I Wonder What Love Is
Of Human Love...
"... Love is distinct from my ego; love was here before my ego came into the world, and love will be here after my ego departs. Yet love is something or "someone" who lives within me. Love is a force that acts from within, that enables my ego to look outside itself, to see my fellow humans as something to be valued and cherished, rather than used.
Therefore, when I say that "I love", it is not I who love, but, in reality, Love who acts through me. Love is not so much something I do as something that I am. Love is not a doing but a state of being -- a relatedness, a connectedness to another mortal, an identification with her or him that simply flows within me and through me, independent of my intentions or my efforts.
This state of being may express itself in what I do or in how I treat people, but it can never be reduced to a set of "doings," or acts. It is a feeling within. More often than we realize, love works its divine alchemy best when we follow the advice of Shakespeare's Cordelia: "Love, and keep silent."
Love exists, regardless of our opinions about what it ought to be. No matter how many fabrications or how much selfishness we justify in the name of "love," love still keeps its unchanging character. Its existence and its nature do not depend on my illusions, my opinions, or my counterfeits. Love is different from what my ego wants, different from the sentimental froth and inflated ecstasies I've been taught to hope for; but love turns out to be real; it turns out to be what I am, rather than what my ego demands.
We need to know this about love. Otherwise we could never stand to look honestly at our self-deceptions. At times people say: "Don't make me see my illusions; if you take away my illusions, there will be nothing left!" We seem to think of love as "man-made," as though we invented it in our minds. Even though romantic love has not turned out to be what we thought, there is still a human love that is inherent in us, and this love will be with us even after our projections, our illusions, and our artifices have all passed away.
Human love is so obscured by the inflations and commotions of romance that we almost never look for love in its own right, and we hardly know what to look for when we do search. But as we learn love's characteristics and attitudes, we can begin to see love within us -- revealed in our feelings, in the spontaneous flow of warmth that surges toward another person, in the small, unnoticed acts of relatedness that make up the secret fabric of our daily lives."
~Robert A. Johnson, from "We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love" pg.189-191
"... Love is distinct from my ego; love was here before my ego came into the world, and love will be here after my ego departs. Yet love is something or "someone" who lives within me. Love is a force that acts from within, that enables my ego to look outside itself, to see my fellow humans as something to be valued and cherished, rather than used.
Therefore, when I say that "I love", it is not I who love, but, in reality, Love who acts through me. Love is not so much something I do as something that I am. Love is not a doing but a state of being -- a relatedness, a connectedness to another mortal, an identification with her or him that simply flows within me and through me, independent of my intentions or my efforts.
This state of being may express itself in what I do or in how I treat people, but it can never be reduced to a set of "doings," or acts. It is a feeling within. More often than we realize, love works its divine alchemy best when we follow the advice of Shakespeare's Cordelia: "Love, and keep silent."
Love exists, regardless of our opinions about what it ought to be. No matter how many fabrications or how much selfishness we justify in the name of "love," love still keeps its unchanging character. Its existence and its nature do not depend on my illusions, my opinions, or my counterfeits. Love is different from what my ego wants, different from the sentimental froth and inflated ecstasies I've been taught to hope for; but love turns out to be real; it turns out to be what I am, rather than what my ego demands.
We need to know this about love. Otherwise we could never stand to look honestly at our self-deceptions. At times people say: "Don't make me see my illusions; if you take away my illusions, there will be nothing left!" We seem to think of love as "man-made," as though we invented it in our minds. Even though romantic love has not turned out to be what we thought, there is still a human love that is inherent in us, and this love will be with us even after our projections, our illusions, and our artifices have all passed away.
Human love is so obscured by the inflations and commotions of romance that we almost never look for love in its own right, and we hardly know what to look for when we do search. But as we learn love's characteristics and attitudes, we can begin to see love within us -- revealed in our feelings, in the spontaneous flow of warmth that surges toward another person, in the small, unnoticed acts of relatedness that make up the secret fabric of our daily lives."
~Robert A. Johnson, from "We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love" pg.189-191
By:
Dee67
Age:
41-45
,
Female
