The Temple of Love

[aforceforgood]

A place to celebrate love, name our loves, heal, learn, meditate.

Please leave your other emotions at the door, and turn your mind to love, it's emotional realm, the physical, and the spiritual.

Please no squabbling. There are plenty of threads to do that in. My hope is that this will become a place of gentle words, a place of peace where you can come to forget the days troubles and turn your heart and mind back toward what is truly important, those we love and those we try to love.

Love is a feeling.

Love is a desire.

Love is completion.

Love is fire.

Love is an action.

Love is a choice.

[Guest]

Don't know if it'll fit the thread, but here goes...

I love someone because they have a beautiful voice

and because they feel hurt more deeply then most

and because they are smart in ways that i am not

and because they have sparkly eyes that shine on a soul more complicated then most

and because they have great posture, a winning smile, and a way with words

and because they have an energy that comes from some strange fire that i don't recognize.

and simply because I do.

Someone wrote that there can be no love where there is fear. I feel that this is not true. I think when a heart is completely filled with love (a pretty hard trick to pull off), then there exists the potential for there to be no room for fear. But we're all complicated beings, and there usually exists within us a variety of feelings at any one time. It's unfortunate but love can coexist with fear.

Love is the opposite of hate.

Love is about actions, not thoughts or desires or even words. Thoughts can be all over the map. So can actions if you let them. We all like to think that for the most part, our values guide our actions rather then our thoughts. When we let our values guide our actions, even when they are in conflict with our thoughts, then we have done the ones we love a service.

I see a lot of words on the eplaya that resonate with me, love, judgemental, negativity, community, support, expectations, bitter, children, abuse, over-analyzing, compassion, fire. I'm learning from them, and I love the mass of what youhave created.

Love and compassion are closely related. But one can override the other in a bad way. Love can make you blind to a person's problems, and then your compassion is fucked up because you don't know where your compassion should lie. Sometimes one has to be compassionate to oneself, over the love you feel for another. When you're blind to a person's problems, you can't really love them because they are an idealized dream. Not a real person. It's intoxicating to be in such a state, but like any intoxicant, it tends to make you do stupid and goofy things.

I like that there are many kinds of love. As many kinds of love exist as there are forms of the wind.

I also think that love and fire share a lot in common. Both can burn brightly or lie beneath the surface like warm coals.

And long-term love is like a shape that's been tempered in a fire. Stronger from the experience to withstand the criticisms and disagreements, the disappointments and heartaches, the inevitable bending of one's dreams and hopes to the reality of trying to make a friendsip work.

Love is about the feeling you get when you see a loved one smile.

I've seen unrequited love described as tortuous or the worst. I don't think it has to be. It's only when one expects a certain set of actions to flow from the other person that the unrequited love can be painful. Expect nothing, and you can still love them with a happy heart. I wouldn't recommend putting a lot of actions into that love, as they may just be time wasted on not acting out your love on others, but I don't think the love itself has to be painful.

The tempering of love in the field of actions can be a real test of values. If you love someone with a problem, say a drug problem, you can 'love' them by getting them a dose. But if your values lead you to recognize that this is bad for the person, then the actions should be to get them away from their problem. Even though you may fear that they will strike out at you or stop loving you. That's when choice enters the love equation. When you have to choose to help someone by telling them, I can't do that with you.

Love is about wanting someone to win, about believing they are capable of winning, and about supporting them in their efforts to win.

Love is hoping peace and completeness find that person, even while recognizing you may never be able to bring it to them.

Love can color everything like the uncovering light at sunrise. Sometimes that cover can get ripped away, leaving the harsh light of the midday, but the imprint of those colors can last a lifetime, and they can help put a sunscreen on everything you see so you don't have to focus solely on the defects revealed by the harsher light. And another day always comes with another chance to love.

Love is about renewal, and finding ways to love again.

[aforceforgood]

Beautiful.

The ancient greeks found it helpful to have at least three main words to further define the types of love; PHILEO=fellowship love, the love we feel for a friend, EROS=romontic love, accounting for the honeymoon period in our relationships, and AGAPE=an intellectual kind of love, based on a choice of what orientation a person would be, selfish (disclaimer; all humans are ultimately selfish- even our philanthropy is based on some emotional satisfaction we feel at helping others, so please stifle your initial emotional reaction to that word) and immature, this type falls in and out of love with people and things as it tires of dealing with the negatives that arise as time goes on, with his love based on his feelings, or, giving and other-directed love, based on a desire to improve the world and our relationship with it.

It recognizes that people are not perfect and loves them in spite of it, it creatively thinks of ways to apply love to difficult problems, and loves in spite of hurt, in spite of others' shortcomings, frailties, and without regard to what it will receive in return.

Or in other words, love is a choice.

[Guest]

I like most of what you've written above, but I think we disagree on one thing.

Love to me is not always a choice.

Sometimes it just happens.

And sometimes, friends, family, and professional thinkers can't understand why it would continue, but it does anyway.

Actions we can usually choose. Feelings are not always something we can decide to turn on or off, though they are things we can usually choose to act on or not act on.

I still love some people and things that most people would hate with a fierce intensity. Maybe that means I'm stupid, or its just another side of the stubborn streak my friends know so well. Whatever, it's still there.

We can choose and act to grow love. That's something I'll definitely agree on. And sometimes wisdom comes into play in knowing when our efforts to grow love are being met with pain instead of warmth.

That's when it's time to seek renewal, and find ways to love again.

[Phydeau]

Love ... a subject that can vary in meaning in as many ways as people that interpret it. Love is something different for each person. For me personally, the meaning of love and the ways I've expressed it have changed multiple times. This has led me to believe that a person's interpretation of love is heavily influenced by experience and exposure to other's expression of it. Context is important as well, especialy in conversation, due to the fact that most people use "love" far too generally. Often they might be meaning compassion, adoration, charity, desire, admiration or a plethora of other shades of gray. I feel that pure love is expressed when another's needs take priority over your own. For me personally, I feel that the best example of my own expression of love was represented when I finally accepted my children leaving the nest I'd created for them for so many years. I loved them enough to "lose them" without showing them the pain it caused me. I kept my torment silent in their presence so they would be free from any guilt. In my past, for me, love has always been a very selfless act but has, in the recent past, changed to a very selfish thing.
How can love be selfish you ask?
Well, it's something I have been experiencing on a totally internal level. I've found that the more my inner peace increases, the less I need people to validate me. I'm unintentionally severing all my personal/spiritual connections that I always thought were so "mandatory" to my survival. Hence, I'm becoming incredibly solitary. I'm not narcisistic. Nor am I vain. But honestly speaking, I seem to love myself more than anyone or anything else these days. Is it wrong to be in love with yourself? To be one's own best friend and lover? I dunno, but it's the path I've found myself upon and I must see it to it's end.
A side note tho, something I'm starting to take notice of, too soon to integrate into any of my personal theories, but it seems that now that I'm not wasting my time/heart on maintaining connections that my love is becoming more free and open. I seem to be having a much greater appreciation of beauty in all things. Very few people cross my path that I don't find to seem to hold some facination. Some point of unique beauty, whether inner or outer.
Well, that's enough ranting from me :) Doubtful that I said anything that will be insightful to anyone but myself, but thanx for listening :)

[Guest]

I thought what you wrote was quite beautiful.
Thank you.