[Janmarie]

In our society and cultures we have been programmed to believe that we are separate from love and that the only way to know love is to be loved by someone. But what the truth of the matter is we are not separate from love. It is hardwired into us, we are the ultimate source of love. It radiates from within us and giving it away only produces more back to us.

But what our cultures forgot to tell us is that a relationship will not save us. Reading the threads here and seeing how much pain and frustration people are going through may not truly understand where love really comes from. We all strive for the right job, the right body and the right relationship in order to make us feel complete and whole when we are already complete and whole just as we are. A relationship can give us greater experiences of happiness but it is not because of it.

what I am trying to say is that "Save" is referring to a mistaken idea that being in a relationship will rid us of feeling empty, less of a whole or half of a whole, loneliness, insecurity or fear and that finding someone will save us from ourselves.

You are completely complete just as you are and this means that you can start living your life like you matter and that everything you do really does make a difference in this world.

If you have dreams then stop putting them off waiting for someday for prince charming or princess perfect to come into your life and make it all better.

When you start living your life like you matter, that you count an amazing thing happens...you begin to feel happier more satisfied, secure in yourself and more fulfilled pretty much all the time.

If you are single because of a relationship break up or you just haven't found that person you want to be with, don't think of it as a problem or a failure. This is an opportunity to re-engage in your life and grow. It is a time for fun and adventure and a new chance for romance to re-enter your life.

[Clough]

I do like what you have written, Janmarie! It borders on being profound! I have been divorced and now single for a very long time. I love myself and realize my worth as a person and it's not contingent on me being in an intimate relationship with another person for me to know that and also be satisfied and fulfilled with my life the way that it is because of now being a single person again. For me, I don't need a romantic relationship with anyone in order to feel complete and fulfilled as a person. But, that's just me...

Just one more thing, though. I have found that some people are "seekers" in that they just have to have someone else in their lives intimately in order to feel complete. I have found that the "seekers" and those who feel complete unto themselves don't necessarily see "eye to eye" on how they think a person is to be "complete" and "fulfilled" as a person.

Have you also observed this sort of thing with people not seeing eye to eye because of what they believe about what people need in order to fell complete?

[Tralyn]

I think some people are overflowing with love from the inside out - and it's not necessarily that they 'need' per se an intimate relationship to make them whole, but some people literally function better as a whole when they are able to share their love with others, whether it is with friends, family, people they work with or care for - or yes, a significant other.

I agree - happiness most certainly emanates from within. I also believe that people and love around you, being able to share your own gifts with others and vice versa can certainly make love and happiness even more plentiful. In no way is that to say an intimate relationship is required. In fact - an intimate relationship can be relationships on many different levels in my opinion - an intimate relationship isn't necessarily sexual.

[Janmarie]

I think some people are overflowing with love from the inside out - and it's not necessarily that they 'need' per se an intimate relationship to make them whole, but some people literally function better as a whole when they are able to share their love with others, whether it is with friends, family, people they work with or care for - or yes, a signifigant other.

I agree - happiness most certainly emanates from within. I also believe that people and love around you, being able to share your own gifts with others and vice versa can certainly make love and happiness even more plentiful. In no way is that to say an intimate relationship is required. In fact - an intimate relationship can be relationships on many different levels in my opinion - an intimate relationship isn't necessarily sexual.

That is why there are billions of people in this world and those who enter our lives whether it's a frienship, a boss, or an intimate relationship. They are all in our lives for a reason. A relationships purpose is to serve the mutual growth and expression of each individual. To share enthusiasm for life and giving of ourselves to another. It's opportunity in it's greatest form to hold a vision of another's greatness and to help them be the person they were ment to be.

We need relationships in our lives and we do function better in our wholeness because they help bring it out into the light, they help us over come our fears and self imposed limitations. But our wholeness isn't because of the relationship it is because of what we already know is within us.

[delight]

Love is simply, accepting the 'other' as he/she is and as he/she is not.

This is the essence of the LOVE.

[Janmarie]

Just one more thing, though. I have found that some people are "seekers" in that they just have to have someone else in their lives intimately in order to feel complete. I have found that the "seekers" and those who feel complete unto themselves don't necessarily see "eye to eye" on how they think a person is to be "complete" and "fulfilled" as a person.

Have you also observed this sort of thing with people not seeing eye to eye because of what they believe about what people need in order to fell complete?

Mainly because no one really knew what makes a relationship work. People just played it by ear and relyed on some form of luck that it lasts throughout thier lifetime.
Our parents didn't take a class on "relationship 101" and I don't think their parents did either or thiers. What we learn about love comes from our parents, society, religion and the media. And 99% of what we have been conditioned to understand is completely wrong. Such as manipulating your partner, playing little tricks and head games. Those are all a bunch of crap and yes they may work but its never lasting unless you can keep manipulating and that is not loving someone.

But we are here to discover what it takes to have a brilliant life, magical relationships and being completely and authentically who we are. Something that has taken me a few broken relationships and pounds of hurt to master this stuff. I know that my relationships would always continue to produce the same results if I hadn't of gotten curious as to why and investigated how I was opperating in my life and in my relationships.

Awareness was the key that automatically allowed me to stop doing the things that produced unsatisfying relationships and allowed me to start doing the things that produced satisfying relationships.

[delight]

Love can not be defined. It can only be had and experienced.

[Janmarie]

Love can not be defined. It can only be had and experienced.

Love is not really an experience...love is already within us, we are not seperate from it. People get confused about love. It isn't something you have to go out and find, or be something else in order to have it. We already have it and giving it away to someone always produces more of it and we experience new facets of love.

People get the false idea that it is something outside ourselves that we must search to find it. In certain respect, love is all there is. Fear, resentment, isolation, aloneness are all illusions created by our minds to keep us believing that we are seperate from it. But underneath all this illusions of the mind, love is really all there is.

[Romefalls19]

What is love...



Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me

I apologize... I had to:-(

Great post though!

[Janmarie]

What is love.....



Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me

I apologize...I had to:-(

Great post though!

Awesome song!!

You goof :-)

[delight]

Love is something which gives u pleasure, and when it gives pain, it is love non-existing, or overcome or dominated by something.

[NeedKarma]

The short form:

You need to be happy with yourself before you can be happy with someone else.

[Janmarie]

Love is something which gives u pleasure, and when it gives pain, it is love non-existing, or overcome or dominated by something.

This is where you are looking outside yourself for love. Love is always existing. When you realize that you yourself are the "source" of love and that it is within your "being" then you will realize that there is no limit on love's supply. It will never run out and it can never be stolen from you because "you" are the source.

Does love give us pain? And if so does that mean it is non-existing? The answer is simply no.

When someone comes into our lives and we share that love that is already within us with that person and for some reason that person or a situation causes that person to leave us. It is not that love is gone. The person we loved is...but not love itself. If that were true then we could never be able to love again.

[sohnanaam]

Love is being loveable!

[BetrayalBtCamp]

"It is hardwired into us, we are the ultimate source of love. It radiates from within us & giving it away only produces more back to us."

I agree with that & especially your sig quote (it's on the front page of our site now!). I'm glad to see someone standing up for love as eloquently as you are doing, great job!

Amazon.com: Loving Each Other: Leo F. Buscaglia: Books

Leo Buscaglia, "Loving Each Other" Excerpt:

Why are we so afraid to commit ourselves to loving each other?

This is a book about love, tenderness, compassion, caring, sharing, & relating – the most vital of human behaviors. Without these qualities life is empty though we may have the best of health, the most comfortable of homes, the most impressive of bank balances. Even knowing this, we spend so little time developing these behaviors.

In fact, we are living in a society in which such words as love & commitment have been relegated to sentimental, old-fashioned nonsense. Skeptics are only too ready & capable with quick wit & stinging phrases to ridicule those who continue to speak of broken hearts, of devastating loneliness & the mystical ways & power of love.

If you love, you are considered naïve. If happy, you are considered frivolous & simple. If generous & altruistic, you are considered suspect. If forgiving, you are considered weak. If trusting, you are considered a fool.

If you try to be all of these things, people are sure you are phony. This flippant attitude has had much to do with the breeding of a society of detached, noncommitted persons too sophisticated to admit their confusion & unhappiness & too caught up in ego to risk doing anything about it.

It has perpetuated isolation & devalued basic human values. This, in spite of the fact that over the past years there has been amassed a vast scientific literature which proves that relationships do matter, that intimacy is necessary to sustain a good, productive life, that a loving touch or a hearty laugh can heal, that positive relating brings physical, psychological & mental well being.

Such contemporary philosophers & scientists as Ashley Montagu, Carl Rogers, A.H. Maslow, Harold Bloomfield, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, Desmond Morris, James Lynch, Theodore Issac Rubin, Margaret Mead, Norman Cousins, David Viscott, Clark Moustakas, William Menninger, Melanie Klein, C.S. Lewis, Nathaniel Branden & others have persisted in their writings & research, in spite of their critics, in affirming that a society devoid of these basic human needs is doomed.

Our growing inability to relate one with another is reaching frightening proportions.

[Janmarie]

"It is hardwired into us, we are the ultimate source of love. It radiates from within us & giving it away only produces more back to us."

I agree with that & especially your sig quote (it's on the front page of our site now!). I'm glad to see someone standing up for love as eloquently as you are doing, great job

Thank you for your compliment :-) It is a very simple, easy concept when you understand what love is and where it comes from. Because then it doesn't have to be searched for anymore.

It is all about having magical relationships, that is what everyone deep down inside wants to have, but don't know how because they just don't realize that it comes from you first.

[Janmarie]

Love is being loveable!

Exactly :-) being loveable and irresistible. And one can achieve that by being the person that wakes up every morning ready to be loved. Dissolving all old programming and old ideas about life and love so one can actually start responding to life appropriatly rather then mechanically re-acting to everything.

[BetrayalBtCamp]

Maybe that's why people can't resist trying to complicate it all up? Because it REALLY is pretty simple when all is said & done.

The greatest thing you can leave as a legacy is not in bank accts or any material assets, but the love you've created, shown & nutured through the decades that will live on eternally in varied forms. And it will help make you a happier, more passionate & healthier person in your life with a ton of other personal benefits to boot.

[Janmarie]

Maybe that's why people can't resist trying to complicate it all up? Because it REALLY is pretty simple when all is said & done.

The greatest thing you can leave as a legacy is not in bank accts or any material assets, but the love you've created, shown & nutured thru the decades that will live on eternally in varied forms. And it will help make you a happier, more passionate & healthier person in your life with a ton of other personal benefits to boot.

True, once it's realized that there is "NOTHING" outside of us can ever produce a lasting sense of completeness, security or success. No man/woman, relationship, job, amount of money, house, car or anything else that can produce that ongoing sense of happiness, satisfaction, security and fulfillment in us. And operating from that idea that these things will "save us" or make our lives magically take off is a sure fire way to keep us unhappy and "single."

BUT...becoming complacent with this isn't what I am trying to convey here. Because I don't want anyone to think that all those wonderful 'other' things shouldn't be important because it is.

We as human beings are the highest forms of intelligence on this planet, we are above the creepy crawly creatures and above any other life form such as fish, birds, cattle etc...so why do these creatures seem to have everything they need, they lack of nothing and they seem to live out their lives absolutely in bounty? When we as intelligent humans seem to suffer with lack? ie: (relationships, money, a fulfilling life.)

It is because we are simply operating on the wrong information. Once understood that nothing outside ourselves can produce anything that we don't already have.....a magical thing begins to happen in every other area of our lives. If our minds are free from that consistent chatter that either we "don't deserve' these things, or we don't have these things because we weren't born to a rich family blah, blah, blah....then of course everything will remain the same. Life is about growth, it's about change, it is about living out your purpose for even being here and it is about putting 100% into our lives. In every area of it.

But this is not the forum to go into a whole lot of details about how to produce more money. Everything is attainable if you are operating in your life like you matter. And ultimately once a person does this they become more attractive, more irresistible and more magnetic to the opposite sex :-)

[BetrayalBtCamp]

BUT... becoming complacent with this isn't what I am trying to convey here. Because I don't want anyone to think that all those wonderful 'other' things shouldn't be important because it is.

Agreed! Balance is crucial so we do have a roof over our heads, etc. And having more means being able to share more. Even the bible doesn't say money is the root of all evil, it's greed that's the problem.

Life is about growth, it's about change, it is about living out your purpose for even being here & it is about putting 100% into our lives. In every area of it.

Absolutely right, & when that ball gets rolling all sorts of "magical" things start going on consistently because you can see things clearer, think on a better level & fuel the passion to make dreams come true. It puts the person in a state of peak performance that will beat any drug any day. It's a natural high that you can create for yourself over & over again.