What Is Love?
Love Notes
Much of the commentary from last post was trying to get to what love is – which makes sense. How do you say whether universal love is possible without first saying what love itself is?
Maybe a good way to get started is to think about a person or experience that taught you something about love. Who or what was it? How was it communicated? People could even treat this as a “meme” and post something on their own blogs – please let me know in this discussion thread if you do.
Reference – Original Faith: Chapter One, What Love Is
Book Notes
Notice that Original Faith is now more widely available, including on Amazon UK. (Sorry about that, Vincent… had no idea it would happen so fast. But no overseas postage refunds, lol!)
I’d be interested in receiving emails about where and when people are getting the book – date of purchase would be useful at this point, especially as of the last few days and going forward.
Thanks to those who have linked here lately, including some who have reviewed the book. Links to those reviews that I’m aware of have been added to this site on the “media kit” and “press and media” pages. And you can see Firebird’s customer review on the book’s Amazon page.
Much of the commentary from last post was trying to get to what love is – which makes sense. How do you say whether universal love is possible without first saying what love itself is?
Maybe a good way to get started is to think about a person or experience that taught you something about love. Who or what was it? How was it communicated? People could even treat this as a “meme” and post something on their own blogs – please let me know in this discussion thread if you do.
Reference – Original Faith: Chapter One, What Love Is
Book Notes
Notice that Original Faith is now more widely available, including on Amazon UK. (Sorry about that, Vincent… had no idea it would happen so fast. But no overseas postage refunds, lol!)
I’d be interested in receiving emails about where and when people are getting the book – date of purchase would be useful at this point, especially as of the last few days and going forward.
Thanks to those who have linked here lately, including some who have reviewed the book. Links to those reviews that I’m aware of have been added to this site on the “media kit” and “press and media” pages. And you can see Firebird’s customer review on the book’s Amazon page.
Posted by Paul at 11:47 AM Permalink
35 Comments:
It didn't sound ordinary at all, even though you took it for granted. So it got me questioning my own past experience with "loved ones". I realised that my experience, against your criteria, if I may put it that way, had been quite deficient. I say "past experience" because in the last few years I have had the experience of true love, especially to be loved and know it. Since it happened in the later years, I cannot take it for granted.
In fact it was not until I realised it as an absence that I was able to pray for it: not prayer in a religious sense, but in the sense of acknowledging my own longing, so that it became a message sent out to the Universe.
Only in the achievement of this ordinary human love was I able to stop being so "needy" and start being conscious of Universal Love.
In talking about love above I am not distinguishing between parental, brotherly or sexual love. A person who has grown up lacking parental love can find it in romantic, sexual love. I
I came to a specific point in my life when I realized that I could not experience "divine" (non-human) love without the very physical manifestation of being loved in this world by a human being. It may be different for others of course.
These days I'm aware of specific emanations from Nature which are forms of love. I've felt love from a tree and from a shrub, as I recorded some time last year in my blog. But I never got it from my own mother, or from any of my stepfathers, so I wrapped myself in a kind of indifference.
But it seems to me, Paul, from your lyrical early chapters, that love touched you profoundly. And if it is not quite like that, if your subsequent mystical experiences repainted your earlier memories in brighter colours, it doesn't matter to the reader at all.
I couldn't add to any debate as to what love is, or talk about any experiences. I think everyone knows; at least if they enter into their deeper self and let go the superficial level of discourse. They only need to be reminded and this your book does! But still I am wondering how it would have struck me if I had read it some years ago.
(and re the book - I was happy to order from amazon.com, at least it was quite prompt)
Taken together, they point to what I found to be a major challenge in writing something along these lines: people have so much in common that they can discover, and yet how we get from here to there, the particulars of our stories, are highly individual.
This led me not to use my personal story as the basis for organizing my material - although even then, much of the outline is suggested. So Vincent, yes, I was fortunate early in life in my experiences of my mother and sister.
I waited for your book for a long time and I was sure that it will be a great book for me. But I can tell you that "Original Faith" is much more than I expected.
I am truly thankful Paul! Your book becomes my second Bible, my Daily Bread for my soul.
I'm so happy that I have Original Faith.
I tried to share your success with such a great accomplishment and I wrote about Original Faith here:
http://evolvesmb.blogspot.com/
Congratulations!
Have a blessing Sunday!
Today I'd like to share this one:
"To love others is to love ourselves not only in the sense that by loving others we promote our growth as person, but also in the sense that we are unable to discover joy in our own being apart from acting on our love. Apart from this, we are pretty miserable creatures. Only our love evokes our glad, wholehearted, and unconflicted assent. Only our love gives us peace".- Paul Martin
So true.
For years my cynical response to most things was a shrug and "life is hard. then you die." It was a hard position and hard won, - and a reasonable representation of my experience. Ultimately of course, it is a trap: coloring my experiences and filtering/censoring those that don't fit.
Thinking hard I realized that now I see an equal and opposite truth as "core truth" - Life is Abundance, Life is Dance.
I'm consciously reorganizing my thinking now to abandon the first and embrace the second.
While this isn't Love, per se - I think it's related. I wrote about the struggle to change today - a bit elliptically, but this is the 'underneath' story.
Congratulations on your book!!
Blessings,
Sheila/Bluebirdy
The word love can point in so many different directions, as your post so clearly shows. Often the best words about love end up being indirect - alluding to one or another of its characteristics.
But I do think that it can be articulated with quite a bit of precision.
KRYSTYNA - I'm so glad. Half of writing is the inherent Zen, so to speak - but the other half is trying to communicate and it's wonderful to see by someone else's words that you've done that.
Thanks for your beautiful post.
Have to run, will be back to pick up on additional comments to this thread…
Sounds to me like the real thing, what you’re doing. Certainly for myself, the best way to move toward diminishing my own complexity has been to acknowledge it.
BLUEBIRDY: Thanks for stopping by, I’ve noted your URL and will stop by again – I see what you mean about the similarities…
Unfortunately no eBook, although in the coming months there will probably be eBooks of poetry that cover the same spiritual ground and that were written contemporaneously with the prose.
Thanks for your interest - and that postage thing is really frustrating! Where's the "global economy" when you need it!?
Put the word "love" out there and it can bring an interesting variety of reactions on the part of others, reactions that seem tied to individual need and expectation.
I think as one grows older and gains experience, the complexity of what we call love also deepens and takes on nuance and meaning unlike anything we were perhaps capable of in our youth.
It seems, however, that we are unified in our longing for love, this passion and desire to give love, to be loved, perhaps it is in this passion where we too experience what I will call God. When we are loving and creating we are expressions of something beyond our own physical boundaries, we are givers, and in so doing we transcend our sense of aloneness and separation and taste a glimpse of what it really means to be "one".
Congratulations on your book. It is a delight to see your work published!
Another book that I consider one of my "bibles" is *A General Theory of Love" -- It was written by three men who are medical doctors/psychiatrists -- They combine science with a poetic sensibility -- truly a beautiful *and* practical book -- and it underscores the necessity of love and relation ... Love is as imperative to survival as air, food, water, shelter ... I have written a bit about *A General Theory of Love* -- here is a link: http://pushingfiftygently.blogspot.com/2008/02/two-books-for-valentines-day.html
Really, I do agree with your essential ideas here. Also, as you say, “trying” doesn’t work. To the degree that I’ve managed to put language to love, it was a matter of letting it come to me – that chapter took a total of about seven years to come into focus. And I think it’s that way not just with writing, but with life – that the best that comes our way isn’t a product of our own cleverness.
One caveat: in my personal experience, trying, effort, will, when exerted in the right direction, has sometimes worked – but never in the way that I expected! That is, I’ve had times in my life where the direct approach ended up working indirectly. The outcome was never what I’d aimed at or anticipated – and in one instance, went far beyond anything I knew was possible. But as far as I can tell, my willingness to change and to exert myself, was a factor in helping to prepare me for the change that would come.
JALIYA: Thanks for the link, sounds like an interesting book – and thanks so much for getting mine. This is a topic you’ve clearly thought a lot about; I’d be very interested in your impressions of how Original Faith speaks to love.
check this out http://visheshunni.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/thinking-about-my-identity/
But one thing that definitely shaped my perception of love is the media, specifically Disney movies. We are taught from a young age that "love conquers all" and that romance is this amazing, life-changing thing that will help you live "happily ever after" which, once we are adults we realize, is total crap. I don't know about everyone else, but I felt pretty friggin' betrayed once I realized that. We're basically being lied to throughout our childhood. I think way too much emphasis is placed on love in our media. It should be redirected to loving yourself for who you are and developing good self-esteem and confidence in yourself instead.
Time is limited and we are thrown together in all sorts of situations but where people are together there is always an opening for love and that makes us invincible.
GOLLYGEE: Same here. Also, my sister, who's eight years younger, helped bring some things into focus growing up. Yes – I think popular media-hyped notions of romance that confound it with the idea of love work against people achieving clarity about what love is.
HAZZBUZZ: Thanks for reading so closely! (Also... hope you and others have noticed the Amazon UK link.) It’s hard to even give poetry away today, but the way I organized them thematically may give them added interest.
Invincible – I hope. I think it’s either us or your bugs, lol...
I came here thru Krystina's blog.
I will try to get it and read as soon as possible.
DEEPAK G: Thanks! It looks clear to me by now that booksellers in the US have no direct channels to India.
Seems like a bit of an oversight to say the least; I would think it's bound to change.
B
Wondering if you tried just copying my email address after clicking the contact link and using that in your own email... I never use that Outlook thing or whatever it is either...
Martin22204@yahoo.com should work, feel free to test it anytime. Just be sure to use three twos - sometimes people leave one out.
when u love
u r vulnerable
the slightest frown on her brow
puts u in a cold sweat
Fools falls in love
said Elvis
I tend to agree
but at the same time
I gotta admit
I am a FOOL incaps
I tot your book was about Faith and padres and stuff like that
I am going to beg, borrow or steal your book
or wait for the piratted edition on the footpaths of Mumbai
the day I see your book there
then u will know u made it to the big time Paul
u made it Paul
take a look at this
Results
URL http://www.originalfaith.com/blog/index.html
Google PR 5
Alexa Rank 3,093,585
I google searched
what is love faith
and u came on the first page
JIM: I think romantic love often has very little or no love involved, although, of course, it can. But what makes romance romance, as far as I’ve been able to tell, isn’t love, but the psychology of sex.
Thanks for your interest, and for that information –
ANONYMOUS, thanks for taking a look -
u r tieing me up in knots
with romance is not love
and psychology of sex
whats the diff btw Love and Friendship?
Can friends not become lovers some day?
I think it is all in the mind
one sees the other as a good friend
the other is more intimately involved
and feels love
and has sexual feelings towards his friend
as Pilate asked Jesus
I think the universal truth if it exists dont matter
what is true for me is my truth
and what is true for you is yours
My truth to day may not be my truth tommorow
so we fall in and out of love
we marry and we divorce
and we marry again
its kinda funny
aint it ?
but nothing lasts forever
and that is an UNIVERSAL TRUTH
asking that the Love will last forever is asking too much
I dont know the future
I once was married
and I tot it wud be forever
but the love I had was not nurtured
by reciprocal love
and so it gradually faded and died
A guy with a pin to burst your bubble
That's what you get for all your trouble
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again
What do you get when you kiss a girl
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia
After you do, she'll never phone you
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again
Don't tell me what it's all about
'Cause I've been there and I'm glad I'm out
Out of those chains those chains that bind you
That is why I'm here to remind you
What do you get when you give your heart
You get it all broken up and battered
That's what you get, a heart that's shattered
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again
Out of those chains those chains that bind you
That is why I'm here to remind you
What do you get when you fall in love?
You only get lies and pain and sorrow
So for at least until tomorrow
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again
It might be that we disagree on the degree to which love is involved with romance; probably all anyone can do is speak from their own experience.
For myself, looking back, I think the better part of romance was the psychological aspect of my attraction to the opposite sex. There was an element of love, but I don't think it was the primary active ingredient in getting "all shook up," so to speak.
ANONYMOUS: And speaking of popular songs...
Seems to me you that and Diana Ross are right about the ephemerally of romance. Of love? Certainly in so far as love is a feeling, even the feeling of love sometimes doesn’t last – although I think it generally holds up much better than romantic feeling.
My question about universal love isn’t about universal truth, but simply whether it’s possible for a human being in life as we know it to love everyone.
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