With apologies to Raymond Carver: what we talk about when we talk about love

Lots of people talk about love, especially at this time of year, but what does that word translate too in our day to day, minute to minute experience?
What does love mean in a traffic jam or crowded parking lot when other people don't behave as you have it they should?
what does love mean in the context of family members who refuse to conform to your expectations
what does love mean in abbatoirs and factory farms?
what does love mean in the supermarket aisle and at the rubbish bin
what does love mean in casinos and advertising agencies and news rooms and in our addictions to the dark sticky energies of conflict and resentment and self justification?
what does love mean in aged care facilities with a ratio of one worker to ten inmates
what does love mean for animals that you have stewardship of
what does love mean when we don't know, or are overwhelmed, or are hurt, 
or are masking hurt with anger, or trying to escape what looks like boredom?
how does love acknowledge our limitations?
how would love support us?
what would love have us let go of, if anything?
what would love have us accept and embrace?
what would love have us do?
what would love have us be?

Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so

"No one can humiliate you without your permission" (Eleanor Rooseveldt)

In CBT and similar approaches between external event and internal emotional response there is the interpretive, meaning making faculty of the mind. "He / they made me feel dirty..." "She hurt me" "You're making me angry.."...all of these statements demonstrate the principle of false causation. It is your - and my -unquestioned thoughts about the external event which leave us feeling sad, heavy, tense, hurt, angry, numb, resentful or the opposite - light, easy, relaxed, open, alive.

This is why two people can respond completely differently to the same external event, and experience opposite emotional reactions.

When Shakespeare said nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so he meant it, and with no exceptions. Violence, disease, death, the end of relationships, accidents, amputations - all of these have hidden blessings and their meaning in our lives shifts depending upon which set of thoughts we have about them. Gam zoo letovah - "also this is for the good", it says in the Talmud, i.e something that at first seems like a terrible tragedy may slowly or quickly reveal itself as a gift, if we are open enough to receive it. Perhps this is also a reason the Talmud says a person

That this is so is experientially verifiable. It puts people firmly back in the driving seat, able to generate an internal contentment irrespective of what happens and how it initially differed from our expectations ( really demands) of how Life and people "should be".

But people give this power away to others - treat me right and I'll be happy, treat me (what I consider) bad and I'll be sad. These are the mind forged manacles Blake writes about, and these are the mind forged manacles Victor Frankl threw aside in the concentration camps.

Content-less thought #32

"I could have done more with my life"

If I could have I would have.

Who's more? Which of the internal voices sets itself up as knowing what more looks like? More killing? More symphony writing? More fathering of children? More consumption of meat? More earning money through owning casinos?

My life? Is it really mine? Or do I mean "I could have done more with the story of my life?"

Everything happens by itself.


everyone is ripe
for some transition
but not necessarily the one
you have decided for them
______

Discrimination

I continue to confuse

willfullness with willingness
stubbornness with strength
self esteem without self justification
assertiveness with aggression (I think if I say what I want in a situation I'm being "aggressive")
compassion with weakness
acceptance with permissiveness

how fine and important are these distinctions!

Like many men I confuse

seeking help with weakness
showing emotion with increased vulnerability (i.e wound ability)


The Hebrew word bochen comes from the root to test, to check, check it out against (or with) your reality. Lehavchin is to take note of what differentiates one thing from another. Check out if that rope is a snake, or if that snake is a rope. in Hindu thought discriminations is called viveka. Viveka is right discrimination between the true and the false, the real and the unreal (vi, away, without + veka from root vic to sift sever seperate)*
________________________________
*From glossary in I Am That