Love

[Steve Hydonus]

Love expands in increasing the quality of usefulness. Your wife, husband, father, or parents may be useful in the conjugal or social way, but unless they develop ever increasing, divinely emancipating usefulness, you will never experience true or divine love in them. In my Master I found the unconditional impersonal expression of divine love, because of the usefulness of the divine emancipation which I found through him. Love is born in usefulness. Love is evoked by one who is aesthetically, materially, mentally, morally, socially, conjugally, or spiritually useful. Love is the cosmic pull of God to bring back all things that went out of his bosom.~Paramahansa Yogananda

[Steve Hydonus]

Will i ever love again? Will u ever love again? Do u have a desire to love? When it envelops u. When u can think of nothing but love. When every moment of your existence u have this strong urge to find love again. When u begin to realize what we are missing every moment of our life. When that over pouring desire for love drowns your thoughts love will open up to u again even if it shows up in the most unusual ways that u had never expected.

[Shannon]

There are new studies that show we actually can change our mental pathways - the phenomenon of neuroplasticity.  The TED talk I am hooking up below is an example - not of the studies, but a woman's actual experience.  Very inspiring, touching.  There are more 'scientific' ones out there for data geeks.  Ha ha.    Yogananda teaches as well that we can change our actual brain grooves by learning to be conscious of our thoughts.



Steve, I think that Love is in us all the time.  Ever present, ever new.  We don't always realize this because our own baser thoughts and perceptions get in the way.  Usefulness is a desirable habit, becuase it helps us to focus on giving, loving, being in tune with our deepest nature - which is... Love!  I feel Love everywhere, but not always.  Sometimes I forget, but that is usually when I am wrapped up in negative thoughts - thoughts that need to be tamed and pruned - like turning one's back on the paper tiger.

[Steve Hydonus]

There are new studies that show we actually can change our mental pathways - the phenomenon of neuroplasticity.  The TED talk I am hooking up below is an example - not of the studies, but a woman's actual experience.  Very inspiring, touching.  There are more 'scientific' ones out there for data geeks.  Ha ha.    Yogananda teaches as well that we can change our actual brain grooves by learning to be conscious of our thoughts.



Steve, I think that Love is in us all the time.  Ever present, ever new.  We don't always realize this because our own baser thoughts and perceptions get in the way.  Usefulness is a desirable habit, becuase it helps us to focus on giving, loving, being in tune with our deepest nature - which is... Love!  I feel Love everywhere, but not always.  Sometimes I forget, but that is usually when I am wrapped up in negative thoughts - thoughts that need to be tamed and pruned - like turning one's back on the paper tiger.

i believe some people come in our lives to help us redefine our own realities. i am always open to that possibility with others. That to me is part of love... growing, expanding my own limited conception of who i am. Sometimes though i have just drove down the street and this tremendous feeling of love has welled up inside me. Sometimes not even coming from any person but from nature and some mystical experience coming from within. If it is there much of the time for you... then it is not dependent on a person or a certain situation. That would b nice. i watched the video... and can relate to some elements in it. i believe i was a slow learner as a child... i lived in my own world. i guess i just 'learned' how to do it in a more constructive way as i found out about meditation and spirituality.

[SI]

Steve, I think that Love is in us all the time.  Ever present, ever new.  We don't always realize this because our own baser thoughts and perceptions get in the way.

There are many distractions that blur truth. Stubbornness, skewed perception, I me mine, etc., I'm guilty of all these things and more.

[Steve Hydonus]

Steve, I think that Love is in us all the time.  Ever present, ever new.  We don't always realize this because our own baser thoughts and perceptions get in the way.

There are many distractions that blur truth. Stubbornness, skewed perception, I me mine, etc., I'm guilty of all these things and more.

Thank-You SI i believe we all are.

Love never destroys it only changes so we can realize its greater meaning. We may b in tune with it with someone else and then one of us may no longer experience it. We do not deny that it happened. A lot depends on how people treat one another. Very few things last for ever. But if you ever have the chance to experience love at some level... you are always grateful! True love inspires and looking back at it we always find it as an impetus in our life even though we must be receptive to its changes.

Through out my life i have found the strongest memories of love are associated with spirituality in myself and those i have been fortunate to have touched my life. For the most part; 'Love' with little spiritual aspiration or presence has fizzled out over the years.

[Steve Hydonus]

Here i am experiencing what love is once again.... recognizing that everyone is at a different place in their evolutionary understanding of love. If i can truly understand this i can recognize that people can only express what their present outlook allows them to. Most of us here are trying to expand that outlook to include others and gain a greater knowledge of ourselves and the world. We just have to allow others to move along at their own pace as the great ones allow us to move along at our own pace however slow it may be. If this expresses itself as some that are leaving our lives and others entering it we find that this too is meant to deepen our experience and understanding of love and not to punish us.

[Steve Hydonus]

Here i am experiencing what love is once again.... recognizing that everyone is at a different place in their evolutionary understanding of love. If i can truly understand this i can recognize that people can only express what their present outlook allows them to. Most of us here are trying to expand that outlook to include others and gain a greater knowledge of ourselves and the world. We just have to allow others to move along at their own pace as the great ones allow us to move along at our own pace however slow it may be. If this expresses itself as some that are leaving our lives and others entering it we find that this too is meant to deepen our experience and understanding of love and not to punish us.

It is not something we control. Love is actually an experience of the soul. If people recognize love in another they r very fortunate indeed. But when we begin putting conditions on it.... it slips thru our fingers. Because love is a state of being.

[tides2dust]

All these Bruce lee videos under the love section
I thought this would be a nice bump
 

[tides2dust]

hope you didn't find the bruce lee video offensive. 
i have been reading this chapter for the past couple of days and will take just a snippet from it and share it here...

"The effect of love is pain. The love that has no pain is no love. The lover who has not gone through the agonies of love is not a lover, he claims love falsely. 'What love is it that gives no pain? Even if one were crazy in love it is nothing.' The pain of love is the lover's pleasure, his very life. The lack of pain is his death. Amir, the Hindustani poet, says, 'Thou wilt remember me after I am dead, O my pain in love, for I have given thee place all through life in my tender heart, and have fed thee with my flesh and blood.' Everybody can speak of love and claim to love, but to stand the test of love and to bear the pain in love is the achievement of some rare hero. The mere sight of love's pain makes the coward run away from it. No soul would have taken this poison if it had not the taste of nectar.

He who loves because he cannot help it is the slave of love, but he who loves because it is his only joy is the king of love. He who, for the sake of love, loves someone who falls short of his ideal is the ruler of love. And he who can seal his heart full of love in spite of all attraction on the part of the beloved is the conqueror of love.

Those who have avoided love in life from fear of its pain have lost more than the lover, who by losing himself gains all. The loveless first lose all, until at last their self is also snatched away from their hands. The warmth of the lover's atmosphere, the piercing effect of his voice, the appeal of his words, all come from the pain of his heart. The heart is not living until it has experienced pain. Man has not lived if he has lived and worked with his body and mind without heart. The soul is all light, but all darkness is caused by the death of the heart. Pain makes it alive. The same heart that was once full of bitterness, when purified by love becomes the source of all goodness. All deeds of kindness spring from it."
http://wahiduddin.net/mv2/V/V_22.htm
Volume V - Spiritual Liberty
Part IV: LOVE, HUMAN AND DIVINE
Chapter IV
THE MORAL OF LOVE


a lot to learn from and discuss if open to it

[Dr. Suess]

We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

Dr. Seuss

[tides2dust]

Thanks Dr. Suess,
and all who've shared here. I find it important to make ones self available to others(to give in that moment, Loving intent) in some fashion as a way to experience some depth to Love(which may be greater than we realize). What that means is probably different for every one... giving our attention to one for just a moment may be of great service. Love is gentle. It is dropping self-concern, it is selfless. Selflessness is Joy. In our sincerity to experience or be closer to God we learn the importance of Love... 
Yesterdays wisdom from Hazrat Inayat Khan

   ~~~ True pleasure lies in the sharing of joy with another.
"Tawazu in Sufi terms means something more than hospitality. It is laying before one's friend willingly what one has, in other words sharing with one's friend all the good one has in life, and with it, enjoying life better. When this tendency to tawazu is developed, things that give one joy and pleasure become more enjoyable by sharing with another. This tendency comes from the aristocracy of the heart. It is generosity and even more than generosity. For the limit of generosity is to see another pleased in his pleasure, but to share one's own pleasure with another is greater than generosity. It is a quality which is foreign to a selfish person, and the one who shows this quality is on the path of saintliness."

   from  https://wahiduddin.net/mv2/XIII/XIII_15.htm

[Steve Hydonus]