Why should I want to love suffering and all the "bads" of the world?

[Kshantivadin]

I just don't see the reason. Why should I cultivate love in the situations where someone caused me great harm ( I am aware it's because of ignorance, but still, why love instead of non-hatred and just not harming them back). Why love all facets of life? I love myself (ego self) way too much to want the harmful situations to be happening in my life, so why love them? It all boils down to want, and I don't want them. I truly don't want any of these things to be happening, so why approach them with love? What's the "benefit" of loving everything?

Thanks for solving my dilemma.

[Forestluv]

There is a self-centered relative love and a transcendent love. The self is oriented toward protecting itself for its own survival. As well, the self is oriented toward seeking self gratification and pleasure. From the perspective of the self, there may be no reason to cultivate love in situations that the self interprets as harmful to itself.  In terms of the self, an orientation that I will avoid engaging in harmful behavior to myself and others seems pretty healthy to me. There are unhealthier self orientations. For example, a self might ask "Why should I practice non-hatred if someone harms me. Why can't I seek revenge by putting is cat in a pot of boiling water?". As well, we could create healthier self orientations. For example, we may think "When someone harms me, I don't necessary want to engage with them, yet I'd like to understand their perspective and why they are behaving the way they are". For example, imagine you go on a few dates with a gal that we kinda like. Then we find out she is married with a child and the husband tracks you down and tells you "stay away from my wife or I will harm you". In a sense, the woman's lie and the husbands threat have harmed you. From a self perspective, it seems reasonable to say "I don't want to get involved and be harmed in this unhealthy situation. And I don't want to cause any harm to their family". Do you need to get involved and try to infuse love into this unhealthy family dynamic? Do you need to play some type of psychologist to help the family heal with love? I would say "no" in this context. It seems best to step away and disengage. Yet we can still have love. We may notice that this woman and family have gone through trauma and are suffering. We can see how they are acting out their trauma for relief. We may feel a sense of understanding, empathy and love for them. Yet this doesn't mean we need to intervene in the family and try to inject love. Showing up to their house with a basket full of fruit and love would be very inappropriate in this context. 

So let's imagine the we disengage. We can disengage with neutrality and think "She has issues. I'm outta here". Or we can disengage with a sense of understanding what they are going through on a human level. We can have empathy, compassion and love for them. We can wish them the best. Perhaps we do a tonglen meditation one night and send healing energy to their family. And then we move on. . . Is there a "benefit" to this orientation. To me that is an odd question because it is so self-centered. Thinking "If I feel a sense of empathy for the family, how will I benefit? What's in it for me?". I don't know how to answer that. I think it is more of a personal orientation. When I see people harming others, I get a sense of their inner insecurities and pain. People who harm others also harm themselves and they are suffering on the inside. This doesn't mean I should go camping with them, yet I can still have a sense of caring and empathy for them. I guess for me, the "benefit" of this is that my human experience is much deeper and meaningful. Transactional interactions are very shallow too me and I don't like them. 

[Recursoinominado]

Those distinctions exists only in the mind, when the mind doesn't have a say on it, where are your problems?

The silence is always closer to the Truth that anything your mind has to say, think about it.

Love arises naturally from this silence, from raw reality.

[TheSelf]

Maybe "sufferings" or "bads" are just creations of your mind and doesn't exists at all. Just like who you think you are and or your thoughts about your personality and all that only exist in your mind, and its just imaginations. Every body can realize these with just Self-Inquiry.

[student]

You can't love it forcefully. You can only come to that conclusion. It is actually the "foundation". The Truth. You are trying to see clearly what you have in front of your eyes. But you can't, because the layers of illusion are still standing too heavy on you.

If you don't have it [love], it means you are still deluded somehow, you still have "layers" of illusions that doesn't let you feel it. Love is pure "truth energy", life energy.

Don't force yourself to love. Know that love is the conclusion. Know, with the help of this information, that when you hate, you are actually deluding yourself. Keep this information in your mind, to guide yourself in your direct experience, in your personal path. 

But you must reach the direct experience of what Love really is. By hating you are only perpetuating the chaos, the illusion. You are perpetuating a "self", an identity.

Do not "love" either. If you don't understand what that is don't do it. Love will come naturally, when you start breaking the cycle of always reacting.

You can only have ups and downs. Hate, suffer, cry, have mental breakdowns. Then be happy again, feel again freed somehow. Believe it or not, this is all drama and illusion. Whether it is something "negative" or "positive". It is something perpetuated by you and maintained by you. Break the cycle of always reacting. See what is really there with awareness when you are standing in front of the "bad guys", and see the simplicity of it all. 

To see the simplicity you must renounce the "decorations" you willfully are putting on the people that wronged you. It is all between you and yourself. This is the only battle.

[SOUL]

It isn't really a matter of loving everything for what it is as it is that we are coming from a loving place from the source of our being no matter what we experience. This allows us to live life in a loving way through everything even if the circumstances we encounter aren't pleasing or appealing to our 'self'.

Then how we behave is influenced by this love and the actions we take are characterized by love so can heal the situation to the degree it can be. It's difficult to behave in a healing way if we are acting from a fearful or hateful place because that would inform our behavior. Even if we find the situation contrary to what we seek for ourselves coming from love is the way to heal it.

[Shin]

7 hours ago, Kshantivadin said:

I just don't see the reason. Why should I cultivate love in the situations where someone caused me great harm ( I am aware it's because of ignorance, but still, why love instead of non-hatred and just not harming them back). Why love all facets of life? I love myself (ego self) way too much to want the harmful situations to be happening in my life, so why love them? It all boils down to want, and I don't want them. I truly don't want any of these things to be happening, so why approach them with love? What's the "benefit" of loving everything?

Thanks for solving my dilemma.

Whatever you refuse to love is a part of you you refuse its existence.

So as long as you refuse to love everything, you won't be able to feel divine love.

Loving something doesn't mean wanting it in your life more, it means total acceptance.
It's not because you love someone that you will never leave that person, if that person is doing you harm, still it doesn't change the fact that you love him/her regardless.

[MAYA EL]

After years of intense contemplation and experience I have found (In my opinion ) that love as we understand it in today's spiritual and social groups is do to a childhood neurosis do to a lack of affection from there parents as well as false examples through Hollywood and the promotion of unrealistic desires through media and other outlets of advertisement

 

and due to quantum entanglement ( or whatever you want to call it)

and the unfortunate bad habit the human mind has where it creates false experiences for itself such as Cinderella syndrome / or false memory syndrome and so we have created an epidemic of misunderstandings catalyzed by good intentions that has created this concept that is of hardly any fundamental value at all

this love movement witch had a strong starting  with Juliana of Norwich a Christian woman (which is known in some occult circles as the witch of Norwich) was not the main source of the movement but is a influential player in starting this belief nonetheless

 and because of all this it has caused a great confusion in the  spiritual community and many others.

Now I'm not saying we never had or showed affection beforehand because parents still cared for their children and their significant other's but it was not like this impractical Hollywood understanding we have today.

So don't worry about loving everybody you love who you need to love and you won't  love who you don't need to love.

[Jacobsrw]

@Kshantivadin primarily because it is suffering that at all allows you to know there is bliss. You would not know the primacy of bliss without it’s opposite, it would be near impossible. So suffering and pain is your opportunity to cultivate within it and transmute it into its counter part, which is bliss.

Much like consciousness is made known through becoming separated through the duality of self, bliss is known through being dichotomously contrasted by suffering.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Jacobsrw

[Leo Gura]

16 hours ago, Kshantivadin said:

Why love all facets of life?

Because you are all facets of life.

You got the question backwards. The real question is, why hate or reject any facet of your Self?

Rejection of Self is what creates all suffering. So from a purely practical perpective anything less than love is foolishness as you are the one who suffers for it.

[Kshantivadin]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Because you are all facets of life.

You got the question backwards. The real question is, why hate or reject any facet of your Self?

Rejection of Self is what creates all suffering. So from a purely practical perpective anything less than love is foolishness as you are the one who suffers for it.

I see now. It's hard. Would I truly suffer less if I were to accept everything? I could still cling to samsara and, while being aware of all the spiritual teachings, try to make the "best" life with the most of the "good things" and the least of the "bad things" and suffer less than if I were to go head on into loving everything without yet being enlightened?

Surrendering reality itself could mean radically different life circumstances (for the worse) while I'm still unable to fully love which would create more suffering - because of the choices I make while being in a higher state of consciousness, mystical experience, divine love that's not yet "permanent".

my dilemma is solved though, thank you leo. enjoy taking a break!

Edited January 16, 2020 by Kshantivadin

[Kshantivadin]

@Serotoninluv thank you for the lovely reply <3

@SOUL great insight. thank you.

 

[Leo Gura]

@Kshantivadin If you don't want to love, don't love. But you have no idea what you're missing.

Love is not something that you can be forced to do. You do it willfully out of mature consciousness and wisdom that love is the best in ever case.

[purerogue]

What helped for me is noticing how I do the same things other people do , the ignorance about getting mad , judgemental just to do the same thing to someone else.I am sure you have done fair share of things in your life that have been harmful to someone, maybe you are doing it every day.

I would not force loving anything, you just have to see trough ignorance and most of it will come itself.

 

 

 

[Nahm]

 I truly don't want any of these things to be happening, so why approach them with love?

Derive what you do want, line up with it, and watch it all unfold right before your eyes. 

What's the "benefit" of loving everything?

The life you actually want. Feelings you have not yet known. 

Indeed, “The kingdom of heaven is within you” -Jesus

Discover the unthinkable profundity of this reality changing truth.

[Scholar]

17 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Kshantivadin If you don't want to love, don't love. But you have no idea what you're missing.

How is he missing anything at all? It's not like he is finite.

 

To the enlighened person the Divine will laugh and say "Oh enlightened person, you have no idea what you are missing!"

And then the enlightened person pops into existence as a zebra being eaten by a lion. "Now you know what you have been missing, enlightened person.", the Divine will say, and the zebra will know.

Edited January 17, 2020 by Scholar