Love is not a feeling, as you have discovered, or remembered and experienced. It is a state of being, and it is a perpetual creative and kinetic state, for all of existence exists within it, creates it, is it, participates in it, and is created by it. Love is. You cannot, as a consciousness, not participate in it, for if you were to step out of it, you step out of any existence – physical or non-physical. It is impossible, so not worth contemplating.
In becoming or being aware of this state of being that you are, you may experience emotions, yet the beingness is not the emotion. We would encourage one not to mistake an emotion for a beingness. Emotions are not necessarily indicators of a truth, nor are they the thing. They are indicators of, reactions to, a perspective. They are not the Love.
We would like to expand upon this.
The word “love” in English most often refers to an emotion, which you correctly cringe at, instinctively and correctly understanding that True Love (Unconditional love, many say) is not an emotion. You personally would be more comfortable referring to Love (capitalized) as a living being, and in this you would be more accurate if still not completely correct. You would be more comfortable referring to love as the core being-ness of being, which would also be a more accurate description, if not yet complete. In your lexicon love might be more accurately referred to as “limitless creativity,” “inherent balance,” “harmony.” You cannot find the proper word with the proper connotations and vibrations, for as you know the proper word does not exist in your language. “Love” as a word has lost its meaning in the English language (in this context of which we speak), at its essence, just as the word “God” has been so defined as to have lost the limitlessness of the mysterious, eternal, creative and essentially unknowable-ness / total knowing-ness of that to which it refers.
The word is only marginally important. We cannot give you a new word, nor would you want us to do so. It would not make your experience or your state of being any more comprehensible to another without the word’s widespread dissemination and use. Therefore, we will continue to use the word “love” with all its inadequacies. As long as you will remember that love is not an emotion but a state of being, we can continue our discussion of the heart and its chakra.
(to be continued)
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I always think of language as being dependent upon having a body, with a throat and vocal chords; being convinced that one is this body; and then believing that one has to string together sounds–each of which is an auditory symbol for a word, which is a symbol for an idea–in order to communicate.
It’s a wonder we manage it at all. You do very well at it.
Is your goal to disassemble some of the no-longer-useful new age thoughtforms?
Thank you, Marian. I think of language in a similar way and often wonder how we manage to communicate at all.
Applying that way of understanding language sometimes helps me “unpack” concepts or downloads. If all I can do is glimpse the concept, it’s as if I can “hold” it steady in my mind and look for one sound, word or auditory symbol to describe one tiny aspect of the concept. As soon as I get that one little thing, I’m able to pull it like a thread, unraveling the rest into words that are at least accurate to what I “see” in the concept, if not precisely true (the indescribable can be described to some extent, or at least made comprehensible). It often comes out garbled, but that can be fixed.
Hm … I hadn’t thought of what my goal is, I guess. I don’t mind disassembling some of the no-longer-useful new age thoughtforms, and can see that does sum up much of what I’ve been writing, eh? I suppose I could just as well turn my attention toward dissembling no-longer-useful Christian thoughtforms (for instance), the topics just haven’t been called to my attention in an immediate way.
I suppose that the new age base concepts and understandings seem closest to my own (ever-changing) understandings of consciousness and reality … or that the best in the new age remains closest to and wide open to accepting the validity of personal exploration of the All That Is (fewest transmogifications and overlaid controls such as those that have accumulated in and around, for instance, Christianity). Because of that clean potential, I’m aggravated/ annoyed/ irritated/ agitated by the accumulation of peripheral rules (this dream means this, that animal means that), the easy and increasingly empty instructions (“open your heart,” “follow your passion,” for instance), the preponderance of people competing to be “more together,” to fix others, to sell their modality or message or vision as the silver bullet for everyone and insist that we must save the world …I wonder if, as soon as we start to build a dogma, we limit ourselves.
I prefer to strip all that down to one known: I am more than my physical body.
From there, each person can explore their own experience – that’s how I look at the things that I write. They’re my explorations, not necessarily true or right or relevant to everyone. I’m indulging myself.
I suppose my goal, if I had to state one, would be to nudge people to explore … to start to notice what they believe and what they know. To question, challenge, and explore their assumptions and comfortable perspectives about reality. To stretch beyond what they thought was possible or beyond what others tell them is true to explore their own understanding of consciousness and reality …
There’s a lot of emoting, a lot of ten steps, a lot of quick-fix be-all-that-you-can-be, a lot of “I can fix you” in the new age world. There’s a lot of intuition, and attendant suspicion of the intellect and ego. Personally, I think our minds, our logic and ability to analyze and think deeply about things is as valuable as intuition, and that ego has a valuable role in our physical lives. Experience gets digested and assimilated not just through emotion, not just through intuitive understanding or by using crystals, recording dreams, drumming in circles, chanting a mantra … thought, intellect, has a large role in our explorations, learning and digestion.
Is that right? I’m thinking out loud (well, not out loud exactly)… oh look, you got the long answer 😛
I’m not sure where I’ve ended up but I’m going to stop now.
Another interesting question that urged me to think about what I’m doing in a different way… Thank you, Marian.
I could sense your irritation with new age platitudes. What aggravates me is when people come back from a near death experience and aren’t able to flipping describe what they experienced without stringing together more of same. Arrggg. Good lord. That’s like going to a foreign country and bringing back one of those ‘and this is all I got’ t-shirts. I always think, “Is that the best you could do?”
But yes, it’s the best they could do, and so are the new age platitudes and the animal totems and the dream analysis and all the rest of it.
I like to think of that whole spiritual supermarket approach as like manure in a garden. The earthworms are eating and digesting and making compost and eventually something nourishing, but of an entirely different order, may grow.
Not that new agers are earthworms, of course, but I feel that they must be holding a useful vibration or playing a useful role or they wouldn’t be here. I prefer to feel that way, frankly. And it’s all about how I prefer to feel! 🙂 Seriously, however, I believe that they are useful in some way.
Intellect, for me, is another story. My feeling is that I have to be fairly careful about how I use my intellect. On the one hand, I understand completely what you describe as catching hold of a wisp of a thread and then using it to unravel the whole package.
On the other hand, I know that analysis, by and large, can be nothing more than distraction for me. It can breed division. And breeding division is not what I want.
Gotta go. I sent you a FB message. Interacting with you got me thinking as well!
I like your worm analogy! I agree – it is the best that they can do, and serves a purpose. (I still get irritated – maybe that serves a purpose too 🙂 )
I can get tangled up in my intellect, I do know what you’re talking about – stuck in analysis, constructing structures to prop up what I want to believe -ha!-, stuck on loops, or otherwise distracting me. My cousin and I have a theory: smart people simply have this problem and have to learn to manage it. I once went to a psychiatrist (don’t get me started), and after ten minutes thought “This will never work. I can run rings around this man even when I’m a mess!”
I guess I’m assuming a balance. It seems to me that without my analyzer, my intellect, I might be the woman who doesn’t distinguish between the present physical moment and what I’m focusing on in my head. Aargh – that’s clear as mud. Someone I knew heard voices – not just little “tell Natalie x” voices (though later she got those and … dead on). She would run screaming outdoors, climb to the top of a snowdrift and scream “The Germans are coming!” She would wake her kids in the night, leaning over them and yelling, “Something is terribly wrong!” (Well, yes …I’m sure they agreed!) I believe that she was picking up real information, but wasn’t able to make a distinction between what was useful, pertinent, applicable, appropriate – etc – to what her physical presence was experiencing or focused on now, in the present. She wasn’t able to negotiate with herself over what was appropriate for her, the people around her, the environment that she was in. I wonder if there wasn’t a disconnect between intuition and the intellect. If they’re working in tandem – both in a healthy state, I think that they must complement each other. I certainly negotiate with myself, using my intellect, and value that ability.
Maybe I’m assigning to intellect what you or someone else would assign to intuition?
No, you’re right. I would not trade away my intellect, or my analytical abilities, or my ability to experience something and be able to verbalize about it.
What I mean is that analysis, or just running the intellect for the purpose of analysis, creates a very solid sense of self that can stand in the way of appreciating others.
To me it feels similar to a false feeling of validity…. like the one I might get from righteous indignation, or from living in a big city.
So yes, a balance has to be negotiated. It’s just something I’ve had to be aware of with myself. Just the doing of intellect… it’s not really an accomplishment, or anything necessarily of more value than the contributions of someone with no intellectual skill.
Like just because I have a computer with lots of processing power, I’m not better than someone with an Atari. Maybe the person with the Atari has some experiential skill that I can’t even guess at. They often do. And sometimes it’s quite valuable. Not, as you say, that anything isn’t.
Well, now I’ve got my tail in my mouth, so I’ll quit here! 🙂
I think I know what you’re getting at in the “…just running the intellect or the purpose of analysis, creates a very solid sense of self …” idea. Agreed – I think of it as self-justification, rationalizing, pride?, … there must be a more accurate description. It contains competition, and some other ingredients, I think. I know it through the feeling of self-righteousness too, and am mortified by myself when I’ve caught myself doing it. I associate that with what people refer to as “ego” (another word that has almost lost all meaning to me, it’s used so much and sometimes so vaguely or strangely).
“…it’s not really an accomplishment…” agree completely. It’s just a skill that we happen to have. Applied stupidity is difficult for me to handle with patience (in myself and others), but so is intelligence when it’s applied with what you describe in the first two paragraphs of your comment.
(I think I got what you said … here is the set of instructions I give myself: Remove tail from mouth, spit out residual fur bits, drink lots of water … 🙂 )