Deep Spirits

Dermot, When you say, "I think it has to be found inside before we have a chance of finding and staying with it 'outside'" you say so much of the points of what I wrote.

As you say, we have to first find it inside, and that was part of my wondering as far as each person has had different experiences to define love. I agree, we have to find it inside. But part of the problem is no one else can love you until you love yourself because until one sees himself worthy of love, he will never accept the love of another. There are simply so many aspects to and definitions of love that I find it fascinating to try to define it, to search for something in it that all will see as love, or to ask if that even exists.

[size=140]On finding it inside...[/size]

What if you think you found it inside, and are happy to finally have found "love",... that grand "thing" that everyone is talking about, poets have written about and philosophers have contemplated on, but in actuality what you have found is not love at all?

What if you were so eager to find and discover love that when you found something that roughly fit the description you immediately labeled it love, when it really wasn't?

Or was it?
Is anything that one labels as "love" automatically love? Is the label enough to make it that?

I guess Sabina that if you identify a feeling as love inside......thats what it is, might be slightly different to what someone else feels and therefore calls love, but its yours and it might change, deepen, or you might ignore it for a while. ?

Certainly. But consider this.
If you have misidentified love at the very beginning (when you first identified it as "love"), then this deepening and changing that occurs with further and new experiences will all be based on this misidentified love.

Not to mention, it will also have a large impact on the nature of these new experiences, and therefore the new experiences may simply be extensions or continuations, as well as repetitions or variations of the old experiences.

What you are asking me to consider.......is the idea that someone, an ordinary Joe could mistake 'the feeling' love, for something else, and add further to his initial misconception without turning back to look at his mistake?

Seems more likely the growing and maturing process would inevitably lead him to the real meaning of whatever it was he was feeling.....or hes got a deeper problem?

Could someone who is not a pathological liar not understand that he is lying?

It can be much more simple than that. Here is an illustration of what I am trying to say.

A boy is raised in a fairly good home. His parents love each other as far as he knows. Their life is calm and steady, no excitement. Everything is ok, he has no reason to really question it, to ask himself "Is this love?"
He has been taught that it is and he accepts it. There is no huge conflict to point out any underlying problem.
The above is this boy's starting point for love. For him, love is not life's great answer to any question. It is not mysterious nor mystical. It doesn't make us feel like we are hovering instead of walking.
For him, love is steadiness...
So if he watches a movie, for example, a love romance, he may enjoy it or not, but chances are he will classify it as a fairy-tale. It is nice, we can maybe even learn something from it, but that is not how life is.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

[quote="dermot"]What you are asking me to consider.......is the idea that someone, an ordinary Joe could mistake 'the feeling' love, for something else, and add further to his initial misconception without turning back to look at his mistake?

Seems more likely the growing and maturing process would inevitably lead him to the real meaning of whatever it was he was feeling.....or hes got a deeper problem?

Could someone who is not a pathological liar not understand that he is lying?