Does "love" work?

I am exploring the concept that the most powerful "force" or aspect of the Force is Love. Love is part of the Unified Force. Is love the force that binds us together or do you call it something else like: molecular bond, gravity, magnetism or something else? Are those all just different names for "love"?

Can love really save the world?

I am wondering if very one just focused on the purest or highest, most universal form of "love", what kind of world would be live in?

I believe in the power of love. I enjoy reflecting on the USA "love in's", "bed-ins", Human be-in events of the 1960s that focused on: personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization, communal living, ecological awareness, higher consciousness.

I like the idea that if I don't like either side of the game, just don't play it. Get out of it and do what it is that I do want to have in my world: Love.

Can I really get to a state of "unconditional", complete, universal love?

where have your explorations in the power of love taken you?

Me personally, love can't save any one and neither can hate. What this world needs is some one who has them and knows how to use em. Like swords or guns, it's the way you use them and in what manner.

my love may not be conditional but my loyalty is

romantically, i will eventually have a lot to offer someone and i cant give the best off myself to a woman who i know is not honest with me

ive had a really horrible experience with an extremely dishonest and manipulative person

polygamy is not something i am especially comfortable with, but i value honesty and sincerity and willingness to effort far more than monogamy

outside of romance, i still have conditions for association

i can love everyone in a theoretical way, but when i see footage of a gangster beating up some innocent person because they can, i feel strongly antagonistic to the gangster, put it mildly

i do belive that love can save the world

but only when we are commited to lovING rather than being loved

and im not yet able enough to do that wholly

this represents a weakness on my part which i aim (though i dont necessarily expect) to overcome

love with attachment hurts

The Force IS Love.

Nothing more need be said.

Streen wrote: The Force IS Love.

Nothing more need be said.

what role does love play in your view of child molesters?

have you ever had the "broken heart" experience?

betrayal by those you loved?

what of those rare but real few who actually enjoy causing pain and inflicting helplessness on others?

"nothing more need be said" only happens after everything has been said

How do you define love?
And how do you feel you apply that definition to your world?

I don't "define".

"Defining" chops things up into recognisable and manipulable "parts" which are not very useful when 'applied' to Life ; Life itself has only a nebulous "definition". It has some usual characteristics, but even those are just tendencies (meaning, we haven't encountered otherwise yet ...).

Definitions restrict. They are useful reductions for being able to talk about things, but that is where their usefulness ends. This is also one of the reasons why such a wildly unreasonable and unpredictable feeling as Love (as well as some of the others, but I'll stay on topic here) is most aptly apologised in poetry and art -- it cannot be talked about with any certain, quantifiable, reducible or exacting logic. It defies rationality ...

As it were, that is also why it gets under our skin so much. It is paradisal ecstasy, it is the most miserable desert of Hell also.

We don't need a "definition" for it ; the media already brain-wash us enough about what it should look like, sound like and feel like -- because that sells stuff so incredibly well. But, it doesn't really do much for us on the existential level.

Here's what you can do :

When you feel that someone else is a little 'more special' than everyone else you know ; when you get just stupid about everything that person says or does or has touched, as though it takes on the sacredness of a relic (which, in a way it has) ... and you are so terrified that from one moment to the next you could be deprived of that person's existence, affinity or humanity ...

... then you're "applying" it. And you just enjoy it and suffer from it for as long as it lasts.

in "the road less traveled" m scott peck defines love thus:

“Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.”

he says that love is not a feeling but an action, and that the attachment that we all feel to people we desire is not actually love in many cases but rather cathexis

from google: the concentration of mental energy on one particular person, idea, or object (especially to an unhealthy degree).

the gist of what peck says in his book is that genuine love is not predicated upon the other persons feeling exactly the same but rather on the willingness to invest in the other person for THEIR betterment

he says that love can grow from cathexis but that they are definitely not the same

i agree but thats not the same as being able to live up to what i agree with

in my experience, love is hard and it doesnt always love back
letting go is not easy and there is a great amount of truth in the adage about loving oneself before being able to love another

here is an article

https://radicalreadings.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/the-road-less-traveled-love-its-not-a-feeling/

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EDIT

i would add that i have found, for myself, that in order to love in a healthy way i have to have at least two conditions met - first that i am building my own life and my own world which does not require any particular person to act or feel any particular way, to the extent that i am sufficiently satisfied with the direction of my life as a result of my own efforts

and second that i understand that its not a PERSON i am looking for, its a RELATIONSHIP

the specific individual person is MUCH less important than the way the person and i treat each other

being attached to people has gotten me in trouble

being determined to experience a certain type of relationship

and being set to accept and reject individual people based on the standard of treatment
seems a much more effective formula for my personal happiness and sanity than being "in love" with a particular individual has been

I tend to agree but think its better associated as the living aspect of the Force, where the unifying aspect is more around objective reality IMO.

> Can love really save the world?

From what? I do use compassion as the polar of evil, so yea maybe

I am wondering if very one just focused on the purest or highest, most universal form of "love", what kind of world would be live in?

I think it would take an energetic form, with all things represented as measures of that love. To act in that realm you'd have to define boundaries still I think, as while it might be seen as ideal to be one with and an extension of that 'love' to act within it as an 'agent' you'd likely need to exert different natures and extents of 'love' beyond your agency - otherwise you'd be exerting your own control over all things within a self centred framework. So understanding other manifestations of complex love (animals etc) as different agents then you might end up with a sort of recontextualization of existence - redefining how things exist. It's a bit confronting to face the dissolution of the 'known' to replace it with some other system of perception, but I do think its worthwhile if done cautiously. I find Buddhism to be the most useful, but lots of spiritual/religious path's have great value in doing it I reckon.

> Can I really get to a state of "unconditional", complete, universal love?

Only you can answer that :pinch:

> where have your explorations in the power of love taken you?

Trying to perceive 'love' as a field as a source of information can find attribution to outcomes, but I'm not sure if the association is causal or casual
:laugh:
Finding connections is fun though.