Love and Authority

Image credit: Emanate Presence

After publishing the blog post on Authority from Chapter 13, these realizations came to me:

The resistance I've felt towards authority from youth until now — has not been against authority itself at all, but the misuse of authority. Resistance of this type is not useful, of course, even if it seems 'right,' and I am working on it or more accurately Life is working on me with my agreement.

Natural authority, vibrant with innate confidence, leadership, self-command and service to Life, is a beautiful thing. It is given by the original design of pure consciousness. However, when a person through role, rank or position twists social authority to control, dominate and feel superior, there is misuse and imbalance.

One way to say it is that natural authority is a life-affirming influence, an out-raying of the One Being. Like a sunbeam to the sun, authority frequencies beam from the essential nature of pure consciousness, which is universal love. O.B. is a borderless inner sun, the foundation of everything pulsing within the atoms, particles and wavicles. It is within each of us and the one true self of us all. 

Without awareness of the One Being/True Self, people given authority often turn it into a malfunction of society and a hindrance to the flow of living consciousness. In this sense, the universe is full of life, meaning the multi-verse of existence is populated on all dimensions for the self-expression of the One Being. When a person is aware and acts in alignment with it, authority supports the expansion and homeostasis of Life. 

On a Tiny Buddha forum, Greenshade started a thread titled 'Redefining love-beautiful read' [1].

Qualities such as authority can have a hindering or supportive effect on the flow of life, and the difference is the presence or absence of pure love.

​With Greenshade's permission, our forum dialogue to date follows.

---

July 31, 2016

GREENSHADE:

I read something beautiful online today that resonated with me, and thought you guys would appreciate it so sharing it here! It basically explores redefining love along these lines: 'Love blossoms virtually anytime two or more people — even strangers — connect over a shared positive emotion, be it mild or strong.'

The beautiful something is 'The Science of Love: How Positivity Resonance Shapes the Way We Connect: The neurobiology of how the warmest emotion expands your sense of self and blurs the boundaries by you and not-you.'  [2]


GARY:

Thank you for sharing the article link, Greenshade. This would be a subject for conversation over a cup of coffee or tea! It is a worthwhile exploration, to be sure.

I feel the author has presented a partial view based on a fairly narrow interpretation of love. The article says,

“Using both data from her own lab and ample citations of other studies, Fredrickson dissects the mechanisms of love to reveal both its mythologies and its practical mechanics.

“First and foremost, love is an emotion, a momentary state that arises to infuse your mind and body alike. Love, like all emotions, surfaces like a distinct and fast-moving weather pattern, a subtle and ever-shifting force.”

Greenshade, for me it is not mere semantics to gain a clear understanding of the word love. I would called the emotion described above arousal, passion, excitement or attraction — but not love. I like to keep the word love in its pure form as the constant, self-existing energy of creation that it is universally. Humans have rarely caught glimpses of love, except in transcendent moments of experiencing pure consciousness. It is well beyond emotion. But of course that is my perspective.

I agree that love expands the sense of self and blurs the boundaries by you and not-you. Just disagree that it is an emotion. Emotions get stirred when the universal energy of love is felt, but they are a side product and not love itself.

How do you feel about this?


GREENSHADE:

Hmm that is an interesting concept…I think I’m struggling a bit with separating the cause (love) and effect (emotion). My understanding of love has been as something very human and very mundane in how commonly it is felt but very unique in that it is how we manifest the divinity in all of us. I would love to hear more about your understanding of it, especially if you think its possible to acknowledge the cause and the effect it has on us as separate, if that makes sense.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to reply and share your thoughts, it is appreciated :)!


GARY:

You have started a forum conversation of limitless breadth and depth. I would 'love' to interact with you on the subject of "The Science of Love: How Positivity Resonance Shapes the Way We Connect."

I followed links from the article to a page titled, 'What is Love? [3], which is a collection of sayings. Browsing those quotes, it seems people are talking about very different things, and calling all of them love.

Another link took me to "How to Love: Legendary Zen Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on Mastering the Art of “Interbeing”. 

If I understand you correctly, you see love as the cause of the emotional response to it. And the emotional response to love is generally also called love.

If love is the cause and emotions are the effect, how do you mean "love" in this context? Are you referring to love as the attraction of one to another? And then after that, the feelings of completion, expansion, cherishing, companionship, friendship, loyalty, and so on? You wrote,

"My understanding of love has been as something very human and very mundane. It is commonly felt but very unique in that love is how we manifest the divinity in all of us."

I see how you understand it and agree that love becomes everyday in human activities and that pure love truly felt manifests the divinity in all of us.

Love in its original design is the essential nature of the One Being of pure consciousness which emits as oscillating high frequencies from its universal field. 

O.B. emanates itself, and fills and animates everything. O.B. is also the true self of each person and of all that is. This understanding is blocked from human awareness by social/environmental programming and the distortions of distance and density in the so-called 3D world. The distance and density mentioned are also illusory fabrications, made to feel very real in their effect. What we call love is a distortion of the emanations of O.B., normalized in fragmented human historical perspective. That is not to put down the experience humans call love. It appears to be the best we can do in this 'point in time.'

Re-reading your sentence to me, " I would love to hear more about your understanding of it, especially if you think its possible to acknowledge the cause and the effect it has on us as separate, if that makes sense ..."

The cause and effect of love on us are separate in one way and in another way not. The cause of love, the emanations of O.B., is separate in blocked human awareness from the emotions which arise in response to the filtered down stimulus of universal love. We then take this filtered down stimulus and do what we do with it, and call that love too.The cause and effect are not separate in that the One Being who emanates itself, love, is in actuality our true self.

Following are some quotes I picked up on my hyperlink hopping from the article you linked.

Best regards,

Gary

****

"Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything." - Katharine Hepburn, Me: Stories of My Life

Kurt Vonnegut, who was in some ways an extremist about love but also had a healthy dose of irreverence about it, in The Sirens of Titan: "A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."

Stendhal in his fantastic 1822 treatise on love: "Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. … there are no age limits for love."

Ambrose Bierce, with the characteristic wryness of The Devil’s Dictionary:  "Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage."

:

At the heart of Nhat Hanh’s teachings is the idea that “understanding is love’s other name” — that to love another means to fully understand his or her suffering. (“Suffering” sounds rather dramatic, but in Buddhism it refers to any source of profound dissatisfaction — be it physical or psychoemotional or spiritual.) Understanding, after all, is what everybody needs — but even if we grasp this on a theoretical level, we habitually get too caught in the smallness of our fixations to be able to offer such expansive understanding.

[1] 'Redefining Love' - a Tiny Buddha forum thread

[2] The Science of Love: How Positivity Resonance Shapes the Way We Connect

[3] What is Love?

---

CONTENTS - BLOG POSTS

THE IMPERSONAL LIFE, UNABRIDGED