THE PRIMITIVE CANNOT LOVE
Posted on: June 27, 2010
“What men live by?” The famous work of Tolstoy. At the end of the book what is remembered is “love”. Everybody wants to be loved from birth till death. The entire struggle is for this. So, what do people do to be loved? They do what they’ve learnt since their birth. From who? Firstly, from their parents. . They do the same things in order to be loved until they learn new ways or the right way. What do they do? They have many strategies including pursuing success, being respected, silent, naughty, noisy, hardworking, famous or punctual, living for others, self-sacrificing, fighting etc. All is to be loved and to be precious. When the schemas that worked well in childhood begin to lose power the fight also begins. People don’t understand how their childhood strategies fail. They become puzzled and aggressive. They blame others for not loving them. In fact, there are very simple things to do to be loved. That is to be a person that can be loved and to learn the true love. How can a person learn true love? It starts with listening to others in order to understand them. You cannot love somebody without understanding and getting to know him/her. The one that we don’t understand and recognize is always a stranger. And this can be done via patience, discipline and attention. When you pay attention to the other person you start to love yourself too. One of the prerequisites for love is trust. Then, comes compassion. The one who trusts and who mercies has a mature ego. The primitive are cruel. They don’t love and they are not loved. Love is parallel to your ability to see others as separate beings from you. If you cannot see them that way, and make them an extension of you or stick them to yourself, you do not listen to them. When they don’t think or act like you do, you get angry. You do not respect them. Respect starts when you see others as “others”. The most harm is done to the children in this sense. They are forced to live as the extensions of their parents.
Love is also a work of mind. The mindless cannot love. Patience and discipline are found and understood via mind. Knowledge is a must. After a while knowledge turns into behaviour and then it is internalized and becomes a part of soul. Love is not sacrifice. Love is not romance. It’s not just a feeling. It’s labor. It is about expressing yourself in the best way you can and permitting others to express themselves as well and letting them be independent of you. And it’s about your capacity of endurance as letting the others be themselves can cause discontent. The one you love doesn’t have to love you. Love is to be happy when your beloved is happy without you. Love is to take the risk of being alone. The real love begins when the requirements are over. It continues with your overcoming the drawbacks that prevents you from listening and understanding others. When you understand that you and the others are not Gods, your love gets mature. Because only God gives with no strings attached. And all kinds of love are actually there to love the Lord. That’s why it’s difficult. Hard. It requires getting rid of primitivity and reaching maturity. The Lord can be reached via loving all his creatures. People are always curious to know the difference between love and romance. Which one comes first?
As far as I am concerned the real love begins when you learn how to love.
When the matter is love it is a must to listen to Mawlana:
Walk, open the eye of your soul,
Look at those lovers:
How they have locked one another in a close embrace and become something like a heart,
How they have become handless and feetless like the soul.
They are more cheerful than the garden,
More cheerful than the rose.
Truer than the knowledge,
More clever than the mind,
Freer than the cypress,
Cleaner and purer than the water of immortality,
They are vagabonds like the particles.
The sun is their caftan.
They have set foot in mud,
They have put their head on the heart’s knee.
They have passed upon the blood,
Through the waves of the seas of blood.
Yet, their skirts are still clean.
They are among the thorns but they are like roses,
They are in a dungeon but they are like wine.
They are in mud but they are like the heart.
They are in dark but they are like daylight.
Drink their wine and see:
How fresh and luminous will your heart be,
How, suddenly, everything is forgotten,
How, suddenly, your eyes smile.
Dr Faik Özdengül
Askintherapy's Blog 
July 9, 2010 at 10:21 pm
Thank you very much for sharing your heart via such beatiful article