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# 2017-02-14 - The Art Of Loving by Erich Fromm | |
Rainbow hug | |
Excerpts for Validation Day | |
The most fundamental kind of love, which underlies all types of love, | |
is brotherly/sisterly love. By this i mean the sense of | |
responsibility, care, respect, knowledge of any other human being, | |
the wish to further their life. This is the kind of love the Bible | |
speaks of when it says: love thy neighbor as thyself. | |
Brotherly/Sisterly love is love for all human beings; it is | |
characterized by its very lack of exclusiveness. If i have developed | |
the capacity for love, then i cannot help loving my brothers/sisters. | |
In brotherly/sisterly love there is the experience of union with all | |
humanity, of human solidarity, of human at-onement. | |
Brotherly/sisterly love is based on the experience that we are all | |
one. The differences in talents, intelligence, knowledge are | |
negligible in comparison with the identity of the human core common | |
to all humanity. In order to experience this identity it is | |
necessary to penetrate from the periphery to the core. If i perceive | |
in another person mainly the surface, i perceive mainly the | |
differences, that which separates us. If i penetrate to the core, i | |
perceive our identity, the fact of our brotherhood/sisterhood. ... | |
Brotherly/sisterly love is love between equals: but indeed, even as | |
equals we are not always "equal"; inasmuch as we are human, we are | |
all in need of help. Today i, tomorrow you. But this need of help | |
does not mean that the one is helpless, the other powerful. | |
Helplessness is a transitory condition; the ability to stand and walk | |
on one's own feet is the permanent and common one. | |
Concentration is by far more difficult to practice in our culture, in | |
which everything seems to act against the ability to concentrate. ... | |
Indeed, to be able to concentrate means to be able to be alone with | |
oneself-and this ability is precisely a condition for the ability to | |
love. ... Anyone who tries to be alone with theirself will discover | |
how difficult it is. ... It would be helpful to practice a few very | |
simple exercises, as, for instance, to sit in a relaxed position | |
(neither slouching, nor rigid), to close one's eyes, and to try to | |
see a white screen in front of one's eyes, and to try to remove all | |
interfering pictures and thoughts, then to try to follow one's | |
breathing; not to think about it, nor force it, but to follow it-and | |
in doing so to sense it; furthermore try to have a sense of "I"; I = | |
myself, as the center of my powers, as the creator of my world. One | |
should, at least, do such a concentration exercise every morning for | |
twenty minutes (and if possible longer) and every evening before | |
going to bed. | |
Besides such exercises, one must learn to be concentrated in | |
everything one does, in listening to music, in reading a book, in | |
talking to a person, in seeing a view. The activity at this very | |
moment must be the only thing that matters, to which one is fully | |
given. If one is concentrated, it matters little what one is doing; | |
the important, as well as the unimportant things assume a new | |
dimension of reality, because they have one's full attention. To | |
learn concentration requires avoiding, as far as possible, trivial | |
conversation, that is, conversation which is not genuine. If two | |
people talk about the growth of a tree they both know, or about the | |
taste of bread they have just eaten together, or about a common | |
experience in their job, such conversation can be relevant, provided | |
they experience what they are talking about, and do not deal with it | |
in an abstract way; on the other hand, a conversation can deal with | |
matters of politics or religion and yet be trivial; this happens when | |
the two people talk in cliches, when their hearts are not in what | |
they are saying. ... | |
To be concentrated in relation to others means primarily being able | |
to listen. ... | |
To be concentrated means to live fully in the present, in the here | |
and now, and not to think of the next thing to be done, while i am | |
doing something right now. Needless to say that concentration must | |
be practiced most of all by people who love each other. They must | |
learn to be close to each other without running away in the many ways | |
which this is customarily done. ... | |
One cannot learn to concentrate without becoming sensitive to | |
oneself. ... One is aware, for instance, of a sense of tiredness or | |
depression, and instead of giving in to it and supporting it by | |
depressive thoughts which are always at hand, one asks oneself "what | |
happened?" Why am i depressed? The same is done by noticing when | |
one is irritated or angry, or tending to daydreaming, or other escape | |
activities. In each of these instances the important thing is to be | |
aware of them, and not to rationalize them in the thousand and one | |
ways in which this can be done; furthermore, to be open to our own | |
inner voice, which will tell us-often rather immediately-why we are | |
anxious, depressed, or irritated. ... | |
To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself | |
completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved | |
person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is | |
also of little love. | |
> You didn't know i was watching through the eyes of every person | |
> you met, nor could you hear my voice in the wind. But in your | |
> heart i await you, my love, forever. -Drunvalo | |
tags: book,non-fiction,love,philosophy | |
# Tags | |
book | |
non-fiction | |
love | |
philosophy |