LOVE?

Bette Davis.



What we all want is some kind of bliss or rapture or ecstatic love.



Something divine.



We see a youthful Bette Davis, and we think she looks divine.



But, is it all an illusion?



Forget the seven-year-itch, the breaking point for couples comes after THREE years



"More than two thirds - 67% - of couples say that the habits of their partner that they once considered harmless or endearing turn into major turn-offs by the dreaded three-year mark.



"Common niggles that kill passion by then include lack of sexy underwear, snoring, stray nail clippings and over-exposure to the in-laws."

Bette Davis.

The most memorable holding of hands I can remember involved an orphan about to die in a squalid little hospital.

The most memorable hug I can remember came from a little handicapped girl who had been abandoned by her family.

I am eternally grateful for that holding of hands and for that hug.

Two Minds Meet has an excellent post entitled 'The Many Names for Love'



From this we learn:



The Greeks had four words for 'love'.



Eros - "based on the zeal of the organs for one another."



Pia – the kind of love involved in bringing up children.



Philia – The love one feels for one's friends.



Agape – Here there is a "degree of spiritual awareness" and we find we can love everyone

Zahoro by Lindsaymp. Zahoro is 12 years old and lives on the coast of Tanzania. "Zahoro had only half a sandle and a ripped dirty t-shirt."

Two Minds Meet has a second post on 'love' entitled "Two Become One?"



According to Carl Jung:



Men, within their unconscious, have a divine (feminine) nature (called anima).



A lover "can evoke it out of them."



The man sees his anima, his own divine nature, in the loved one.



Likewise, women have their divine (masculine) nature (called animus).



In Part 3, Two Minds Meet tells us more about Anima and Animus



From this we learn:



Jung believed that the feelings of love we experience are an "experience of our own Divinity."



The lover experiences a hint of their own divine nature when in the company of the loved one.



But "neither lover can perpetually live up to the other's divine expectations."



In time "your lover appears once again as a mere human being... with ... maddening faults."



So, it is the 'divine' that one really loves.

American writer Joseph Campbell advises you to "follow your bliss".



Joseph Campbell wanted to get above, or transcend, the world that most of us experience.



He wanted to tune in to the divine and experience bliss or rapture.



Campbell said: "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. "So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being...



"If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

"Wherever you are - if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time." (Joseph Campbell - Wikipedia)

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