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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/11/2009 1:47:57 PM | The maintenance of personal freedom is essential for the maintenance of whole hearted service to the other and to others. The belief that personal freedom is somehow incompatible with "a loving relationship" is unfortunate. All the evidence of our broken relationships should have taught us that by limiting each other's personal (individual) freedoms we actually harm our relationships. Our romantic notions about near ideal unions are undone by the confining of each others souls, minds, time and actions through possessiveness, fear of inadequacy and jealousy. Our reasons for restricting each other are more often about fear, jealousy and personal need than about confidence and completeness in one's self; and our reasons for claiming the right to personal freedom are no less soiled e.g., an excuse for mere erotic gratification (with the stress on "mere" not on "erotic gratification"). In romantic relationships, two halves do not make a whole because none of us are halves. The uniting of my own better half with her better half does not somehow magically and romantically neutralize my worst half, nor hers.
The forcing of sex upon another is horrid, but the imposition of assumptions about the meaning of consensual sex is also pretty nasty in its consequences. I agree that it can be helpful, in the circumstances, to be up front about such things... i.e., be clear, e.g., "Having sex with you means I expect a future." OR "Having sex with you does not mean I will be here tomorrow!" But both statements are based on an enhanced need to achieve or avoid consequences, not on pure-in-the-moment intimate (erotic) expression. It is obviously quite silly to make or expect a future investment (or to avoid the possibility of a contract) based on an erotic moment that is wholesomely free of business-like negotiations. The sex act should not be the basis for writing or not writing a contract.
What we want and the way we want it is a self defeating process. The prescriptions we follow for success are, like cannon law, counterproductive to their own aims. Making acquaintances with basic motivation to achieve or avoid is already the end of the relationship. "I will love, I will give, I will serve, I will fully welcome if ... if ... if ... " At the very least, there is no pure spontaneity (and spontaneity can only be pure) ... therefore there is no (pure) joy. There is wariness, a facade, entrapment. Many movie/soapy writers and novelists see this as the normal structure of relationships, the game human males and females play. We are following their script and are locked into a cheap soapy with all its inevitable morbidity.
We have turned everything into a tradable commodity, including our own personal biology. My body is not currency; it is the place we meet.
The responsibility of freedom is too much for us. It frightens us. So we cannot love. We can obsess, desire, be desperately attached... but we cannot love. | |
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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/11/2009 6:57:06 PM | Well, I don't agree with your analysis and its conclusions. At the limit, the only form of absolute freedom is non-existence. The minute that existence occurs, it is in relationship to an environment, and all environments involve constraints, starting at the trivially obvious one that is related to location.
In a similar vein, a person can only be free in the interpersonal sense if they have no relationship invested. They can act freely because there is no interdependency to be involved with. The instant you have a relationship with another human being, you are perforce constrained by whatever requirements that are imposed by the other person for the continuation of that relationship.
We are social animals, and it is part of our biological survival strategy. By and large, for instance, human females require assistance when giving birth, and that imposes the need for relationships which are stable and enduring. Similarly with the raising of the young. It is a natural need for the human to form relationships for many reasons, and to maintain those relationships we all negotiate an exchange of obligations which impinge on absolute freedom. These negotiations do not make the exchange one of currency, but they can and do result in emotional patterns that we call love. The reason we can love is that we can negotiate the exchange of commitments, expectations and the bases of relationship.
To me, if we could not behave this way, we could not exist as a species. If we did not exist, there would not be freedom in any sense that is useful. As we are, we are free to survive, to love and to prosper in our relationships. It is, to me, an illusion that we are individuals. We are all part of a living system and what freedom we have is based on relationships and love. | |
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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/11/2009 7:28:28 PM | wow, guys, there's a lot to agree with in both of your very persuasive arguments.
Scorpiodate: Fear stopping us from loving - yes, of course, but this comes with age and history, don't you think? And how many have been ever able to love another unconditionally and be loved the same way back? Your kind of love is the ideal, yes, the dream (and I have to say unbelievably Scorpion) but..
The reason we can love is that we can negotiate the exchange of commitments, expectations and the bases of relationships
This love, scorpiodate, might not tick all those Scorpion needs for deep passion and mystery, but it is achievable and much more sustainable. No falling off pedestals this way... | |
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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/11/2009 7:57:38 PM | Yes, Rearguard, it is just as you say: "the only form of absolute freedom is non-existence". So many of the things you have stated in response are wonderful and, if not wonderful, quite true: "we are social animals" and "it is part of our biological survival strategy"... Biological strategies are not love, they are, perhaps, truly animal instincts. That is why, for the self to maintain its illusions of love, wholeness and survival, it bails out of its essential connection to all other things. First it opts out of the whole and shacks up with the one, hoping to secure a more secure and fulfilling self continuance. And when the self is exposed and threatened and hurt in the narrowness of that "union" (which is exclusion), it bails out, still following its instinct for the survival of some idea of the self. What are these entities that unite in relationship, that suffer so much, that close each other down so much, that need to survive above all else? For, even in your representation of things, they remain individuals looking for their own fulfillment! and thus, opting out is always the available escape hatch. "We are" after all, at our common level of experience, "social animals, and it is part of our biological survival strategy ". The illusive "love the other 'til the end" dream cannot be achieved by one who needs to survive so badly. The unions of such self conscious selves (and also of such subliminally self conscious selves) is a constant negotiation for each one's own survival and/or enhancement. We each have to grab our share of the scarcity of this non-love love. The truly rich, spiritually and materially, are not such animals (and I do not look down on animals in the least). The wise of times past knew that they really did not exist ... for themselves ... at all.
Rearguard, it is good to discuss. I feel a great kinship with you, no matter how long it takes to express the inexpressible.
Best Wishes.
Scorpiodate... there is no venom in this scorpion's tail. | |
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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/11/2009 8:27:17 PM | I can see that we view the subject from opposite sides of the perspective on the individual. For myself, there is no true existence as an individual, for a single individual can not survive a lifetime. We are who we are because we are more than individuals, we are members of the human race, and ultimately the broader life system that has developed here on this planet. Our love is not non-love. It is the expression of the deepest form of relationship that we can know, and it is an imperative in each of us to fulfill the need to love and be loved.
Love of self is the illusion because it can take you nowhere. It can have no relationship. It can only be active in one direction. It can not be reflected back to itself, and it can deliver no expectations or commitments as you are already completely aware of who you are, even if you have a mental structure that allows you to deny this self knowledge. There is no beauty in the love of self, and at least in the judeo-christian culture, love of self is generally regarded as a form of sin. Because it is capable of action only in one direction, it is a form of chastisement of the self, consuming the energy of the self yet giving nothing back.
The view that true love devolves exclusively in the context of a relationship with another has a balance in that the love of one is reflected back by the love of another. Each gains from the relationship from the other partner. A harmony between to partners results in a mutual synergy, and the mutual gain exceed the mutual loss associated with the exchanges of the relationship. Hence, a loving relationship grows, prospers, expands, develops, and flowers. It is the reason that children are born, families get bigger, and life goes on.
To look on all this as simply the needs of individuals and their satisfaction requires the idea that the individual has an independent existence. This I find is arbitrary and in our western society of late a sort of intellectual fad that has laid waste to the balance of individuals in society as a whole. The conflict between men and women, evident throughout my lifetime, is an obvious manifestation of this view.
To me, its obvious that we are parts of a whole that is defined by and held together by relationships, the strongest of which are what we call love. It is a true love, and a mutual recognition of deep relationships between ourselves. What to me can be called non-love is the feelings that come from self indulgence that devolve from the idea that the individual has a distinct, independent existence. | |
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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/11/2009 8:39:31 PM | Hello FriendlyFreeSpirit. First the discussion... then some words about the Cats!
I am not sure I understood you correctly on the "comes with age and history" thing. If you mean, the realization of these things comes with age and history, then I agree that that is largely the case. Unfortunately. It comes after a lot of pain, if it comes at all. But it does not have to be so belated. The fact is that we build the delay of "realization" into our cheap commercial culture. It might even be directly related to the basic assumption that rules culture, education and even religion, i.e., that value lies in scarcity and therefore there is little to be had "by me" unless I have clever strategies and wear a poker face when dating = fear. I hasten to add that I am not seeking a formula or explanation that makes us all stay in one-on-one unions... nor am I trying to break that option down... though the majority of such unions seem to be unnecessarily stifling of otherwise wonderful souls.
With regard to "all those scorpion needs"! LOLOL! I am amazed and delighted that they still arise, so to speak! But, in fact, "this love" makes one the "master" of those needs (I hesitate to say the "mistress" of those needs for obvious reasons!). But "master" might mean that certain shackles have been broken that others might consider essential to moral strength, moral mastery. In "this love", animal drives are clearly recognized as such and are expended in such ways that the bigger mysteries and miracles of life can be approached. In fact, "this love" opens the door to those mysteries and to expression that is otherwise stifled by guilty expression (derived from poor understanding of status of such instincts). Basic, ordinary and wonderful sex energy is operative in all kinds of amazing expressions in life... in art, music, leadership and, as we all now know... in preaching and in serving. Its distortion,its horrid expressions are due to its suppression rather than to its existence. It is sad that the expression of our own biology is so contrived and even alien to us. Now we go to universities, colleges, counsellors and prisons to find out how to be! Some go to drugs to simulate what "this love" promotes naturally. An enormous amount of expression (popular .. and classical ... music, art trends ... breakthrough ideas) were realized through drugs... "This love" does those things... not as a drug... but it allows a natural flow... of one's biology.
Anyway "FriendlyFreeSpirit" if I come home to visit my folks down there, I hope we can chat face to face.
And that is not a strategy!
I don't suppose you are a Cats fan?
Best wishes.
Scopriodate. | |
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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/11/2009 8:42:12 PM | I would hope so! When I was 16 girls didn't actually date guys, they dated the muscle cars that the guys drove! Guys dated the girls that looked as much like Nancy Sinatra, or Twiggy as possible!
I now choose guys for whether or not they have an interest in more than motorcycles and football. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that you guys have all really evolved! I think you still look first for the girl that looks as much like Nancy Sinatra or Twiggy (at age 50 of course)!!!   | |
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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/11/2009 8:54:19 PM | Work beckons, but I will just say that all the words used to explain this union of two loving individuals reveal that they are attempts to explain into existence things that do not exist and,a the same time, things that always are. The words: relationship, unite, share, parts of a whole, held together, recognition, between, and so on... each of these words can exist only because they each assume and essential division / separation / alienation. Conversely, the actual oneness of which you write, is not an ideal, nor is it a goal, and it is certainly not an ought! It just is so. It is actual... that's why we all feel the pain... Thus, we expend enormous amounts of energy trying to make unions within wholeness ... the energy of our fractiousness is "all in the mind".
Give me a hug.
I love you.
Thanks for the "chat".
Scorpiodate. | |
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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/11/2009 9:00:35 PM | Basic, ordinary and wonderful sex energy is operative in all kinds of amazing expressions in life... in art, music, leadership and, as we all now know... in preaching and in serving. Its distortion,its horrid expressions are due to its suppression rather than to its existence. It is sad that the expression of our own biology is so contrived and even alien to us.
It is because this sex energy is so strong, you see. Society know how innervating it is and control it so as to make us a more malleable and manageable group. To me, an obvious symbol of a liberated society is its ability to maturely accept and even embrace its sexuality.
I think many in our generation are searching for ways forward in love and sexuality that would have been foreign to our parents. And maybe we're looking for new ways, maybe we see the old ways didn't work and maybe there is a new way of loving that will make us feel as if we've evolved a little.
Are you from Melbourne, scorpiodate? I barrack for the Blues, but daffie is a cats fan. She loves her pussies..lol.. | |
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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/11/2009 9:17:25 PM | Yes FriendlyFreeSpirit ... Anything that lets you "see" is not healthy for the human construct "whole" which focuses on conceptual management of the world as a resource i.e. .... well, you name it....
Healthy sexuality does not treat the world as a resource... it's a garden... a generous garden.... And that is always the case, despite the sickness/slavery of our minds to deep but idiotic perceptions of our "leaders".
From Cat country.. origionally... now Tokyo...
"Daffie loves her pussies!" i will work that code out later tonight.
xxx | |
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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/11/2009 9:49:38 PM | ffs....now you'll have them thinking i play for the other team....lol
abby,
i agree,
sanity is a good criteria to have....
just the same a "rich madman" could be a blast.... | |
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| How much has your criteria changed?
Posted: 9/12/2009 12:13:41 AM | | I'm sure Daffie's pussies are very lovable. Wow! North of Brisbane... These addresses look a bit like a conspiracy... getting closer and closer to "home" and "Daffi" looks very familiar. Four weeks ago I ate in an Indian restaurant in Caboolture with a good lady just like Daffi! Alignments? And I thought I was in control! | |
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