~ Love And Truth ~

LOVE AND TRUTH

Sacred relationships rely on two currents of healing found within all relationships. The first is the current of love, support, generosity, and sympathy that manifests as the quality of gentleness. The second is the current of truth, justice, and righteousness that manifests as the quality of firmness. All relationships and all interactions are composed of these two intermingled currents.

 

To love without truth means to not see others, and therefore to relate to them in a shallow way. It also means to not be seen oneself, and therefore to pay the price of reduced intimacy. When we love without being truthful, we relate to others from the surface of ourselves. As a result, we may have difficulty feeling loving or that we are being loved. 

 

On the other hand, to have truth but not love, means to fall prey to judgment about the limitations of others. It is to create distance from others through the restriction of our gentleness and compassion, both of which are needed to develop intimacy and to help someone change and grow. In each of our relationships, love and truth, gentleness and firmness, must be tied to each other in such a way that each permeates the other. Only in this way can our life with others remain in balance.

 

Even though love comes from the heart, our culture also defines which actions will be perceived by us as loving, and which will not. 

 

Sometimes, it tells us that being truthful is not loving. Sometimes, it confuses us about what love really is. This confusion takes many of us in the direction of limiting our truthfulness so that we will appear loving, even though we don't really feel authentic in what we are expressing. It causes us to be afraid of being firm with others because we will be seen as 'making waves'. 

 

Within a sacred life, we are called to integrity before God. We are called to find ways of being honest with ourselves and with others in all forms of our expression. At the same time, we are called to become expressions of love. Because of this dual calling, we quickly come up against the cultural confusion we have lived with about what it is to be loving and what it is to be truthful. We need to find a way within ourselves to balance these two strands.

 

Sometimes being loving means to support someone in what they feel they need. This may include offers of sympathy, help, statements of affection, and affirmation of another's positive qualities. Sometimes being loving means to support someone in who they are inside - who they are as a soul - not in what they feel. This may include confronting unconscious behavior, setting limits, requiring accountability for words and actions, and saying "no" to what is being asked for. 

 

To make the distinction between these two currents of love and to decide which is needed in a given situation is not always easy. It requires a clear mind and heart to do so and the courage to speak the truth. Gestures that are typically loving and supportive are easier for us to offer to others than gestures that show love as truthfulness. This is not difficult to understand. To hear the positive truth about oneself feels like support and love to most people and is most often felt as nourishing. To hear the truth about limitations or blind spots does not commonly feel like love to others, first, because their sense of self may be uncertain and in need of bolstering, but more importantly, because they are not committed enough to seeing life as a learning process in which each limitation is revealed in order to be overcome.

 

The offering of truth to others must be done in a way that joins truth and love. This is only possible when the mind is not clouded by need or fear and the heart is filled with a spirit of generosity which seeks to help another in as pure a way as possible. When this is the case, our inner knowing of another can be offered to them as a mirror to the self so that they can see themselves through our eyes.

 

Inner knowing is built into each of us, and continues to be present even when we feel it to be missing. Our sense of truth is our inheritance; it is a function of our soul. It resides within our hearts as intuition and within our bodies as sensitivity and can be reached for at times of need, even though the way to it may seem dark. 

 

If we do not invalidate our sense of truth but rather seek it deliberately, we will find it in the deepest place of our heart. What gives us this inner knowing is not primarily any studying we have done about the human psyche, or any experiences we have had with groups of people. It is the innate goodness of our soul, our spiritual core, that tells us when something feels right to us and when it feels wrong. Intuition can be cultivated and enhanced over time, but it is always there. The more we rely on it, the more clear are the messages it sends to our conscious minds and the more we can trust these messages.

 

Our sense of truth tells us when what we are saying or doing serves the best interests of another, and when we are speaking because we are angry, frustrated, or impatient. These are not good reasons for being truthful. In fact, in the presence of these reasons, a good deal of the time we will not be truthful and most of the time we will not be well-received. It is only when our hearts are clear and we stand in the place of love, that we weave together the two currents of relationship that are gentleness and firmness. Only in the presence of both can we try to do what is best for others and can we believe in our own reasons for doing so.

 

The fear of speaking truth often causes us to accomodate to situations that do not serve the best interests of anybody. Generally, this is because we are afraid of the disapproval we might incur by standing for a point of view that is different from anyone else's. Many times this places us in false situations - situations where we do not express our true feelings for fear of being seen as not-loving - situations where we do not reveal what we think for fear of appearing different and unlikeable. 

 

Indeed, we are different; this is our gift and our destiny. We each have a unique perception to add to the world. But we are also the same. We are also human, struggling with the same learning process that others struggle with. It is our commitment to being human that makes us want to help others become more human as well. It is our commitment to being whole that makes us want to help others become whole as well. Fear limits our capacity to become more human and to become more whole. In the presence of fear, we walk around as half of ourselves rather than as a whole being.

 

In the end, our capacity to be loving and our capacity to be truthful rest upon the strength of our desire to live life with integrity - to be truly ourselves as God would have us be. Only when we wish for this in a deep way, can we find the courage that is needed to stand for what we believe in and to speak for what we stand. When this is the case, all of our interactions with others become a testimony to the values we hold. If we do not betray ourselves, we support others in becoming more truthful as well. To express our love through both gentleness and firmness is the goal of our wholeness. It is to bring into balance the two currents of healing that can help humanity grow.


 (Julie Redstone)

~ Love ? ~

 

 

 

What Is Love? It Definitely Isn't...

• Manipulation. "If you loved me, then you would..." isn't love, but rather infatuation.


• Compromising who you are. If someone asks you to do or say something that isn't in your nature, that isn't true love. Although love does involve compromises between partners, someone who is in love with you will never ask you to change who you are in order to be loved.


• Violent. Passions can definitely become inflamed with someone you love, but a relationship with physical or emotional violence isn't true love.

• Just lust. Yes, chemistry and physical attraction are important, but true love also includes commitment, trust and respect. 

So then, what exactly is love?

True Love Is...

• True Love is Caring. The ancient Greeks had many different names for different forms of love: passion, virtuous, affection for the family, desire, and general affection. But no matter how love is defined, they all hold a common trait: caring.


• True Love is Attractive. Attraction and chemistry form the bond that allows people to mate. Without this romantic desire for another individual, a relationship is nothing more than lust or infatuation.


• True Love is Attached. Like the mother-child bond, attachment comes after the initial attraction. Attachment is the long term love that appears anywhere from one to three years into a romantic relationship (sometimes sooner and very rarely after), and you'll know you've found it when you can honestly say, "I've seen the worst and the best you have to offer, and I still love you," while your partner feels the same way.


• True Love is Committed. When it comes to true love, commitment is more than just monogamy. Its the knowledge that your partner cares for you and has your back, no matter what the circumstances. People who are strongly commityed to one another will, when faced with seemingly negative information about their partner, see only the positive. For example, a friend comments that your partner doesn't say a lot. "Ah yes, he's the strong, silent type," you reply. People with less commitment to their partner would instead say something like, "Yeah, I can never have conversation with him. Its annoying."


• True Love is Intimate. Intimacy is a crucial component of all relationships, regardless of their nature. In order to know another, you need to share parts of yourself. This self-revealing behavior, when reciprocated, forms an emotional bond. Over time this bond strengthens and even evolves, so that two people merge closer and closer together. Intimacy by itself if is a great friendship, but compiled with the other things in this list, it forms an equation for true love.

~ Every Man has his own little World ~

 




EVERY MAN has his own little world, so little sometimes that it is like a doll's house, and in that little world he is not concerned with the world outside or with the universe; he just lives in his small world so full of illness, misery and ill luck. He cannot come out of it, for he has built a little shell for himself in which he lives, a shell of misery. He likes to live in it for it is his own home.

Human beings living in their shells are mostly unaware of the privilege of life and so are unthankful to the Giver of it. In order to see the grace of God man must open his eyes and raise his head from his little world. Then he will see – above and below, to the right and the left, before and behind – the grace of God reaching him from everywhere in abundance.

If we try to thank God we might thank for thousands of years and it would never be enough. But if man stays in his own little shell he does not find the grace of God; he finds misery, injustice, ugliness, coldness.

When one looks down one sees the mud; when one looks up one sees the sun, the moon, the planets. It all depends how we look: upwards or downwards.

Every day we should have a time in the evening or in the morning to think of what we have experienced during the day, to consider how many mercies and gifts of God we have received, and how less worthy we are of them; to think what we have done wrong –  how we may have hurt the feeling of another by inattention, by a kind of insult, by not doing what he wished when it was in our power to do it. We should never say that we are beyond this. We should say that,  we are liable to mistakes, then your experience will be a teacher.

~ WHAT IS WANTED IN LIFE? ~

 

IF THIS question were asked of several people each would perhaps make out a list of not less than a thousand things that he wanted in life. And yet even after writing them all down one rarely knows what one really wants. What one apparently wants in life is not what one really wants, for the nature of the outer life is illusion. As soon as one feels that one wants this or that, then the world of illusion will answer, 'Yes, you want me, this is the particular thing you want in life,' but when a person thinks he lacks something in life he only sees the outer lack. He does not find the lack which is within himself.

There is no doubt that what we lack most in life is to be tuned with the infinite and to be in rhythm with the infinite. In other words to be in rhythm with the conditions of life and to be in tune with the source of our existence. Our perpetual complaints against all things in life come from our not being in rhythm with the diverse conditions of life that we have to face. And then we think that if these conditions would only change into something that we wish, it would make our life easier. But that is an inexperienced expectation. If we were placed in the very conditions that we had just desired, believing them to be the best, we would not even then say that we were quite satisfied. We would surely find something lacking in that condition also. For with all the errors and mistakes and shortcomings we find in our external life, we see a perfect hand working behind it all. And if we looked at life a little more closely than we generally do we would certainly find that all the lacks and errors and mistakes and faults add up to something, making life as complete as the wise hand which is working behind it wishes it to be.

~ Lost Love ~

Love is a great feeling, but only when you are in love and the person with whom you are in love is in love with you, otherwise, love can show the downside of giving a heartache and sadness that only those who have been in love and lost it know.


Lost love is enduring, actually it lasts longer than the feeling of love itself, it is like someone you connected with and the person broke the connection, but from your side it is still on, and that there is no answer is what is painful.

" It is better to have loves and lost than not to have loved at all."  by Lord Alfred Tennyson. Love is a wonderful feeling, so you should fall in love whenever and with whomever you like, and there are no restrictions in love. However, what is important is that you should fall in love at least once in your life; love has often known to change perceptions about life.


Another quote rightly mentions the path of love ‘Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss and ends with a teardrop’. The quote signifies the path love generally ends up taking, love always begins as a look and a smile, in height of the affection there are tender feelings generally shown and expressed, however, in love it is difficult that these would last long, if love ends, there are a lot of tear drops and sadness, generally at both ends.


There is another quote, by Margaret Mitchell; she has very much expressed what love is like when it is at its height. And the best way to remember love is to remember it when it was sweet and forgiving. Love mended and joined and trying to keep hanging on love with a thread is no way to experience love. Therefore, when love is lost, instead of trying to rejuvenate it, only those feelings need frozen in memory that are pleasant and give ability of giving you pleasure of the feeling once you remember it as love. She quotes:
‘I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken and I rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken pieces as long as I live.



Once broken love can never be the same again, love cannot be mended, of course there can be distractions that can alter the course of love and when the love realizes its value people get together again. However, once love breaks, there cannot be anything like getting together again for people just because once up on a time there as love between them. The feeling of love would never be the same again.



There are many paltry reasons why great love breaks, these reasons vary from ego hassles to not realizing the value of true love in time. It is so often seen that people end up hurting or ignoring the very people they love. Love is a feelings that needs to be nurtured with value and by putting great esteem in the feeling. The relationship will grow only for those who value each other and respect one another, unless that happens love cannot last long. This truth about love has been rightly expressed by Kahlil Gibran, who quotes love as ‘Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.’ Many times as the quote mentions lovers realize the value of their partners once they have lost them and that is just the time when we realize ‘if I would have valued her a little more, she would still be with me’.



Love is a passionate feeling, love has a combination of several things in one, at the beginning and when it is at its peak, there is no way love would remain the same again, sometimes love may diminish or would grow as time passes. However, there may be times that love that was so inviting and hot once may not be so anymore, in fact the emotions that ran high have run out all together baring nothing but coldness. Many times hotter the love affair, the end turns out to be equally cold. This is exactly quoted by Socrates, when he quotes ‘Hottest love has the coldest end.’



Lost love and its memories can last as long as we live, however, we do not lose the ability to love. Lost love in fact can teach us many things that we should have learned and we will probably value the new love and affection that comes our way. Love is an undying feeling that is bound to remain with us. Love is the feeling that makes each day valuable.

~ When Love Hurts ~

 

Love is great when it is fresh and happening and when you feel it slipping away, both the times love makes us feel there is nothing like love in our life. Though love gives a certain high at the time when both of you are feeling the same things, there is nothing more painful that your love going away.

Love hurts so much that at times it leaves you in depth of sadness which is certainly larger than the high of happiness it gave you. A breakup is the thing about love, a reason that prompts many to avoid being in love. Many simply ignore the realization that they are in love because they dread the time when this feeling will wear itself off and the remains of love will be torn to shred by arguments and fights and usual drifting away.

Many famous people have fallen in love again and again only to grow apart and feel the sadness that love tends to give after it goes away. There are very less numbers of people who have not experienced love and almost all who have experienced love have experienced the heartbreak that follows love, bar a few lucky ones. Many writers have expressed their feelings about how love hurts in most apt way and that is through quotes.

As famous poet and writer Oscar Wilde puts it, “when one is in love, one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others, that is what the world calls romance.” Love is blind and has been proven more than one time, often couples in love do not see stark differences that are obvious to others in their personality. Love often makes people do things and act in certain ways, that are surprising to others as well as themselves, heart wants to love whether or not brains allows it, therefore, rational decision making rarely takes place when people are in love. 

There are quotes made by other famous literary giants like William Shakespeare who wrote “The courses of true love never did run smooth!” this happens to be true too, most passionate love affairs have ended up rather tragically, with either the couple breaking up with some one causing the breakup or one among the couple passing away. Whenever there is true love there is no dearth of troubles coming its way. 

There is another quote from an anonymous author who quotes, “Why is it always that we don’t know when love happens, and we always know the moment it ends?” True some people though they do recognize the feeling of love, and they know that they are in love tend to ignore it to the extent they can. It is mere fear of the break up and the denial that love cannot happen to them makes them react in such a way to love, however whenever love has ended we accept it and face it faster than we recognized it. 

End of love means end of the world for some, where people are unable to comes to terms with the end in relationship often get depressed and are more likely to try drastic methods since they cannot stand the pain end of relationship brings together. There is a proverb that proves love to be a truthful thing it is “where there is love there is pain”. Love can bring up pain in different forms not just through break up. 

Love gives pain whenever your beloved is in pain or suffering. Love ensures that you will suffer as much or maybe more when your beloved is suffering just because you cannot do anything to ease out the pain and the emotional turbulence your beloved is going through. 

Another quote by William Shakespeare proves how difficult it can be to comes to terms with a breakup, he quotes “Love is a smoke made with the fumes of sighs.” This quote speaks so much about feeling of losing out on something precious that a breakup tends to bring. No wonder people who have been through this feeling sigh away their sadness. 

All pain that there is in love is given all the more aptly by George Granville, who writes “Of all pains, the greatest pain, is to love, and to love in vain.” Whenever feelings of love are not reciprocated or the relationship that one values so much is not valued equally by the partner, definitely the feeling of loving in vain would come. The feeling of not being esteemed as much as you esteemed another person will surely cause pain. 

Love hurts through different ways, you can be in love and with the one you love and still be hurt, or a breakup in a relationship can hurt. It does not take a long time to end a relationship, but it surely takes a lifetime to forget someone you once loved so dearly.