Several of the experiences that inspired the principles were romantic interactions. Over the years, I've become clear on what I look for: someone who can enter into an interaction with me, someone who can really make contact with me. I know in two seconds whether there is mutual attraction between me and a person. It only takes one look in the eyes to know. Then what? If I feel it, I'm ready to move forward, to act on this attraction. Can the other person feel it as well? If they can, are they ready to acknowledge it, to accept what they feel? I look for people who can say yes to that, who are willing to acknowledge an attraction to themselves and to me. To be able to do that almost instantaneously is, to me, the most attractive thing in the world. It's a green flag for the kind of person I can get along with. Denying their own attraction, however, pretend it doesn't exist, or trying to play games, is a form of deceit and self-denial, and that's a huge turn-off. But if they can acknowledge it in some way, that is a big sign that this person understands themselves, trusts their intuition, and knows what they want.
Now for a long time, I felt a contradiction here. I knew that these interactions were so special and so spiritually alive, and that they were closely related to my sense of spirituality. But because these interactions so often had to do with romantic feelings and with sexual desire, I felt they also had a base quality, a sort of profanity, that I could not understand how to reconcile with their clearly spiritual nature. For instance, if one were convinced to organize their life and their metaphysics exclusively by through the principle of spiritual connection to others, they could be easily deceived. They would be tempted into trysts and love affairs and would undoubtedly damage themself and others through destructive behavior. This is what seems to happen to many people on the burning man / spiritual festival circuit who have developed their capacities enough to recognize spiritual connection to others but only use it to sleep with them. And this risk is one thing that points to the principle of no moral valence.
But now I see these interactions in a deeper way. I thought of them as attractions, but now I see how they bottom out. When two people enter into an interaction like this, I would now say that there is a "yes" in their heart; there is an "I love you" already there. And this "I love you" is more neutral, more pure, and more basic than the desire. It is the same "I love you" at the heart of any successful interaction.
This deepens my understanding of another axiom of mine, which is that there is an intrinsic romance in getting to know someone. When you are getting to know someone, and you both have this "yes" in your heart, there will be romantic feelings and attraction without fail. What's more, these romantic feelings will exist regardless of the gender or sexual orientation of the two parties. But this love is like a stem cell that can develop into many different cells and organs, many types of love. It can grow into a beautiful intellectual bond, or a loyal friendship. It doesn't have to become a romance. And when it does develop, when the bonds are strong enough, they can bear the weight of an "I love you" being expressed directly and verbally without risk. So it's important to sit with the feelings of romance that are always there at the start, and understand that they really derive from a deeper sense of love.
It is like this: which kind of love do you think is more primary? The love of mating and partnership? The fraternal and selfless love of kinship? The nurturing love of a mother? Perhaps motherly love is most primordial. But none of these are prior to the other. Desire arises through the biomechanical drives of our body, but when it does there is already a deeper love already there. Ask someone what romantic love means, and you will hear that it is rich with the overtones of all these different types of love. And the way that none of these can be said to be prior points to the possibility that an underlying and foundational love exists in reality.
Now that I see that all successful interactions have this property of mutual love, I am starting to see how it is possible to bring this energy to every kind of interaction. I understand it intellectually, and I don't yet know how to practice it, but I can see it clearly. I can see the possibility of opening myself in the same way to more people. What does it mean to practice this kind of love?
Several of the experiences that inspired the principles were romantic interactions. Over the years, I've become clear on what I look for: someone who can enter into an interaction with me, someone who can really make contact with me. I know in two seconds whether there is mutual attraction between me and a person. It only takes one look in the eyes to know. Then what? If I feel it, I'm ready to move forward, to act on this attraction. Can the other person feel it as well? If they can, are they ready to acknowledge it, to accept what they feel? I look for people who can say yes to that, who are willing to acknowledge an attraction to themselves and to me. To be able to do that almost instantaneously is, to me, the most attractive thing in the world. It's a green flag for the kind of person I can get along with. Denying their own attraction, however, pretend it doesn't exist, or trying to play games, is a form of deceit and self-denial, and that's a huge turn-off. But if they can acknowledge it in some way, that is a big sign that this person understands themselves, trusts their intuition, and knows what they want.
Now for a long time, I felt a contradiction here. I knew that these interactions were so special and so spiritually alive, and that they were closely related to my sense of spirituality. But because these interactions so often had to do with romantic feelings and with sexual desire, I felt they also had a base quality, a sort of profanity, that I could not understand how to reconcile with their clearly spiritual nature. For instance, if one were convinced to organize their life and their metaphysics exclusively by through the principle of spiritual connection to others, they could be easily deceived. They would be tempted into trysts and love affairs and would undoubtedly damage themself and others through destructive behavior. This is what seems to happen to many people on the burning man / spiritual festival circuit who have developed their capacities enough to recognize spiritual connection to others but only use it to sleep with them. And this risk is one thing that points to the principle of no moral valence.
But now I see these interactions in a deeper way. I thought of them as attractions, but now I see how they bottom out. When two people enter into an interaction like this, I would now say that there is a "yes" in their heart; there is an "I love you" already there. And this "I love you" is more neutral, more pure, and more basic than the desire. It is the same "I love you" at the heart of any successful interaction.
This deepens my understanding of another axiom of mine, which is that there is an intrinsic romance in getting to know someone. When you are getting to know someone, and you both have this "yes" in your heart, there will be romantic feelings and attraction without fail. What's more, these romantic feelings will exist regardless of the gender or sexual orientation of the two parties. But this love is like a stem cell that can develop into many different cells and organs, many types of love. It can grow into a beautiful intellectual bond, or a loyal friendship. It doesn't have to become a romance. And when it does develop, when the bonds are strong enough, they can bear the weight of an "I love you" being expressed directly and verbally without risk. So it's important to sit with the feelings of romance that are always there at the start, and understand that they really derive from a deeper sense of love.
It is like this: which kind of love do you think is more primary? The love of mating and partnership? The fraternal and selfless love of kinship? The nurturing love of a mother? Perhaps motherly love is most primordial. But none of these are prior to the other. Desire arises through the biomechanical drives of our body, but when it does there is already a deeper love already there. Ask someone what romantic love means, and you will hear that it is rich with the overtones of all these different types of love. And the way that none of these can be said to be prior points to the possibility that an underlying and foundational love exists in reality.
Now that I see that all successful interactions have this property of mutual love, I am starting to see how it is possible to bring this energy to every kind of interaction. I understand it intellectually, and I don't yet know how to practice it, but I can see it clearly. I can see the possibility of opening myself in the same way to more people. What does it mean to practice this kind of love?