unhinged complexities of love

Era of Romanticism, Love, J. Krishnamurti, individuation, and my dialogues

Hello everyone, I hope you are having a wonderful week! Here is a journey into my labyrinth…I hope this provides you with something to contemplate.

A quote that seems fitting for today’s post…

“Love admits no division. Either you love, or do not love; but do not make the lack of love into a long-drawn-out process whose end is love.” — J. Krishnamurti

Something I’ve been reading…

The Red Book Liber Novus: A Reader’s Edition by C.G. Jung…the book is Jung’s own journey of individuation, which is essentially his journey of understanding his own inner psyche. I’ve been reading it and loving it. I previously bought the kindle version of this…but fortunately found a hard copy in my local used book store since my mind craves the physical writing of notes for some reason.

Anyway, I’m saying all of this because this book has been very impactful so far…thus my idea. I’d like to turn this letter into my own sort of “Red Book”…which isn’t a lot different from what I’m already doing, however, now I’ll be expressing and contemplating some of the things my mind decides to find meaningful—and then asking why.

So, as this letter looks to continue getting more personal, while trying to educate, and entertain…I hope some of my experiences, thoughts, and interpretations leave you something to contemplate….much love.

I hope you enjoy it…

Let’s enter my labyrinth…

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My more modern take on Plato’s Dialogue…

The Era of the Unhinged Lovers…

A fictionalized creation of dialogue…based on past conversations, research, reading, and everything else!

Why do you deny the existence of love?

I wouldn’t say I deny its existence — that would be foolish of me, as it’s simply a way to express an inner emotional state. However, I think we all have unrealistic expectations upon entering most relationships. And a lot of these unrealistic expectations probably create unneeded suffering.

I mean, how many of those ideas are even your ideas when you think about it.

What do you mean? What expectations? Can we not have expectations?

Of course we can, that’s what preferences are, of course, but are those preferences yours? Society feeds you all of these expectations of what love is, what romance is, what romance should feel like. They want to describe all this stuff to you to the point it’s not even yours.

So, before you even have a chance to experience it, you’ve already been running this idea of “love” through your mind — some ideal — that has muddied a truly authentic expression you hope to experience. The psyche’s created perception is never only your perception.

Think about your first kiss. Before you had that first kiss, you probably saw or read about a first kiss in a movie or novel, which created this new narrative for you — that’s not your narrative — it’s someone else’s.

So, when you go and have that first kiss, is it really yours? No. You are now running that experience through the lens of the narrative borrowed from another. And we do this over and over and over again. An endless loop.

Thus, we constantly compare instead of being within an original experience.

But what are we missing?

I’m not certain of course, about anything really. But what desires do we have deep down — around love — that have been shackled in place by the structures we live in?

Many of us want to describe love as this all-knowing feeling, a knowing perception of another human, and one that we feel to our bones. We say things like, “they are your best friend,” and then follow that up by describing them as all-consuming, like nothing else in the world matters; that description of “all-consuming” is never one of your best friend, nor should it be; that state of being, of being consumed by another, is an inevitable state of neurosis because being all-consumed by anyone is your ticket to unavoidable anxiety.

And for what?

For some grand conspiracy brought to your inner psyche by utopian thinking about soulmates, about love.

And that’s it! The idea of soulmates every naive seeker of love wants to wrap their entire being around. An idea that isn’t even yours, it’s an idea from the 18th-century era of Romanticism that was so distracted by their hopes and longings expressed through the love of another individual. And then the foolish people made everything about sex! Sex is meaningful and important, yet today we handle it as some sort of a binding contract with every person we interact with.

We cannot escape the ideas of the past; we can only look to better understand them, as that’s our only hope for liberation.

So those of the era of Romanticism were unhinged by an idea! They created this idea of self-liberation through the romantic relationship with another. And we are unhinged in much of the same way around love today.

Do you think your partner should never be attracted to another person? If yes, that’s not your idea.

Do you think you should just understand your partner intuitively, as though your emotional state is so beautifully intertwined? If yes, that’s not your idea.

Do you think your sex life will be exactly as you perceive, all of the time, in perfect harmony? If yes, that’s not your idea.

And the reason I emphasize that it’s not your idea is that I hope people recognize most ideas are not yours! A complete original thought? It’s a lie. So, maybe we can become more open to the thought that some of our ideas suck, and that’s okay.

They are not your ideas, anyway.

And from the era of Romanticism, their ideas on love, they suck. It’s delusional. It’s naive. It’s dangerous. It’s toxic.

It’s an ideal that has us always hitting well short of the mark. And when we constantly fall short of our imaginary inner ideals — suffering awaits.

I believe in love, but much of modern society embraces an ungrounded utopian perception of love. And utopias are another one of the great lies that breeds the conspiratorial mind, because we will do anything except blame ourselves for not meeting our own created ideals.

My point is that most of us are attracted to unhealthy love, but how can I blame people? It’s everywhere! These toxic perceptions. Our films, the religions we follow, and the houses we grow up in are the windows we used to understand the world. Those windows show an image of people telling themselves that the ideas around love that they’ve grown up in are for the best. That they know best because that’s how it’s always been done! Blasphemy.

I just want people to know they’re worthy of a healthy love…

But how do we find it?

So, Kendra, help me with this, what do you think love is? What do you think healthy love is?

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Paid post…journey into the mind #3: the special k

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I think love can be about feeling seen. Everything you described revolves around people becoming involved with each other but never actually seeing the other person, only their imaginary image — a projection. How often do we get into a relationship…and we never truly feel seen?

We might give love to someone and want that love in return, but then not necessarily feel that presence from them. In this missing presence, something is always missing, maybe an intuition. We desire a sense of being known — being seen. It’s the feeling of someone seeing right into your soul, knowing parts of you that you didn’t understand yourself, and when that other persona sees your soul…they still love you — and choose to love you. That’s love.

It’s as though we come into this new knowledge, we receive it. We receive it from another that then brings us into a new awareness of our own consciousness. And this consciousness brings us into a new understanding of who we are and an understanding of our existence.

Okay, you know me, I love the poetic expression through abstraction, but how does this look? Practically speaking.

It feels cliche at this point in the modern era, yet communication is everything. The communication in sex; the communication of boundaries; the communication of intentions.

Most of us probably tell ourselves this very fact, “we need to just communicate better,” but we don’t. Why? Truly, why? Because it’s not easy. The communication I speak about doesn’t always mean communication with your partner…this communication can be with yourself. I dated a guy once, for a couple of years, and I cared for them, deeply.

But, for reasons we can get into another day, I knew I wasn’t best for him. I couldn’t be the person who could truly see him and love him the way he desired. Yet, this communication became something I had to accept for myself, in that I enjoyed being with this person, I cared for them deeply, and yet I had to accept that wanting the best for them meant not being with me.

So, if we want to find healthy love, we need to start with communication with ourselves and the people we become involved with. And beyond that? We have to ask ourselves the questions that we’re too afraid to know the answers to.

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Hearing, sharing, and commenting means a lot! Thank you for your support:)

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A couple of quotes I’ve been contemplating…

“True individuality is measured by this: how long or how far one can endure being alone without the understanding of others.” — Provocations by Soren Kierkegaard

This one adds an additional touch for your contemplation….

“Even though every individual possesses the truth, when he gets together in a crowd, untruth will be present at once, for the crowd is untruth.” — Soren Kierkegaard

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until next time,

with love,

Brenden