Mini-Love Lesson #197
Synopsis: These 20 questions are aimed at helping you think smarter and with increasing fascination about the wonders of love and its many mysteries. Why you will want to do this, why you should do this for your own future good, and how to do this are also addressed.
The New Amazements of Love and Why You Should NOT Learn About Them
Love is even more amazing than most people ever thought. With the help of science, that is what we are discovering via well conducted research in a wide variety of scientific fields. New discoveries in everything from (A) anthropology to (Z) zoology and including brain sciences, an assortment of medical fields and even behavioral economics are producing new and sometimes astounding knowledge about love and it’s workings.To understand and make good use of what is being discovered, you may have to learn how to think about love a lot more than you might be used to. But wait! You are not supposed to think about love at all. You just are supposed to let it happen and trust it will happen if it is meant to be, right? You certainly are not supposed to try and learn how to think smart about love knowledgeably. “The Anti-Love Forces Are out to Get You” With love, the thing to do is just let nature take its course, correct?
Whether it is falling in love, or love of a newborn or any other love, it will just happen the way it is supposed to according to your destiny, or mother nature, or the stars, divine providence or maybe karma, right? Trying to actually think smart i.e. informed and knowledgeable about love is not necessary and actually is quite suspect. Also quite suspect, is learning about any new discoveries or new knowledge concerning love, astounding and useful though that new knowledge may be, right?
Why Should Love Be Any Different?
If you learn to think smarter i.e. with more knowledge, creativity, understanding, wisdom and usability about your health, finances, work, hobbies or any other area of your life, you are more likely to be more successful in dealing with that area of your life, right? Not only that, but doesn’t remaining ignorant in an important area of your life mean it is more likely there will be major problems and failure in that area?So, why don’t we teach people to think about love? Is it because we are afraid it will steal loves magic? The truth is, that it is a lie. It is false because the more we learn about any big topic the more amazing and, dare we say, magical it becomes. Love is no exception. Science is proving that.
A Way to Get Smarter About Love
Pondering curious and puzzling questions has proven to be an excellent way to learn how to think smarter. So, here is what I suggest. Read the following 20 questions and give some thought to each. Pick the most interesting ones and give them some more thought. Maybe talk over with someone what those questions bring to mind, and maybe look up stuff and read a bit about them. Then think this. How can I improve my thinking about the things I am learning concerning love. Maybe write out your thoughts and maybe read more? Maybe talk more to others about love? Then be sure to work with the more personal instructions given at the end of the 20 questions. By doing these things, you will be practicing learning to think more and better about love. That most likely will make your love-functioning better, happier and a lot more interesting (see “Thinking Love to Improve Love”).The 20 Smart-Making Questions
1. Is love like food, something that comes in many varieties (romantic, parent, pets, self, etc.) and is, at the core, one thing – something that nourishes us, or are all those types of love actually unrelated?2. Can many people romantically love, or be loved mated, with two people at the same time, like many Mormons, Tibetans and Euro intellectuals have thought, and also why do you think what you think about that?
3. Can real love motivate harming or even killing a loved one, as many police conclude, or is it insecurity, possessiveness and false love misidentified as real love which causes that violence?
4. Who is right, St. Paul who taught love is not jealous or the French courts of love who ruled jealousy was proof of real love?
5. Is love of comrades the same thing as friendship love, or are there distinct differences?
6. Can friendship love include sexuality?
7. Do lovers who forgive adultery have a stronger (better, bigger, healthier, etc.) love, or weaker (insecure, dependent, etc.) love than those who do not forgive adultery?
8. Is love the prime spiritual force in the universe from which all other loves come, as several major religions teach, or is it just one of many feelings we can experience?
9. Is love just an emotion, or is it a vital natural process which triggers many different emotions?
10. Who’s right, some social scientists who said love is an invention of culture having no basis in natural fact, or the behavioral scientists who trace love back to the dinosaurs and the development of the brain’s limbic system?
11. Do animals actually love or can only humans love?
12. Can the lack of healthy, real love in one’s life cause serious physical and psychological health problems?
13. Was Ovid right when, in the year one, he taught that lasting love requires skill and, therefore, the work to develop one’s love skills, or is the more common concept that lasting love is a matter of luck and just finding the right partner correct?
14. Do people who learn to think about love more fully, accurately and extensively achieve more success in love relating than do people who rely on love success being determined by some mysterious, unknown force?
15. Is romantic love just one of many types of love, or is it separate and essentially different from all the other types and kinds of love?
16. Do we find love or do we grow love, and which concept is better to focus on and work with?
17. Who is right, those who say self-love is a good thing or those who say self-love is a bad thing, and why?
18. Can people really love their family, clan, tribe, state, country, cause, work, art, religion, deity, nature, life, people, humanity, the universe, etc., or is using the word love just a way to say something is important and valued?
19. If we experience real love for someone, is it forever as some religions hold, or for at least as long as we live, or can real true love die, fade away, dissipate and no longer exist?
20. Of the following, who do you suppose has the most useful, valuable ideas and understandings to teach us and help us learn about love, and also of these, who would you be most open to learning from?
(The following all have things to say about love)
A. Behavioral scientists (research psychologists, ethnologists, etc.)
B. Brain scientists (neurophysiologists, neuropsychologists, etc.)
C. Social scientists (sociologists, social psychologists, etc.)
D. Mental health practitioners (counselors, clinical psychologists, etc.)
E. Medical professionals and practitioners
F. Marriage and family therapists, couples counselors, etc.
G. Philosophers, (including seers, sages and wisdom masters of old)
H. Poets and songwriters
I. Theologians, religionists and clerics
J. Romance writers
K. Grandparents, family, friends, etc.
L. Others
.
Do you want to include in this list astrologers, fortunetellers, matchmakers, shamans, rishis, curandaros, etc. and do you also want to think, of all these, which ones would you mistrust the most?
Dare to Make It More Personal
Now that you have seen the general questions and given them some thought, dare to make it all much more about you and your own personal love life! You can do that by going back through the questions and seeing which ones you can easily restate using the word you, meaning yourself. For example, question #2. becomes “can or could you romantically love two people at the same time?” Some of the questions take a little bit more rewording than others. Then too, you might want to make some notes on your current thinking about the questions that are more personally applicable. You also might read and/or talk to someone with more intimate, self-disclosure occurring.Another way to make this exercise more personal is to think about someone that is special to you and apply the questions which you suspect that person would believe, feel, or do. For instance, question #2. becomes “could someone special to you romantically love you and someone else at the same time?” Then ponder about how that might change how you think about this question and about that special someone.
The third way to make it more personal has to do with talking to a special someone honestly and openly about what you both think and feel when dealing with each question, both in general and more personally (“Startup Love Is Never Enough”).
Connecting with the Wisdom of the Ages and the Cutting-Edge
In ancient times and again in the Renaissance, European people read, thought and wrote about love quite a bit and they did this as intelligently as they could. That is, they did it until the Catholic Church began to ban profane i.e. non-sacred and not church authorized thought, speech and writings about human (as opposed to spiritual) love. Widely read and talked about books such as, in English called “Dialogues of Love” written by and for Jews but of much broader popularity and “The Art of Love” in five volumes and “Remedies for Love Sickness” were suppressed and disappeared. It probably was not until Stendhal in the early 1800s tried to intelligently research love and wrote his eventual breakthrough book “On Love” that some people began to give love serious, intelligent thought.Today Loveology (as it is being called and pioneered in Russia) is being looked at along with happiness in China, is being studied in laboratories in the West and researched in many academic and scientific fields around the world which is starting to produce astounding (magic like) results. You to can join this cutting-edge thinking smart about love phenomenon. Maybe by reading this mini-love-lesson you just have.
Help spread love know how, tell someone about this site.
As always – Go and Grow with Love
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly
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