The Ego cannot Love.
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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.
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@Alrah said
"Love makes the ego unyielding to appropriate change?"
So much fun. More clearly:
Some people's idea of Love (which ends up being a selfish sentimentality), ends up being a device of the ego (could it be?
), masquerading as something higher, sometimes leading to problems.Belief, in anything, can cause us to erect one tower and never destroy it. Clinging to our own mental constructs without ever bothering to ask ourselves why we believe it. This can stunt growth. Concepts are limiting, but the ego-identity loves them. Gives it something to cling to.
Look at the Christians. That was my point.
So many things on this planet are done in the name of "Love", including passivity and imbalance in benevolence. Unfortunately, "Love" has become a buzzword.
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@Alrah said
""By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'non-existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one." - [Kaccāyanagotta Sutta] "
All poles have shifted. A word exits the Buddha's mouth, and immediately his followers set it in stone. But that Buddha is dead, and the world is changed, and the entirety of our current preconceptions have little to do with what was once "Truth."
There is No-Self (the destruction of the illusion of self, an act in itself No-Thing, has no polarity, beginning, end, whatever. It simply precludes the Union of that which is Many with the One. The snake eats its tail, but the tail is not conscious of itself as such.)
Nothing need be lost or gained. There is no Ego to love. The idea of Self is the basis of Sheol. That which we call the ego is simply a facet of Divnity, which in itself is not limited to conception, time, or space. Thus there "is no ego." But this is the view of one who "knoweth God." The un-initiate, the man on the street--he suffers from the idea that he is different from other people. In reality were are all simply minute factors in a grand coalescence of Id, and that, Null. Hence, joy.
Enough of this auto-erotic intellectual vacillation. Find thy Will and Do That.
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@JPF said
"Enough of this auto-erotic intellectual vacillation."
But whatever would we do with the discussion board?
@JPF said
"Find thy Will and Do That."
I couldn't agree more. Practice makes perfect.
"And Adonai said: The strong brown reaper swept his swathe and rejoiced. The wise man counted his muscles, and pondered, and understood not, and was sad. Reap thou, and rejoice!"
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[quote="Alrah"}
Would you expand on this please?
"Have you ever put a needle in your vein and injected heroin?
Caressing the needle as you become excited at the thought...
that sharp stick felt as it first punctures your skin.
Sinking it deeper, steel disappearing,
you apply a slow,
gentle,
pressure: injecting your Lord directly into your veins.
Holy! Holy! The Lord has Risen!I am guess I am really a junkie that can not be saved.
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@Uni_Verse said
"
@Alrah said
"
Would you expand on this please?
"Have you ever put a needle in your vein and injected heroin?
Caressing the needle as you become excited at the thought...
that sharp stick felt as it first punctures your skin.
Sinking it deeper, steel disappearing,
you apply a slow,
gentle,
pressure: injecting your Lord directly into your veins.
Holy! Holy! The Lord has Risen!I am guess I am really a junkie that can not be saved."
I recently saw--watched!--a deep dear friend smoke himself into oblivion and destroy his life before my eyes, and I'm...well. I don't want too say to much, but I know this: if you've never felt the touch of H before, and loved her, you will never know what it is to fight that inner battle.
I hope you win my friend. Myself? The battle is really half the fun, isn't it? I recently finshed reading "Junky" (while I took on a junky at my pad and watching him smoke his life away.) A good book. But nothing close to the truth of addiction and withdrawal.
I think the Thelemic Orders should proscribe a Heroin ordeal, wherein one needeth become addicted--and conquer the urge. Separates the boys from the men--that's for sure! Might I remind us that our Prophet was a longtime adherent...
My Brother, may we conquer that which seeks to destroy us. I have no qualms. As I said: it's in the battle we find joy.
Edit@ Universe: Relapse? You either conquer or you don't. There is no relapse. This is spoken by someone who just kicked a 3 month morphine habit (1-200mgs a day), and let his "junky" friend live with him while he kicked--cold turkey, three weeks, and two bupes. Nothing--and got high in front of me every day. You have to conquer. The point at which you can take Heroin--and laugh at it, enjoy the withdrawals. Smoke it again and get withdrawals just to conquer them again--and then transcend every such bodily sensation, and overcome. Like LSD: the weak fall by the wayside.
(Btw, a lot of that last paragraph won't make sense to someone who hasn't been into dope. Read Burroughs.)
Read Liber AL.
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What can I say? Here, deep in a tequila binge (which I've been co-ordinating with a study of Ritual Consecration, a noble mixture only you could appreciate, tippler thou.
)--here, I happen to be waxing poetic, at three in the morning. Is that my fault?The Heroin eperience is something very, very painful. I spoke those words to whoever it is (I'm bad with names) out of the deepest sympathy. If it's my fault I sound so damn poetic, it's probably your fault, muse.
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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."
Agreed in that Love cannot derive from Ego.
Though I believe Egoists are capable of love. -
LOVE is simply evocation or perhaps inhabitation. The Ego would view it more as a tool of manipulation to accomplish social objectives?