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“The time has come to turn your heart into a temple of fire. Your essence is gold hidden in dust. To reveal its splendor you need to burn in the fire of love.” — Rumi

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Fire of Love

LOVE and LOVER live in Eternity. Other desires are substitutes for that way of being. -Rumi

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"Love only exists among those who already possess it within themselves."

O som da terra a tremer (Rita Azevedo Gomes, 1990)

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watch this. this is literally what love is.

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Refusing to love for fear of suffering is like refusing to live for fear of dying.

-- Jim Morrison

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Real love doesn't make you suffer. How could it? It doesn't suddenly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn into pain. As I said, even before you are enlightened – before you have freed yourself from your mind – you may get glimpses of true joy, true love, or of a deep inner peace, still but vibrantly alive. These are aspects of your true nature, which is usually obscured by the mind. Even within a "normal" addictive relationship, there can be moments when the presence of something more genuine, something incorruptible, can be felt. But they will only be glimpses, soon to be covered up again through mind interference. It may then seem that you had something very precious and lost it, or your mind may convince you that it was all an illusion anyway. The truth is that it wasn't an illusion, and you cannot lose it. It is part of your natural state, which can be obscured but can never be destroyed by the mind. Even when the sky is heavily overcast, the sun hasn't disappeared. It's still there on the other side of the clouds.

-- The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle

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Think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

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"To match couples together is as difficult as the splitting of the sea," states the Talmud.

What is the meaning behind these words? True, the process of finding and maintaining a life partner may be challenging and difficult, nothing short of a miracle. But why, of all miracles described in the Bible, does the Talmud choose specifically the miracle of the splitting of the sea to capture the process of marriage?

A Map of the Subconscious

What is the difference between the land and the sea? Both are vibrant and action-filled enviroments populated by a myriad of creatures and a great variety of minerals and vegetation. Yet the universe of dry land is exposed and out in the open for all to see and appreciate, while the world of the sea is hidden beneath a blanket of water.

In Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah and Chassidic spirituality), these two physical planes reflect the conscious and unconscious dimensions of the human psyche. Both parts of the self are extremely vibrant and dynamic. The difference between them is that while our conscious self is displayed and exhibited for ourselves and others to feel and experience, our subconscious self remains hidden, not only from other people but even from ourselves. Most of us know very little of what is going on in the sub-cellars of our psyche.

If you were given a glimpse into your own "sea" and discovered the universe of personality hidden beneath your conscious brain, what do you think you would find? Shame, fear, guilt, pain, insecurity, an urge to destroy, to survive, to dominate, a cry for love? Would you discover Freud's Libido, Jung's collective unconscious, Adler's search for power and control, Frankl's quest for meaning?

Where Freud diagnosed the libido as a craving for a parent, and Jung saw it as a longing etched in our collective unconscious, the Kabbalah understood it as a quest for union with G‑dIn Kabbalah, at the core of the human condition is a yearning for oneness. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812), founder of the Chabad school of Kabbalah and one of the greatest soul-experts in the history of Judaism, has written more on the subject than any other Jewish sage. In 1796, a hundred years before Freud, he published a book, the Tanya, in which he presented his "map of the subconscious," based on the Talmudic and Kabbalistic tradition. Rabbi Schnuer Zalman offers a facinating parable for the inner life of the soul: quoting the biblical verse, "The soul of man is a divine flame" (Proverbs 20:27), he explains that just as the flame is always swaying, dancing, licking the air, seeking to tear free of the wick and rise heavenward, so too the soul in man is always aspiring to leave its shell and experience oneness with the divine.

The Secret of Intimacy

This quest for a relationship with the divine is manifested in our search for relationships with our twin flame here below. Where Freud diagnosed the libido as a craving for union with a parent, and Jung saw it as a longing for the opposite gender etched in our collective unconscious, the Kabbalah understood it as a quest for union with G‑d. Our desire for intimacy is one of the profoundest expressions of our existential craving for Truth, for Oneness, for G‑d.

As the Book of Genesis states, "G‑d created Man in His image, in the image of G‑d He created him; male and female He created them." Clearly, it was in the union and oneness of the genders that the first Adam, the first human being, reflected the image of G‑d.

This view of relationships and intimacy is expressed in the very Hebrew names for man and woman given by Adam in Genesis. The Hebrew words for man and woman — Ish and Ishah — both contain the Hebrew word for fire, Eish. They also each contain one more letter—a yud and a hei respectively—which when combined makes up G‑d's name. The significance of this is profound. Man without woman, and woman without man, lack the fullness of G‑d's name. When they unite, the two-half images of the divine within them also unite. The fire and passion drawing them to each other is their yearning to recreate the full name of G‑d between them.

At a Jewish wedding ceremony, this blessing is recited: Blessed are You, G‑d, King of the Universe, Who created the human being in His image... Why is this blessing said at a wedding ceremony? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say such a blessing when a child is born? The answer is that it is through the uniting of man and woman that the image of G‑d is most closely reflected.

Our desire for intimacy is one of the profoundest expressions of our existential craving for Truth. The ramifications of this idea are important. It means that marriage is not a suspension of one's natural individual self for the sake of uniting with a stranger. Rather, through marriage man and woman return to their true natural state, a single being reflecting G‑d, each in his and her own unique way. Marriage allows wife and husband to discover their full and complete self, a self made up of masculine and feminine energy.

Know Thyself

We may travel through life unaware of this dimension of self, seeking oneness with the divine. Throughout our years on this planet we may behave as though this element of self does not exist. Though its symptoms reverberate through our consciousness — most often in the feelings of emptiness and lack of contentment when our spiritual self is un-satiated — we are prone to dismiss it or deny it. After all, at least in the short term, it is far easier to accept that we are nothing more than intelligent beasts craving self-gratification than spiritual souls craving for G‑d.

When we view the surface self, selfishness is easier than selflessness; isolation more natural than relationship; solitariness more innate than love and commitment. Only when we "split our sea," when we discover the depth of our souls, the subtle vibrations of our subconscious, do we discover that oneness satisfies our deepest core; that love is the most natural expression of our most profound selves.

"To match couples together is as difficult as the splitting of the sea," the Talmud states. The challenge in creating and maintaining a meaningful and powerful relationship is the need to split our own seas each day, to learn how in the depth of our spirits we yearn to love and share our lives with another human being and with our creator.

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"Falling in love is the insanity of the soul." One of the most intense experiences a human being can have.

Soren KIERKEGAARD

Danish, 19th c

Book: “Works of Love” 

Fell in love with Regine Olsen - mutual 

He thought it was a tragic event 

Passionate Preferential Love

Just another form a self love 

Says more about what we are attracted to and how the object of our desire can gratify our needs, instead of what we can give without expecting something in return 

When we fall in love, isn’t it so that we’re attracted to them because they’re able to invoke a sense of pleasure in ourselves, and this pleasure is more about how they make us feel than the person themselves. 

Comes with strong attachment

Drenched with lust 

In its insanity, it produces a chaotic explosion of contradicting emotions, from great longing to extreme anger and jealousy 

Why would we pursue something that can change from affection to hate at the flip of a switch? Is this true love, or a curse? A manifestation of inner madness that’s been elevated to the domain of the sacred? 

Non-Preferential Love 

Not fueled by passion, not erotic, not selfish 

Comes form a place of equanimity 

A boundless source 

The love we have for our neighbor, no matter who they happen to be, instead of someone of our preference. 

Romantic love in BUDDHISM 

Recognized as potentially harmful 

The love between 2 people doesn’t have to be true love when it involves unhealthy attachment and suffering 

“If romantic love is true love, it can also bring a lot of happiness. But if it is not true love, it will make you suffer, and make the other suffer as well.” - THICH NHAT HANH  

How often does the experience of filing in love go together with deep desire and the pain that follows from it? 

As THE STOICS observed: The problem with DESIRE int he disappointment when one fails to obtain the object of this desire. It leads to jealousy, possessiveness, ownership. 

When two people are deeply in love with each other and want nothing more than to be together, they also produce a fear of separation, which is a form of suffering  

Is there a resolution? Is there a way to make romantic love sustainable?

According to TNH it’s possible for a couple that is romantically involved to experience true love,. 

Four Ingredients 

1. Loving-Kindness: the capacity to bring the other person happiness

2. Compassion: the capacity to have concern for the other person’s sufferings 

3. Joy: Because it’s important to have fun together 

4. Inclusiveness: Two people become one and are willing to carry each other’s burdens 

The Stoic Proposition on Marriage by MUSONIOS RUFUS

Mutual care is the key ingredient for a successful union 

“In marriage there must be complete compaionship and concern for each other on the part of both husband and wife, in health and in sickness and at all times, because they entered up on the marriage for this reason...” 

A problem many people face is that they seek relationships while operating from a place of lack, hoping that their partner will fill up their emptiness and make them whole. This isn’t the right way to think about love. If we let our happiness depend on external forces, we bet on something extremely unreliable: The infatuation phase we first experience when we fall in love. It may make us feel complete for a while, but when the honeymoon phase is over,  we go back to feeling incomplete. 

Many people breakup to find someone else to get that “romantic high” again 

Completeness is not anything to be found anywhere but in ourselves. 

When you are complete as an individual you are able to love without conditions

Not tainted by wants and needs 

Love is not a path to completeness, but an opportunity to share our own completeness with someone else. 

Enter the domain of Non-Preferential Love

“Love the whole world as if it were you self; then you will truly care for all things.” - Lao Tau; Tao Te Ching

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Coloured wood engraving by Rud. Rössler. 

A young couple sit on a sofa holding hands while she coyly holds a fan up to her face. (via.)

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We still make love, in a half-hearted, functional way, but it's not the sex: it's more that we've worked out sleeping in the last twenty-odd years, and how to do it together. I've developed contours for his elbows and knees and bum, and nobody else quite fits into me in quite the same way, especially not Stephen, who despite being leaner and taller and all sorts of things that you think might recommend him to a woman looking for a bed partner, seems to have all sorts of body parts in all the wrong places; there were times last night when I began to wonder gloomily whether David is the only person in the world with whom I will ever be comfortable, whether the reason our marriage and maybe countless marriages have survived thus far is because there is some perfect weight/height differential that no one has ever researched properly, and if one or other partner is a fraction of a millimetre wrong either way then the relationship will never take. And it's not just that, either. When David's asleep, I can turn him back into the person I still love: I can impose my idea of what David should be, used to be, on to his sleeping form, and the seven hours I spend with that David just about gets me through the next day with the other David.

-- from How to be Good by Nick Hornby (2001)

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When we are in love with a woman we simply project on to her a state of our own soul… [It] is only a clumsy and erroneous form of perception which places everything in the object, when really everything is in the mind… Love places in a person who is loved what exists only in the person who is loved.

Marcel Proust describes projection in Discovering Lost Time

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Written by a Greek novelist in the second century A.D., Daphnis and Chloe is a love story—one that (shockingly, considering the trajectory of most Ancient Greek storylines) has a happy ending.

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I Want to Die While You Love Me | Georgia Douglas Johnson

I want to die while you love me, While yet you hold me fair, While laughter lies upon my lips And lights are in my hair.

I want to die while you love me, And bear to that still bed, Your kisses turbulent, unspent To warm me when I’m dead.

I want to die while you love me Oh, who would care to live Till love has nothing more to ask And nothing more to give?

I want to die while you love me And never, never see The glory of this perfect day Grow dim or cease to be!

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Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of your be alone, Even as the strings of the lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

On Marriage by Kahlil Gibran

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Tufted Titmouse couple. 

This species of bird are monogamous and mate for life. 

Says the photographer: 

The color differences leave me a bit baffled...boy or girl, or parent and juvenile? Either way, it seemed to me that the one on the left was offering some seeds to the other, something i've seen male cardinals do as well.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/quetzalres/27151341386/in/photostream/