Post by johnbc on Oct 23, 2020 16:42:03 GMT
Want to be interesting? Be interested.
Turning to the other, looking with charity, serving others and working hard are things that we demand of others, but that we ourselves do not do.
First, you want to win the sympathy. To win sympathy, you need to show interest in people. Only if you are interested in them just to gain sympathy, you are not really interested: your focus is not on them, but on you, then that will fail. So the practice is about teaching yourself to have a genuine interest in people. In other words, I don’t need to think about sympathy. Because? Because it is implied, I will have sympathy anyway. If I’m really interested in listening to the person, he’ll sympathize with me even if I’m not thinking about it; so why am I going to try to win sympathy, if sympathy is already built in? So the focus shifts from winning sympathy to genuine interest, and so on many other things. I mean, there will be a change in the axis of conduct, and then you will see that the sympathy you want to win is not worth the effort, because it is very easy.
“No one has greater love than the one who gives his life for his friends.” — Job 15,13
For example, I have a theory: there is no unrequited love. Let’s say, your love is unrequited when you’re dying of pity for yourself because that person didn’t pay attention to you. So you’re mortally in love with yourself, you’re taking care of yourself, so of course the woman won’t even call you. But if you have true love for her, want her well, want her happiness and forget about you, she will love you anyway. It is irresistible. So the problem is not how I will win the lady’s love, the problem is: how I will truly love her! When you have it, it is irresistible.
Most people do not know true love, total and definitive love. If they knew it, they would know that it, unlike partial and temporary loves, is ALWAYS reciprocated. Infallibly.
Love is about attraction, passion, lust come together with true kindness and generosity, and in such a way that one thing is indiscernible from the other: only then do you have love. If there is dualism, it’s over, it doesn’t work.
So, for example, you are in love with so-and-so. Are you sure that marrying you is the best thing she can do in her life? You can say: “There is no one better for you than me!” Are you sure about this? If you’re not sure, how can you want this for the woman, and still say it’s out of love? You want to screw with her life. Now, if you think and say: “No, in fact, she will not have a better one than me, I am the best because I am more sincere, I really like her, I am this, I am that and I am even beautiful and yummy, etc. So I want this for her because I want her to be happy.” Then you will not arrive with shyness and such because you know that what you are offering is good. And if she doesn’t want to, then she’s a jerk.
Through culture, you forget about yourself and start to have bigger concerns that encompass you and that solve the first ones: this is how you move to another level of understanding. So you leave the subjectivism of adolescence because you know that you have true love for one person or for several people, not only in the domain, of course. And notice well: if you have true love and that love is rejected, you don’t feel depressed, you don’t feel diminished, you feel sorry for the person, you say: “What a dumb! This woman doesn’t want to, she wants to get screwed. Damn it, I’m not here to waste time with an idiot”. I mean, as your concern goes up, you lose that fear, that fear of not being accepted, of not being liked. Because being liked is the easiest thing in the world! Why waste so much time on this bullshit? You don’t have to! Have a genuine interest, have a true love for people, and they will like you; and if they don’t like it, then you’ll be sure they’re stupid.
In short, you gradually extract yourself from the judgment of others as you gain certainty of your intentions. It is not that you will despise the opinion of others — we should never despise the opinion of others — you simply do not need it because you already know what you are doing.
The Stages of Love
In practically everything I read and hear about sex, desire and love, the most crude and childish indistinction reigns among the most diverse experiences associated with these terms, almost always taken as synonyms.
The fragmentation of Love (Eros, Agape, etc.) as it exists in the world is a trace of Original Sin. Love is really only one thing, it is the Holy Spirit. Human love, as such, is not divine, without ceasing to be love — but it is fragmentary love. For example, the Greek word “love” has its variations — eros, philos, and agape — and the word used to say that God is love in 1 John 4: 8 is “Agape”, not “Eros”. But let’s go to the different stages of love in the human sense:
1st Stage — Desire without a desired object
At its most immediate and physiological level, desire is a purely internal phenomenon, a product of hormonal chemistry with no defined object. In other words, the subject is sexually excited but not with anything or anyone in particular. Desire simply appears. This happens frequently when you wake up, and for that reason it can then be projected onto any real or imaginary object. Note that if sex did not exist in this first purely physiological sense, it would not exist in the other senses as well.
2nd Stage — Desire with a desired object
Quite different is the desire aroused by the direct or indirect vision of an object, of a desired body. In the first case the desire comes, as it were, from the inside out and in the second case it is attracted from the outside. Invariably the exciting factor there is some secondary trait to which the subject is particularly sensitive, , buttocks, legs, eyes, etc. This is the level that technically corresponds to the scholastic notion of concupiscence. Comments by beach boys among passers-by who seem to them to be hot, are encyclopedias of verbal expressions that manifest this type of desire. You see a person you don’t know who she is, but who has an attractive ass, beautiful legs and you are naturally attracted to her. You see that the case here is specifically different from the previous one. The former does not need an object, it is simply a product of its internal dynamics. The second is an attraction from the outside in.
Many people do not achieve true love because they cling to sex to feel they are alive, to escape the anguish and fear of death. But it is only the awareness of death that opens us to true love, when we see our beloved growing old, dying away little by little, and we implore God to preserve her in the hereafter.
3rd Stage — Enchantment by the whole person
In a third level, the desire is not aroused by any more prominent physical characteristic, but by a general, indefinite and not localized impression of beauty or charm, almost a magical aura around the desired object. You are not fixed on the backside or the eyes. It is a general impression that you have of the whole person so to speak. The third case is where the desire is not aroused by a specific trait, but by the sight of the whole person, as a kind of fascination for her, without you being able to say what properly attracted you towards her. Just above that comes the passion, the falling in love, which makes the object an obsessive presence in the mind of the passionate, the subject cannot stop thinking about that day and night. So that person occupies his imagination and in a way dominates him. This emotion is full of ambiguities, inevitably brings with it anxiety, jealousy, fear of rejection and triggers a set of psychological defense mechanisms against possible frustration.
Love should never be shy or discreet. It must be intense, passionate and ostentatious especially when it is chaste and without greed.
4th Stage — Conjugal Dream
Having overcome these ambiguities, falling in love can be consolidated in a conjugal dream, the yearning to have the loved one by our side forever. At this level, desire takes on tones of moral value. That happens to be approved or praised by the community. Intended to manifest itself in the common acceptance of sacrifices for mutual benefit, for the creation of a family, for facing social responsibilities, etc. Greater or lesser resistance to difficulties can lead to a result that ranges from the creation of a stable family to a variety of marital disasters. Which is what happens in most cases. Love begins when you understand that the other is an unavoidable mystery.
5th Stage — True love
Only at the top of the conjugal experience with all its ambiguities, however, can true and genuine love emerge in the full sense of the word. It gains a firm, constant and irrevocable impulse to sacrifice everything for the sake of the loved one, to always and unconditionally forgive his defects and sins, to protect him against all evil and against all sadness even with the risk of our own life and of keep it by our side as our most precious asset, not only in this earthly existence but for all eternity. At this last level, sex itself has lost all autonomous energy, and is either forgotten or is playing an occasional and very modest role among 1001 different ways of expressing love.
Each of these levels encompasses and transcends the previous one. Only those who reached the last and highest level understand what was at stake in the outdated phases.
Those who have not reached it can imagine, but do not yet have the concrete experience of all the elements that have been incorporated into their experience of love and making it increasingly complex and embracing.
Love is not a feeling: it is a decision, an act of will and a deep existential commitment. Feelings vary, but love remains. Those who did not understand this did not come even close to maturity. It is an inner oath to defend your loved one to death, even when he sins seriously against you. Love is really, as Jesus said, to die for the loved one. When we expect love to make our lives more pleasant, instead of sacrificing our lives for it, we are without love and life. Love is the most fearful of challenges, but when you know it, you never want anything else.
Feeling is just an initial fleeting stimulus. The leap into true love is a free act.
Turning to the other, looking with charity, serving others and working hard are things that we demand of others, but that we ourselves do not do.
First, you want to win the sympathy. To win sympathy, you need to show interest in people. Only if you are interested in them just to gain sympathy, you are not really interested: your focus is not on them, but on you, then that will fail. So the practice is about teaching yourself to have a genuine interest in people. In other words, I don’t need to think about sympathy. Because? Because it is implied, I will have sympathy anyway. If I’m really interested in listening to the person, he’ll sympathize with me even if I’m not thinking about it; so why am I going to try to win sympathy, if sympathy is already built in? So the focus shifts from winning sympathy to genuine interest, and so on many other things. I mean, there will be a change in the axis of conduct, and then you will see that the sympathy you want to win is not worth the effort, because it is very easy.
“No one has greater love than the one who gives his life for his friends.” — Job 15,13
For example, I have a theory: there is no unrequited love. Let’s say, your love is unrequited when you’re dying of pity for yourself because that person didn’t pay attention to you. So you’re mortally in love with yourself, you’re taking care of yourself, so of course the woman won’t even call you. But if you have true love for her, want her well, want her happiness and forget about you, she will love you anyway. It is irresistible. So the problem is not how I will win the lady’s love, the problem is: how I will truly love her! When you have it, it is irresistible.
Most people do not know true love, total and definitive love. If they knew it, they would know that it, unlike partial and temporary loves, is ALWAYS reciprocated. Infallibly.
Love is about attraction, passion, lust come together with true kindness and generosity, and in such a way that one thing is indiscernible from the other: only then do you have love. If there is dualism, it’s over, it doesn’t work.
So, for example, you are in love with so-and-so. Are you sure that marrying you is the best thing she can do in her life? You can say: “There is no one better for you than me!” Are you sure about this? If you’re not sure, how can you want this for the woman, and still say it’s out of love? You want to screw with her life. Now, if you think and say: “No, in fact, she will not have a better one than me, I am the best because I am more sincere, I really like her, I am this, I am that and I am even beautiful and yummy, etc. So I want this for her because I want her to be happy.” Then you will not arrive with shyness and such because you know that what you are offering is good. And if she doesn’t want to, then she’s a jerk.
Through culture, you forget about yourself and start to have bigger concerns that encompass you and that solve the first ones: this is how you move to another level of understanding. So you leave the subjectivism of adolescence because you know that you have true love for one person or for several people, not only in the domain, of course. And notice well: if you have true love and that love is rejected, you don’t feel depressed, you don’t feel diminished, you feel sorry for the person, you say: “What a dumb! This woman doesn’t want to, she wants to get screwed. Damn it, I’m not here to waste time with an idiot”. I mean, as your concern goes up, you lose that fear, that fear of not being accepted, of not being liked. Because being liked is the easiest thing in the world! Why waste so much time on this bullshit? You don’t have to! Have a genuine interest, have a true love for people, and they will like you; and if they don’t like it, then you’ll be sure they’re stupid.
In short, you gradually extract yourself from the judgment of others as you gain certainty of your intentions. It is not that you will despise the opinion of others — we should never despise the opinion of others — you simply do not need it because you already know what you are doing.
The Stages of Love
In practically everything I read and hear about sex, desire and love, the most crude and childish indistinction reigns among the most diverse experiences associated with these terms, almost always taken as synonyms.
The fragmentation of Love (Eros, Agape, etc.) as it exists in the world is a trace of Original Sin. Love is really only one thing, it is the Holy Spirit. Human love, as such, is not divine, without ceasing to be love — but it is fragmentary love. For example, the Greek word “love” has its variations — eros, philos, and agape — and the word used to say that God is love in 1 John 4: 8 is “Agape”, not “Eros”. But let’s go to the different stages of love in the human sense:
1st Stage — Desire without a desired object
At its most immediate and physiological level, desire is a purely internal phenomenon, a product of hormonal chemistry with no defined object. In other words, the subject is sexually excited but not with anything or anyone in particular. Desire simply appears. This happens frequently when you wake up, and for that reason it can then be projected onto any real or imaginary object. Note that if sex did not exist in this first purely physiological sense, it would not exist in the other senses as well.
2nd Stage — Desire with a desired object
Quite different is the desire aroused by the direct or indirect vision of an object, of a desired body. In the first case the desire comes, as it were, from the inside out and in the second case it is attracted from the outside. Invariably the exciting factor there is some secondary trait to which the subject is particularly sensitive, , buttocks, legs, eyes, etc. This is the level that technically corresponds to the scholastic notion of concupiscence. Comments by beach boys among passers-by who seem to them to be hot, are encyclopedias of verbal expressions that manifest this type of desire. You see a person you don’t know who she is, but who has an attractive ass, beautiful legs and you are naturally attracted to her. You see that the case here is specifically different from the previous one. The former does not need an object, it is simply a product of its internal dynamics. The second is an attraction from the outside in.
Many people do not achieve true love because they cling to sex to feel they are alive, to escape the anguish and fear of death. But it is only the awareness of death that opens us to true love, when we see our beloved growing old, dying away little by little, and we implore God to preserve her in the hereafter.
3rd Stage — Enchantment by the whole person
In a third level, the desire is not aroused by any more prominent physical characteristic, but by a general, indefinite and not localized impression of beauty or charm, almost a magical aura around the desired object. You are not fixed on the backside or the eyes. It is a general impression that you have of the whole person so to speak. The third case is where the desire is not aroused by a specific trait, but by the sight of the whole person, as a kind of fascination for her, without you being able to say what properly attracted you towards her. Just above that comes the passion, the falling in love, which makes the object an obsessive presence in the mind of the passionate, the subject cannot stop thinking about that day and night. So that person occupies his imagination and in a way dominates him. This emotion is full of ambiguities, inevitably brings with it anxiety, jealousy, fear of rejection and triggers a set of psychological defense mechanisms against possible frustration.
Love should never be shy or discreet. It must be intense, passionate and ostentatious especially when it is chaste and without greed.
4th Stage — Conjugal Dream
Having overcome these ambiguities, falling in love can be consolidated in a conjugal dream, the yearning to have the loved one by our side forever. At this level, desire takes on tones of moral value. That happens to be approved or praised by the community. Intended to manifest itself in the common acceptance of sacrifices for mutual benefit, for the creation of a family, for facing social responsibilities, etc. Greater or lesser resistance to difficulties can lead to a result that ranges from the creation of a stable family to a variety of marital disasters. Which is what happens in most cases. Love begins when you understand that the other is an unavoidable mystery.
5th Stage — True love
Only at the top of the conjugal experience with all its ambiguities, however, can true and genuine love emerge in the full sense of the word. It gains a firm, constant and irrevocable impulse to sacrifice everything for the sake of the loved one, to always and unconditionally forgive his defects and sins, to protect him against all evil and against all sadness even with the risk of our own life and of keep it by our side as our most precious asset, not only in this earthly existence but for all eternity. At this last level, sex itself has lost all autonomous energy, and is either forgotten or is playing an occasional and very modest role among 1001 different ways of expressing love.
Each of these levels encompasses and transcends the previous one. Only those who reached the last and highest level understand what was at stake in the outdated phases.
Those who have not reached it can imagine, but do not yet have the concrete experience of all the elements that have been incorporated into their experience of love and making it increasingly complex and embracing.
Love is not a feeling: it is a decision, an act of will and a deep existential commitment. Feelings vary, but love remains. Those who did not understand this did not come even close to maturity. It is an inner oath to defend your loved one to death, even when he sins seriously against you. Love is really, as Jesus said, to die for the loved one. When we expect love to make our lives more pleasant, instead of sacrificing our lives for it, we are without love and life. Love is the most fearful of challenges, but when you know it, you never want anything else.
Feeling is just an initial fleeting stimulus. The leap into true love is a free act.
