Experiments in Love's Journal (original) (raw)

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Below are the 14 most recent journal entries recorded inExperiments in Love's LiveJournal:

Thursday, June 2nd, 2005
_9:37 am_[radiantsun]	Succesful Relations of Famous Couples Hey Friends and people i don't know!I am working on a project, think of Famous Couples that were more or less successful in their relationship and a line or two (preferably funny) of why you thought their relationships worked out.For Example Adam and Eve: Because he gave so freely of himself. (But not She let him eat her apple)(X posted) (3 Comments \|Comment on this)
Thursday, December 4th, 2003
_11:34 am_[beitlamed]	Blunt Hm, okay, i'll be blunt here. Perhaps there will be some kind of learning process along the way.i only read a few of your postings, and i didn't really find a definition of what you mean by the term "Radical Love", so i can just assume.i think the concept of "Radical Love" is a 19th century stereotype of how love should be. In an ideal world, it would be the best thing of all. In reality, it only leads to pain and hurt and cruelty. i believe, the more foundation i have within me, the more i can love. So the necessary prerequisite for love of any kind is the honesty to know where i need security, firm walls outside myself. "Radical Love" might serve well as an ideal: Ideals are not there to be achieved. Ideals are outside of reality. Ideals are guiding stars. It's important to realize that we will never reach them.Nonetheless. i also think that if we do respect our own limits and do what we think we need to do in order to be "safe"... then suddenly the limits start to blur and melt away. i think the reason for this is that fear is love's greatest enemy - so if i can get rid of my fears in any way, i can love more.bl (9 Comments \|Comment on this)
Friday, October 31st, 2003
_12:57 pm_[dancingwaves]	Well, since I have the last five entries in here, let's make it six... Last time I posted, I asked what radical love means to you - I personally never answered, nor will I - I wonder if I really understand it.But, I realize that radical love must also extend to yourself. By this, I mean radical love is not just accepting someone, face value, and not questioning, not protecting your Self in some fashions...such as, not allowing yourself to be walked on, screwed over, or just ignored. That, to me, may be "radically loving" the other person, but how well can you love another if you let yourself be abused?Just some thoughts... (1 Comment \|Comment on this)
Monday, August 25th, 2003
_10:29 pm_[dancingwaves]	Question to pose What does loving someone radically mean to you? Current Mood: questioning (2 Comments \|Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 13th, 2003
_2:39 pm_[dancingwaves]	Another quote... I must be prepared also to explore entirely unfamiliar terrain: loving relationships among equals.Without illusion, lying, indirect communication, passive aggression, manipulation, self-sacrifice, projection, the need to control or rescue, persecution, codependency, dominance and subordination, what is intimacy, anyway? What does it feel like, look like, act like? How do we begin to connect with one another at the level of our essential selves? What are the rules for intimacy between and among self-loving, self-aware beings? We have no models, no guidelines, no environment of support. We must create them.--Kay Leigh Hagan, from Fugitive Information (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 12th, 2003
_11:10 pm_[dancingwaves]	Came across this quote as I was reading tonight...thought lovingly of this community.No movement has ever been more than an accumulation of small motions of people acting within their own spheres. In rearranging our lives, we participate in rearranging the life of society. - Marilyn French (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 3rd, 2003
_11:18 am_[dancingwaves]	"No details have been made public" I just heard on NPR that the military trials on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay will be beginning soon, with threats of the death penalty. I feel so out of the loop when it comes to current events; I am assuming that there will not be juries (or, even if there are, who can say they will be unbiased?) and I am concerned of the repercussions, of the way we are handling this. I always have had issues with this - I don't understand the death penalty, at all. And, after watching MS go through the internal demons when her father was killed - to see how it affected her, to wake with her in the middle of the night when the nightmares overtook her - and still, to know that she and her sister fought, tooth and nail, against the death penalty. What good would it have been? Make his family feel the same sort of pain that she and L went through? That's just silly and painful. Her family, on the other hand, didn't understand. Couldn't. They couldn't see past their own pain...the blinding pain and hatred that the boys' actions caused...Knowing that MS and her sister had such a love - this, for me, began even thinking about radical love might mean... Current Mood: concerned (1 Comment \|Comment on this)
Saturday, August 2nd, 2003
_8:08 pm_[dancingwaves]	( Our Deliverance - Indigo Girls Collapse )I heard this today as I was driving to work, and thought of this community. (3 Comments \|Comment on this)
Friday, August 1st, 2003
_1:32 pm_[bippus1]	Principles of Interbeing One of the things that feels so central to me to my own personal belief in love is the understanding that everything in the world is related, and that in order to contribute to my own well-being, I must contribute to the well-being of everyone. As long as one person is going hungry, the entire world is hurting. Stuff like that. It has become a very integral part of my system of thought. I never knew a good word for what I was talking about, but a book I was reading gave me the term Interbeing.I finished Peace Is Every Step this morning as well, and at the end, the book enumerates fourteen principles of Interbeing, deriving from the understanding that all life is one with each other, that we are not seperate, our fortunes and attributes are all bound up together, beautiful principles that I find I have been trying to follow for months now, but it is good to see them written out so neatly and compactly. This will take a bit of typing, but...( Here are the principles...Collapse ) (1 Comment \|Comment on this)
Thursday, July 31st, 2003
_7:23 pm_[bippus1]	Hmm... I don't know why the community isn't growing. I also don't know why nobody else has posted. Is this something that most people just don't have much to say about? Or is it because nobody has really broken the ice? Any ideas? (2 Comments \|Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2003
_5:11 pm_[bippus1]	The thinkers who were heroes... Radical love... what is it? I think the closest way to describing it, or the form it takes in actions is "returning love for hate." There are all sorts -- "returning honesty for deception", "returning compassion for coldness," "returning acceptance for fear," "returning understanding for closed-mindedness"... and all seem based on the idea that we should increase the amount of love, acceptance, trust, honesty, etc. -- that is our most important job on earth. In my mind, it takes the form of a force called Love, or agape, that we increase with every positive action, and decrease with every negative action. With others, it's a god. But its the idea that living the right life is the most important thing about love, perhaps even more important than life itself. Maybe Love, in its many, many forms, is all that matters in life? I wonder about this sometimes. And it might make sense, because I believe happiness comes from acceptance, intrinsically valuing, and I think wonder and amazement and joy and beauty come from it too.There have definitely been thinkers in the past who have embraced a similar vision. The ones that come first to my mind are Gandhi, Jesus, the present Dalai Lama, and Martin Luther King. Concepts of satyagraha, civil disobedience, turning the other cheek, losing one's life to save it, nourishing and poisoning the soul, all of these combine with and swirl around the concept of radical love, I think. I'm sure there are more thinkers, but none off the top of my head who have made such a central feature of it in their lives. (3 Comments \|Comment on this)
Saturday, July 19th, 2003
_12:51 am_[bippus1]	Dar and Inner Strength I post a lot of stuff on my personal journal that I don't want to double-post here. However, this is another wonderful song that fills me up and reminds me that uncertainty is an okay way to go, and there is still value in every one of us. I especially like the last verse. "You'd wish for them a humble friend." Friends go so far to making us feel whole, because I think possibly the most important feeling to every human being is to feel accepted and valued -- to feel loved. That may be our greatest source of strength.( Mercy of the Fallen, by Dar Williams Collapse ) (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 17th, 2003
_2:19 am_[bippus1]	Alanis and Unconditional Love I heard this song when I was driving a friend up to Rhode Island, and it just captured me. I had been thinking about Love and unconditional love for the last few months, and then this song -- it captures the essence of it. It's very direct, not subtle like many beautiful, amazing songs. But because it's so direct, I could hear and speak the words inside my head, and they made so much sense. It's all about unconditional love. My favorite line? "It's the only kind of love, as I understand it, that there really is." smiles ( You Owe Me Nothing In Return -- Alanis Morissette Collapse ) (3 Comments \|Comment on this)
_2:05 am_[bippus1]	Initiation? So I've been trying to expand my love for the last few months, and doing it pretty intensely. It can be hard... sometimes, too, it just frustrating, and it's very often pretty scary. Being honest about the things nobody ever hears, about little fears that you think are going to be laughed at or just invalidated... it's really frightening, and always harder than I expect it to be. To open myself to someone else and say "this is me"... they can always say "I don't like that." I've even had that occasionally. For me, though, what brings me through is knowing that I have this inner core of humanity, of love, something that is incredibly worthy of value -- and if someone doesn't accept me, well... that's their problem. I wish they would. And in turn, I try to accept everyone. The old elitist rumblings in my brain often step in and say "that's not worthy of your attention" or "that person is acting so wrong," and I dislike him or her. Amazingly, though, more often it has been accepting. Saying "that is not me, but I see that it is you, and I accept that." Which is another way of saying "I love you." In my mind, at least. smilesSorry, it's really late at night, and I'm not terribly coherent, but I wanted to get this up and running today. I really hope this goes through... I really hope this place thrives. There is so much that is amazing about the world, and so much that is amazing about a community of people who are committed to saying "I love you, no matter who you are, no matter what you are -- you are supported and accepted and loved." This is part of my hopes. A place like this has been my greatest desire for months, and I hope it thrives. smiles This is me. I'm John, and here you are seeing my greatest hope put into action. I hope to post frequently, but even more than that, I want to see what others bring -- it will make me very happy. (4 Comments \|Comment on this)