Does this really explain anything about any of the naturally-arising questions we are looking into: the chaos, the evil, the disorder, the contradictions that are “thrown” at us, the functioning of the human mind, the Eternal? Maybe it does. I don’t see it that way. We are looking into them because they arise spontaneously. No? When one comes face to face with chaos, evil, disorder, inner contradictions, irresistible compulsions, is the functioning of bird brains relevant in that moment? Does it explain our inner state of being?
I’m taking a break now. Until the next time we meet.
Let us return to exploring love, okay? It’s hard to stay with, for me at least, but I think it might be worth the effort and discomfort.
I like the idea of love and Love. The love with a small l is very familiar to all of us, I’d think: love of family, friends, ideas, art works, nature, self. But what is Love?
That would be ironic, right? The more effort you put into ‘cultivating’ love, the further you push Love away!
The feeling we have when we love something or someone, it’s so powerful, nothing beats it for sheer depth and intensity. What is it, really? Can it be trusted, is it the real thing?
It’s attraction that can’t be resisted and draws me like a moth to the flame that sooner or later burns up the fuel of my hunger for understanding, releasing me to the next attraction, and so on.
There are things I feel helplessly compelled to find out about, and I love nothing more than finding out what I can about things that attract and hold my attention.
What is it, really? Can it be trusted, is it the real thing?
It is the most “real thing” if it gives meaning to living. What need is there to trust it if it’s what matters most to you?
This is what “love” is for me. As for the love K spoke of, I know nothing.
Right it’s selfish and it’s greedy; it makes me feel good. It’s ‘self love’. I may plant minefields for the ‘love’ of my country, where children will die and lose limbs…and that’s too bad because I ‘love’ my kids! So absurd.
That’s what love is to the conditioned brain, and it’s why the conditioned brain thinks it knows what K meant when he spoke of love because it it doesn’t make me feel good, what good is it?
So if love makes me (the conditioned brain) feel good, the love that K spoke of would be the feeling of no me, or a me transformed into something radically different from what we know.
Absolutely because the self can only know, feel, experience ‘self centered love’. This Love that he and others referred to, could only be present when the self wasn’t. When there was a transformation. Like “ If we truly loved our children, there would be no war.”
What I glean from statements like that is that with real Love we see ourselves as the other, in the other, whereas in our ‘self loving’ we see the other as separate from us. We see ourselves as ‘individuals’ and them as ‘individuals’. (Though with self love we cease to see them at all, by forming images of them based on the past!)
With real Love, there would be no image making of the other? Since ‘image making’ is a defensive reaction of the self based on fear? If I AM the other no such reaction would be necessary?
Would it be then, that seeing ie. “the observer is the observed”, that would itself be an ‘act of Love’?
I think so.
Humans are primates.
The main difference between a chimpanzee brain and ours is in the size. The main difference between our minds is culture (here are 3 chapters in my blog which explore this idea that intelligence is cultural - the 2nd of the 3 has a comparison of chimpanzee vs human intelligence)
It is obviously the most reliable means of demonstrating that something is so. Understanding the totality of the truth about life might not be possible, as we (and Bohm) have just seen.
It might be our perception and interpretation that differs the most (seeing as the sense organs and brain, or lack thereof can differ immensely) - but if we claim that awareness is less correlated to conditioning than belief, we must surely be able to argue for some universality of awareness?
Seeing IS Loving. A felt sense of non-dual connection. Loving doesn’t necessarily mean liking.
I am likelier to feel that connection with people I don’t know well or at all, probably because I haven’t yet built an image of them, they’re just fellow humans.
The anticipation (memory) of having chocolate ice cream triggers the endorphins and the eating it….really triggers the endorphins! ( I am speculating, I wouldn’t know an endorphin if I tripped over one!)