womyn see men "in love" much as hyenas see antelopes with a limp

it is a cloying false emotion nurtured on selective repression of fact that feminit womyn value in men as it confounds critical thinking in besotted men long enough for cupcake to get his imprimatur on her peonage contract

or to put it another way - to nail his balls to the wall

" too much love drives a man insane ..." words of a pop song

""whom the Gods want to destroy they first drive insane.. "" anon

Ok, I'm not making fun of Tera anymore; on a more serious note, I'm really, honestly, tired of people acting like romantic love is good; I mean sure, everyone is different, your perceptions and so on, so you all have your own take, but for me, reading this thread I think Percy has hit nearest the mark:

Quote:

No-one would willingly want it.

I don't know, maybe I'm not cynical enough; trust to me is the foundation of love and the only way to find out someone is trustworthy, in my experience, is to trust them. This inevitably leads to pain, and that is only the beginning. There is no happy end; no happy end, if two people love each other one of them, at least, is going to get fucked it is inescapable; I have seen people, happily married, married for years, and then their lover dies and then they, who were healthy, die soon after; do you think this looks like fun? And if one doesn't outlive the other, then that's only because their love shrivelled up and died, or so it is often thought, this leads me to my next point, which is one of the great myths, ok, for all you ladies who happen to be reading this, right? Guys too for that matter. Listen carefully:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MUTUAL BREAKUP

Every time someone told you that, when you wanted to leave, they also wanted out, they were lying. You hurt their soul and because they loved you, they did not want you to feel guilty.

Quote:

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

You stomped on them, then you spat on them, then you threw up on them and left. What remained wasn't worth picking up.

Whenever you love someone, they love something else more, usually themselves, but not always; sometimes it's drugs, money, or another person. Even your parents, especially your parents, well ok maybe not your parents, but still you get the point.

What about self-love? Don't make whacking-off jokes. This is serious. How can you love yourself if no one else does? How can someone else love you if you don't? What if you're garbage, I mean, what if you just plain reek at everything and are a complete failure (allot of people are, or have been at some point) are you worthy of love? You'll still desire love, but with it you have no motivation to change, besides which you'll never get it.

To me that’s the only good thing about love, it is a true motivator toward self-improvement, honest and wholesome self improvement, the cultivation of the spirit in a desire to be worthy of love.

This brings me to my next point; the sham of 'bastard love'; this is a condition, primarily it occurs in women, but some men show it, people with this condition are

1) Bastards
2) Are to love what Ted Bundy is to human feeling, a complete blank, but capable of a convincing performance nevertheless.

Why would I say such a horrible thing? Well, let me put this to you, for Huxlian reasons I can't actually prove it, but I can nevertheless give fairly good anecdotal evidence in support of this idea, the evidence follows -

Ain't it just a bit fuckin' convenient that for a fat swathe of obnoxious women, and quite a few obnoxious men, love is never an inconvenience? I mean, these girls never fall so desperately head-over-heels in love with the local hobo that they just gotta marry the guy, despite him being a hobo, right? They never fall for the guy who lost his face in Vietnam, and the guys never fall for the fat chick with the lisp, or the 45 year old women who had breast cancer and had to have one of her tits cut off, the list goes on and on. I mean if you ask me, it seems like they're choosing the people they fall in love with, consciously choosing them based on various pros and cons, and - newsflash - that's not love. Love is primal, love is the monkey.

I mean I've fallen for girls who were unattractive, mean, and unpleasant, girls who never wanted to have sex and who were poor, unfaithful, etc. I've been screwed over by love, had it lead me right into a minefield by making me go ga-ga for someone who was just pure garbage when all was said and done, and I think most decent men have experienced this sort of thing. And to be fair, allot of decent women have too. I mean, I hesitate to bring up male-fault domestic violence, but let's be honest it does happen, just not like all the fucking time as the feminists claim, some women, great girls, will fall for a guy who literally abuses and treats them like shit, hits them and bosses them around (It happens to guys too, all the time) but they can't help it because they're in love. Because that's what love is, it's a bitch, you're not the one in charge, you don't choose, you can't fall out of love just because you want to.

And yet who blabbers more about love? Who never shuts up about it? Who sells it, or thinks they can buy it like it comes in a box with a diamond ring, who runs around filling everyone’s head with bullshit disney fantasies? Who are, in short, the bastards. It's the shamers, the bastards, THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT LOVE IS, but they run around acting like they're the fucking experts. It's just a fucking game to these people, and I HATE THEM.

Also, this might be blatantly unfair, but I think most of them are women, and most women are them, but maybe that's just the way the dice have fallen for me, in my life.

That pain is palpable, Dad Sav. It is weighed down with sheer disappointment and disillusionment. And I know exactly how it feels. My brother.

You took only part of my quote though, before you moved on, and excised it's context.

I made a point about Unconditional Love being something no-one would willingly want - if they knew what it did. It isn't at all like 'Lerve'. It has barely any sexual content. It is not confined to any sort of reproductive purpose.

Oddly, very few men ever express a view about unconditional love and women do it all the time.

But that is no reflection of their experience of it.

It is rare. Few ever get to experience it.

It is sought only by fools who think their seeking of it makes a difference to their getting it. It doesn't. It is 'given'; Like it, want it, or not.

Men who have experienced it rarely ever want to tell of its Awfulness. It is a Divine Grace with an enormous dark side to it. Women seem to 'claim it' as though it was a quality of their own. It isn't of course and it is a blasphemy to even think so. Sheer hubris and 'holier than thou' on women's part.

Poets and some literary men - or mystical men - have made some small attempts to describe it, but it is virtually indescribable. There are no words in common use. The effects change a life and the scars last. The upside is a phenomenon. The Individual cannot survive it. A Tsunami in the soul. Not the heart, although it can be felt very strongly there. A different person eventuates. It is not even for the person who gets it. It is for someone else's benefit. Often a great many.

One often lives in sorrow after it.

Unconditional love, Percy? I can only explain it as I know it and to do so I must use the words of one wiser than myself to illustrate what I'm talking about, but these aren’t simple things to explain so forgive me if I come across a little fuzzy, I’ll do my best. Of course, it may not be what you’re talking about, I cannot say.

Quote:

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena, they are crucified alone. Embraced the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies – all these are private and, except through symbols (language) and at second hand, incommunicable.

This is an ugly fact about being human. There is no true communication in the sense that what we feel, what we know, we know alone and feel alone; this can only be exchanged through inference via symbols, language is useful but it is inherently limited.

Let us look closer at this particular quote:

Quote:

Embraced the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain.

Interesting. Consider then, the mind is its own place, but what of two minds with an exceptional degree of common ground, not in memory, habits, etc but in function, in character, two souls cut from the same cloth; this common ground would serve as a basis for fellow feeling and understanding, were there enough synchronicity then all references would be understood, inferences realized, the limitations of language and symbology could be overcome by one, via reference to their ‘own place’, their insulated self; ‘feeling into’ the other, clumsily at first but with some success due to their similarity, until one and the other come to understand the ‘own place’ of the other, to develop a map of their mental landscape and a powerful empathy which overcomes the limitations of symbolic communication. The sacrifice to be made to feel this transcendence is one of self, the abasement of the ego in order to better navigate the emotional and mental landscape of the other.

This kind of love will require the supreme abasement of self, complete compassion, the reward is the only true relief from the isolation which is the birthright of all humans save that available to the mad, the drugged, the genius, the prophet, this is as I understand it.

Impressive, Dad.

The human condition in part. An important part.

I know that two people who do the work of love over a long time can achieve that deep understanding and acceptance of the 'landscape' of the other. They have to be courageous in themselves of course as both their landscapes contain Dragons. That familiarity is also rare but is within reach of those who want it and try. It takes two though. And persistence. Success can be found.

The 'sacrifice, though is not found in abasement, of ego or anything else of value. I think that is an error of perspective. A small error. It is a harsh word. You get it spot on with 'complete compassion'. It does require that the ego is put to service rather than dominate the person or be wiped out.

Who does the Grail serve.

Philosophical differences Percy. I believe in C.D Broad and Bergson's concept of the eliminative conscious; reality is infinite, perception is not. Huxley would call this the 'Mind at Large', the Mind At Large possesses no concept of self, there is no ego, no individual, only infinity; the ego is kind of light-trick of perception, limiting and corrupt, finite. This isn't anything new. To Blake it was the 'Doors of Perception', maybe you call it Sat Chit Ananda (Being-Awareness-Bliss):



That has more to do with powerful drugs than love, but it's a similar situation; as I understand it, love is a glimpse at the infinite, being your 'Not-Self' in the 'Not-Self' that is the 'Not-Self' of your Lover. It is more approachable than Blake's infinite (accessible only to the insane, powerfully drugged up, etc.) still it is rare and precious, but nevertheless, I don't like it. I'm sure you've read the wind in the willows, right? Perhaps not recently though; it's like meeting the Piper and not forgetting you did.

Or maybe I'm just being too cynical. It's too easy, though, when love (which has no happy ending) comes from innocence, to jump straight into cynicism without stopping to experience the middle ground, that's the hand I got.

That is as maybe, Dad. I am not a filopsofer.

The human consciousness is a rarity. It is a quality barely found even in our closest animal cousins. To have consciousness eliminated in an action deliberately undertaken is an oxymoronic position to seek. It may well be considered as a mental (or spiritual) exercise but that would seem to serve only a contemplative purpose and no practical one. There seems no teleological or even evolutionary one either.

To me, in my ignorance, our consciousness is there to be developed and used. It is definingly Human.

In the actions of Love, the joining together of two people, that consciousness has a unique and central role. Abandoning of it may be possible, indeed it is written of from experience. But what can be done as an instance is not all that can be done. One can throw away the crown jewels too, if one wished, but it would be a waste.

I hold that those two people have a capacity, if nurtured, to enter the consciousness of one another, as close as it may be possible for two independant consciousnesses to do so; egos intact and fully aware of position and integrity, in full authenticity. It needs Love as a catalyst. It needs, as you say, 'complete compassion'. That in itself, implies something present and authentic with which to be in compassionate union.

It is all very well to use bamboo chairs as one's example of what to 'enter into' but I suggest that well read mind such as yours shows us some human examples. I would appreciate being steered in a sound direction by a man of your clear intellectual quality.

I recognise your cynicism. There is hardly a man on ths forum that has not felt the shrinking away caused by pain. But it has its place alongside other more optimistic and curious qualities.

Now that is cynicism. It may appear to be all those things, but that is only appearance and to a jaundiced eye. The light-trick. Maybe an eye that has been temprarily blinded by a flash of something brilliant. An eye that has seen the Grail.

Ego is an experienced reality and it may well be that we cannot consciously experience without it. It is a useful and necessary human attribute.

I am not stroking your ego by recognising yours as having its own authentic integrity. I am asking you to use it properly.

For my benefit.

For the benefit of any who read this exchange.

As an act of Love.

I have been married for about 19 years now with a very religious Filipina

she is loyal and the house is spic n span

I on my part bring home the bacon of which she get most

I don't cheat except for one lapse

she has raised our kids to be functioning human beings

but if some one were to ask me do you love her

I don't know what love is - maybe fondness and a sense of commitment

we are fond of each other

but the kind as presented as Hollywood there is none

maybe that is why our marriage has survived this long

maybe because she thinks first of the family and not her self

I say leave well enough alone

You are doin' OK after 19 years, Shazza.

Fond ain't so bad.

Commitment is rare.

I like the smell of bacon in the morning.

We seem to be at loggerheads regarding the value of the ego, self, the relationship between the conception of self and conciousness; I do not discount what you have said, but these certitudes about which I might seem so smug have been won with blood and sweat, experience, it is not easy for me to be convinced to abandon them. I will nevertheless consider your words, they do have merit, I see this, I think you are a wiser man than I am.

Let me see.

Conciousness, a state of being, as you understand it, I would hazard is an inclusive faculty; eliminative conscious is not. The evolutionary purpose served by the eliminative concious is the focus required to exist in a limited state, in a limited space, in a limited time and acheive material goals. I think this is a language problem. Conciousness, I offer, as you perceive it is not Eliminative Conciousness as I have described thus our conflict is irrelevant as we are discussing two seperate concepts.

Simmilarly in our conflict regarding Ego.

However I will not assume this is correct, I await. Nevertheless, I think it is so, though the difference may be more dogmatic, I am not certain, I must see what you say, then I will give more detail regarding my issue.

I dont agree with the idea that there is no such thing as a mutual decision to split up..

This is how it works..


1. You plonk some woman.

2. She starts harrassing you because she thinks she is in a relationship now..

3. You tolerate her, because she cooks well and drops her knickers etc..

4. You cant be arsed with her most of the time, but, you get hungry and like to hide the sausage, so you go along with it..

5. She eventually realises you are not that arsed..

6. She makes a fuss and starts moaning, says things are going nowhere etc..

7. You agree, hence you break up, as she has suggested..

Therefore, its a mutual breakup!!

The hard bit is when they come back a month later and try to start again!

Silly creatures!!

You're right, of course, it does happen, there are mutual decisions, just in my experience these are rare, I was being a little loud, and really did not mean to generalize in such an arbitrary way, I hope you understand what I mean, though.

Oh right, yes, i get where you are coming from generally, I suppose my example could be seen as odd because I have a policy of always trying to get women to dump me as I find it very hard to directly remove them owing to my rather cowardly nature when dealing with the fearsome gender and the risk of revenge attacks..

Yes, if a gent can tolerate a woman for more than a few months it must be serious!!

..... (insert 'Haahoo' here)