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What is Love?

Migrated topic.
There is selfish love and there is unselfish love , the first can spawn obsession and jealousy and pain whereas the second can set you free. (cue Ntrance)
 
DreaMTripper said:
There is selfish love and there is unselfish love , the first can spawn obsession and jealousy and pain whereas the second can set you free. (cue Ntrance)
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Good one.
 
Heck if I know. Wish I did though.

I had a friend in high school who had a classic near death exp. At the end of the light-tunnel,he was asked a question. " who do you love?" Unable to answer,he was forced back into his body. Ive been trying to find that answer since.
 
[YOUTUBE]


You'll be given love
You'll be taken care of
You'll be given love
You have to trust it

Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at

Twist your head around
It's all around you
All is full of love
All around you

All is full of love
You just ain't receiving
All is full of love
Your phone is off the hook
All is full of love
Your doors are all shut
All is full of love!

All is full of love
All is full of love
All is full of love
All is full of love
All is full of love
 
It seems to me that love is dependant on the individual. Very much like someone"s idea of God or any other absract concept. I can relate to the idea of people loving each other but not to a vibrant love that is all around. Even though i cannot relate to it i do not doubt it"s power for another individual.

I can also relate to it being an evolutionary survival concept that has come about with self awareness.

indydude19 said:
LOL hug :lol:
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Indydude, there was gravitas behind my words. I think that once all the fireworks in a relationship die down is when love comes about.
I have a friend who had an abscess near to his anus that he had to have an operation for. After the operation the wound was left open in order for it to drain any remaining gunk out of it. The open wound was right next to his ring and it was imperative for him to keep it clean in order to stop any further infection. His girlfriend cleans the wound for him each time after he has been to the toilet. This is love. Putting up with other peoples shit (sometimes literally) without conditions, whether they be a partner, family or friends.
 
Hug you seem to have a real good grasp on love, good explanation! sorry i tend to LOL at logs in a toilet and situations of the like :oops: ;)

I am really digging all the responses! some great ideas on here that are giving me a better idea of what love is. at first i thought it was more of a feeling, but now it seems more a mindset or way of reasoning to me.

Floor, that is one strange video :surprised , but cool :thumb_up:
 
As I see it: Some on here say there is not good or bad, but only respect and chaos. I think love is the ultimate respect. It's unconditional care. It's the precursor to creation. Even hateful people that create chaos either had something they loved taken from them or they love an idea, thing, person, something enough to create chaos, or they have a lack of love for anything other than themselves. Either way, if love is involved, it's from unconditionally caring about something, whatever it might be. Again, as I see it.



What happens when you care about nothing, unconditionally?
 
Golly i wish there was a Roxbury around the corner that i could drive my floral van to 8)

Nice additional comment FloorFan, i like the idea of love as the ultimate respect :thumb_up:
 
indydude19 said:
I am really digging all the responses! some great ideas on here that are giving me a better idea of what love is. at first i thought it was more of a feeling, but now it seems more a mindset or way of reasoning to me.
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I think that it can be a fluid mindset that comes about through feeling. Put simply love is when you like someone or something a lot. Is love the same as being in love? I love bacon and egg on toast but i do not necessarily want to cuddle and procreate with it. I think that people have to decide for themselves what love is.

Last night i thought about the subject of the vibrational feeling of love throughout the universe and tried to make an analogy between that and the vibrational frequencies that are discussed in string theory and that perhaps, at times, we become in tune with the very harmonics of existence. Just when i came to the conclusion that i was entertaining hippie claptrap i heard a tonal sound in one ear. I then came to the possible conclusion that the unified field of nonsense was communicating it"s awareness to me and that i should take heed. Or it could just have just been that i had a bit of tinnitus. Even so, the tinnitus occurring at the very moment of these reflections may have been a form of synchronicity.

I was riding the diachotomised seesaw of truth and fantasy like a bucking bronco and i still do not know on which side that the balance will fall. I am hoping for equilibrium.
 
FloorFan said:
What happens when you care about nothing, unconditionally?
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I've been following & enjoying this thread but this question has hit harder than anything else I've read so far.

FloorFan, would you care to elaborate on this or is it more of a thought exercise with no real answer?
 
hug46 said:
I think that it can be a fluid mindset that comes about through feeling. Put simply love is when you like someone or something a lot.
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Wouldn't that be more like Cathexis?

Investing a deal of emotional energy in a person or thing. I'm just rehashing Scott M. Peck here, but in his book "the road less travelled" he discusses how this cathexis is quite different to Love. You can cathect your garden for example but you can't be in love with your garden the same as a person who has been close by your side for years.

He also discusses paratism and lust as types of emotions often mistaken as love. I've been guilty of these myself and I can certainly say they are not the same. I also don't believe in types of love. They are just types of 'like' and dependency IME.
 
I LOVE this thread....

..and the more I keep thinking about the question, the deeper I get myself into confusion. I don't think it's a sub-routine of the brain (such as the need to pro-recreate, to eat, or to feel a sense of belonging etc). Agree, there is also different "levels" of love (as there is with 'consciousness')... additionally, it doesn't seem to require any sort of sensory input, though may be induced following sensory input (eg visual stimulation, pheromones) .... I wouldn't even go as far as saying it's a "feeling"... but what is it? the most logical sense to me is the it's a state of the brain, induced by hormones... but this explanation doesn't really do it for me... Hmmmmmmm .... baby don't hurt me...don't hurt me..... no more...
 
soulfood said:
hug46 said:
I think that it can be a fluid mindset that comes about through feeling. Put simply love is when you like someone or something a lot.
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Wouldn't that be more like Cathexis?

Investing a deal of emotional energy in a person or thing. I'm just rehashing Scott M. Peck here, but in his book "the road less travelled" he discusses how this cathexis is quite different to Love. You can cathect your garden for example but you can't be in love with your garden the same as a person who has been close by your side for years.

He also discusses paratism and lust as types of emotions often mistaken as love. I've been guilty of these myself and I can certainly say they are not the same. I also don't believe in types of love. They are just types of 'like' and dependency IME.
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I was being a bit flippant by saying that my idea of love is when you like something a lot and you illustrated my point better than i did with my bacon and egg analogy. I agree that lust and paratism are not the same as love but i still think that the idea love is entirely dependent on the individual.

Do you think that the love that you have for your mum is the same as the love for a partner? I think that there is a difference but there is a great deal of emphasis on a certain kind of love being linked to romance, so i could have been influenced by suggestability. I love my mum and i think that i am starting to love my girlfriend but they are not the same kind of love to me (even though i had couple of disturbing dreams about my mother 10 or so years ago).

Would you say that love is only possible with someone that has been by your side for years? Would you say that love is only possible between human beings? Or does it apply to animals or human/animal interaction?

I guess the problem i have is that if love is some singular, transcendent, rare jewel of a feeling that one individual has for another. With no varying shades. That it is so profound that you would give your life to save someone you loved, then all these people bandying comments like "i love you man" are just spouting empty rhetoric for the sake of flapping their lips and hearing the sound of their own voices. Or it could be that they are just high on drugs when these sentiments are voiced.
 
hug46 said:
Do you think that the love that you have for your mum is the same as the love for a partner? I think that there is a difference but there is a great deal of emphasis on a certain kind of love being linked to romance, so i could have been influenced by suggestability. I love my mum and i think that i am starting to love my girlfriend but they are not the same kind of love to me (even though i had couple of disturbing dreams about my mother 10 or so years ago).
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It's quite hard to compare emotions from a lover to a mother because the mother in your life especially is highly unique.

I have two brothers so I guess that will do for comparison. Related the same, both older than me though one obviously younger than the other. I love them both but as they are different people and I have shared different experiences with them, our relationships are coloured differently. Even though we share the equal similarities to each other on which we relate (sports, booze and humour mainly) in our way we each have different vibes to one another and these vibes can colour how love is felt.

I'll bring your mother and girlfriend back into this now. Due to who they are physically, you will have very different methods or tools for expressing love which will colour the experience surrounding love, but are not the experience of love in themselves. More like extending to and from love.

To throw in a cheap metaphor or... something ehm...

If you can think of love as a ball. I would throw a ball gently towards my niece where I may be more aggressive with my sports Brah's, but in the end I'm still throwing the same ball.

hug46 said:
Would you say that love is only possible with someone that has been by your side for years? Would you say that love is only possible between human beings? Or does it apply to animals or human/animal interaction?
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Years... nah that's a bit extreme, but it has to be beyond a short term shallow connection. I don't think you can realistically place a time limit or something but I don't believe in love at first sight and I'm also skeptical of short term relationships where the word love gets thrown around. I never call folk out on it, because I'm guilty of it myself

As for animals, I have no opinion on the matter. Never had pets or anything close to an animal I loved myself.


hug46 said:
I guess the problem i have is that if love is some singular, transcendent, rare jewel of a feeling that one individual has for another. With no varying shades. That it is so profound that you would give your life to save someone you loved, then all these people bandying comments like "i love you man" are just spouting empty rhetoric for the sake of flapping their lips and hearing the sound of their own voices. Or it could be that they are just high on drugs when these sentiments are voiced.
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Right I'm going to sound like a hate filled nazi now, but if you were to say you loved me for example, I'd assume you're spouting empty rhetoric or you were on drugs. Who are you? Who am I?

I'm familiar with you as a member of what I believe to be some of the most important information I have ever read. It's very profound overwhelming etc etc.

I hate pea shoots.

Wait, what? Sounds exhausting really. Truth is I don't hate pea shoots... I just don't eat them. I don't hate the black eyed peas either. In all honesty I haven't experienced hate. Though I use the word in reference to my own relation to other entities countlessly. There are a great many things that I'm strongly not keen on and I like the bulk of society have equated this to hate.

I believe the same applies to love.

However if someone explained to me after what I believe to be a comparatively trivial association. That they loved me, I would not reply "No. You don't" That would make me an ass. I reply "I love you too" as long as I correctly understand the spirit of this. I would not reply I love you, to a young girl with a crush for example.

But when harm is not caused via misunderstandings, you just go with it. Sometimes "fucking *insert many positive profound adjectives* awesome"... just takes too long and "I love you man" is appropriate language.

In essence I don't believe this to be shades of love. More like shades of fondness/appreciation.

I believe love to be the highest of blissful awareness. If I am not in blissful awareness of the highest, or acting upon a prior blissful awareness in a spiritually positive way, I am not experiencing love.
 
..I think that love is a product of the brain for a few reasons...

When I think of "love" , universally between all creatures, the best example I can think of is the love that a parent feels for it's offspring. In any animal species I can think of that has a brain, they would willingly sacrifice their own lives, so that their children live on.

Is there any species without a brain that does the same?

What about ants? Do they love their queen?
They put their lives on the line for the sake of the queen, without hesitation.
Obviously it's a chemically induced state of mind in the ants. Is this love? :?
 
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