love comes in many guises. there are things that come disguised as love too. control, mind games, manipulation, ego gratification. life is about being able to distinguish.

my ex had a book about finding love…………..there was a chapter in there about the self and love. unfortunately it was buried in amongst all the strategies for what the ideal partner must have for you. the gifts, the trips, the magic of romance……………..

i like what yves said. it`s not about heroics. heroics are the cultural recognition of behaviours. that would feed the ego wouldn`t it? love is a relationship with the self that is based on kindness, compassion, understanding, grace, respect, admiration and all the high virtues that some teach that we should give others………..

why not give to the self, then everything else falls into line. whether others do it or not.

prisoner`s dillema? we aren`t in prison. we can come and go as we please. i will continue to smile and hold the door open and be polite and respectful and allow others in on the highway………….for me.

I like Jiddu Krishnamurti and he says

The demand to be safe in relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and fear. This seeking for security is inviting insecurity. Have you ever found security in any of your relationships? Have you? Most of us want the security of loving and being loved, but is there love when each one of us is seeking his own security, his own particular path?

Love is not the product of thought which is the past. Thought cannot possibly cultivate love. Love is not hedged about and caught in jealousy, for jealousy is of the past. Love is always active present. It is not `I will love’ or `I have loved’. If you know love you will not follow anybody. Love does not obey. When you love there is neither respect nor disrespect. Don’t you know what it means really to love somebody - to love without hate, without jealousy, without anger, without wanting to interfere with what he is doing or thinking, without condemning, without comparing - don’t you know what it means? Where there is love is there comparison?

One cannot love anything until one truly loves oneself. This is the first rung upon that “Stairway to Heaven” that Led Zeppelin sang about.

A little known short story by PK Dick is simply called “The Exit Door Leads In”. Freedom is within. But it is a dark and perilous journey. And only you can go there, and only you can open the One Door Away from Heaven.

And I would also like to propose that the very book that teaches us about Jesus, and love, and love your neighbor has contributed more to muddying the truth, and led to more self-hate because it teaches us that we are all descended from evil. A trap indeed.

I have a little theory, that the so called “Rapture” has already been sent to Earth. Go back and read the words to the music of the sixties, read them with today’s ears.

You might be surprised

Alfie Dionne Warwick lyrics

What’s it all about, Alfie
Is it just for the moment we live
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie
Are we meant to take more than we give
Or are we meant to be kind

And if only fools are kind, Alfie
Then I guess it is wise to be cruel
And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie
What will you lend on an old golden rule

As sure as I believe
There’s a heaven above, Alfie,
I know there’s something much more
Something even non-believers can believe in

I believe in love, Alfie
Without true love we just exist, Alfie
Until you find the love you’ve missed, you’re nothing, Alfie
When you walk, let your heart lead the way
And you’ll find love any day, Alfie
Alfie

The same mechanism operates within me and it’s easy to be divided against myself so that I fight my own desires and emotions. An internal cease-fire is the precondition for self-love to be established. If my experience is anything to go by, it can take sixty years to achieve. But my experience is not anything for anyone else to go by! You have your own.

I’ve noticed in myself a huge change. With self-love established permanently, I don’t feel threatened any more, and if I am not threatened I don’t need to pay society what it demands from me in terms of conformity. Then I can devote myself to that well-spring, and find not just my brotherhood to every human but my cousinhood to every animal too.

Show me how you radiate it in your life, and how your connection to that wellspring allows you to give thirsty travelers a long cool draught.

There is no heroics involved here, just trust. To be yourself is all. I trust that when I do that - and again it’s a lifetime’s effort to do something which sounds so simple - I’m doing the best possible for my brothers and cousins. It may come out in the form of kind indulgence or a fearless challenge, but it feels like something natural and certain: a well-spring indeed, which does away with the need of philosophy.

I guess I’ve tended to figure that self-love means you don’t want to hurt yourself or die, and I know at least I have that — it’s part of being a wuss.

Dude, that’s awesome that you can be so open like that. Not to mention hilarious. I love it!

Still, I don’t think it’s too hard to love oneself — I’d venture to say that pretty much everybody wants to protect their own body from pain and death, at least at the instinctive level.

Haha, well there’s a lot more to loving yourself than not wanting to kick your own ass. A whole hell of a lot!

I would add that there is a positive feedback mechanism in this: the fewer people who follow the Golden Rule, the better a strategy it becomes for any one individual not to follow it. Eventually, society breaks down into chaos.

This is what is happening in America now. It’s probably been happening since the 60s, but it has really accelerated under George II. Fraud is the norm now. Trust has completely broken down. Even if Jeff Wells is completely wrong and there is no 911/occult/paedophile conspiracy, it is now completely plausible that such a conspiracy could exist.

21st Century Primitivism arises in part by trying to imagine social systems where the Golden Rule is a stable equilibrium rather than an unstable one, i.e. where relatively speaking an individual is likely to suffer if he or she deviates from the Golden Rule. In point of fact, that’s always true (under my belief system) — “karma” represents the systemic effect of violating the Golden Rule — but it is a subtle effect and unless you are sufficiently aware of the interconnectedness of things you won’t see it. But in this regard, Primitivism is an illusion because it just reestablishes the Prisoner’s Dilemma at the group level, i.e. tribes are now in competition with each other rather than individuals. In a post-collapse scenario, this means tribal warfare and all the nastiness that goes with it. Think Africa.

Still, I don’t think it’s too hard to love oneself — I’d venture to say that pretty much everybody wants to protect their own body from pain and death, at least at the instinctive level. Whether someone “wants” to hurt his- or herself in terms of a conscious choice (based on a more cerebral analysis of one’s self-worth), this is difficult to do unless the instinct of self-preservation is overridden. And that, I know from experience, is very hard indeed. So as much as it may be tempting (even for me) to worry about self-hatred and want to boost self-love, it really seems to be under control instinctively. Of course, there are instincts that lead one to give oneself pleasure as well as avoid pain — the other side of the coin.

But what about if you hate yourself and wish you could override your instincts to hurt yourself? Cerebral analyses don’t get at the root of one’s opinion of oneself, and I personally have found that the self-preservation/pleasure-seeking instincts are tied to having a high opinion of oneself. At least, I think it is for me.

This also might be connected to the subjective viewpoint from which we see the world — we can’t help seeing everything revolve around us, because that’s what it looks like. Between this subjectivity and our instincts for pleasure and life, it’s a wonder we think of anything besides how much we love ourselves.

“Jesus, who really only taught that we should love our neighbors (and even our enemies) as ourselves”

Too bad there are so many which do not love themselves.