The Ego cannot Love.
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@Alrah said
"93,
Throwing this one in for debate: the ego cannot love, feels no love, is not capable of love and does not have the equipement to love.
Love is something engendered elsewhere, but when ego proclaimes 'I love you', it is a lie of manipulation, or a declaration to satisfy a social convention. It is something to be expected to say. But the ego does not love.
Any arguments to the contrary?
Love is the Law. Love under Will."
Why single out love?
Can the mouth open to speak at all without either the attempt to control or to conform? Those accusations seem apply to the act of communication itself.
One might just as easily say, "When ego proclaims, 'I hate you,' it is a lie of manipulation, or a declaration to satisfy a social convention."
You thoughts?
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@Alrah said
"the ego cannot love, feels no love, is not capable of love and does not have the equipement to love"
whoa...
Well done. And well said. Alrah, you may have tapped into something beyond the ken of most folk 'round these here parts (planet earth).
True Love only issues from the Eternal Realms well beyond ego.
But given the limitations of language... Love, love, luv... hippie L_U_V, puppy love.... This could be a more than difficult subject.
Children require a form of love in order to grow the same as they need food and sustenance. Grown ups are expected to know how to give Love. But of course, many can't quite manage it. Not even for themselves, not to mention those who depend on them....
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I tend to think that only the ego can experience Love, because it is the only one that can seperate itself (with a lot of help of all kinds of trouble) from the jigsaw pieces - in your terms.
If the Puzzler realizes that they are indeed seperate from their jigsaw puzzles and from anybody else's, and that they are in control of which piece of the jigsaw to connect to which other piece, then they are free to consciously connect the pieces according to their will.
In my humble opinion, that would be Love. The actual free and conscious choice to connect and unite. -
Alrah, 93
"But it's only when the Puzzler isn't playing with the pieces and dissapears, such as in sexual union, or in certain psychological states, that Love can really be experienced, although Love as a piece in the Puzzlers Jigsaw and is recognised as being omnipresently 'there'. In that sense, the Puzzler does not experience Love but recognises Love as a foundational piece of their being. "
I've read this several times, and I can only see that you've confirmed JAE's point. For a thing to be experienced, there has to be an entity, however ill-defined, to experience it. To experience love is to love. Love isn't a painting in a gallery.
Your original question involved a verb: "The ego cannot love." But only the ego has the experience of love.
I agree with you that love is 'there'. Since an experience in my early 20s, I've accepted that love constitutes the matrix or fundamental substratum of the Universe. But for anything to occur beyond the fact of love existing, an ego has to act in some way. Or interact.93 93/93,
Edward
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Alrah, 93,
Again - 'experience' is a verb. A verb has a subject, and usually, an object too.
"Isn't the existance of Love enough? Love radically transforms the picture, alters all the puzzle pieces it comes into contact with. It is Sunshine. Why must the Ego try and co-opt it when it arises? That sounds more like Ego attachment than Love."
Is it co-opting? This word 'ego' is a tricky one. Most Hermetic traditions differentiate between 'mundane ego' and (capital E) Ego. (Both Dion Fortune and Paul Case wrote a fair bit on this). There's this greedy scavenger, the Jigsaw Puzzler as you call it, and there is Selfhood - the Hadit-based perspective that undergoes all the experiencing. There has to be a Hadit to dissolve into Nuit, or we just have a static, crypto-Buddhist bowl of miso broth without the bits of tofu, not love. "There is that which remains," as Aiwass said, to Crowley's disgust.
We both agree love transforms - it extends, reaches out, embraces, accepts and enfolds. It needs (or at least eternally seeks) an object, even if that object is simply going to be beholding it. To behold love is to be affected by love, and to be affected by love is, in turn, to love.
There have been a couple of threads here about Love under will, and the need for love to be guided, received, expressed, according to Will. This seems to be to be the crux of Thelema's difference from (most) Buddhism. It accepts and glories in the phenomenon of individualized beingness - in all these Hadits that are doing their various Hadit-ings.
"The ego is a dynamic process, not an archetype, and although (as in my Puzzler) it may be thought of and defined as a static form, conversed of and refered to as such, this is not the truth of the matter, is it? How then, does a dynamic function who's sole purpose is to organise and make sense of the world, 'Love'?"
I agree the mundane ego is a dynamic process. And it will try to make sense (or self-serving lies) out of the world, including its experience of love. But each being still is a Hadit, a point of view from or through which proceeds a True Will. That point of view+Will can, through initiation and constant practice, refine itself to the point it ceases to grab relentlessly onto experiences to justify or preserve itself. But I can't see that it ever disappears entirely, at least in incarnate beings.
If it could, we'd be back to a boring Buddhist broth, waiting for a new Universe to start.
93 93/93,
Edward
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I held off on this point to see how the thread would progress, but now is the time to mention it: We've been approaching the question without defining "love." I suspect most of the disagreement comes from that.
Qabalah points out that the Hebrew words for "unity" and "love" have the same numerical value. Love is unity. In popular culture, there is a definition of "love" as "The will of two to become one." I'd tweak that to say the experience of their doing so, In any case, the essential idea requires (apparently) separated, distinguished beings as a starting point. Therefore, only that faculty which perceives itself as separate, distinct, isolated from the whole can have the experience of exceeding that.
Another definition of "love" would, of course, lead to its own conclusion.
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Well, it's begining to sound like you're starting to argue the limitations of words to describe certain experiences while at the same time asking people to attempt to do so.
How would you personally define or describe the Love on the level which you are speaking...? You've said what it is not. Can you say what it is?
Where would you like the thread to go?
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@Alrah said
"Love is something engendered elsewhere, but when ego proclaimes 'I love you', it is a lie of manipulation, or a declaration to satisfy a social convention. It is something to be expected to say. But the ego does not love."
If, "when ego proclaimes 'I love you', it is a lie of manipulation"...
what is it that wants to hear the words, "I love you"?
?
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I am in disagreement with the position that you shared in this topic. I'm wondering if it represents your personal opinion, or you had read it somewhere and decided to discuss it here. I believe in the old saying: “If thou wilt to love thy neighbour, thou must love thyself.” The same rule also applies to honour. I can't see how anybody can love or honour another being without first loving and honouring oneself. I see Thelema as a selfish religion—selfish in the good way. Aleister Crowley too was a firm believer in the ego, and I wholly agree with his position on the subject.
Crowley talks about his position on «amour de soi» in Chapter XLVI of Magick without Tears: Selfishness.
hermetic.com/crowley/magick-without-tears/mwt_46.htmlI also really like the way Osho puts it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LfUvi1bof8 -
@Mortimer Lanin said
"I see Thelema as a selfish religion—selfish in the good way."
@Alrah said
"In what manner do you find selfishness to be good?"
Allow me to butt in, but that question requires at least a book's worth of your time to consider, so here's the book and I hope you have the time.
www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_nonfiction_the_virtue_of_selfishness
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The original question, or challenge, had to do with whether or not the ego could be said to love - if held to the highest and strictest definitions of love.
But, I wanted to throw out some practical level stuff, namely, what are the ways in which the ego finds itself experiencing love? And what does that mean?
It reminds me of a lot of really good stuff about the various levels on which people can connect and how this may evolve over time found in Dion Fortune's www.amazon.com/Esoteric-Philosophy-Love-Marriage/dp/1578631580.
But I think you'd probably find it really interesting to read in light of the idea that love can seem to come and go depending on the development of various levels of mind - and therefore possibility of interconnection. I'm sure you'll find her a bit Puritanical regarding sexuality, but the chapters on the levels of mind, interconnection and attraction make it worth the read.
You might find this tack a little off topic, but the thought came to me, and I wanted to see if you'd read it, given your general musings on love and attachment.
93
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@Alrah said
"If you love yourself, does it also automatically follow that you hold yourself in high regard?"
I assume that it's natural to hold things that you love in high regard. “We call ‘good’ that which we like, ‘evil’ that which we don't.” We love that which we want, and we hold that which we want in high regard. It makes perfect sense to me.
@Alrah said
"If you love your neighbour does it follow that you hold them in high regard too?"
…Nevertheless, it's different with animate things than inanimate ones. One acknowledges that other living beings have feelings, too; non-living ones don't. When you love something, you want the thing for yourself; when you love someone, you want the thing for hir. That's when the idea of altruism comes in. For instance, you saw a homeless person—a blind one, to make it worse—and you're unlikely to hold hir in high regard, but hir pitiful position is likely to trigger compassion in you, and that's an expression of love..
@Alrah said
"In what manner do you find selfishness to be good?"
I'll try now to compare the selfish person with the selfless one.
The selfless person has zero self-esteem. The selfless person loves not hirself. Not loving oneself, one cannot love anything, for the self is everything. The selfless person cannot even let another person love hir because of foolishly thinking to hirself, “I am unworthy of being loved”—not a healthy way to look on life. A real relationship cannot exist within such limits and is bind to lead nowhere. The person is left to hate oneself alone, not knowing what one wants, indeterminately shaking from east to west.
Now the selfish person is an entirely different chapter in the book. The person has a stronger ability to contribute to oneself as well as to others. Whereas the selfless one creeps in the dark with unfounded fear and guilt, the selfish one bravely walks in with an open heart and a broad mind. Unlike the former, the later is firm, stable, confident in hirself, knows hir desires and can decide for hirself. Whilst selfishness results in self-love, there is no guarantee that the selfish one will choose to love others but, unlike the selfless one, at least has the ability to.
@Alrah said
"It's very difficult for anyone to not believe in the ego. It appears to be so evidently 'there', doesn't it? Except when you're asleep of course..."
I did not express myself specifically and lucidly enough when saying, “a firm believer in the ego”. All I meant to say was that Crowley believed that we ought to be selfish, nothing more. The rest depends on your definition of the phrase.
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How about: "Without the ego, the human organism would lack a framework upon which to experience love in the first place."
The idea of the ego as something that must me subverted or destroyed is a very common psychological misconception. The ego is a crucial aspect of a human's pyschic makeup: without a sense of self, we might as well be amorphous blobs.
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If the ego or Ego can not love then what can?
The ego (Ego) is just a much a part of everything as everything is a part of it.
I would say it experiences love in its own limited fashion, which on other levels may seem false.As for a definition of Love: the dissolution of any difference between one thing and any other thing.
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@Alrah said
"I don't think the Buddhists seek to subvert or destroy the ego by asserting that ultimately there is no Self. The two truths allow for an ultimate or absolute truth and a relative conventional truth."
Well, there isn't really any self to destroy, is there? The ego is merely a construct by which we relate our existence to other beings, but of itself it is nothing. Rather than destroy, one should seek to incorporate the "Self" into the plane of other selves so that each being might operate according to its true nature. That is the meaning of "Do What Thou Wilt."
(I think Froclown would have some very interesting, arguable things to say on this topic.
Where is that guy?) -
It isn't the function of the ego to b/gin w. The ego recognizes/fears it is alone and will b/alone and is missing something unless it learns to co-exsist and cannot always have it's own way.This is what the alchemical marriage is all about. 'Love is the law. Love "under" will.' True love and total ego can not co-exist.
Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
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-Carl Jung.
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The ego cannot Love:
If we define it, state it, and believe it. Yes.
"We" can definitely be products of our beliefs, instead of making our beliefs into beneficial products. If we define our ego-identity and include it's beliefs, I'm sure it can be made to follow whatever concepts we want to assign to it.
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I agree Alrah. Thankfully the ego can experience.
Again: Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.- -Carl Jung.
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@Alrah said
"dispite any type of intellectual noodling whatsoever"
Intellectually noodling includes trying to define the subjective experience of anything. This includes Love.
EDIT:
My point is that we can often be pigeonholed into believing concepts - even things about this "MYSTICAL LOVE" - that can affect our ego to the point of it being unyielding to appropriate change. Change is Stability applies to anyone's label of this UNDEFINEABLE, UNYIELDING (but often fruity, misinterpreted stink that people call) Love. But I understand your point, thankfully.