The essence of this popular ‘love’ is that the other person completes, fulfills, makes whole. Without them, the one who is in love is absolutely miserable as a half-person, a wretched starved creature who cannot — and does not want to — survive alone.
Odd that this ‘half-creature’ seemed perfectly happy and able to survive before meeting their supposed ‘other half’ then, isn’t it? If they were okay before they met their one true love, where did half of them vanish to? Did it vaporize the moment they came into contact with this ‘beloved’ so that for the rest of their lives they are no longer able to function properly? Or did they just never realize they were miserable until they came into the presence of this deity?
The workings of this popular ‘love’ is peculiar. In pursuit of ‘love’, people act insane. They will do very bizarre things trying to get noticed… either by a paramour, or by their family whom they feel don’t love them enough. Ironic that half the time the one who falls in love doesn’t even really like their beloved.
It drives some people to whine and nag their relatives and friends who don’t remember their birthday, and it drives others to attack those who are closest to them. Still others make fools of themselves and willingly take upon themselves massive amounts of shame and humiliation — which they usually never recover from — in a gamble that if they trade enough currency for a chance to get noticed by the beloved, the beloved will be so smitten with them that ‘true love’ will blossom and they’ll live their life in bliss. Faith in this gamble — which is surely worse odds than even winning the lottery — is probably why so many innocents lose their virginity at so young an age. It’s lottery with the soul.
But ‘true love’ never seems to blossom, even after romance has come and gone. A person who can be life and breath to his or her lover one day can overnight transform into a stench that cannot be endured. Love can turn to hate so quickly and so fully that divorced people think of their former mate as the very devil, often for the rest of their lives. More so the one who wanted to divorce a long time ago, but who was never allowed to and had to live with the sorry bastard until he (or she) died.
Looking at the realm of ‘love’ this way, there seem to be more questions than answers. One would even think it’s too complicated, it can never be understood, it should only remain in the realm of poetry and philosophy forever. But one of the fundamental lessons of Etherics is that only darkness is complicated, and only wickedness cannot be understood because it must always hide; anything true is simple, and anything right is very plain.
So we must not be seeing the real ‘love’. This popular love must be some kind of an imitator attempting to creep in and take the place of real love for some nefarious reason of its own, because real love should be really easy to comprehend. The only person who needs to make things confusing and complicated is a deceiver, and the only purpose of a deceiver is to steal, kill, and destroy.
True Love
Why are people so desperate to find love that they will risk their life, their sanity, their dignity and their self-respect? Is life really that horrible without this punishing, brutal beast that we must slave and sacrifice all on its unforgiving alter?
The fact is that the human spirit has a fundamental need for love just like the physical body has a need for food. Without love the spirit dies, and without food the body withers. But people these days have gotten completely confused over what, exactly, love is. They keep trying to ‘eat’ this popular ‘love’ stuff, and it doesn’t satisfy or fill them up; it just makes things even more miserable.
Thus, poets and songwriters yowl continually that one must always seek for love but never find; and one must always bare one’s soul to the soul-eater and never be comforted.
The basic mistake is to believe that love is a feeling. There are feelings of relief, delight, pleasure, gratification, satisfaction, etc. that come along with love, but love itself is not a feeling nor does it dwell in the realm of the soul (see Spirit, Soul, Body). Love dwells in the higher realm of the spirit, and it is a spiritual force, not a soulical (or emotional) one. In fact, one can experience true love and feel nothing at all in an emotional way.
The second misconception is to believe that love is the receiving of something. One often hears formerly married people (who, amusingly, never had any happiness in their marriage) harp about ‘give and take’. What they really mean by this is that the spouse is supposed to give, and they are supposed to take. Others believe that their own ‘giving’ is simply the absence of giving pain; if I don’t do anything particularly nasty to my mate, they should be happy that I’m acting so civil and thank their stars.
In fact, true love is the spiritual determination to give. That is, in fact, the full and complete definition of love. It may seem overly simple, but truth often does. For all its simplicity, like a prism in a beam of light, its effects are diverse and astonishing.
This true-love giving is not the sort of petty, conditional giving we are used to. The usual sort of giving secretly keeps a little tally in its head: I have given this much of such-and-such, that means I should get something of equal value back someday. Usually we expect to receive the same amount of ‘give’ back from our mate (or family), and we are very disappointed when they do not ever pay their debt. But what are we? A spouse, or a merchant?
True love giving gives, and when it does, it is instantly satisfied. It does not want a reward or some kind of payment, because it is finished. There is no debt. The very act of giving was like painting a masterpiece, or doing the perfect work after years of practice; just doing it was the victory. Like going alone to shoot hoops and getting ten free-throws in a row perfect, the person who does it for the love of playing itself doesn’t need an audience. They are just thrilled they saw that happen from their own hands, and they walk home with a big smile feeling content.
True love is art. It is the spiritual desire to give, more to satisfy the giver than anyone else. The giver wants to see everything done perfectly, so that he or she can be personally satisfied that it was done in an exceedingly excellent way. The giver does not want anyone else to be inconvenienced at all by the giving art; he or she will do it all themselves and will insist on it. A painter doesn’t need someone else to help them paint.
True love takes practice. Humans begin life as selfish, and slowly grow out of it as they realize selfishness sucks. Continually seeking to improve and to become happier, the mature human eventually discovers the secret of real love, and is happy for the rest of their existence. True love makes its own happiness; it is not dependent on another person to supply it. If the object of affection is not thrilled by the gift, oh well; at least the gift itself was glorious. It is never wasted, because it was a delight in itself.
The true lover can love anyone; a spouse, a family member, a stranger, whole crowds of strangers, or just themselves equally without difficulty. They feel no jealousy; their giving can be done for anyone, at any time. There is enough to go around.
No More Misery
The basic need of the human spirit is to give love, not to get it. When we spend our whole lives trying to ‘get’, we are condemning ourselves to endless years of torment and pain. That rush of excitement and desire we feel when we find a compatible person and ‘fall in love’ as they say is really just the thrill of the spirit as it gets ready to begin to give. We could give already before that to our family and friends; this is why we didn’t feel too miserable before we met the ‘other half’. However, with more compatibility comes more opportunity to give. That increased opportunity is what is exciting.
The betrayal we feel during divorce or breakup is the sharp pain of another person refusing to allow us to give any more. Probably the cruelest thing one human can do to another is to slam the doors of giving on them, making it impossible. We feel a distinct panic that we will never find another person so compatible again, thus we will never be allowed to give as deeply again! Horror of horrors!
But it is not a fear that we will be alone that is really terrible. Nor is it a fear that we won’t ever receive another gift. It is the fear that we won’t be able to give.
People who shut the doors of giving on themselves, people who hate themselves, are going to be always afraid. People who shut the doors of giving on God, and refuse to give to God, are going to feel alone. And people who shut the doors of giving on other people, from family to lovers to strangers, are going to feel unappreciated.
We must open those doors, and begin to give even if we don’t feel it will be well received. We can do something. Find out a person’s favorite kind of paperback book, buy them one. Help take an elderly lady out to do her hair. Give an extra dollar or five as a tip. Give God a little respect. Pay attention to your own birthday and celebrate even if you’re all by yourself. There are ways to give if one will only start to look for them. They don’t have to be super-huge at first, like a true-love marriage; they can be more humble and still be very satisfying.
False Love
Now it becomes easy to see why so many so-called ‘love stories’ end in disaster. For instance, take the ‘falling in love’ idea. Two people meet, they are staggered with delight to meet one another, they instantly cling to each other and… what? What do they do? They begin to try and ‘get’ something from one another. They try to get kisses, they try to get attention, they do weird things to get attention, they try to get, get, get…
The more they try to get, the more annoyed the other person becomes.
What is the problem? If true love is just giving, shouldn’t at least one half of the couple be happy to do all of the giving?
It’s not “just giving” that makes love-giving satisfying. True love giving is a burning desire within the heart to give, of one’s own free will, especially to someone who didn’t deserve it or didn’t expect it. That is when it’s best. The more the other person expects it, the less strength the giving has, until it loses all power and just whimpers and dies an early death in the face of blatant selfishness.
When one person is willing to give, but the other person is convinced it is their right and honor to do all the taking, neither of them will be happy. The taker will be miserable because taking can never, ever fill the void of their own need to give (if they are not giving, they are empty), and the giver can never be happy because all of their efforts are both expected, and not enough. Usually this relationship dissolves into the pathetic lopsided agony of the beaten wife and the abusive husband, the user and the victim, the vampire and his prey, until finally the giver just gives up and dies and the taker moves on to find fresh blood.
If both lovers are takers, there will be instant conflict because after a brief and extremely passionate (and probably steamy) episode of wild taking, very soon all the blood between the two vampires will be sucked out, and there will be no life left in the relationship. Inevitably the double-takers will both accuse the other of not giving enough, which is correct; but it is the fault of both for being selfish pricks, not the fault of one over the other. A couple who screams at one another all the time are both to blame.
If both are givers, there must also be civility. “Giving and taking” is not the answer; there should be no taking. Taking is pure barbarism. “Giving and allowing to give” is what should be happening. Both giving, and both being gracious and polite enough to allow the other to give, no matter how clumsy or awkward their unpracticed attempts may be at first.
There is a gentility to receiving which has been lost in the modern age. It is a politeness of a lost civilization, an age of chivalry whose sun set four generations ago. One does not make fun of a gift, no matter how moronic it may look. One does not ever, EVER, refuse a gift even if one does not want or need it, and especially when one does not feel worthy of it. One must always receive a gift without examining it or examining oneself to judge whether the giver is right in giving. Who made you the judge of another person’s heart? If they felt it was right to give, then it is your duty to accept with quietness, grace, and kindness.
Learning to receive is perhaps the one largest gap that has developed in American culture these days. Everyone wants to be totally independent, nobody wants to rely on “charity”. Oddly enough, the word “charity” is the English translation of the Biblical word ‘hased’, which has no English equivalent. ‘Hased’ means “a forceful desire to give”. If we won’t receive love because we are too proud, how can anyone give? And how can anyone be happy?
No comments:
Post a Comment