Is Love A Culture Thing?

[Felipe]

For instance, why a man is supposed to love only, and only one, woman? how is this love different from the love between parents and their kids? and siblings? and friends? and strangers !?

What makes some people to give/dedicate their life for other people? Would it be the ego sacrificing the body for the sake of its identity!?

What does love mean for Enlightened people?

To relax: 

 

Edited May 8, 2016 by Felipe

[Emerald]

2 hours ago, Felipe said:

For instance, why a man is supposed to love only, and only one, woman? how is this love different from the love between father/mother and daughter? and brother and sister? and friends? and strangers !?

What makes some people to give/dedicate their life for other people? Would it be the ego sacrificing the body for the sake of its identity!?

What does love mean for Enlightened people?

To relax: 

 

Now, these are beliefs based upon two experiences of oneness that I had 6 years ago. So take this perspective with a grain of salt. But here is my take:

Love is real. But, contrary to popular belief, love isn't relational. So, it isn't something that we receive, give, or do. The word love is another attempt to describe the essential nature of reality. You could say that the word love is synonymous with the word God, in many respects. The only love that exists is the love that existence has for itself. Because everything in existence is one thing, you could say that the very nature of that one thing is love.

However, because people have an ego with beliefs, assumptions, complexes, and thoughts about reality... we become very unconscious and desensitized to this love as we progress through life. This is why children typically feel more emotion than adults do. We think of ourselves as separate from everything else, which blocks us from seeing our true nature... which is love. So, when you feel wholesome positive emotions like love, it is your body's way of communicating to you that you are stepping closer to your true nature. 

But make no mistake, love doesn't come from an outside source. An outside source can help shift you into greater alignment with your true nature. But the love is already there to be experienced. Love isn't just an emotion... even though we associate it with an emotion because that is the way that we experience it. The phenomenon that catalyzes the feeling of love is all there is. When we experience that thing firsthand, we feel an emotion that we call love. 

 

[Pav]

What is commonly thought of as love in our society is the 'in love' experience or infatuation. It is very different from genuine love and in many aspects even opposite. The 'in love' experience is a temporary insanity designed to facilitate breeding. Some characteristics of this are: it is highly possessive/needy, neurosis develops when the need is not satisfied, it can develop for literally anybody no matter how compatible they really are, it lasts a maximum of 2 to 3 years.

Real love is very different. Maslow explains it well:

Quote

I have already described in a preliminary fashion the contrasting dynamics of B-love (love for the Being of another person, unneeding love, unselfish love) and D-love (deficiency-love, love need, selfish love).

1. B-love is welcomed into consciousness, and is completely enjoyed. Since it is non-possessive, and is admiring rather than needing, it makes no trouble and is practically always pleasure-giving.

2. It can never be sated; it may be enjoyed without end. It usually grows rather than disappearing. It is intrinsically enjoyable. It is end rather than means.

3. The B-love experience is often described as being the same as, and having the same effects as the aesthetic experience or the mystic experience.

4. The therapeutic and psychogogic effects of experiencing B-love are very profound and widespread. Similar are the characterological effects of the relatively pure love of a healthy mother for her baby, or the perfect love of their God that some mystics have described.

5. B-love is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a richer, "higher," more valuable subjective experience than D-love (which all B-lovers have also previously experienced.) This preference is also reported by my other older, more average subjects, many of whom experience both kinds of love simultaneously in varying combinations.

6. D-love can be gratified. The concept "gratification" hardly applies at all to admiration-love for another person's admiration-worthiness and love-worthiness.

7. In B-love there is a minimum of anxiety-hostility. For all practical human purposes, it may even be considered to be absent. There can, of course, be anxiety-for-the-other. In D-love one must always expect some degree of anxiety-hostility.

8. B-lovers are more independent of each other, more autonomous, less jealous or threatened, less needful, more individual, more disinterested, but also simultaneously more eager to help the other towards self-actualisation, more proud of his triumphs, more altruistic, generous and fostering.

9. The truest, most penetrating perception of the other is made possible by B-love. It is as much a cognitive as an emotional-conative reaction, as I have already emphasised. So impressive is this, and so often validated by other people's later experience, that, far from accepting the common platitude that love makes people blind, I become more and more inclined to think of the opposite as true, namely that non-love makes us blind.

10. Finally, I may say the B-love, in a profound but testable sense, creates the partner. It gives him a self-image, it gives him self-acceptance, a feeling of love-worthiness and respect-worthiness, all of which permit him to grow. It is a real question whether the full development of the human being is possible without it.

 

[Consept]

'Love' has been marketed really well in the western world, so what happens is it builds expectations of what love is. These expectations are usually why less and less people feel satisfied, just because they expect so much from it. It's sold as the answer to everything pretty much, what's funny is that in most films, the film ends as the couple get married, so that in people's minds is the ultimate goal, whereas relationship wise it's still the beginning. 

Love I think is something first and foremost you have to experience within yourself, at that point loving someone else is an expression of that, but it is important not to look to outside influences to guide what your love should be, you have to take it as it comes and not rely on it to cure you of everything you're worried about 

[Khin]

Love in relationships, between men and women is not pure. It is called needy love in spirituality. You know...! "Dang... Can't live without you," kinda thing. It is the lowly desire and if you wanna put it as Love, it is very basic love which occur even in animals. Love between parents and children is half pure. It is half pure because on one hand parents love their children without any desire to get something back. They protect and care without expecting in return or they won't hate you if you don't return anything back. On the other hand, their love is still in selfishness. They love their children in a sense of "MINE" which is still based on ego. The most perfect love is accepting everything as the way they are without exception.

In very recent video of Leo, he talked about seeing things as the way they are without any judgement. I bet if you practice that you will understand about LOVE more and more. Because I'm not fully enlightened, I won't talk about how enlightened people love. But even if someone had the enlightenment experience as the one Leo had, one will understand that there is no entity and everything is only happening according to cause and effect, everything is changing, and there is no such thing as perfect or imperfect. Because of understanding those things, everything will become equal in one's eyes.

One also understand that everything is the same including himself. Because of that, one will break the layer of separation between himself and surroundings and become connected with everything. But one will also understand that not everyone understand as him. Because of that, one will become forgiving, understanding, caring and protecting for everyone and everything without judgement and needy desire. Also there's no ego base because he understands that even himself doesn't exist and an entity.

Edited May 12, 2016 by Khin
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