What Love Is: Love Notes. Post #10

Gel Cap Love

Several posts ago, when I started trying to work toward a concept of what love is, Matthew commented that you can’t “encapsulate” love. However, I still think it’s possible to get a concept that’s reasonably accurate. That way, when you ingest it, it breaks down in your system and helps transform you - so it’s not encapsulated anymore.

But we seem to be working with a gel cap and not one of those solid caplets, because there’s this tendency for people to keep unscrewing it and spill stuff all over the counter, pretty much ignoring my efforts at tidiness, like when I summarized with, “Okay. So far, we’ve got a feeling strongly connected with how we act, that always remains somewhat beyond words, and to which there are inner obstacles for living it out.”

So today I look at the counter and find powder everywhere. But I’ll just “rise with the tide and go with the flow” (Mockingbird, Carly Simon). What follows is a sort of Dear Ann Landers approach to some of the recent comments, which I may abridge or make up. But I’ll only make it up if I think it’s something you might say.

A word of caution: I don’t know if we want to head off mainly in a direction of love as it’s involved in relationships. There’s so much in addition to love that goes on with relationships that we’ll end up not talking about love that much.

Plus you need to bear in mind that you’d be asking somebody whose longest term relationship was with a dog named Lady. Also, that even though I worked for twenty-three years as a counselor, it was with elementary school children. So if you’re going to go there, you should concentrate on stuff I can handle, like, “How old do you think a girl has to be before she starts dating? My Dad says thirty-six.”

Divine Love-Talk: Stella started down this path in an attempt to contribute to conceptualizing what love is – a woman who appreciates a good capsule. Anonymous turned Space Food Sticks (we all feel bad about that, BTW), followed up on Stella’s lead by talking about the non-judgmental love of all-being or reality.

These remarks point down a path that includes love, but is broader. We’d need to ask: what is religious or spiritual experience? So for the moment, let’s call this powder for another capsule, set it just a little off to the side, and focus a bit more on what it means to love another human being. And hopefully, as per last post, taking the romance out of it as much as possible. But then there’s the Lorena problem.

Relentless Lorena:

Emilyjane, in a waitress uniform, leans across the counter with, “The usual?”

Lorena: “Well, I would like some more love with romance please...”

Emilyjane, turning away and hollering: “That’ll be the two and one combo!”

Paul, from the kitchen: “No fresh romance coming in for several months! It’s a seasonal thing!”

Emilyjane, to Lorena: “You can’t always have the two in one combo, honey.”

Lorena, frowning: “We’ll just see about that…”

Emilyjane: “Hey! Hey! You can’t just go…" {EJ’s voice trails off. My kitchen door opens and I look up to see Lorena close it and lock the door behind her.}

Lorena: “Well… {folds her arms and stares pointedly}.

"I just think it's very interesting that you’re trying to make romantic love available on this blog only on a seasonal basis. You’re saying romance can get old? You’re saying you can get too ‘mature’ for romantic love? Well I don’t think so, Mister…”

Paul, backed against a wall of the kitchen: “No, no Lorena {cough, cough}… And the way you’ve got me by the throat is hurting a little.”

Lorena, slightly relaxing her grip: “You’ve got five seconds and it better be good.”

Paul: “It's just that I think that as you get older, you romanticize romantic love less. You view that whole, spellbinding-fascination-physical attraction thing, as being less about love than - as ‘The Voice’ put it - an aspect of human biology. Something that draws the sexes together.

Lorena, raising her fist: “I’ll show you something that draws the sexes together…”

Paul: “Wait, wait! But you can still feel romance, and order the two in one combo, when you get older.”

Lorena, staring into space, rapping her fingernails on the counter: “So you’re saying you can have an unromantic view of romantic love, but still experience romantic love…"

Paul keeps quiet, swallowing hard.

“Not likin’ it… {pauses}

“You wormed your way out of it this time, Martin. But I’ll be back.” Exits.

T Spreads Powder Everywhere:

T says, “But what about loving writing?”

I’d say that really, you like writing. Same goes for ideas and objects. “Loving” here is a way of saying, “really really like a lot.” This would be clearer if we had a better handle on what love is.

T: “I love my best friend; in fact I am in love with him.”

Sounds like that two in one combo. “In love” equals romance. “Love” is something else. And you feel both toward the same person.

T: “I eventually came to realize that really I had been in love with the idea of being loved by my ex.”

I would want to put it differently: that you needed to feel loved, and this was the original basis for your relationship with your ex.

Receiving love is critical, especially when we’re kids. Not feeling loved by one or both parents creates a void that people often end up trying to fill with romantic relationships. But our partners can’t be the mothers or fathers we would have liked to have. The void has to be filled in other ways. And it can be.

What Love Is: Romance and Love Contrasted Post #9

Romantic Disentanglements

To me, Emilyjane’s recent comment to the 6/24 post is a good disentanglement of romantic love from love:

“Of course, one can have love without sex, sex without love or the highly sought after two-in- one combo. One can love without being in love, fall in love without it leading to love and fall out of love and still love. As to sexual love versus spiritual love, it could be either/or, but I don't think it has to be.”

The Voice added this comment to the same post:

“To me, a cold reality about romantic love has to do with good old-fashioned Biology: Humans are hardwired to seek out people who are physically 'symmetrical' and, good 'breeding stock'…”

To which I replied:

“And I agree - romance is largely biology. And I'd construe ‘biology’ broadly. The hardwiring has to do not only with physical mating, even though that's Mother Nature’s intent, so to speak, but with what I've referred to as the ‘fascination’ that the opposite sex can have. In other words, it's hardwiring that includes the psyche.”

I’m getting a feeling that commentators' perspectives on romance are dividing along age-lines. The middle-agers appear to be inclined toward a less romantic idea of romantic love than the twenty-somethings. In fact, to put it bluntly, I think we middle-agers are saying that romantic “love” has little to nothing to do with love, necessarily, even though it’s possible (and great) to both love someone and be romantically involved with them. “Romance” and “love” are loosely connected, at best.

I think this may be one of those “passages” or “life stages” things. Speaking personally, I had a romantic idea of romantic love myself when I was younger.

The Real Thing: Summing Up What We’ve Got

So getting back to a concept of love, romance aside, what have we got? A quick summary of comments shows:

A feeling (Lorena, t).

A feeling with a strong inclination to express itself in action (Marybeth, Grumblefish).

A feeling that is ineffable in some sense. Words aren’t going to “encapsulate” it (Matthew’s word.)

A feeling that can be hard to act on because a lot of things can get in the way (Grumblefish, if I’m recalling correctly.)

There’s a lot more that could be said toward becoming conscious of what love is. It’s a feeling – but what’s that feeling like? It’s ineffable – but how so? (Guess I’m a wordy kind of guy…) And what kinds of actions does love lead to? But all of this is probably more than we can really explore on a blog.

The Real Thing: An Illustration

Anyway, yesterday I posted a comment to Nancy Nordenson’s brand new blog, Sabbath Journal (link at bottom of the page.) I like her concept for this blog. It’s based on Bible readings, but Nancy’s Bible must be in pretty good shape: she doesn’t seem to pound it. Her blog is low key, thoughtful, and she has a clear writing style.

Anyway, after posting the comment to her blog, I realized that it illustrates at least three out of four of the points in the concept of love as we’ve developed it here. So maybe it can serve to bring some closure to this topic. Maybe not. I’ll try to gauge from your comments whether to go further with love, or move on to something else.

The short form of Nancy’s question was to ask readers to think of an act of kindness toward them, and how it may have manifested God’s love toward them. My slightly edited reply was:

What follows happened during my last full year of work, before becoming too severely disabled to continue.

I was standing in our school gym, speaking to around 600 assembled students, staff, and parents - performing one of my parts in the end of the year awards assembly. Holding the mike in one hand and some notes in the other, I felt a sheet of paper slip from my grasp.

All I could do was pretend not to notice and hope it was a sheet of names or notes I'd already used. Although I still appeared completely functional to others when standing or walking, I was incapable of retrieving something from the floor without a wall or chair for support - and even then, it wasn't easy and took a long time.

Most people in the room had no idea I was in such bad shape. Basically, just the kids who'd been in my office a lot.

One of them was Caroline, a third grader small for her age, with big brown eyes and a demeanor that was quiet and somewhat shy. But she enjoyed being around people, and was friendly, smart, and perceptive. Caroline was only in my office a lot because she was one of our school mediators, a program that I ran. So she was a problem-solver, not a problem-causer.

At least a full minute had elapsed since I'd dropped the paper. I was continuing with my talk, when suddenly I found Caroline standing directly beneath me, in front of those 600 people, holding out my paper to me without a word, while having to wait a few seconds for me to wind down my sentence and look down to take it. Then she scooted back to her place - which I then saw happened to be in the front line of kids who were seated on the floor.

Clearly it had taken Caroline that full minute or so to reach her decision because she was struggling with the fact that she knew exactly what my predicament was; and yet this wasn't going to be easy for her to do...

To the degree that God's love comes by way of any of us, I think that it arrives singing, "We shall overcome."

Sabbath Journal

What Love Is: Romantic Love. Post #8

The Cracker of Sex

Lorena suggested a post about romantic love. This may help clarify what love is not.

I have to add that I’m no expert on this one… There’s no chapter on romantic love in A First-Hand Faith! So this is off the cuff.

To me, romantic love is a multi-layered attraction spread upon the cracker of sex. (My writing style has possibly come under the influence of Grumblefish, who has started his own blog, Slit Trench.

Love, which we made a start toward conceptualizing last post, can be one of the layers. But there are a lot of layers on the cracker.

Topping the Cracker of Sex

First usually comes some fig leaf, often topped with a little pimento. Okay, I’ll really stop now. So let’s start with:

Psychosexual Attraction: First, I think there’s some sort of psychosexual attraction which is really hard to describe, but I think or hope everyone will know what I’m talking about so I don’t just sound odd. It’s easiest to give examples.

I remember exactly one other child from my preschool class at age four. The rest are just a bunch of faceless kids romping around on hobby horses. She had brown eyes and brown hair. I wasn’t going to be taking this anywhere physically, and wasn’t focused on her body. But it was a definite boy-girl attraction, the first I can remember. (I’m going to put things in heterosexual terms to keep it simple – not meant to exclude the idea that homosexuals experience romantic love.)

Or the way this attractive woman’s eyes used to catch mine like a magnet a few years ago. It would be the end of the school day at my elementary school. The crowded lobby would be full of parents and children rushing around, and I’d be standing there scanning for the kids I needed to round up to walk over to the nearby extended day program. A couple times a week, a very young mother or very much older sister would enter the lobby, and, Bang! I’d have to pry my eyes loose from this serene, open-looking female face with very dark eyes and high cheek bones and force myself to keep kid-scanning.

Was it love? Although I’m well-disposed to strangers, so this might be described as love in some sense, that certainly wasn’t the main thing going on.

So I think that on top of the physical attraction there’s this hard to define psychosexual attraction. Something gets expressed in the opposite sex’s eyes, voice, manner of speaking, that’s attractive to us.

I’d say that this first layer on the cracker of sex is the essence of “romantic love.” The “chemistry” thing gets involved here. Certain people attract us much more than others.

Why do I call it the cracker of sex? Partly because it’s sort of a fun phrase to keep repeating. But mostly because I think that all these layers of attraction serve the fundamental purpose of driving the sexes together to mate. That might not sound so romantic, but I think that’s gotta be the obvious foundation for all this.

Cheez Whiz Etc.

Other layers of attraction, just off the top of my head:

Esthetic: If I were a painter, I’d have painted a lot of women.

Projective: This is not much the case anymore, but when I was young, I had some sort of psychological tendency to idealize those by whom I was smitten. They would turn into The Ideal Woman. Don’t know the explanation here – maybe Jungian archetypes and all that.

Neurotic forms of complementariness: We’ve all seen this kind of thing. For example, the domineering male finds a submissive female and they form an ongoing abusive relationship based on an unhealthy form of psychological attraction.

And of course love can enter into all of this (less so if the neurotic thing is predominating.) When it does, I’d expect that’s what makes for the most satisfying and long lasting relationships. But I don’t think love itself is an attraction – or if you try to look at it that way, things get muddy fast. “Attraction” is a word I considered but ended up rejecting in thinking about what love is. Attraction is focused at least as much on “what’s in it for me” as it is on the other person.

Dear Paul Landers

Lorena asks two questions:

1. Can partnered or relational love exist apart from the romantic aspect?

Probably. Just think about all the arranged marriages, for example, that have occurred historically.

2. I understand that at points the romance can fade but doesn't it always come back?

My best guess is that when an enduring relationship, in which real love is present, starts off with a strong romantic component, it never totally goes away. I think of my Uncle Paul and Aunt Anita. They had a 50 + year marriage that ended when she died several years ago. In his eighties now, he still can’t refer to her without looking like a man still under the spell of romance as well as love.

I imagine it’s like with anyone else you’ve known long and well. When I look at my little sister, for example, eight years my junior, I don’t just see the grown woman others meet. I see her through a prism of memory that refracts way back to how she looked and acted as a little girl, toddler, and infant, and all the things we ever did together.

So if at ninety you’re lucky enough to still be with someone you fell in love with at sixteen, I bet that you see and experience them through that same sort of memory-prism, and it keeps the romance alive.

What Love Is: Now We’re Talking. Post #7

Here’s picking up on some great comments to Love #5, June 17 post, toward conceptualizing what love is:

Action

Mary Beth: “Perhaps love defines itself ‘in action’… “

Grumblefish agrees that love is closely related to action.

Me too:

Help Build

A human being, whatever special mix of gifts
He owns, wherever placed by circumstance
Can find a way that is the way of He who calls
And balanced so upon the narrow walk gains strength
Can strike the cleanest, hardest, telling blow yet never falls.

Oh he can strike
From stone draw light
Can flake a spark
That works in love.

Come, act;
Come act in love.
Come move, come strike
Oh wield the hammer that is yours to wield
This world is womb of God: serve, deliver him,
Help build his world
Help build a kingdom suited to a King,
Help make, increase, the godliness of things;
Through work of yours let music of his call resound
Down other centuries, through more millennia of sun-rounds
To rounder, sounder, sweeter worlds than this;
Help build a World
Help wield a brush across the deep
Help hammer, chisel features in a wall of stone
Hear in the dark how nature stirs and moans
Grows more humane
Throws off another cloud of sleep:
This world once moved becomes a gentler place
Wears more and more the imaged look
Of a compassionate Father’s face.

Oh praise with works the One who calling comes;
Oh work while there is time to act with love.



Copyright Paul Martin 1987, all rights reserved


Feeling

And yet T’s comment seems to identify love chiefly as an emotion, and I agree.

That is, love itself is of the realm of inner life, notwithstanding the fact that the more we become aware of it, the more we discover the tremendous force by which it seeks outward expression.

I think I would prefer “feeling,” though, T, if you’d agree that “emotion” seems to imply something more transitory and less substantial than “feeling.” I’d add that although love can be classified as a feeling, it’s also in a class by itself because of certain unique characteristics.

Obstacles

G-Fish says: “what would you call the gyrations
required to wriggle past your own
self-defense mechanisms, just to get
in the water?”

My take on this is that G-Fish is alluding to the problem of getting past all the psychological stuff that can stand in the way of living-out our love. And there’s a lot of it. And it can stand in the way for a lifetime.

Immensity

Some of you – I’m thinking of T and G-Fish – seem to imply that there is something about love that makes it both enormously important, and yet maybe just about impossible to pin down with words. Matthew, as I recall, at one point used the word “encapsulate” with regard to trying to get a handle on what love is with words. I agree with all of you that any adequate concept of love is going to have to somehow include the notion that the experience itself overflows vocabulary, so to speak.

I think that Mr. A is trying to point even further in the same direction when he says: “I once heard something about love that stuck me – ‘Love is nothing and everything.’”

And I have known wave on wave welling up from the deepest more-than-within-me, running concentrically outward in raptures toward a darkness brimming with everything and nothing.

(Excerpt, Chapter Eight, A First-Hand Faith, unpublished work copyright 2005 Paul M. Martin)

What Love Is: Concept v. Definition. Post #6

Confessions of Blogustine

Really interesting comments to Love #5, Friday 6/17 post. Before I summarize them, I should probably mention a few things at this point.

I’m frankly just sort of muddling my way along here, and for a couple reasons. First, my outlook on this stuff is informed by an unpublished book manuscript I’ve written. But a blogger with an unpublished manuscript who blogs the manuscript itself is viewed as having given up “first rights” by many print publishers. In other words, by putting out the real thing here, I could further reduce what little chance the ms already has of being published due to my lack of “marketing platform” (no public stature).

My impression is that the print publishing world is still trying to figure out the whole Web thing and probably hasn’t got it right yet. Sharing an unpublished ms with half a dozen people = “publishing” it and giving up first rights? It seems odd… I’m still checking into this. Excerpts, to some degree, sound like they may be okay, but I have questions such as: “To what degree??”

Second, even if I could do whatever I wanted, it’s a book, not a series of blog posts. I doubt that I could “blogify” the book’s content in a way that would not diminish the overall message.

Third, as I think about “reviewing” your comments, I’m feeling somewhat self-conscious and like I might come across as pretentious. Who am I to be sort of evaluating what you’ve got to say? You’re all obviously bright, reflective types. And in all honesty, I didn’t learn that much in divinity school. I’ve forgotten most of it.

So what follows are my real qualifications for doing a blog in which I’m not actually posting A First-Hand Faith, even though the perspective I bring to the blog is informed by it. That’s the working title of the book, anyway, so you’ll know what I’m talking about if I ever post something like, “excerpt, First-Hand Faith.” The book has a subtitle that better gets to the heart of the subject matter – but titles aren’t copyrightable, so I’m going to reserve that portion of it for now, hoping for publication.

Here I’ll just mention that the subtitle clarifies that a “first-hand” faith is a faith that we answer to rather than invent. We only call back to what calls us. “First-hand” doesn’t mean something originating with our ability to think clever thoughts, or, as conservatives sometimes say, something tantamount to, “making it up as we go along.”

What happened personally is that at age twenty-three, I had a pretty substantial “enlightenment experience.” It turned my life around, but I couldn’t absorb it quickly. (I know I’ll die without having absorbed anywhere near the whole thing.)

Everything that would follow in terms of my spiritual life was initiated by that experience. And everything in A First-Hand Faith developed from out of this experience as I learned more about getting out of its way of proceeding with me. The book’s concept of love is something that eventually came out of this.

A Concept of Love

A couple of you have politely asked, “Why bother?” when it comes to defining love. But what I’m really talking about is a concept of love. You can extract a definition from a concept as a handy way of referring to it, but the concept is what I found important.

How? The concept of love, like all the concepts in the book, evolved by way of reflecting on experience. And then, sticking close to experience. I learned that at least for me, going out on long metaphysical limbs is a mistake. After a while I really don’t have any idea what I’m talking about anymore, so how could/why would I want to convince anyone else?

But a concept that reflects and highlights experience, and makes it less nebulous, so that it has a bit of a handle on it – to revert to G-Fish’s “most important piece of luggage” metaphor – can be useful. In the case of love, once you know your own love, and how big it is, and what its business is, you start to become less tolerant of your inner obstacles to love. (And in my case, you end up coming up with a couple concepts for those too…)

So although I know I’m nothing special in terms of my inner life, I’ve been motivated to do something fairly unusual. For the fourteen years following that experience at age 23, my number one priority was to fathom its implications as far as possible. Then came the illness. Then, with the illness making it clear that it wasn’t going anywhere, came getting back to the book a couple years ago, and finishing it.

So what I’m trying to say is that I hope I don’t come off here as being some sort of know it all, or thinking I’m exceptional. If I thought so, it would be a total bummer. What would be the point of writing a book if I thought it only had validity for me?

So at this point, the “spiritual blog methodology” (now there’s a handy phrase…) that I seem to be stumbling into, is mainly to ask you to think about this stuff for yourselves. Because I don’t think any of us are that different in terms of the essential composition of our inner lives. And while our specific paths differ, I think we move along the same general landscape when it comes to spiritual matters.

I’ve run on so long here that I won’t get to those comments to the Friday 6/17 post until Wednesday! But thought I should let you know where I’m coming from.

What Love Is: Focusing-In. Post #5

First, a brief announcement…

No, I’m not getting married or having twins, although I did receive a bag of pre-shelled pistachios the other day. It was my first time.

I really enjoy this blog. However, I MUST cut back on the time I’m putting into it. The disability slows me down, and there’s a lot I’m trying to do in addition to the blog that’s highly related to it. Like continuing with the effort to find a publisher for the book. (By the way, the title of chapter one is, What Love Is.) That might not come as much of a shocker at this point…)

But I want to try and cut down on my blogging time in a way that doesn’t make the blog less worth checking in with.

So I’ll be posting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If I get the chance, I’ll do extra posts occasionally. I’ll keep reading/responding to all comments, whatever day they’re left.

If I get the days mixed up, which happens fairly easily when you’re housebound, then I’ll be posting on that odd Tuesday or Thursday instead. But the MWF commitment will probably heighten my day of the week consciousness. If not, you might want to comment with, “Fous! Oubliez la jour encore??”

Sharpening the Focus

I’m wondering if I may have started out by asking too broad a question: in effect, asking people to say what Love with a capital L is.

You’ve mainly come back with examples of love.

Let’s try something in-between. What does love mean to you? But don’t only provide an example or metaphor. So if you’re going to say, “Love Is Walking Hand in Hand” (Charles Schultz), also attach some kind of concept to it; here, maybe something like, “Love is a feeling of affection.”

A Break from Love

Who needs that, you ask?

Nancy Nordenson. Not in any personal sense that I’d be in any position to know about, I hasten to add. It’s just that she passed this on to me to pass on to others. Since a lot of you who've been commenting have blogs yourselves, consider yourselves “tagged” if you want to be. That is, answer the questions that follow for yourselves on your own blogs, and pass the format on to other bloggers.

Nancy strikes me as the same sort of thoughtful person that’s been tending to post comments here. And just to prove that, she wrote a book called “Just Thinking,” and has her own blog with an equally suggestive title, the link to which appears at the bottom of this post because for some reason that's the only place I can make it go.

The “tag” idea is about reading habits, with the main purpose of suggesting good books for others to read.

Book Tag

Total books ever owned: Several hundred.

Last book I bought: I can’t tell you because I don’t want to get sued. It was a really really bad book in the spirituality area that I bought to look through when doing the “market analysis” portion of my book proposal.

Nancy was kind enough to ask how that’s going. Badly. I think it was in Literary Marketplace that I read that no matter how good the book is or how well qualified you are to write it, sending out nonfiction proposals with no “marketing platform” is a “waste of your time.” I’ve gone a long way toward proving that point.

I am currently reading: Blogs and the additional two books I’ve written – I can’t help myself. But the severity of my disability means it’s very tough for me to read except on the computer screen.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

The New Testament – I’m not much for scripture quoting, either in real life or in my manuscript, but it’s the only book I’ve read more than once – probably half a dozen times. (Just never generally been a re-reader, don’t know why.) Certain NT ideas and phrases have had far-reaching implications for me and for the manuscript I wrote.

Goldstein, Joseph and Jack Kornfield. Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation. Boston: Shambhala, 1987. A great intro to Buddhism for westerners.

Hanh, Thich N. The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1975. A beautiful, simple, short book. Wherever you’re at in terms of your inner life, it’s probably going to challenge you to be an even better person than you are.

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Longmans, 1902. An oldie but a goodie.

To anyone who took Psych 101, James is just an archaic figure from early psychology. But in the area of religious studies, this book is considered a classic. It was on the required reading list when I got my MA at the U. of Chicago divinity school. James basically asks, “What is ‘religious experience?’” and separates the wheat from the chaff.

Smith, Huston. The Religions of Man. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. Another oldie but goodie. There must be an updated version of this that probably doesn’t have “man” in the title… But it’s a very clear, well written and concise summary of each of the world’s major religions.

By the way, doing “tag” doesn’t require all the bibliographical detail I’ve provided. I cut and pasted from my manuscript’s bibliography...

Just Thinking would be that link I mentioned...

What Love Is: Unselfish Love. Post #4

The concept of unselfish love seems to be religion’s way of getting at “the real thing" when it comes to love. It occurs to me that the secular word for this idea is “altruism.” I’ve never especially liked that word, but when it comes to talking about religion and spirituality, words are loaded with connotations for people. This is another good reason for trying to clarify terms.

It was interesting to me to see the similarities between love as defined first in Buddhist and then in Christian terms as I surfed the Web.

Love, Buddhism:

The definition of love in Buddhism is: wanting others to be happy.
This love is unconditional and it requires a lot of courage and acceptance (including self-acceptance).
The "near enemy" of love, or a quality which appears similar, but is more an opposite is: conditional love (selfish love, see also the page on attachment).
The opposite is wanting others to be unhappy: anger, hatred.
A result which one needs to avoid is: attachment.
This definition means that 'love' in Buddhism refers to something quite different from the ordinary term of love which is usually about attachment, more or less successful relationships and sex; all of which are rarely without self-interest. Instead, in Buddhism it refers to de-tachment and the unselfish interest in others' welfare.

From The Four Immeasurables

Christian Love (“agape”):

Two Definitions

1. Love as revealed in Jesus, seen as spiritual and selfless and a model for humanity.
2. Love that is spiritual, not sexual, in its nature.

From Answers.com http://www.answers.com/agape&r=67

The following similar definition of Christian love is from a Christian Web site:

Christian love is giving to others those things that you would want them to give you if you were in their situation -- and it's doing so even if they can't pay you back. In fact, it's doing so especially if they can't pay you back! Christian love is respect for others. It's mercy. It's charity.

From Christian Love http://www.allaboutgod.com/christian-love.htm


Comment with Question

Freud thought that the concept of a universal love that “rains on the just and unjust alike,” so to speak, devalued love. A love that doesn’t depend on the existence of laudable qualities in the beloved made no sense to him.

Is there any way to reconcile the idea of a selfless, universal love, with the “hot” love we feel for those whose qualities we find attractive or commendable? Or is love like hot jazz and cool jazz? If so, what makes both “jazz?”

Essays on this topic are due June 30.

What Love Is: Primary Colors. Post #3

Complications

People’s comments to yesterday’s post include mention of love in relation to God and the topic of self-love. I’d like to set these aside for the time being. It’s a lot easier to think about love of God and love of self once you have an idea of what you mean by “love” to begin with, especially since love of God and self-love introduce complications of their own. (Example: self-love vs. selfishness or egotism.)

G-fish brings up what I think is an important point that all of us have to look at, but again, for now, a complication of the topic, when he writes:

“I am still learning the differences between what's right for {my son}, and what I think he ought to think is right for him (hence the many tooth marks in my tongue).”

G-Fish is getting at two ideas here: A) love for his son, and B) something that has potential to get in the way of that. Obstacles to what love is – this is a major topic in its own right. But again, first things first: What is love?

It’s easiest to get a clear picture of what love is by reflecting on our experience of it in relation to persons that we love.

Primary Colors

So again: when you focus quietly on someone you love – hopefully, and sort of ironically, without them being around as a distraction – what exactly do you experience? You’ve provided a lot of vivid examples, such as

“my husband waking me up at 7 am with a fresh cup of Starbucks espresso roast coffee , kissing my sleepy head, and me saying "thank you babe" while being fully aware of the true joy of the moment and very grateful for his caring action” –Marybeth

Gratitude… joy in the moment… caring action… These look like possibilities worth looking at.

G-Fish refers to the “transparency” of his daughter’s love on a certain occasion when she was little. Was anything visible in that transparency?

Emilyjane refers to “unconditional” love in terms of love that loves despite imperfections in the loved one.

What’s essential in all this? What are the primary colors of love? Life of Bryan asks if there is one “pure” form of love. Essentially, I think so.

What Love Is: Why Bother? Post #2

Anybody have any luck with just closing their eyes per yesterday’s post? If not, here’s some food for thought about what love is from Answers.com.

The stuff on this link goes all over the place. Anything here you find worth picking up on – or not worth picking up on, i.e., something is being discussed which, in your opinion, is definitely not love and should be distinguished from it?


Why try to figure out exactly what love is? Why try to understand what the experience of love is really like?

Because it turns out to be a very big thing. Because becoming conscious enough of what love is, is itself transformative.

And because all of us have it in us. If enough of us were ever to become conscious of it, it might save the world, or postpone the Apocalypse, depending on your point of view. At the least, it would increase the odds of our species having a long run on this planet. And between now and the end, the human race would be have had a much better time all around.

Maybe it would be good to focus for now on what it means to love other people. The link above goes into love of God as well – the ultimate, “link above,” of course, metaphor unintended. Anyway, if we try and introduce God into things at this point, matters might get complicated fast. So maybe to start, we should just stick with people, although I’d go wherever anyone wants to…

What Love Is: Post #1

Let’s again look directly at the topic of religious/spiritual experience with a post that’s completely free of poetry and foreign language – n’est pas? Couldn’t help that, but there will be no more of it.

Specifically, let’s continue with love. It certainly plays a prominent role in religion, and is also a common human experience, confusing as the topic can be.

Love is something I’ve read quite a bit about, what with degrees in psych, religion, and counseling. Most of what I read described different kinds of love. Examples:


Platonic love: love of friends.

Eros: love of one’s partner or mate.

Lactos: love of dairy products.


Yes, that last one was meant as something of a commentary. I’ve never found love-typologies up to the job, although I do think they have something to contribute.

I don’t think they really tell us the fifty-seven varieties of love. Instead, I think they offer up ideas concerning what kinds of things it’s possible for us to love – and, in contrast, not love.

Looking at these things can start to tell us something about what love is, but that’s a long and winding road.

To me, a better route is closing your eyes, bringing someone you love to mind, then thinking about what it is you’re feeling.

Going Internationale

While Marybeth is sleeping on what love is, per her comment from yesterday, and while the usual Friday through late Sunday blogging lull settles over the planet, I offer the following, figuring and really sort of hoping nobody will read it.

If you do read it, think of this as my way of getting back at readers, in general, for the lack of comments to my Falling for Diana poem. Here I went and exposed my whole soul - well, okay, less, but still something... And what do I get ? Nuthin’. Nuthin’.

And so, wanting to partially and yet not completely alientate readers, I have displaced most of my rage on the nation of France through one of their blogs. It is called, dJeyL's French Blog, http://blog.djeyl.net/fr/index.php/2005/06/03/21-et-voila?cos=1.

That first « d » in the blog title makes no sense to me. Neither do those odd marks I just made surrounding the « d », which were supposed to be quotation marks. I have a new computer because mine died several days ago. Apparently my quotation marks also expired.

Anyway, I took a little French in high school a long time ago. I may have been off-topic in my response to the French blog. Since I didn’t really understand the post anyway, I haven’t bothered printing it below. Below is just my response in French as I remember it, followed by the translation into English via an online translation service.

I thought my remarks might actually have gained something in the translation.

En Mon Avis

Estque c'est post d'autour les animaux? Les cheveux?

Je suis Americaine, mais je deteste le George Bush. N'est pas?

Estque vrais que les francais deteste les hommes qui parle francais tres mal? C'est ne pas du faut du moi. J'etude la francais en ecole secondaire - c'est tout. Tres tres tres annees - pas maintenant. J'oublie tres tres du mots. N'est pas?

Mais je suis francais. Tres tres tres tres annees - 17th siecle? - les parents du mon parents du mon parents etc, ils marche sur un grande bateau en France. Le bateau arrive au Canada - Quebec. En 19th siecle, les grandperes et grandmeres du mes grandperes et grandmeres, marche au L'Etats Unis.

N'oublie pas: je me deteste la George Bush. "Freedom Fries!" Ha!

France dit: "C'est stupide aller au Iraq."

George: "Nous et la Grande Fortre Nation. Le Seulment Power Supre. Vous et les wimps."

France: "Monsieur, vous et peut-etre - stupide."

George: "Je viens a Yale Universitee parceque mon Pappa as trop du dollars. Je croix que je suis tres intellegente."

Regard, "the facts on the ground." Qui est stupide? C'est Bush. N'est pas?


Translation Service’s Rendition:

Is Estque it post of around the animals? The hair? I am Americaine, but I deteste George Bush. Is not? Estque truths that French deteste the men who speaks French very badly? It is not is not necessary ego. I French study it in secondary school - it is all. Very very very years - not now. I forget words very very. Is not?

But I am French. Very very very very years - 17th century? - the parents of the my parents of my parents etc, they goes on large a boat to France. The boat arrives at Canada - Quebec. In 19th century, grandperes and grandmeres of the my grandperes and grandmeres, walk in the United States. Do not forget: I deteste George Bush. "Freedom Fries!" Ha!

France known as: "It is stupid outward journey in Iraq."

George: "Us and Large Fortre Nation. Seulment Power Supre. You and wimps."

France: "Sir, you and perhaps - stupid."

George: "I come has Yale Universitee because my Pappa have too many the dollars. I cross which I am very intellegente."

Glance, "the facts one the ground." Who is stupid? It is Bush. Is not?

Oh, Mirror in the Blog, What Is Love

In a comment yesterday, Mary Beth basically asks,

“So why are we talking about dogs, music, and sex?” It does seem like a reasonable question…

I was just being indirect. We’d been talking about religious belief and religious/spiritual experience. There seemed to be a lot of agreement that love is a form of experience that’s widely regarded as being religious or spiritual. I’d add here, as an example, that the compassion for all sentient beings found in Buddhism is a pretty close parallel to “agape,” or the Christian concept of universal love. I’m less familiar with Judaism, but know that the Old Testament presents God’s merciful as well as wrathful aspects. And of course Jesus was Jewish, a mind-bogglingly overlooked fact in the history of anti-Semitism.

I read the Koran a very long time ago, but I’d be surprised if love and compassion in some form isn’t a major theme there too, especially since Mohammed is thought to have read the Bible and was writing from out of the Judeo-Christian tradition, much as he started a new one. (Tarquin, are you around? Can you shed any light here?)

So what I was actually doing in the last few posts was posting material that I thought illustrated something about love, thinking someone might venture what they think love is.

Or, as Stevie Nicks might have said…

Georgia

I said now, Georgia.....Georgia......a song of you
Comes as sweet and clear.....as moonlight through the pines.


That summer I was playing drums with the Momma and the Poppa. Not the band’s real name, but it might have been. Terry and Joe had around six kids, but they were making a living with their general-business band.

They were friendly, warm-hearted people, and had some real musical talent. Either could sing lead or harmony. But although they hit the right notes, neither had a voice that was remarkable for its quality, power, or range. Joe played passable electric organ. He also ran the business end of things, and ran it well. We’d be booked Friday night through the weekend – at local small town clubs, weddings, and, that summer, a hotel at the end of the Mile Road in Wells Beach, Maine.

I was one of any number of drummers who they took on for a while. I did a couple stints with them, one at eighteen and one in my early twenties. It was a good way to earn money in college. And John was one in their parade of lead guitar players. He’s the one who was with them for the briefest period during the time I was on board.

John was an “older” guy. Looking back, maybe he was thirty-four or five. And that summer at the beach, most evenings, usually early in the fourth set, he’d sing Georgia.

That was the first time I’d heard the song. It may be that Ray Charles did it better, but I don't know that.

I think this was the only song where John sang lead. I don’t think he had much of a range. But he had Georgia.

The whole room would pipe down – Joe doing practically nothing on the organ except maybe a subdued bass line, and me switching from sticks to brushes. My hands would settle into keeping basic time, here and there doing a little something to set up the bridge, or to whisk up a slight shift in emphasis for a short guitar riff. But I was really just listening to John, with my hands taking care of themselves.

Voices at the tables would quiet down. Dancers would dance closer.


Other arms reach out to me.......other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see.......the road leads back to you...


Georgia. A place name and a woman’s name. And somewhere you never quite get to, even though it’s supposed to be right here on earth.

John inhabited the whole of that space when he sang of it. I don’t know how he got it so right. I just know that when he sang Georgia, nobody was performing anymore.

Classical Dog Love

Falling for Diana

Spellbound
Held fast by eyes that dance with mine,
I shake strong,
Unfurl and long
Toward legs that could entwine with mine
Like vines;
Hair I know could tumble toward me
Soft and dusky
Fragrant avalanche.

Enraptured
Captured
Held fast by eyes that are at once my shackles
And the keys I have to turn,
You stay me at your waiting gate, so fascinate
I gaze and linger longer in the longing,
Powerless to come or go
Until I find a way to enter and explore
Lands fit for adoration:

High plains
These sleek plateaus of cheek
And sunny forehead;
A favored, finely flavored ground
For honeyed kisses to be planted.
Rich hills –
Rounded, smooth, ecstatic places,
Lush plenitude of tender graces;
And tenderer yet
Twin buds of pouting lip I know would blossom
Kissed apart, would warmly swell –
With each soft center seized, caressed
Sweet grottoes sacred to the seeker’s press.

Trapped
Revealed
Undressed
In the widening spell of your eyes
Obsessed
Least free when we are free of you,
Diana knows herself a goddess
Made to rule man’s clay;
And like a dog beneath a glowing land
Too far away
We howl as if in chains when least encumbered by her.

O come
Encumber;
Come to me
Diana.
Bring you your different earth,
Your lovelier clay
New heaven
Closer.
Mere man
I have to fall
For you;
Must speak, must touch, hold fast;
And take the shaken, shuddered vow of

I adore, I give, I love;
Hold back
No longer
Any living thing –

That helpless cry, the darkest oath,
Man’s heart and loins
Wrested from him by the gentle sex,
Garnered with the groan that blindly joins.

A conquered conqueror,
I take you and submit
Spent
On bended knee;
The mastery of mistresses acknowledged.



Copyright Paul Martin 1987, all rights reserved

What Is Love? A Dog’s Reply

Love is a human experience held in spiritual and religious high regard. So is it a bad thing if it turns out animals can love?

Something tells me that people who find the theory of evolution lacking wouldn’t like the idea. My sense is that the root of today’s questioning of evolution is something emotional that isn’t just a passion for good science. I haven’t really figured out what it is. Possibly it has something to do with discomfort over the way evolution puts us on a continuum with the animal world.

Lady, the dog we had from the time I was ten through my senior year of college, is the animal that convinced me that at least some animals can in fact experience love.

I was eighteen. It was winter break, and we’d just driven back from Boston’s Logan Airport so I could spend vacation at home. We entered the kitchen. My sister and mother had started taking off their coats and I was straightening up from setting down my bags when I heard Lady come prancing down the stairs.

She stopped at the threshold to the kitchen for three or four full seconds, just staring at me. “Lady!” I said happily.

There ensued a performance the likes of which none of us had ever seen performed by a dog, or for that matter, any other creature. By the way, I should mention that Lady was my Mom’s dog. It had always been clear Mom was her favorite in the family. But that day I found out she didn’t think I was so bad either.

The dog ran toward me, ran to the other end of the house, and then ran back toward me again, skidding over the linoleum to a stop at my feet. Lady, an eight year old whippet (miniature greyhound) then rocketed upstairs again.

We all started to look at each other, but the dog was only gone for a moment. She flew back downstairs, ran over to me again, and dashed to a sudden stop in the middle of the dining room, where she performed a series of tight three hundred and eighty degree turns sitting on her bottom. It turns out Lady could break-dance and we never knew it.

Variations on these themes were repeated until Lady had dashed up and down stairs several times and run all over the house about as fast as a dog can do. From everything we were seeing, something like Taichovsky’s Eighteen Twelve Overture was going off in her brain.

Either the dog was putting on a really good act, or she’d been quietly going through something like “the stages of grief” while nobody knew. In her whole life, I’d never been away more than a couple weeks. Suddenly I was gone. She’d had no way of knowing I was coming back.

She couldn’t talk. And I can’t imagine what a whippet confined to a house could do to more largely and eloquently say how much she felt.

More Commonalities in Experience than Belief?

Comments to the “Experientialism?” post by Emily Jane and Mary Beth, bring a couple things to mind.

First, so far there’s unanimous agreement in reply to Matthew. Matthew raises the question of whether anything is to be gained by religious/spiritual discussion among people who have different views over what constitutes compelling grounds for belief.

Mary Beth brings up the idea of discussion as a cooperative “exploration” instead of having the focus be on proving oneself right. She sees this sort of discussion as sometimes leading to spiritual insight and growth.

Emily Jane raises the question: What is love? Once it’s disentangled from a lot of the stuff that people often entangle it with, I'd say it’s an important form of religious/spiritual experience.

Which makes me want to add:

To me, Matthew’s question reflects the fact that although it can be informative and helpful to exchange ideas about beliefs, it’s hard to finally expect agreement with people who have come to different belief-conclusions. The model for how people arrive at their beliefs that was recently suggested by Life of Bryan may help point to why. Often we inherit our religious beliefs culturally. Whether, for example, we are Christians, Jews, or Muslims, probably has a lot to do with who our parents are, and where we are from.

This is one reason that although I am interested in both religious belief and experience, the domain of experience appears to me to hold more opportunity for recognizing common ground. I’ve referred in previous posts to the contemplative (meditative) practices found across traditions, and to the qualitative similarites among the experiences which these practices foster.

The gist is often a sense of being “one with the universe,” or “one with God.” (Many of us have had at least a taste of this in, “one with nature” experiences.) The oneness of these experiences has a lot to do with their characteristic “ineffability.” Words make distinctions – you might say that’s the business they're in – while the crux of this important, and even central kind of religious experience, is the absence of distinctions.

Many people think first of “visions and voices” when it comes to religious experience. Yet the great Christian mystics, even when they’ve had such experiences – I’m thinking of St. Theresa, and St. John of the Cross – seemed to put less stock in them than in their experiences of oneness. As I recall, one or both of them even tended to suspect the visions/voices often as not come from Satan!

My take on this is that the more colorful experiences may often have more to say about psychology than spirituality.

Until tomorrow

Computer crashed, have most stuff back, but it's late and I will pick up again tomorrow...

Paul

“Experientialism?” and: Grounds for Belief

“Religious Experientialism?”

Commenting to yesterday’s June 3 post, Mathew asks for clarification on my perspective. Referring to my line,

Though we may not fully know the meaning of life, we may fully live it,

Matthew asks if I might not actually have meant: To fully live life is to know its meaning.

That’s only what I mean if by the word, “know,” you refer to knowledge in the sense of immediate experience – as distinct from rational explanation or intellectual knowledge. I would also want to add the major qualifier that this immediate and experiential knowledge that can impart meaning to our lives, at least as far as I’ve been able to apprehend it, isn’t anything like complete knowledge, or, The Knowledge of Life’s Meaning.

Instead, what I’ve found to be true is that it’s possible to come to know certain things that might be described as occurring at the interface of our own being with God’s. Of course I’m not being especially clear, but there’s just so much you can do on a blog post…

As far as whether I think of myself as an existentialist, I don’t, but I can see why that would cross your mind, given my emphasis on experience. I can think of at least two big reasons for not placing myself in that category. I should add that these are based on impressions I have of existentialism without ever having studied it – I just read a couple things by Camus and Sartre a long time ago.

It’s my impression that:

Existentialists are ultimately pessimistic, in contrast to my own faith perspective.

Existentialists deny absolute truths. I think they belong to the broader category of “humanist.” I affirm certain absolutes while acknowledging my inability to comprehend what faith tells me may be their full implications. My outlook is definitely “spiritual” - I would want to say, “religious” - and not humanist.

Maybe I’m a “religious experientialist,” but this seems like a mouthful, plus we haven’t formed a society yet…

Particular Beliefs and Grounds for Belief

Matthew then looks further into the topic of belief:

“An existentialist, an empiricist and a rationalist walk into a bar. Can they have any meaningful discussion about belief beyond its proper grounds?"

"In other words: is it useful to discuss particular beliefs with a person if you don't agree on the proper grounds for belief?”

{I should say that, after typing the two paragraphs below, I saw Mbaines’ reply to Matt on yesterday’s post. I think I like his remark on this point better than mine. People may want to have a look…}

With those three particular examples, wouldn’t they have quite a bit in common in what they see as adequate grounds for belief? Or, if there’s a punch line, that could be interesting! But I think your larger question is: When people disagree over what they see as adequate grounds for belief, isn’t that going to muddle-up any attempt at discussing their particular beliefs?

Seems that way to me. Therefore I would think that any prolonged discussion by people who are genuinely interested in each other’s differing perspectives on religion and spirituality, would probably get down to grounds for belief at some point. Even if they still found they disagreed, they would have a better understanding of why. And there’s always the chance that they would find their own perspectives refined or modified in some way.

Belief: A Paradigm. Experience: A Metaphor

Good comments to June 1 and 2 posts include Grumblefish and Joseph Campbell, brought to us by Emilyjane, discussing understanding Jesus as divine, vs. understanding him as a great human teacher comparable to Buddha.


Belief-Paradigm


Life of Bryan offers a possible way of understanding how believers come to believe in a “God-entity,” or God as Creator and Other. To paraphrase his comment:

First, we become aware of the concept of God, usually via inherited tradition. LB states that in the absence of this, we may be led to the idea of God by the desire to be “filled with something bigger than {ourselves}.”

I’d just add my two cents to say I think these two would usually fit together rather than exist as alternate routes – i.e., awareness of the concept of God would correspond well with an existing desire for connection with something greater than ourselves.

LB then posits a role for experience in personally validating the idea of God for us. It is this personal validation which produces belief. He mentions that there is a degree of subjectivity involved.

To me, this sounds like a compelling model for belief. Belief arises through a process of making connections from inherited tradition to our personal experience.

I’ll add that we can also approach matters through a route that is more directly experiential:


Experience Metaphor (from intro to my unpublished book manuscript)

We often approach the issue of meaning in life by looking for a reason to live, when real meaning resides in the experience of our love, its purpose, and the self-transcendent identity to which it calls us. A meaning to life is not some series of patches we apply to holes in a fragile raft of reasons by which we can somehow hope to float over the sheer mystery of being here to live and die. Meaning in life is learning how to swim and how water feels against the skin. It is feeling what it’s like to go with the flow and what it’s like to struggle against strong currents, tiring. It is knowing water as our own element: from out of which we were born, into which we can live, and into which we are to die wonderingly. Though we may not fully know the meaning of life, we may fully live it.

Orientations Toward What Matters

Taking your three most recent comments - to the May 10 and June 1 posts - we have three interesting ideas. The two basic topics I’ve proposed are:

What do we think of as “God,” which we should probably broaden to include: what do we consider to be of utmost spiritual importance; and,

What, in terms of belief or experience, is the basis for our orientation toward God - or toward what we find most meaningful in life?

G-Fish, whose comments are best read for themselves because my paraphrases severely constrain them, I think is making the following central point with regard to the idea of any sort of absolute revelation: How would you absolutely know that you knew?

Mary Beth’s comment refers to the wholeness and mystery of all things; to love; and to the importance of trying to proceed further in the way of love. These are matters that I find central as well. Regarding love, this would have to be among the top candidates for something that all religions find important and that crosses readily into the experiential domain of nonbelievers as well. Of course there’s considerable confusion around exactly what love is and means.

Andy’s prior comment indicated his belief in Jesus as uniquely one with God, and in Jesus' status as a person in the Holy Trinity. Andy’s new comment finds some common ground with diverging points of view, then goes on: “I am not a conservative evangelical Christian, by which I mean I don't think I know the answer to everything.” I have two reactions:

First, it’s always great to find someone with traditional beliefs who fully respects the views of others and can engage them in conversation about religious matters. Second, something in my mind went, Bingo!

It never occurred to me before. Maybe ultra-conservative Christians are distinguished by their style at least as much as by their substance. No matter how conservative a person’s belief system is, if they can discuss religious/spiritual matters without a subtext of, “And I know I’m right and you’re wrong,” and without the often added implication of, “And so you’re going to hell” – well, it just gives a completely different impression, and introduces possibilities for mutual listening and hearing that otherwise don’t exist.

I have to say that in so far as you can “meet” people through virtual contact, I really like the people who have been posting comments. A great group of sincere people with somewhat varied outlooks and a common interest.

Experience, Consciousness, and Jesus

Yesterday’s “Experience of God” post started to consider experience, along with belief, in relation to how we orient ourselves toward various conceptualizations of God - such as the three concepts sketched in the May 30 “Belief in God…” post. Yesterday’s post concluded:

"In any case, it’s safe to say that religion is rooted in experience. While the institutional Christian church has emphasized the beliefs and rituals that it has elaborated around Jesus Christ, Jesus himself was not raised Christian! He came to experience and understand something for himself."

What I had in mind here was my assumption that the founders of every world religion, being human, would have come to their understanding of God or spiritual truth by way of intense first-hand experiences. My thought was that it would have been these first-hand experiences and insights that led them to start what would become new traditions.

Here is an excerpt from Andy’s comment about this:

"Personally, I do believe He really was the Son of God, born of a virgin, and that in the Trinity He and God are One. So while I also believe that he was fully human, when it came to matters of the spirit I don't think He ever 'learned' anything, for in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. A time never existed when Jesus did not have full knowledge."

I have two reactions. First, I want to mention that belief in Jesus as being uniquely one with God is the Christian perspective on “God as Other” which I outlined in the May 30 post. And I continue to wonder, as I did there, what it is that makes this belief, or belief in other concepts of God, compelling to believers. People might want to comment in general terms if sharing their personal basis for belief is too – well, personal.

Second, as Andy mentions, a Christian understanding of Jesus as an incarnation of God still acknowledges Jesus’ full humanity. Here I would say that processes of growth and development, physical, mental, and spiritual, are quintessential aspects of being human. I can’t escape the idea of Jesus learning, developing, and undergoing some kind of experiential process – one that I would assume was passionate, intense, and contained elements of struggle – before he was ready for his ministry.

Although the New Testament offers no information concerning such formative processes in Jesus’ life, there are certainly scenes in which we find the adult Jesus engaged in what appears to be a process of struggle and reflection, as in praying in the garden prior to his crucifixion.

Another way of putting this would be in terms of growth in consciousness. I have trouble picturing Jesus as an infant, a twelve year old, and a thirty year old, being equally conscious of his identity and message.

So perhaps the idea is that in some metaphysical/theological/ultimate/unseen manner - one that allowed for his experiential growth and development in consciousness as a human being - Jesus is uniquely one with God.

But this does raise the question: Couldn't all of us be one with God in such a hidden sense? This leads back to Thomas’ perspective and the possibility of Jesus as someone who came to save us in the sense of helping to lead us toward consciousness of who we really are.