What is love? - discuss.
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Peace all,
So I have been busy on the Nature of God topics. Lots of debate about what Allah/the God is or is not, but I was just thinking earlier that actually I didn't notice anyone say 'God is love'; I sometimes hear this but I don't really get it. If God is awareness is that what love is also?
Lots of people are obsessed with measuring how much they are loved or trying to get more - 'you don't love me enough' or 'you'd do it if you really loved me' etc, you hear a lot. I am thinking well, what is this precious stuff anyway? Maybe I don't care if or how much I am loved; I think personally if I were to just get to know what it was, then I think that would be enough for me...
anyone think they know??
http//media-cache-cd0.pinimg.com/736x/6e/9c/15/6e9c15d85d2ebc914345d991b24e1ad9.jpg
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Good question. Plato once said "Love is a serious mental disease", sometimes I have to agree with him ;D. If you talk about love between man and woman than I think love is a chemical process in a body that creates emotions, like drugs, people become addicted to each other.
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Peace,
To maintain unity we need to show immense love for our fellow brothers and sisters, but the hardest part is to show love to a stranger. And obviously love is to show kindness, respect, justice, sound judgment and all else that the recitation (Quran) teaches.
The intention is not only to keep the unity between those who are already in your assembly but also invite the people in distant lands. What difference does it make if we only show love towards those who are inclined towards you?
Perhaps this was not the kind of love you were referring to though?
But we should not just expect too much of people to love us. Often you have to show ten times as much love before you get anything in return. And also there is a n conflict in how different people perceive love. And there can be gender-specific differences where men sometimes have another mind regarding how you show love. This may cause conflicts with women who are expecting love a certain way.
And men may feel unappreciated for what they do in terms of providing for their family in old school settings because they find a grumpy woman at home mostly complaining about things.
Moving more to the nature of love; in my eyes there are more than one variant. You have lusts and desires (sexual) which is simply reptile brain drives with the instinct to reproduce which our intellect (ab)uses by applying various kinds of prevention methods. That is not the real "love". Attachment and the bonding between man and woman separate from instincts is the real love in my opinion and when you love the person for who he/she is and not only for their looks and seducing moves or money and status. I can understand the primitive feelings of a woman to want a man who is self-sufficient and confident in himself, but that is another story.
As you said there may be an obsession with being loved, but it might also be that we do not do enough for our loved ones in some cases. A man can have problems with imagination and being romantic because beneath his heart he is just a very typical rough male. Women often want men to be "romantic" and many men may have problems with that and they are then accused of not showing love. And I think women often miss some things that the man subtly does for his woman possibly out of love. And women are often demanding on that front so it does frequently not matter if you try to give that little extra because she perceives it not.
I guess we should not blame these women for it, but we may blame romantic movies and novels for it because they create a too-perfect imaginary world for the woman to live in.
And we may blame action movies and coldy men in them for the kind of exaggerated behavior in men about having to be macho and often violent and emotionally detached.
The problem is in ourselves.
God bless you
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To maintain unity we need to show immense love for our fellow brothers and sisters, but the hardest part is to show love to a stranger. And obviously love is to show kindness, respect, justice, sound judgment and all else that the recitation (Quran) teaches.
But we should not just expect too much of people to love us.
Agreed.
I'd say that a prerequisite for love is selflessness. You cannot love someone, i.e. show love, if you're also selfish. Love is about NOT being selfish. If a selfish person loves something, then I guess it is just some sort of fascination or fondness or other type of attraction, but not actually love.
Also, the more peaceful you are inside, the easier it is to love... not just other people, but the world, and even your so called enemies. Love doesn't so much depend on the object of your love, but rather on yourself. For the selfless and peaceful people, love is not a mystery, but highly normal.
The feeling of falling in love, having a crush, is also not love... but rather a temporary intoxication. To have a crush on someone is definitely not the same as loving someone, although people mix these things too much.
I'd also say that the need for love is many times not really a need for love. Rather it is a need for attention and soothing. We may feel empty in side, so we want to cover it up with "love" from outside. If we feel we are in need of love, then we oftentimes have issues within ourselves to solve.. pertaining to peace and accepting oneself. If we cannot love our self then it would be hard to get love from the outside/somebody else.
group
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The feeling of falling in love, having a crush, is also not love... but rather a temporary intoxication. To have a crush on someone is definitely not the same as loving someone, although people mix these things too much.
And if it lasts 40 years is it also a temprorary intoxication?
I think love has many colours and textures and I say "yes" even if temporaryif infatuation if intoxication, it is love, a taste of love, not the all love, but it is a taste of it. We love because all our being asks for union, for melting with the beloved. But of course that is too much and God usually does not give us much of it. We mi8ght in fact get more than we can handle and then really, really become deluded thinking how great we must be that we have managed the difficult thing of earning the perfect love.
I rather suffer for love one hundred times than to think love is another word for success. In many things said about couple love, the final conclusion seems to be that if it does not turn out right it is failure on our part. I reject that outright. Love is never a failure, no matter how much disenchantment, unrequited love, heartbreaks or whatever, we are never cheated on anything. Love is there for us to love, not to be loved. If you love, no matter how disappointed to get, you still have done your part of the deal, and you earn your lesson, and GROW, like when you have pains in the knees or other parts because you are growing up.
I think we should thank God from our fearts for every love in our lives, every infatuation or intoxication, it is not a a disgrace or a failure, it is a gift, it is the most heartening of gifts.
I agree with all the criticism of romantic love for the absurd expectations it has brought people, specially women to have from men and the deapth of humilliation a abjection so many have undergone for the sake of that kin of love. But that said, what a gift it is... no gift can match falling in love and staying in for however long. While it lasts you are a believer. The challenge is to continue being a believer after it is ended. But we should thnk god. Wehumans ar enot meant to be perfect, but to be alive, be warriors in a quest, daring and trusting in our destiny. Whatever amount of union we may experience in a failed love, we may think that it was a cheat, that we cheated ourselves, nd it may be so, it is so. But not abosolutely so. There is always something, at the cor, that is true the truest of the truth. God has given us something that we maight not have expected that was not all, but that was like having a gold piece of unending beauty. It is not all the gold of the world, but it is still gold and of the purest kind.
What one should not do is loose self respect, dignity letting oneself become a steping slab for somebody unscrupulous. No matter how tempted we feel to give in to that person because we are so much taken up with him or her, we should put a limit to the concession, even while in love we should serve ustice and equity and not let somebody we love do things that we despise just because we love him adn he can get away with them. So, if it ends, when it ends, we will not be bitter at our own errors and indignities.
Love comes, I said, in many colours, the love of friendship, the love of beauty, the love of a father or a mother, or of a sibling or the love for your neighbours, for people you do not know, for everything. Those are the colours of love, as many as there are things in existence.
But please, do not do away with the colour of "romantic" love. The rainbow would get mad at you.
Salaam
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And if it lasts 40 years is it also a temprorary intoxication?
Well, 40 years doesn't sound very temporary. It doesn't sound very common either... that you remain for year in and year out, in that head over heals, spinning, state, that occurs when first falling in love. I was basically referring to that state which typically "wears off" after some time... and grows into a stable, solid and sober love.
I rather suffer for love one hundred times than to think love is another word for success. In many things said about couple love, the final conclusion seems to be that if it does not turn out right it is failure on our part. I reject that outright. Love is never a failure, no matter how much disenchantment, unrequited love, heartbreaks or whatever, we are never cheated on anything. Love is there for us to love, not to be loved. If you love, no matter how disappointed to get, you still have done your part of the deal, and you earn your lesson, and GROW, like when you have pains in the knees or other parts because you are growing up.
bravo bravo
The challenge is to continue being a believer after it is ended.
Exactly... when the intoxication has ended... this is when it will show if both involved are able to love enough for the relationship to continue.
Love comes, I said, in many colours, the love of friendship, the love of beauty, the love of a father or a mother, or of a sibling or the love for your neighbours, for people you do not know, for everything. Those are the colours of love, as many as there are things in existence.
Indeed.
But please, do not do away with the colour of "romantic" love. The rainbow would get mad at you.
;D agreed
Peace
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Peace,
Some men have neanderthal brains when it comes to romantic stuff. Our idea of love is coming home with a piece of meat. Ogg!!
God bless you
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Good question. Plato once said "Love is a serious mental disease", sometimes I have to agree with him ;D. If you talk about love between man and woman than I think love is a chemical process in a body that creates emotions, like drugs, people become addicted to each other.
How true '( brickwall
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What is love? Baby, don't hurt me.
Don't hurt me.
No more.Always wanted to post that. Love is a bond of affection/likability I'd say at the very core. Takes on different colours depending on the people involved. Where it starts getting messy is in regard to the expectations...that's why unconditional love is usually rare and confused with a lot of other things. Very few could claim to love unconditionally...and to have it be true, not sure if that even is a good thing. Duty and love may be confused there. Then again, we tend to place that sort of love on a pedestal, as an ideal...to love without expectation is the purest sort and all that. Like I said, not sure if that is healthy. In my view, a healthy love would consist of give and take which also allows for growth, adjustment and adaptation. Can the other sort also allow for that? Unlikely but possible in certain rare circumstances and since it would depend on a very particular set of people and circumstances, I would consider it an anomaly and not something that is very practical to strive/hope for. if it happens it happens kinda thing, and whether it leads to a happy life is another thing.
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Love is not the same as subservience or blindeness. You can love unconditinally, that does not mean that you are going to lick the ground the loved one or ones treads. You may be even more severe with those you love, precisely because you do not exact conditions from them. Of course it may involve duty, just as it may involve beauty or joy or learning. Love is a channel for growth adn wisdom, the best one. There is nothing one learns better than what one learns motivated by love, any kind of love, romantic, or fraternal or universal, when the feeling ir real one would go through things that might otherwise not handle.
And all kinds of love, I think, are faces of the divine love, the longing for fusion and identifying with Being.
Salaam
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Love is not the same as subservience or blindeness. You can love unconditinally, that does not mean that you are going to lick the ground the loved one or ones treads. You may be even more severe with those you love, precisely because you do not exact conditions from them.
Of course, love even unconditional doesn't have to involve subservience and/or blindness. By unconditional I meant nothing another person does can change the love they feel for them. This I consider unrealistic mostly and/or applicable to a very small set of specific people in very peculiar circumstances. Severity with those you love is a different thing...one may have more at stake or feel/care more for those they love thus may be compelled to act a certain way with them and so on but I am confused as to why one may be more severe with those they love 'precisely because' they do not exact conditions from them? They obviously want them to do certain things, or there is no need for more severity with them as opposed to anyone else. There are still expectations, and those expectations are magnified in a sense because we love them so much.E.g. Neighbours children and one's own children are playing in your house and there is a fight. One would tend to be more severe with one's own than the others because a) you can b) they are guests and your own should know better c) you want them to have better manners regardless of how others raise their kids...doesn't mean you show them severity precisely because you have no expectations/conditions on your love?
On from that, say your kid grows up to be a monster. Would you still love the kid the way you always did as he is now? Or would your love now take into account what he used to be or what you thought him as, rather than the reality? One can love kids when they are kids,it's kinda instinctive, when they grow up it becomes a different thing as one is dealing with an adult, albeit one we had a hand in nurturing. I know in what cases I've seen, that a child growing up to be jerk in varying shades is loved in ways that really have nothing to do with reality but with our memories or images of what we think of them as or what we want them to be. Is that love, sure it may well be. Are we fooling ourselves? Depends.
Change the kid into a betraying husband now, and the love we felt for the man is by the roadside, but there are a few women out there who will still claim to love the man without any changes regardless of what he did...fewer still who will say philandering is a part of him, it's endearing and I love all of him the way he is...would a mother say that? Maybe. Would his wife? Not particularly. Would this be subservient or blind? In many cases yes it might. In some cases however the possibility exists that the person knows and still genuinely loves. It may be rare but we can't strike that out. It's this type of love that I bring up in my previous post. I don't think it's healthy to love like that in my personal opinion, maybe because I can't imagine loving someone like that, but who am I to judge what another is capable of or not. If they feel unchanging love forever regardless of how screwed up someone is...it is possible, just rare. I don't find that an ideal/pure love however, it just is a form of love.
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That is the challenge. To love without contitioning it to expectations. To trust that there every person is redeemable. Not to pprove of what they do, but to try to do your duty, precisely because you love them. If they are monsters, they must be damned difficult to love, but if for any reason anybody loves them, the challenge is to do whatever one can to bring them out of monsterhood, which may be feasible or not. But that is what faith is about and that is what love is about.
I am not saying that if you cannot unmonster somebody that you do not love that somebody or that somehow you are not being capable of love. I mean that it is a challenge, a very tall one. Fortunately there are not all that many monsters.
Other thn that I believe that love comes from God, from our destiny... That we are meant to love whoever we love and the way we do. I do not think we choose whom we love. We get those people that are meant for us, so much for "good" as gor "bad" and in between. We get the experiences we need. And there are loves that are forever and others that have a certain duration. Like with studies. You get trown on you a certain subject for a certain time. You cannot refuse, you must pass that subject.
That is why I also think that one must never think that falling in love is an error, or to have a friend who turns out bad is an error. Love is never an error. It is part of our life's "project" and we must honour the challenges it presents. Fail is not a dishonour, but running away is. It is like laying an egg.
As to being more severe with those you love, it is out of duty. You owe that to yourself, to the relationship you have with that person. You are not in his or her life for worse, but for better. At least I hope. Although there are people who anybody loves or hates, it is always for worse, but that is like the joke abour Jesus and man with cancer.
Salaam
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Interesting thoughts as usual, huruf. I suppose for me, it's difficult to understand the concept of redemption based on repeated actions that are destructive. Some part of it is asking why should it be a duty and/or why surround oneself with toxicity...For those that have no choice in loving someone (some might say of course you have a choice), it's something that they do regardless. If done with a higher purpose in mind, knowing full well what the person is and sticking to that all their lives, well, they have all my respect because it definitely is something that denotes a strength of character one usually just reads about in legends.
Duty, joy and learning etc are different aspects I think, that can be factors in whichever relationship one has with something. What I meant when I said that in a previous post was, one may feel beholden to love their family out of a sense of duty, but is that really love? Can one love something out of duty? Not sure, I think it would be difficult. Can one love something because of the joy it brings? Yes, more likely. Learning is across the board. Can you love something because it's beautiful? Yes, more likely, also vice versa, more you love something, the more beautiful it becomes. Then again, there are cases where we can't really pinpoint why we love someone, we just know that we do. Obviously, there must be something there, some underlying reasons why we feel the way we do, I can't be satisfied with well, it just is...but yeah, figuring what that something may be is interesting because it points to a process and gives it a more rational aspect than a mysterious emotion that can strike anyone at any time unaware and we are totally helpless in the face of it.
I kind of disagree regarding choosing who to love being fated, in that case, we might as well say everything is fated to be a certain way, which may or may not be true. I believe our choices are ours and of course, we are meant to learn from everything, even those we choose to love (even if it seems like we had no choice) whether or not it ends up being amazing or awful. Love definitely is a learning experience like other emotions, but it tends to overshadow a lot of the others probably because there is just so much built up around it making it an integral part of our lives as a driving force...disappointment too is just as important I'd say, but it's love's evil step sister and not as glamorous
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If God is love;
and love is blind;
and Stevie Wonder is blind;
that means...Stevie Wonder is God.confused
Edit Lol, unfortunately I did not come up with this quote myself, but I am not sure who it is attributed to...
Edit 2 I do not actually think Stevie Wonder is God, but I do think he is a tremendously all-round awesome person 'I just called to say I love you' - Genius.
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Interesting thoughts as usual, huruf. I suppose for me, it's difficult to understand the concept of redemption based on repeated actions that are destructive. Some part of it is asking why should it be a duty and/or why surround oneself with toxicity...For those that have no choice in loving someone (some might say of course you have a choice), it's something that they do regardless. If done with a higher purpose in mind, knowing full well what the person is and sticking to that all their lives, well, they have all my respect because it definitely is something that denotes a strength of character one usually just reads about in legends.
Duty, joy and learning etc are different aspects I think, that can be factors in whichever relationship one has with something. What I meant when I said that in a previous post was, one may feel beholden to love their family out of a sense of duty, but is that really love? Can one love something out of duty? Not sure, I think it would be difficult. Can one love something because of the joy it brings? Yes, more likely. Learning is across the board. Can you love something because it's beautiful? Yes, more likely, also vice versa, more you love something, the more beautiful it becomes. Then again, there are cases where we can't really pinpoint why we love someone, we just know that we do. Obviously, there must be something there, some underlying reasons why we feel the way we do, I can't be satisfied with well, it just is...but yeah, figuring what that something may be is interesting because it points to a process and gives it a more rational aspect than a mysterious emotion that can strike anyone at any time unaware and we are totally helpless in the face of it.
I kind of disagree regarding choosing who to love being fated, in that case, we might as well say everything is fated to be a certain way, which may or may not be true. I believe our choices are ours and of course, we are meant to learn from everything, even those we choose to love (even if it seems like we had no choice) whether or not it ends up being amazing or awful. Love definitely is a learning experience like other emotions, but it tends to overshadow a lot of the others probably because there is just so much built up around it making it an integral part of our lives as a driving force...disappointment too is just as important I'd say, but it's love's evil step sister and not as glamorous
Some people may choose who to love, the same way that they choose the home they want to live in. I do not see anything wrong with that. BUT that is some people not all people. Not by far all people. Many people may still marry and be married and have a "reasonable" family life. BUT some people, not all people.
There are all kinds of people. For some people to choose whom you love is to drive Destiny-God-Fate, or whatever out of their lives, and also impossible. The fall in love and that is it. Satistically I think that the marriages that succeed one way or other is not significant, be it out of chosen love or be it out of fated love (if you want to call it that) all marriages are liable to fail and also to work out well. I have seen many examples of both.
People are different and we do not need a rule that makes anybody feel guilty or idiot for being different. It is like people who have a lot of physical energy and never stop doing everything, spanking the house and everything. Some times they think they are better because the work so much, but the fact is that they are made that way. It is not their merit, but their need, and it is cheating to make out of their need a rule for virtue.
So people who want to choose whom they love, fine, people who fall in love likes tons of bricks, fine. Love of God is for all of them and they enjoy some of God's gifts, to each her or his gift. And never forget to be thankful, no gift of God is poisoned.
Salaam
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Can you love something because it's beautiful? Yes, more likely, also vice versa, more you love something, the more beautiful it becomes.
Wow. So love is powerful then? Is not just some 'feeling'. It IS something and it DOES do things.
And if you don't love something it becomes weak or tired - or even ugly?
Hmmmm
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Body heat from 'emotional states'...
Researchers from Aalto University in Finland have revealed how emotions are experienced in the body.
http//3.bp.blogspot.com/-qRrQrkVSK-w/UsNFZS6_S2I/AAAAAAAACKI/DEQthz-iJMI/s640/love_meme.png
Whoever did it is at least trying to make a point about love being powerful anyway....
See more at http//www.naturalblaze.com/2013/12/research-team-reveals-how-emotions-are.
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I think that "love" is also a sign of the existence of God (the Creator),
and I tend to agree with this quote
"You will never find true love
until you first learn to love Allah"
I don't know whether that quote is right or not, but in my view, it seems to be right/true.