All you need is love

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Love is all there is.
The pull of one massive object in space affects another object. Gravity. Or crude, primal love...
The light from the sun affects and inspires all living things to thrive. UV radiation. Or simple, honest love.
The instincts that drive all creatures to multiply. Desire for life. Or savage and beautiful love.
The feelings humans have toward eachother, that enable us to kill eachother and that inspire romance and this crazy mood I am in now. Chemicals. Or complex and mystical love.

The universe is the interaction between visible forces and invisible. Matter and spirit. Crude in its simplest form, but as the wheel of evolution turns it becomes more complex, and each new creation is a more intricate weaving of the spiritual and the material forces. In humans it is so complex that we ourselves cannot always see it. But it is love. It is god.
No matter how great you are, love will always be greater. It is the fuel on this fire, and the reason we exist. It is the question and the answer. It is everything, and if you know it unconditionally you are truly free... Smile

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welcome cyracuz;

your comment is very poetic, and while your metaphors describe the universe effectively, they are somewhat simplistic.

'love' is indeed a fascinating concept; - is it, or isn't it?

Rather than anthropomorphosizing the universe, i like to think of love as a 'personal' relationship with another.
So much for poetry - large scale!

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True what you say Bogowo. I was not attempting to explain the universe with my metaphors. They are simplistic, because I am no scientist, and english is not my mother-tounge. And because in my opinion love is the most basic of all our gifts, and also the greatest. Smile

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Yes, Cyracuz, welcome.

I thought your piece exquisite. I must add, however, that love can also be a burden by its very nature.

Wow, Bo. Where did you pick up them big words?

Add to anthropomorphism--verisimilitude Smile

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BoGoWo, your response to Cyracuz was undoubtedly reasonable. His metaphorical description was an attempt to anthropomorphize the Cosmos--not in an attempt to "explain" it, but to "describe" its most central characteristic--from his perspective. And I loved it. One other way is to universalize our personal love for others. I was talking to a Hindu man today about a similar matter. He has a child who is "retarded", a daughter who will always live with him and her mother. Although she is a great "burden" for her parents, he tells me that that burden is the most precious thing they have. In a sense, he said, his feeling of love for his daughter is as grand as anything he hopes to experience from his spiritual meditation. To me this is like seeing (but here it's loving) the whole in the part (mustard seed). I'm impressed with Cyracuz's writing. English is not his or her first language yet s/he uses it better than 70 to 90% of native born Americans, including college students.

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sheeeze, J.L., Whose side are you on, anyway?

Ayn Rand's or Bliss Carmen's.

goes off mumbling stuff.

Good to see you, JL. Razz

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Letty, it CERTAINLY isn't Ayn Rand's. Laughing

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in case my original response seemed (to some) a mite 'negative', i will rephrase:

there is 'poetry' in everything, and it is always reassuring to encounter others who clearly see that.
and i add my compliments on your use of language Cyracuz (we could not begin to understand one another in Norwegian!) Laughing

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Hey everybody. Thanks for the compliments. Smile

BoGoWo, I didn't find your response negative in any sense. I am very much in love with the sweetest woman these days, so my mind works slightly less rationally.. Smile

But what does "anthropomorphosizing" mean? That is one big word...

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That big long word means to humanize or apply human aspects to something not human. For instance acting as if a pet that behaves in a manner similar to its owner. While pets, a dog for instance, they do show love and trust for the owner but the dog would also love and trust anyone that fed it regularly and there behavior is still dog not human.

Of course I exclude the Supreme Bean, my dog from the above explanation she definitely is a human bean.

But love well I would love love to be all there is. However I will leave that explanation to those whose knowledge of philosophy exceeds mine.

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I need some love.
I'm utterly sick and tired of being on my own but I have no idea how to go about changing my situation.

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Love is a wonderful thing indeed, but sometimes cheeseburgers are almost as good.

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Heliotrope wrote:

I need some love.
I'm utterly sick and tired of being on my own but I have no idea how to go about changing my situation.

Ditto.

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The Beatles said it, Dave Matthews repeated it, I repeated it, and probably millions before any of us: All you need is love.

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One question: How can we know that we anthropomorphosize the universe in a conversation like this? I know my emotions, but I cannot say that my dog has the same complexity to its emotions. Or a tree for that matter. But I cannot know that it does not either. There is no evidence that humans are the only creatures who possess what we call human characteristics. I cannot know if the sun harbors some deep feeling for all it sheds its light on. I cannot know that mother earth does not love all its creatures. It seems logical to me, though I don't know why, that what we call humanity is but one manifestation of the combined powers of the universe. As humans we experience it in one way, but we cannot see all ends, so it is possible that love extends beyond the borders of humanity, because humanity is not really disconnected from the rest of creation.

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Helio, and Wilso; caring comes from within; to find 'love' one merely has to 'exhibit' it, in a situation where there are others of like feelings, and the relationships will take care of themselves.

and, why not........

as for 'nature' (some 'mother'); the natural process is totally alien to 'love'. it is a savagely parasitic system based on each species consuming the one below it on the food chain, in order to survive. There is no hate, but most definitely no love!
The advent of 'love' in the natural environment is a conscious effort, on the part of some of the species homo sapiens, to assign a degree of 'respect' to those living things which must be consumed for their survival. And that respect grows into a guardianship of the natural environment to ensure its safety, and continuation; a 'self interest' version of 'love'.

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While we're on the topic of Mother(wry smile for Bo), Harlow and Harlow conducted an experiment using small primates to prove Freud's theory that babies only bonded with the mother, because the mother fed them.
The experiment included a wire frame with a feeding apparatus that faintly resembled a monkey mother. It also included a wire frame covered in terry cloth, but with no feeding apparatus.

As expected, the baby monkey went to the wire frame when it was hungry, but serendipity! When the baby became frightened, it ran to the terry cloth frame and clung on for dear life. Sooooooo, we must include fear as a subset of love.

Cyracuz, that's poetry as well, but it's just written in prosaic language. Razz

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Yes, Cyracuz, we cannot shrink the universe to the size of our brains (consciousness); we should try at least to expand our consciousness to the size of the universe. That is only possible in art and mysticism. But remember I do not refer to "size" literally. I know I am as much a part of nature as is any animal or tree. When I identify with my ego, I feel totally apart and surrounded by nature. But when I identity with my beating heart, growing hair, moving intestines and aging skin, I realize my unity with nature.
As usual it's difficult to disagree with BoGoWo, but I might add that Dahlmer ate his companions as, from his perspective, an expression of love, of the desire to incorporate their "beauty" into himself. And when asked if he loved children, W.C. Fields answered something like "Ah yes, of course, with a little salt and garlic." Hannibal Lector would have added "and a nice chianti." Twisted Evil

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BoGoWo wrote:

Helio, and Wilso; caring comes from within; to find 'love' one merely has to 'exhibit' it, in a situation where there are others of like feelings, and the relationships will take care of themselves.

ummmm, bullshit.

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I do not think fear is a subset to love in your illustration, Letty - but that attachment (even to such a poor mother-substitute as a cloth covered wire monkey) is an antidote to fear.

Of course, fear comes into it when we fear losing our attachment figure - a reality that each baby must face whenever the cargiver is not there at the instant of need - but first we need to learn that the loved one is not part of ourselves.

It is when we realise our separateness that we know fear of loss of the loved other.

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All you need is love

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