February 5, 2006

Samuel: Well, greetings, dears.

Greetings, Samuel.

S: Nice group. Nice group. So how are you?

Good.

S: Good. Great. Good. Great works. That works.

Groovy.

S: Again.

Groovy.

S: Good, great and groovy.

Well, I’ve been kind of puny.

S: Groovy. Is that a bad thing?

Being puny? You know, just the allergies. I’ve held on to them since Christmas time.

S: Aye, well, as long as you’re going to be dealing with the weather doing what it is, your body’s not exactly going to know how to settle into it, and just as soon it adapts to it being warm, it gets cold for you. And just as soon as you adapt to getting cold, it gets warm on you, and the body gets confused. Not that you would know it, but there is a very strong tendency amongst humans that like things to be the same all the time, without so much of that—seasonal, for instance; back and forth, for instance; anything in life, for instance—change. So be well. More?

Tonight I’m going to talk about something that I’ve not spoken about in a very long time, and that’s because it’s time to do it. I’m going to talk tonight about love and relationships. And why am I going to do that?

Valentine’s Day.

S: Because it is the month of—depending on which particular story you want to pay attention to; my favorite one is, it’s the month of martyrs for love, because that’s the one that seems to be in the genetic makeup of so many people in this world, don’t you think? “I’m a martyr for love.”

Anybody got the story? Or any one of them? Who was Valentine?

I must be just wrong with the way I say this, but I believe in an area that was ruled by Rome, there was a church man named Valentine. And married young men didn’t get sent off to the army and off to war, and what was happening was young men were getting married and therefore they weren’t going off to Rome, off to the army, and Rome was therefore not getting their share . . .

S: They’ll always find a way, won’t they?

So the Roman government passed a law saying that it was illegal to marry people, and Saint Valentine continued marrying these young men to young women, and he was imprisoned and I believe executed for doing that. And so he became a martyr and was known as Saint Valentine.

S: And was killed by dozens of fat babies with wings and arrows, right? Maybe not. Maybe not. That’s what they look like, though, as if a cherub would actually look like that.

So that’s definitely one of them. And I think that I’ll go with that one, because it’s the one that seems to relate the best with how love is thought of in this society, and in societies for years and years.

Love is not recognized as much as a force—got to be careful with that one—a power, a force—not farce; force—all right, you’ve got that word—as much as an emotion. And there’s a problem with that. What’s the problem with that?

Emotions are usually based on your beliefs, and your beliefs aren’t always accurate.

S: Right. Right. And ultimately, right there in front, there’s the major argument right there. Your emotions are based on beliefs: what you grew up with, what you’ve learned out of your many, many years of relationship wisdom; the things that you have allowed yourself to build your life around, which is not necessarily very useful, not necessarily always truthful.

Now I have a quick question about that. If the emotion is not truthful, as I said, does that make it any less painful . . .

No.

S: . . . or happy?

No.

S: No. No, of course not.

It’s still a more reactionary a response and becomes something that’s more external to the self . . .

S: Good.

. . . than it is a distant internal sense.

S: And that’s well said. It’s a reactionary sort of response. It has to do with something triggered outside of you.

Frank and then Stuart. Did you have your hand up Stuart? All right.

I was going to say, with emotions we tend to often feel that we’re victims of emotion, or we are responding to emotions, whereas if we’re looking at love as a power, it’s something that we can wield and use for our good. And so therefore looking at it as a power rather than an emotion empowers us rather than weakens us.

S: I like that. That’s good.

I had a question about emotions being the signposts for beliefs, which you’ve taught. Can emotions also be a chemical response to the chemicals in the body, whether they’re induced by taking medications or alcohol, or recreational [drugs].

S: Yes and no, and here is what I mean by that: yes, it is because—we’ll make it something very simple. You’re hungry, and your body is putting out the signals in various ways that you are hungry. Well, very often, what does that mean?

Grumpy.

S: Grumpy perhaps. Short-tempered, perhaps. All of the things that would look to be an emotional state, and here is where the “no” comes in: It’s not really the chemicals creating that emotional state, which is what you were sort of implying, but the chemicals are the foundation from which the emotion springs. It’s sort of like this: you have perhaps really low blood sugar. All right? And when you have really low blood sugar your body goes into crisis mode, and it starts sending information to you about whatever is going to be needed to get that body back into balance, correct? That’s a natural system. Ideally it’s one that works all of your life. Ideally it’s one that doesn’t require a lot of maintenance but, as you well know, that’s not always true.

When that chemical message goes out, what the brain does is determine what it feels about that chemical message. The message is only a neutral function of energy, but the brain relates it to what it’s most familiar with. And that means when you have this kind of headache and this sort of disturbance and that sort of feeling, you get in security mode. And in security mode you get short-sighted and you become cranky. Yes and no. Yes and no.

Keep this in mind, though: you have total control over your emotions. You may not have control over your body chemistry, the way your blood sugar goes up and down, or any number of other things that are working that way, but you have control over the responses that you put out into the world, which is what emotions really are. They are the way you are choosing to respond to the world while you are in the world.

If you are in a really awful mood and there’s nobody around you and it’s just you all by yourself, are you still in a bad mood? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody . . . that’s actually a question. I’m really asking you. And how does it affect you when it’s only you by yourself. Lakshmi?

Because I’m still giving myself the negative responses, and messages that I would have given somebody else if they were in my space—like if I’m doing something and doesn’t quite come out the way I want, I kick myself hard, and say, “Oh, I can’t do this, and I’m not good at this,” and all that negative . . .

S: Essentially saying that if there is nobody else to take it out on, there is a tendency to take it out on yourself. Some of you don’t need somebody else to take it out on; you tend to take it out on yourself anyway, in one form of punishment or another. But I’m going to risk just a little and say that when you are exhibiting a negative emotional state when it’s just you by yourself, you’ve moved beyond an emotional response, and there is medication for that.

I mean that. Think about it for a moment. Emotions will trap you. They are ego-based because they have to do with the way that you relate to others in the world. What you feel is up to you. How you express it is very, very much the issue. Emotions are a way of expressing what you’re feeling. If what you are feeling is loving and kind and good and filled with joy and filled with light, you’re happy to claim those. You’re happy to let those be what you guide your life by, but those are just as inaccurate and dangerous insofar as basing a life on them. And that’s because they have to do with how you are presenting on the outside, and not what you’re doing on the inside.

Love is a force. It’s not a reaction. And that is just as true for anger, defeat, disheartedness, any other of those tags that you think of as an emotion; they’re all a choice.

I’ve always been confused about the differences between love, light and energy.

S: And that’s sort of like a yes-and-no question that Stuart got answered. It depends totally on the context, totally on the perspective. There are those in here who would say love and light are the same thing, and light and energy are the same thing, and love and light are energy, and . . . and yet everyone of those depends upon what the context is and what the individual’s perspective is that’s coloring it at the time. As a whole, it’s all energy, and if I am using light, for instance, in toning where you are connecting yourself to light, or with light—in starweaving where you are weaving with light—that light . . . real quick what is that light? [Long pause] Don’t all speak at once. It’s Source. It’s a way of understanding a concept of God or Goddess or Source as a light. So when I use it, more often than not I’m using it as that greatest function of energy—still energy—and, of course, Source contains all that is love. So you’re saying one thing; you’re saying three things; you’re saying four things. No better help.

But where Harvey just went is a direction that I’m wanting to go, so let me go there now. I am talking about love, but I want to talk about the more-or-less emotional function of love that has to do with relationships.

Now, why do I call that the emotional function of love? Because in the same way that Harvey could say, “Love, light, energy,” you can also do something close to that with the idea and the understanding of love. There is that all-encompassing love: the love that is unconditional, the love that is Source in you, the love that is that force that I am referring to repeatedly, the love that is the function of creation—Source.

There is as well love that is a—all right, I’ll use the word—platoic. No. Platonic. Platoic sounds better though doesn’t it? [It] seems to fit better I think. A platoic. So you have a platonic, which is the love that covers all sorts of relationships that don’t have sex involved, right? Is that the only difference?

Well, it’s probably not the love that a mother and child have.

S: You’re right. You’re right. And in just a moment maybe I’ll knock your socks off and tell you something sort of weird about love. So, yes, it’s probably not the sort of love of a parent and child. It’s the love a friend has with another.

I was thinking brother and sister, but then we’re in Kentucky.

S: And it is that there is a recognition of love, but it’s not the love that is “we’re going to live together, happily ever after, forever,” something like that. Correct?

Then you have that love that is the sort of experience that you have when your soul calls to another, and they decide to meet and have a long-term appointment. Just keeping them awake tonight. Just keeping them awake. There is the love that is your soul recognizing Source in another, and recognizing your part of the Source in that one. Now, I have a question. When you’re in love with somebody that way, does that mean that they love you that way?

No necessarily.

S: And when that is the case, you need to know that that love will not last. It will starve. Remember that.

And here is the one about your socks. This is the relationship that a parent and child have simply acted out in another way. Does that explain things, cause questions, or just seem right to you?

Seems right.

Their love what now?

S: A parent and child relationship is not a platonic relationship. It’s the same sort of love doorway that lovers share. The parent-child relationship is a commitment to love that’s very different than any of the commitments that you have with the people you work with, and maybe even your grandparents or cousins. It’s a type of love that is very, very powerful, and as powerful as the two that created that child’s love. And maybe that can help you understand, as you let that play through your head, why those relationships can be so tangled, why they can be so tricky.

Is that true, even though there might be a parent and a child that do not get along? It’s the love that is causing the difficulty probably.

S: Probably. Probably. And, of course, being this society, there are all manner of different versions of ways that works out. Somebody who was adopted and they’ve never met their parents, and have just been shuffled around from foster home to foster home, and have never had any sort of stability to make that anchor is probably not going to be able to see how that connection is possible, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. It doesn’t mean that there’s not a piece of your existence that seeks to be loved with that sort of intensity, fervor. There is a part of you that continually seeks that relationship, and that’s also why so many of your relationships with regard to love sometimes just don’t work, because that first, powerful example maybe taught you more about betrayal than about commitment.

Now, here is what I’m wanting to do. I wanted to put all of that out just to get some thoughts going. The fact of it is you could ask me about life on Mars, and couch it in a way that has to do with love in one way or another, and it would work. There is not life on Mars. However, ideally the things that you’re going to be asking this night are going to be about relationships of all kinds. They’re going to be about love in all of its manifestations.

Paper and pencils?

S: Yes.

Okay. They’re going to be passed out.

S: Almost. If you would like to have your questions written down, these are going to be going around. However, I am very happy in a group this size to dispense with the papers and pencils altogether and just answer questions, such as Frank’s back there. So these are available, just hand out a chunk and let them get passed around on both sides. Anybody know you want to write it down? Well, the advantage of having it written is if it does not get answered today, it goes into the newsletter, and that is always rather pleasing when Paula or David say, “These questions were left over from questions and answers.” So, that’s the advantage there.

All right, Frank.

You talked about the similarities between the parent-child relationship and the lover relationship. Is that because it’s, for the child and the parent, easy to see the Source connection, and with lovers to see that soul connection, that Source connection. Whereas unless you have that type of intense relationship, it’s harder to see that. Does that have to do with it, or is it more than [that]?

S: I need you to do it again.

With parents and children, it’s much easier to see the connection. I mean physically . . .

S: This is parent, this is child.

. . . because the child is from my body. You see the physical connection, so it’s easy to also project and see the spirit connection, that we are one.

S: Got it.

With lovers there is that connection, and it’s easy to say or be thinking in terms of soul-mates and that there’s a soul. So it’s easy to see that there’s that higher connection, and if we had that with other people . . . when I had that and recognized that I am one with others, would those relationship then become the same without it being a lover relationship, or is that specific, lover relationships and parents? Or does that expand once you get to the point where you truly see that we are one, and we see the soul connection with each other?

S: The reason that you have the connection that you do with your lover is because of what happens with sexual activity. What happens with sexual activity, ideally?

It’s communion.

S: Communion. Yes. Well said.

It creates bonds.

S: Creates bonds, yes, absolutely.

God-goddess connection.

S: God-goddess, internal power is raised up. Yes. At the point of sexual union—all right, I suppose this means this one isn’t going to make it out to . . .

Mass media.

S: . . . mass media as well. All right. Here we go. At the point of orgasm, ideally at an orgasm for both individuals sometime in there, masculine energy switches to feminine, feminine energy switches to masculine. That energy change is the power that establishes those bonds, that creates the commitment. There really is something to be said for a relationship that enjoys a good sexual communion. A connection stays there in ways that might hold the relationship together when nothing else does, but will that hold it if that’s all there is?

Not for long.

S: Not for long, yes. And that is where the sacred sexual union comes in, because that involves bringing the highest function of spiritual awareness into an act that can be simply a physical release that has a profound beginning. Well, it will take that beginning and raise it up, so that there is a greater, a stronger, bond that relies less on this world’s activities and allows that bond to become a function of personal growth and positive change.

In a relationship with parents, well, you don’t have that switching over—masculine, feminine—you don’t have that—well, no matter what Colleen says, you don’t have that same sort of bond, so why am I comparing them? More than comparing them, I’m saying that they function in the same arena. Kathy, then Chris.

When you’re a child you see your parents as god and goddess.

S: Perfect. Yes. Add to that.

And in the same context, it is still a long-term appointment that may not always last forever, but nevertheless has a significant impact that helps contribute to the greater continuum of who you are.

S: Out of the mouths of babes, both of you. Absolutely. Yes.

And I’m going to push this just a little bit further. I want you to think back to your own family history. For those of you who are capable of remembering to the age of seven or before, do you have any image of what your parents were to you? Now, it is possible—[Sanat makes a noise] and he’s answering that question, you see—it is possible that what you remember instead is a negative experience, something that hurt that perfect awareness, something that somehow marred that blissful innocence. But even if that’s the only way you can see into it, you can still understand that that negative experience you remember because it was so different than what was going on, which was that innocent, blissful “everything is all right, my world is safe, all is good.”

What is it that most lovers think that they are getting from each other? “Well everything is all right. Everything is safe. My world is good. I’m safe with you. I trust you. I can be vulnerable with you. I can be stupid with you. I can be a child with you. I can be . . . hello.” There is a tendency to expect out of your relationships what that seven-year-old, six-year-old, five-year-old, two-year-old child was getting out of that parental relationship. What’s the really big danger with that that you can see already?

You’re coming from different experiences, and so the ability to relate may or may not connect.

S: Just as an example of that I’m going to just make this up, all right? All right. So Chris and Suzie are going to get married. And Chris’s upbringing is radically different than Suzie’s. All right. Upbringing alone can be worked out, can’t it? Upbringing—oh, you were raised in the country; I was raised in the city; you were raised with a very, very economically poor family; you were raised with a very, very rich family; you had these advantages; you did not have these advantages; you . . . on and on and on it goes. Yes, there’s all manner of things that you can say that way. And those things can be worked out, can’t they? But where you stop being willing to work it out comes with the way you define love. It starts with how you know you’re in love, which is a very scary point that we will talk about some other time. It also determines what you think a lover does, acts—behaviors that come with it. It affects the way that you trust and how long it takes you to trust. It determines how forgiving you are when things start going wrong. So to have radically different versions of “This is the love that lets me know I will commit to being with you for the rest of my life in this world” really needs to either have very good communication skills or you need to have a whole lot more in common than out of common in that direction. Why? What can you foresee with those examples that so many of you clicked into? What can you see?

One of the things I can see is something I mean as loving might not be perceived as loving. On the other hand it might be perceived as something very hateful or not trusting.

S: Aye. Aye.

And so the belief systems we have around certain actions that trigger what it meant when we were a kid with our parents, we tend to believe that [same thing] in the relationship, and that can cause division.

S: Tend to believe that the love that is the lake of your known—that information comes out of, that you are familiar with and therefore go to first when something new comes into your life—that information was solidified at the first, all-encompassing love you had in your life, or did not have in your life. And your willingness to love, the nature of the choices that you have made with love—[Sanat chattering] is he saying, “Oh boy”? Oh boy—so back to [it]. Now think for a moment about you as a parent, for many of you in here are. What do you think your child’s version of love is, thanks to you? You’ve either got to communicate really well, or you’ve got to be willing to shift into another level of love. And that’s what you do when you do not have the grounded foundation of a good, safe example of love. You shift into another level.

Now, what’s the problem with that? Well, if this is supposed to be your mate bit you shift into the love of friends, that might be a little disappointing in the long run, don’t you think? Or take it even another direction: You’re going to be partners, significant others, married, whatever, and you don’t have that common ground to accept the love that both know how to go with, so you go to a different kind of love, but instead of raising it into one of the loves that we’ve already discussed, it gets lowered into a different form of love. What sort of love might that be?

Sometimes codependency can look like love.

S: Very good. Yes. It gets lowered into a struggle of will. “I need you to be this way. I need you to be that way. When you do this, I’m loved. When you don’t do this, I’m not loved.” And I don’t mean in any way to insult any of the creature friends in this world, but essentially what you’ve done in that situation is that you’ve moved from a relationship that has potential for higher love to the sort of relationship that you have with your dog. Although, some of you have better relationships with your dogs than you do with people.

I guess if you’re not willing to see love as a force and that love is an intent and change . . .

S: Yes.

. . . then you’ll never reach that higher version of love, and you’ll just be stuck in that.

S: And as true as that is, how can you get out of that place?

Forgiveness.

S: Forgiveness. Very good. Very good answer, yes, because forgiveness shifts you out of blame, or should. Forgiveness shifts you out of the need for a beginning you did not have. Some people focus on their childhoods until the day they die. And I suppose that, in an effort to relive it in the way they want it, that can be effective in some ways for some. If you are, in your life, finding that you are having a lot of difficulty maintaining—maybe creating—intimate relationships, one of the very first things that would very helpful for you to do in your life is—Kathy, say the word again.

Forgiveness.

S: Is to look to see where forgiveness needs to be from the times you started recognizing love. Now, if in your life you never knew anything about love until you were about twenty-five, well then that’s when you’d start looking for forgiveness. However you started recognizing love at about . . . probably about nine months old. And as much as—particularly for the parents in here—as much as you don’t like to hear that I’m saying that relationship was the example, and it’s the foundation on which love is recognized on a higher, committed, intimate way, there it is: being able to forgive the misunderstanding is what’s necessary. What do I mean by the misunderstanding?

[. . .] to communicate.

S: Well, miscommunication is absolutely in there. Frank, then Chris.

Well, if it’s the [. . .] of relationship both parties arguing what they think shows love to the other person, and if it’s not being understood, if it’s not working, then there’s a misunderstanding. That’s why I said there needs to be communication.

S: Lack of communication, a lack of understanding what that communication was, goes back to the perspective and the context, and it also says you may not be having to forgive someone else, you might be needing to forgive yourself. And, in fact, that is what you will find is the key.

Chris.

In some instances, parents are created out of necessity, not out of choice.

S: Yes.

And often in those times, particularly in my circumstances, there’s a level of forgiveness that’s warranted based on the fact that they didn’t really choose to be parents, so you just sort of have to let go of your prescription of what a parent was in order to accept what their version is, kind of along the same lines of what Frank said.

S: But be careful in there. Try not to equate being a parent with a definition of love. I’m not saying that. Just because you’re a parent does not mean you’re a good lover, although maybe you were once. And maybe not. It is the relationship and the bonds that you received from the parental force in your life. It’s the love, and even if you look back on it now and you say, “Phew, that’s not love. That’s survival. That’s mean,” whatever you might say about it, but you’re somebody whose parents did not love you—oh, woe, haul out the fat babies with little arrows—still that is where your foundation for defining love shows up. Your parents may not have loved each other, and that’s in your definition. Your parents may have absolutely loved one another, did not love being parents. If they did not love you, that’s a problem. If they did not love being parents, were rotten parents, but loved you, that’s not a problem insofar as that definition of trusting and being able to love another in an intimate way is concerned.

Now, not happy being parents and having to live with that, which is a different sort of forgiveness and a different sort of love that goes into effect with that, that one doesn’t have to do with why you are unable to commit to an intimate relationship. That one has to do with why you are unable to keep money in the bank and do those things that would make you feel that you were freer and having an easier time and all of that. That’s where that comes from. But the love—“I was loved, conditions were awful”—doesn’t matter. “I was not loved, conditions were wonderful”—or awful—the love determines your ability to recognize love, to commit to it, to trust it. And that’s where the forgiveness comes in, because what that child recognized and has built that idea of love on is—oh, here it comes, prepare dreams to be smashed—is all a fraud. It’s all a fraud, because when you’re nine months old all you know is that your diaper is getting changed and your stomach is full, and when you’re three years old the way that you recognize what’s going on is still a very tiny tunnel to what all is going on, and when you’re thirty years old that’s still the case. You are basing one of the most important aspects of your life on a reality that is extremely tiny compared to what the whole picture is.

I was going to say that sometimes you can think you were not loved, and also you are influenced by your culture, what you see in the media, what you, you know . . . maybe have a definition or compare it to your friends, but sometimes when you get much older, you realize that even though it wasn’t a very good scene they actually did love you.

S: And I would say that your ability to see that . . .

[ . . . ] at the time.

S: Your ability to see that is because you have learned to function at one of the higher forces of love.

And just to sort of push this a step further: At every level of love, starting with the purely human, physical, lets-keep-this-species-going kind of “you look hot; I feel it; let’s do something with that”—[I’m] a little rusty—you have strictly survival of the fittest. Now, I would have thought that was a much better joke than my being rusty. Oh well, humor. To a recognition of a deep bond, to a recognition of a spiritual bond, all called love. Then in your next level where you are not in survival of the fittest and involving physical-chemical bonds as a part of love, the love that you choose to have—how many of you in here have . . . [what] the Form says, “friends who are a family”? Do you know what that means? That means you have chosen to love them dearly and truly, and that love is a decision, and it’s a decision based on your belief that you deserve to have love in your life, and you are capable of giving it out. Lovers who don’t have friends are way out of balance; needless to say, lovers who are not friends are doomed.

However, that ability to choose love, to be able to create and maintain friendships, and a wide variety of friendships is even better, but it’s the close friendships that open the door either way. Those close friendships open the door of your heart and your emotions, and you put those two together, you might can push aside the misinterpretations and the miscommunications and the difficulties that have made having relationships on an intimate level flee from you—flee from you, far, far away, never to be heard from again—flee from you because you have learned on another level to have and create dear friends, love on a level of choice. And that opens both ways, because that also opens up, ultimately, to that love that is the Source that you are, reaching out and touching the Source that the other is. It is the connection with god or goddess, or All That Is. It is the ultimate level of love.

If you had a choice in life, because you were finding that you were having trouble obtaining, then maintaining, intimate relationships, what should you do? Well, let’s see. On Tuesdays and Thursdays you go out to singles bars, and on Wednesdays you go to the computer matchmaker things, and you answer ads on the weekends, and. . . . Here is what I suggest, you begin teaching yourself how to love by establishing a circle of very dear friends who are family, not because that’s going to put you in the proximity of anybody who’s quite hot and ready—you might have to do that on your own—but it’s going to start shifting the heart into a place of love, and it’s going to start shifting your brain, because of that, into a place of recognizing that love does not have to hurt, it can be healing. It can be safe.

One last question. Stuart is starting to get tense back there.

What do you do when you have two people who are operating and loving on totally different levels. Does it create problems, or do you really work to have that common vision?

S: Every relationship needs to have a common vision of one kind or another. If you have a lovely—it still sounds like platoic ought to be the word—platonic love, and the other person has just got the hots, and really wanting and ready for committing for the rest of their life, or they love—worse, much worse—they love the god you are, or the goddess you are, but forget the rest of it. [There are] all kinds of ways to be disappointed. The key is the vision. Every relationship has a common vision. You say, “You are my dearest friend,” to your dearest friends. You say, “You are my beloved companion that I am intimately connected to for the rest of my life,” and they say, “Wait a minute! Beloved friend.” And you’re honest, and communicating clearly what that vision is, you’re going to at least find out if it’s not the same, and if it’s not the same then you have a decision to make, but that decision does not have to do about [sic] love. That decision is because there is love. And that’s where I’m going to stop.

Relationships. That’s the way everything in your life plays out what you are. So be the shining light of loving energy. That was for you, Harvey. Now you figure out which version of love this is when I end with “Glochanumora.”

I do love you. Happy trails, and happy trails of love.