Universal Love - ?
Blog posts will sometimes address topics covered in the book now that it’s available. Such posts will end by referencing the relevant book chapter and section to assist book readers. However, posts will be self-contained – you don’t need to have read the book to discuss them.
Universal love, or the love of everyone… do you think it’s possible? Leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. seem to have at least practiced an approximation of it, returning good for evil, to use the New Testament phrase, on a large scale.
Critics of the concept essentially think it’s pie-in-the-sky, and that a love so universal that it fails to discriminate between better and worse qualities, affirming everyone and everything, is meaningless – not love at all.
What do you think?
Reference – Original Faith: Chapter One’s “For the Sake of the Whole World: Universal Love.”
Universal love, or the love of everyone… do you think it’s possible? Leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. seem to have at least practiced an approximation of it, returning good for evil, to use the New Testament phrase, on a large scale.
Critics of the concept essentially think it’s pie-in-the-sky, and that a love so universal that it fails to discriminate between better and worse qualities, affirming everyone and everything, is meaningless – not love at all.
What do you think?
Reference – Original Faith: Chapter One’s “For the Sake of the Whole World: Universal Love.”
Posted by Paul at 12:13 PM Permalink
45 Comments:
In practice it is not realized, because we have reason to be cautious of one another for our own well-being. So we all keep a safe distance from one another.
Traditionally, love and fear are antagonists, especially in view of the Biblical text "Perfect love casteth out fear." I don't know about that. I don't accept any biblical texts uncritically.
I'd say that the experience and expression of universal love is limited by trust and self-protectiveness.
Those who can "practise" this love are limited to those who have been able to discover a sense of personal security.
That someone returns good for evil is not proof of love. But I suppose you might call it an approximation.
A love which discriminates between qualities is like a love of good food as opposed to bad food. It isn't anything to do with universal love, which is an awareness of essential oneness.
I notice this awareness in myself when I find small creatures at my mercy: spiders, slugs, files & wasps. When they encroach on my space, I gently put them outside, with a faint but detectable feeling of love. I mention these creatures because one's feelings about them are so much less complicated than those we have about our fellow human beings.
Universal love is not meaningless, because its practice means one refuses to harm another. It's a real thing and with its aid one can live unarmed, and refuse to fight in a war, and refuse to let someone else be made homeless or hungry so that one can have shelter and food. One might refuse to say "God bless America" on the basis that one's loyalty is to all mankind and not just one's own tribe.
One question:
"A love which discriminates between qualities is like a love of good food as opposed to bad food. It isn't anything to do with universal love, which is an awareness of essential oneness."
So love is more of a cognition - "awareness" - than a feeling? (I think the food analogy isn't quite right; we don't actually love food even though we say that...)
TIMJAMZ: Love and purpose as highly connected - looks that way to me too.
Paul, congrats on your book, btw. I'm thrilled. I will be purchasing it.
You are right that the good food example wasn't a good one. However I do consider that universal love is a different kind of thing from what we must call "selective" love.
I mean, as the critics you mention must also mean, that love is normally selective and that is a great part of its significance.
Not sure I’m completely following… you find a peaceful coexistence with bullies meaningless… and did you have an alternative in mind? For what sorts of situations?
VINCENT: To me, you’re on the right track. I’d say different but related. I’ve found the simplest things – like the word “love” – tremendous challenges to begin to understand.
Yes, its non-selectivity – that’s hitting the nail on the head I think when it comes to the usual critique of the idea of universal love.
VISHESH: Sounds interesting – universal love/hate – but would need to hear more to know what you mean.
LIARA: People usually seem to identify love with a particular kind of feeling and know that they don’t feel that way about everyone.
People observe people perpetrating unloving things on each other around the world every day.
These things make the idea that universal love can exist not so obvious to a lot of people.
This is a very complex idea..as shallow as it may seem, one living in dangerous situations and times in neighborhoods where you need to be careful who you look at let alone speak too..well this is sad but true.
Speaking as a single woman living on my own for many years now, I've had so many interesting experiences with what I do call the "Evil and darkness" that I oberve around me..and the danger. And yes I do believe there is "evil" but in evil I also see a lot of it based on fear..if that makes any sense? I've seen it in their faces. I've also witnessed a lot of people who seem unable to handle real emotions or feelings and so they become very uncomfortable and sometimes that comes in rages.
I see Ghandi, Martin Luther King,d Bobby Kennedy and many ohters as people who took risk knowing the danger if they did but doing or speaking it anyway..that to me is a simple type of universal love. I feel that most people from the past and the present that are dreamers and do keep believing that dreams can come true no matter how far fetched they seem to others..well if you look at history, the dreamers do seem to be the ones that made and make "change" in the world..for the better...and during their time on earth many were ostersized, threatened, humiliated, laughed at and yes even killed or assinatted because of their beliefs that change and dreams for a better world could happen.
It seems to me that lots of people are actually living in such darkness and evil that they actually "fear" someone who has the courage to make a difference,who believes in dreams and change for the world, who believe in universal love (as we are one)and the ones that do fear these people of great courage and love usually are the ones doing the threatening, intimidation and the killing also. It's such a prevalent sickness in our time now.
I also understand the feeling of needing to protect oneself who has no backup or protection other than themselves in their living situation..for that is how I have had to find boundaries and live for many years now..and yet there have been very interesting interaction "miracles" along the way that I've experienced. I know I'm still here for a reason but not sure yet what that reason is. I just know it..
Thanks for letting me share my comments on here..
With Many Blessings For Hope, Love and Peace for All,
Rhiannon
It feels to me as if universal love/sympathy/empathy is the most natural state, while fear is learned.
Innately we assume all are "me" - we are all the same - it is only the difficulties we face in egos clashing that shows us our separation, sometimes with "evil" results.
Perhaps the meaning/nature of evil is simply - separation. Just as a healthy soul will not cut away/harm a part of their own body, an emotionally healthy soul will not harm another because they will share the pain.
Btw, I’d distinguish such fear from the reality-based kind of fear that your comment also alludes to.
I’ve also admired the people you cite.
HAYDEN: What you say here comes close in some respects to things I focus on in the chapters on love and egoism, although you sound some broader themes as well – and all off the top of your head!
I could have used you earlier - where were you? It took me years to think this stuff through, lol…
So I think you’re basically on track, although for me, the word “natural” fuzzifies more than it clarifies. Yes, you know... "fuzzifies..."
ENEMY OF THE R: Great! I hope you’ll let me know what you think of it if you get the chance, same for other readers – the people who drop by here are a really thoughtful group.
You touch here on a couple of major things to consider with regard to what love is that I've thought about too: the distinction between being loved and loving; and how to account for love as a warm, joyous feeling even while also sensing that it goes beyond that.
I totally agree with what you said; it's totally foolish to pull at strings, and make a piece of artwork say something it does not say. My goal instead would be to determine the artist's message, and attempt to distinguish the truths from untruths in the artwork. I think many Christians falsely assume that there is no truth to be found in "secular" art; I believe it is rampant with beauty, and we ought search out it out and recognize it!
to me, it is natural that light is stronger than darkness, and love stronger than hate. We just have to unlearn the cultural attitudes we are born into, in order to feel this truth again.
And when we do, it is "natural" that we do not see others as a threat, but as a part of us to be cherished.
Easier said than done...naturally...
i've got
your...
BOOK!!!!!!! wheeee!!
was going to do a post about it to surprise you but can't hold it, lol!
i love the 'afterword'.
ok, now you know i read from back to front.
(and front to middle and all over. so now, you can see i'm impatient too, lol.)
FIREBIRD (and HAYDEN): Me too, but as to the word natural:
It’s useful to distinguish human made from not human made.
Otherwise, it’s often used to argue in favor/against some human action or attribute as being “natural” or “unnatural.”
But in that sort of usage, the word's employed for its positive/negative connotations without making a meaningful distinction. People are a part of nature. How do we distinguish anything that we are, become or do or as unnatural and not natural?
At least that’s what John Stuart Mill said. Hmm… but a comeback is crossing my mind – and based on my own book! That was a really long time ago that I read Mill.
I hate it when that happens…
OK, I take it all back… well, most of it. The word natural is often abused in the manner Mill states but I think you and Hayden are on a different wavelength.
VISHESH: Huh? What? - !
Now I'm really frowning.
(Inside joke going from one of V’s back posts. He may be forcing smiley faces on people...)
MISTI: Thanks! I’m looking forward to the post. I’m just glad it’s not hardcover considering your recent dissatisfactions. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be implicated or anything…
“Misti with a copy of OF in the library,” unless it was Colonel Mustard…
Keshi.
Blessings,
Lance
www.lancessoulsearching.com
Thinking, I approach from the perspective of a baby in arms, who doesn't yet fully understand that she is separate from the mother holding/feeding her - that is the sense that I use 'natural.' Then things happen - disappointments, fear, pain - and the initial understanding of all-one begins to be modified. If that process is especially difficult, alienation and distrust become reflexive. If the child is healthy, experiences no accidents and is bathed in love, they learn to separate their ego without fear/anger/alienation becoming a wedge between self and other.
I'm making this up as I go along, of course. but that was the thread I was drawing from.
paul, i have pasted your button on one of my blogs today and did a short post on it as well.
and my maid lives on. you're safe... for now. :P
tell me do, when your hardcover gets out. and how heavy too.. lalalaala..
http://mistipurple.com/2008/07/19/original-faith-by-paul-maurice-martin.aspx
http://goldiamondrich.blogspot.com/2008/07/original-faith-by-paul-maurice-martin.html
okay, it's done. i did it.
(that sounds so much like a murder done well.)
Once truly 'stung' by love there's no turning back, is there?
Does love require proof? Where does judgment fit?
erm, paul, please do not throw me out of this blog. i am so irrelevant sometimes. but that's the alter me. otherwise i cannooooot post a thing. :P
All I can say is yes, but I go into more detail on this point, so there…
MISTI: Thanks so much – and the photo’s great!
BETH: I think I like it – but to do what, you think?
PECOS B: Great, thanks so much for your interest –
EPITOME: “Motivation toward action” – I like that...
Paul, escape. In all situations.
KUAN GUNG: Or else . . . ?
KIMIAM: Pacificsm?
I just reachhed here tracking firebird. We just recently met eah other on blogoshpere.
Lots to read here..I will and keep visiting and interacting...Its serious stuff and I need to link the threads of thought together, before I make a comment
Meantime, I invite you to my site too: http://devika-jyothi.blogspot.com/
I have a recent one there. Please come over when you have time!
Aprreciate interaction also.
If you ever tie the threads together, let me know, lol! This is a case where the book came long before the blog instead of being based on the blog, so it's a lot more coherent. The blog is basically all I can do as a housebound, mostly bedridden person to make people aware of the book.
I have seen that..and that I bliev it to be a great act...to reach out to the world.
The weekend was too busy for me, with a trip lined up this week..
I would ne reading the blogposts and reaching you time to time as I proeed..
Is the book available in India?
The situation with India is frustrating! Where's the global economy when you need it, lol!
I know that at least a few people who visit here from India got the book, but as I understand it, they either had to get it through someone they knew living in the states or the UK, or, if they were going to order from Amazon (the biggest online bookseller in the US), the postage would have cost as much as the book.
Ugh...
Nice to have your response. thanks!
Well the global economy -- i do watch socio-political and economics..
simply put anything that goes up has to come down -except perhaps our age .
and this downhill is due perhaps..Yeah India was just spreading wings..it may not fly high for a while now.
The book, I do have friends in the US ..i'll get through them.
thank you!
Infact to me, even your effort of have an ongoing blog seems great..reaching out to the world.
But today I seen your kind words today at 'The Certain Kind of Woman' blog..and that was most cherished...
I understand the difficulties that illness ould bring to man...but you seem really progressive...so take your own time in commenting to my work...
But let me take a bit of your time to clarify I have three blogs:
1. 'The Socio-Politially Incclined Onlooker' -- there I may be a critic of Indian and International socio-politial systems, sometimes upholding them sometimes rejecting them..
I may be termed a humanist...but at times takes to communism and socialism for the soial values they represent. I see capitalism as the ause of many social problems -- Hence politically I am against the US policies most of the time...
Hope you will continue have space for me here :)
2. 'The Certain Kind of Woman' -- there its mostly me as a woman and with all my love for mankind...no borders --politial or social -- but may have a bit of ethical boundaries...
3. The Essential Me --
those are for my interests, but the blog has just three posts and is in the making..
Hope you still have a space for me here..and would still visist me there..
But, I am going on a holiday (Its Onam time for we who belong to Kerala, the state known to world tourists as 'God's Own Country'...I will be bak by last week of September...when I shall read you in detail...
best regards!
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