posted February 24, 2008 12:35 AM         

What we see happening on the personality levels is not necessarily a reliable reflection of the deeper, soul-reasons, for the existence of dysfunctional relationships. On a soul level, the abused person may be acting in full consciousness of the sacrifice he/she is making for the other person. Really, we are all victims and all abusers. We take turns projecting the role of victim or abuser onto other people, but, if you are in a relationship like that, chances are, both parts are really aspects of yourself. I think many abused people, particularly women, are unwilling to own their feelings of anger, so they project them onto another person. But all of this occurs at various levels of consciousness and soul.

In most case, and on a more mundane level, it seems to me that people, usually women, are, as Venus said, insecure and just looking to make excuses for the men in their lives. The truth is, people are easy to love, when you overlook their faults. Every man, however brutal and unfeeling, has a child inside him, and some redeeming qualities that make him loveable. Nobody is black and white, good or bad; we are all so complex. But, truly seeing a person means seeing the good and the bad, the bad and the good. There are a lot of people out there who are loveable and who need love, and who won't shove your head into a wall every now and then, or insult you on a regular basis. They are at least as "deserving" of love, and they wont make you suffer nearly so much for loving them. Something to think about.

The only love that is blind is unconditional love, and it is not for any individual, but for all individuals. How could it be limited to one person, if it is, by definition, unconditional? So-called "blind love" for an individual is not real love, in my opinion; its just real blind.

posted February 24, 2008 09:17 AM         

heart-shapedcross,

quote:

---

The only love that is blind is unconditional love, and it is not for any individual, but for all individuals. How could it be limited to one person, if it is, by definition, unconditional?

---

I understand that, but don't you think some people aren't capable of giving unconditional love, and if so, why should they receive the fullness of it? Our fast-paced society makes it difficult for any individual to have 'time' for love, caring and nurturing takes time, sometimes years upon years, and on top of that you have to establish trust with the person, which many people don't have the willingness to give themselves to another person. Love requires patience, but also selflessness. And unfortuanately, our mainstream society keeps us unready for that type of commitment.

By the way, i love the story with Diana, couples like that are so commonplace.

posted February 24, 2008 11:37 PM         

i might have misread ur post.
please tell me U r not in an abusive relationship

virgoleorising

its good u have forgiven ur dad, and i assume u have moved over abusive relationships ?

god bless

posted February 25, 2008 06:17 PM         

quote:

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I understand that, but don't you think some people aren't capable of giving unconditional love, and if so, why should they receive the fullness of it?

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The only people capable of giving love unconditionally are Buddhas. But the ability to give love does not make you more deserving of love, in my opinion. As I see it, the people who are the most "deserving" of love, are the ones who need it the most, and have the least of it to give.

'My friends, how desperately do we need to be loved and to love. When Christ said that man does not live by bread alone, he spoke of a hunger. This hunger was not the hunger of the body. It was not the hunger for bread. He spoke of a hunger that begins deep down in the very depths of our being. He spoke of a need as vital as breath. He spoke of our hunger for love.
Love is something you and i must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self-esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world. We turn inward and begin to feed upon our own personalities, and little by little we destroy ourselves. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others.'
- Chief Dan George

The problem is not that some people are undeserving of love, but, that they are unreceptive to love. It is wasted on them because they are too blind to see it, and, instead, they misinterpret it as weakness, self-interest, or any number of other things. I will not say that anyone is entirely beyond help, but many people need more help than any individual is able to give them.

quote:

---

Our fast-paced society makes it difficult for any individual to have 'time' for love; caring and nurturing takes time, sometimes years upon years, and on top of that you have to establish trust with the person, which many people don't have the willingness to give themselves to another person. Love requires patience, but also selflessness. And unfortuanately, our mainstream society keeps us unready for that type of commitment.

---

If we look for excuses, we will find them. There is always something that seems to get in the way of loving and becoming a loving person.
But we can take these same obstacles and turn them into opportunities to practice and prove our love.

"Only when it is darkest, can we see the stars."
~ Martin Luther Kiing Jr.

Good Medicine
Pema Chodron, on using difficult situations as the basis for spiritual practice, -
and not as something that gets in the way of spiritual practice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=312oBat6MXs&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIyt4G4s2zc&feature=related

"If you cannot find God in the marketplace,
there's no sense looking in the monastery."
~ Meister Eckhart

posted February 26, 2008 04:26 PM         

HSC,
You make a good point about people being unreceptive to love, but i always thought the reality was that a lot of people have or have had bad relationship experiences with men/or women, that they really think is love, but isn't. Say if they were cheating, Because their so distraught with how insecure they feel about the certain situation, they become unaware and can't understand the feelings of the partner and his/her choices, Doesn't that experience, cloud their ability to be receptive to the other person's feelings and needs?

Sort of the same thing with abusive relationships. I don't understand why some women or men are so anxious to leave their abusive partner, if they don't first understand why their abusing them?

Well i've never experienced it so i can't say, but wouldn't it help to just understand, or to just talk it out, is that ever an option?

HSC, or anybody, can you tell me what you think of this quote, its from Rollo May's book Love and Will p. 15 (its an older book but i think its still accurate)

quote:

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It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meaning of love. Whatever merits or failings the Kensey studies and the Masters-Johnson research have in their own right, they are symptomatic of a culture in which the personal meaning of love has been progressively lost. Love had been assumed to be a motivating force, a power which could be relied upon to push us onward in life. But the great shift in our day indicates that the motivating force itself is now called into question. Love has become a problem to itself. So self-contradictory, indeed, has love become that some of those studying family life have concluded that "love" is simply the name for the way more powerful members of the family control other members. Love, Ronald Laing maintains, is a cover for violence.

---

posted February 26, 2008 09:06 PM         

Those are some really interesting and complex questions.
I will do my best to provide a few possible answers.
But first I want to say something that, I hope,
will encourage you to take my words with a grain of salt.

Every situation is unique. There is no cliche or catch phrase capable of summing up the dynamics between any two people. The most important tool you have is your gut. Listen to what your intuition is telling you. And learn to distinguish between the voice of intuition, which is calm (and often quiet), and the voice of delusion, which tends to be restless and frantic to prove itself. Ultimately, the truth you must find is your own truth. People like me are just here to make suggestions, to help you realize your own voice.

quote:

---

You make a good point about people being unreceptive to love, but i always thought the reality was that a lot of people have or have had bad relationship experiences with men/or women, that they really think is love, but isn't.

---

This is so complicated, lol.
But I'll try to explain how I see it.

There are many levels of love, many depths. Some people say that, if it is shallow, it isnt love. Every person must decide for themself how deep love must be in order to be love. From a very high spiritual perspective, only unconditional love, like the kind exhibited by Jesus or Buddha, is real love. From that level, all other forms of love are illusions; they are all shallow and self-serving. Everyone must find their own level, where love feels real to them. According to William Shakespeare:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

quote:

---

Say if they were cheating, Because they're so distraught with how insecure they feel about the certain situation, they become unaware and can't understand the feelings of the partner and his/her choices, Doesn't that experience cloud their ability to be receptive to the other person's feelings and needs?

---

I'm a little confused by your wording.
Who becomes unreceptive?
The cheater or the cheated?

In any case,
I think my answer to your next question might clear it up.

quote:

---

Sort of the same thing with abusive relationships. I don't understand why some women or men are so anxious to leave their abusive partner, if they don't first understand why they're abusing them?

Well i've never experienced it so i can't say, but wouldn't it help to just understand, or to just talk it out, is that ever an option?

---

It doesnt matter what causes the lack of receptivity or the lack of lovingness, on either side. Every reason is a good one. Every thing that happens makes sense. If you could see every cause and effect, from the time before they were born, -- all the strengths and weaknesses they were born with, and all the things they suffered in childhood, I assure you, you would understand, and you would be satisfied with the explaination. It doesnt matter if you are talking about the man you love, or Adolph Hitler. When you need a reason to forgive, or to understand, a reason can always be found. That is simply the nature of cause and effect. But there are other things to consider.

Jesus, for example, could forgive his abusers, and continue to passively submit to their violent wills. He understood very deeply the truth of the words "they know not what they do". But Jesus had prepared himself for this. He had meditated in the desert for years, and cultivated himself to the point where he could be hurt, even crucified, and still feel love. For the rest of us, it is a very different experience. Although we may fool ourselves into thinking that we have a Christ-like ability to return love in the face of cruelty and unreceptivity time and
time again, the truth is that we are doing immense harm to ourselves. This may not become apparent right away, but, eventually, we will begin to see serious psychological illnesses manifesting.

Another important consideration is that we all have lessons to learn in this life, and, often, the most loving thing you can do for someone who has cheated on you, is leave them. Then, they are more likely to learn their lesson. Staying with a person who is abusive can be harmful, not just to the abused person, but to the abuser. Karmically, when you do something bad to someone, you create more bad karma for yourself. Whatever the abuser or the cheater does, it will be done to them, sooner or later, if they dont make up for it with good works in the meantime. Of course, we want to love them, to overlook their weaknesses, and all the ways in which life has hurt them and twisted their hearts inside out. But, by accepting their bad behavior, we are not really doing them any favors. In the end, we are only prolonging the inevitable lesson, and making it harder to learn. This is what is meant by "enabling".

The quote you posted suggested to me that, when the very basic meaning of love is lost, we tend to reach for more and more elaborate and complex explainations to explain what love is, and where the manifestations that we call "love" are really coming from. I think all of that is escapism, and it is positively unnecessary when we have a real and actual experience of love, pure and simple. A very loving thinker, Albert Schweitzer, once said that "Love does not require any reductionist explaination." In other words, we dont have to dismantle the concept of love with an overly analytical or scientific approach. Love is love. Just as the botanist would like to tell us how to see a flower, by reducing it to its constituent parts (i.e. sunlight, chlorophyll, etc.), so there are people who would like to reduce love. But the poet knows, "A rose is a rose is a rose," and "Love is love is love". In small amounts, or in large amounts, love is love. Mixed with impurities, or in its full strength, love is love is love. But that doesnt mean we should settle for a beggar's portion, when there is so much love out there to be discovered.

posted March 01, 2008 12:59 PM         

Ultimately, I believe in infinite love.

Life is a journey....the journey of the soul.
http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/009801.html

I feel that love is love, whatever way we look at it.

------------------
"It's just a ride & we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings & money, a choice, right now, between fear & love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off, the eyes of love instead see all of us as one".....

posted March 01, 2008 01:02 PM         

Well, IMO, I don't feel pain as such is necessary.
It might be necessary, however, to help us learn compassion, empathy, and how to love.
To remember.....who we really are.

"There is only one thing pain is good for. It teaches you to love. Good bless pain".

- Joey Goldfarb
(I got that from your list of quotes, HSC).

------------------
"It's just a ride & we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings & money, a choice, right now, between fear & love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off, the eyes of love instead see all of us as one".....

posted March 04, 2008 11:32 AM         

But ultimately, love is all.

Does that make any sense?

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"To err is human, to forgive divine"
~Alexander Pope

posted March 05, 2008 09:26 AM         

------------------
"To err is human, to forgive divine"
~Alexander Pope