Friends of CwG Discussion Board

Hi,
I've been very stuck the last week, feeling like my insides were saying "Be depressed and live a meaningless life or die in agony. Your choice". I've been able to ask myself today "How can I die?" I've been feeling like I'm going to die-the fear that I'm going to die is the fear that I'm going to die, yet I've been feeling that I'm in a sense objectively dying.

This sense of dying has been based on the thought that an objective thing in the objective world is being destroyed and therefore so am I. I've had a thought that I've objectified to such an extent that I've made it not a thought at all but a "thing out there". This "objective thing" is love. All my life I've seen love as a thing so out there, so dependent on other people that i never even looked to see what love actually is, how i conceive of it. The truth is when I look inside to observe my concept of what love is is see a mess. Words like hugs,cuddles,sex,compassion and peace appear. But a hug is not love, a cuddle is not love, sex is obviously independent of love(especially bad sex ). And what is compassion? What is peace? They're as equally problematic to define as love and seem to refer to the same thing anyway.

Here's the rub: How can i need something if I cannot define it? That's like I'm saying "I need, desperately need...er I don't know but I damn well need it alright?"

I'm genuinely curious to see if anyone can come up with a meaning of love that means something quantifiable and "real world". I suspect not because the one definition that does work for me is "being" and of course how can anyone need being? I am being! Any thoughts?

Chris.

I've had this convo with my hubby. I've asked him what are the exact qualities of love? Is my love for you determined by my actions? My words? My feelings? How you receive any and all of those? If I feel love for you, but you feel you aren't receiving that love from me, what is it that I'm doing or saying that doesn't look or feel like love? Do I have to 'do' love in the way you prefer to help you feel loved? Are you open to the possibility that love may not look like what you want it to look like?

There are so many questions that could spring from those already asked.

Yes. And the more you dig, the more you seek..

I routinely find that Love is always for - giving and It leaves not It's Source

While that can be seen as airy fairy, I feel it is as practical as one who is willing to really hear. By the above definition, all things are Love.

Unless they are not.

I often think the one thing we 'need' to sacrifice, is the conviction in sacrifice.

In human land, we're conditioned to believe that if you give something, it is lost. You are without it, thus you lost it. That's the consequences (so the story goes) with "giving." Therefore we have distorted it to point where it's all about getting, about needing. So we may think (instead) that Love is always for - getting. If I can just get more Love, THEN I will be joyful.

The idea that Love (or anything) leaves not It's Source follows from the for - giving (and even the for - getting) process, though admittedly, even to my own eyes, the "coming back around again" process, can seem to be challenging to not possible (with current human tools) to quantify that process. So we call it Karma and pretend like we have a fairly good grasp on the process when we invoke that term, or ones like it.

Namaste,

J2

I like to think love is a state of mind/being and therefore not quantifiable (can it be?). Thoughts, words and deeds may spring from this state of mind, this state of being and reflect it. Thus you can never give away love (and lose it) because it stems from being. You give out vibes, but they emanate from your source and will keep doing so forever. I suspect the energy vibration of the vibes you send out (frequency) should be quantifiable, as should be its quantity (intensity over time).

I haven't read any of the other responses yet so this may be a repeat, but something occurred to me. We can only experience our own consciousness, or what we think of as our own consciousness. Love is a sensation that occurs within consciousness, our own. Love never comes from another consciousness because we can't experience another consciousness. So it seems as if the struggle may actually be a dealing with the perceived loss, or temporary missing of love, within ones own experience which is the source of love in the first place.

If it's seems to be missing it's not. It's there, it's just not acting upon ones consciousness at that time. It can't be forced out, it occurs naturally.

As far as what love itself is, imo, it's a sensation.

Love is a shared energy between individuals aimed towards a greater understanding of each other and themselves.

So this is more of "we are in love" type of definition and not a "I love that person".

I read somewhere that a relationship can be looked at as an entity itself, it has a birth when two individuals meet, then a life as they interact, and then a death when they part. Similarly I see love more as an interaction, a connection, not as a state of mind.

There's definitely a big difference between being attracted to someone and closely sharing life's experiences with someone.

I think the two can be reconciled.

The state of mind of love is dependant upon the experience of relationship. There has to be an experience of the Other for there to be an experience of Unity, of love. Thus it is both contained within the self, and active between the selves. This is the dichotomy, I'd think.

Hi Chris,

I recognise a little of what you are going through.
If I am right about this you are about to go through a big change.

The sense of dying is real. It does feel like you are dieing.
You start to realise you are not who you thought you were.

Chris what I can say to you now is that love is not something that can be defined. It is not in any way intellectual. It is not something you get.
You can't think about it....it is only something you feel.

Choose to go down into your heart and feel love and then feel more of it.

The best way to start feeling love is to send love. Choose to send love to someone unconditionally.

Remember the time you felt the most love...feel it and send it unconditionally.

I can't emphasis this any better Chris....love IS NOT intellectual...It is only something you participate in and do.


The more you feel love the more you magically understand.

The information is just there instantly.

The best description of love I have come across is described by an old member of this site called oldsoul. He doesn't post here anymore.

If you interested i would suggest reading his earlier posts.

If you still interested I can share where he hangs out now.


Kristian

Love Is.

I agree with MrQ on this one

So as I now understand it,

the OP has had a certainty been cut away from under him. There is now intense doubt. He now tries to find certainty again in rational understanding. This will fail (finding some way to quantify love). But out of this doubting of self can come a new understanding, arise new certainty that is more real than the certainty that was left behind.

I once had this happen to me. I was doing research into my past through some form of regression. And I seemed to have found some way of finding self esteem: I had discovered that I was a sweet person; and for two days I built my self esteem on this, and for two days I felt more certain than ever before. And then I read the last chapters of a book I had been reading. The last chapters of 1984 by George Orwell, in which the main character gets tortured and tortured until he forfeits his own identity, his self, his love. And it cut away from under me my assumption that such a thing could never happen to me, that I would change beyond recognition through the workings of some external force. And reading that book, I could no longer hold that belief, I could no longer hold that arrogant assumption. It was swept away, and I started asking the question: "if tomorrow I may no longer be the person I am now, then am I still what I am?". "If the future me is different from the current me, then what am I?" "If the future me is no longer a sweet person, then am I a sweet person?".

It sounds like a very strange dilemma to be in, but this is the kind of dilemma that arises in such a situation. I see parallels with Chris' quest for a quantifiable love. I would venture that his quest will not be succesful in the way he is searching for it, but that it will fade away into something else.

Kudos to soul_express for helping me see this parallel/understanding.

I think such a cutting away of certainty is the most wonderful thing! With me my certainty only lasted for two days .

the same goes with who or what I am not.

Alot of the uncontrollable rationalising is caught up in fighting who we are not.
Depression for example.
Most people try to feel love in order to fight depression .......instead of feeling love because they are love.

It rarely occurs to a person feeling depressed to simply embrace the depression......and embrace the depression fully.
Only by embracing the depression can they see the depression for what it is and move through it. transcend it.
A depressed person will instead try to control their path by rationalising and making relative 'something' already whole and perfect.

By embracing depression with the intent to feel love, you choose to feel love because you know you are love.