Love vs. Fear?

[joya250]

Maybe someone can help me out here.

I believe, like many others, that Fear is the opposite of Love.   This would make sense, in terms of balance and polarity.   However, why is it that everything I've encountered (i.e. books, websites, etc.) that relate to spirituality and the human condition postulates that LOVE is Truth.  How can Love be Truth... and not Fear?   How can Love be "stronger" than Fear???  Why is it that "light" will prevail over "darkness"?

Do you see what I'm getting at here?  Why the exception?   If "God" is "Love"...  where does that leave Fear?

Hope I'm making sense, and if not, I can certainly try to clarify... but I'd love to hear some other's thoughts on this.

Thank you in advance, joya

[Tayesin]

Hi Joya,
In all honesty, I think the differences you are finding from outside sources such as books etc, is because they are Belief-System based..  and as such they cannot express the bigger picture realities outside of their own boundaries.

Quoting you, " How can Love be Truth... and not Fear? How can Love be "stronger" than Fear??? Why is it that "light" will prevail over "darkness"?

Do you see what I'm getting at here? Why the exception? If "God" is "Love"... where does that leave Fear? "

Love being Truth......  from my experience, is more about the primary vibration of the Creative force/source/God being recognized as Feeling like Love.  Not the standard little love we usually think of, but a full and complete Big Love experienced in One-ness.

We humans feel Fear much stronger than we do the Big Love.  And that is normal considering our choices to be here in the physical where Fear is one of the main tools for growth through Experience.

Light will prevail over darkness because that is the nature of Light.  But, they are not opposed as every one seems to think...  they are simply two parts inherent in this creation we are experiencing.  This is Duality, and we chose to experience it all, light and dark..  until we unite the two within us and become whole.

" If God is Love, where does that leave Fear ?"

It leaves Fear where it is supposed to be, just a tool for us Souls to use in our growth on this world in Duality.  ie:- we feel Fear, it is telling us something important about ourself or our surroundings, and indicates the path for healing/improving/growing, and the remedy for these experiences is Love.  To love ourselves enough to follow the Fear feeling to it's origin in us so we can illuminate it with our own Light and see it for what it is.  The we feel Big Love, the vibration of the Source.

I hope this has been some help for you

[joya250]

Hi Joya,
In all honesty, I think the differences you are finding from outside sources such as books etc, is because they are Belief-System based..  and as such they cannot express the bigger picture realities outside of their own boundaries.

Quoting you, " How can Love be Truth... and not Fear? How can Love be "stronger" than Fear??? Why is it that "light" will prevail over "darkness"?

Do you see what I'm getting at here? Why the exception? If "God" is "Love"... where does that leave Fear? "

Love being Truth......  from my experience, is more about the primary vibration of the Creative force/source/God being recognized as Feeling like Love.  Not the standard little love we usually think of, but a full and complete Big Love experienced in One-ness.

We humans feel Fear much stronger than we do the Big Love.  And that is normal considering our choices to be here in the physical where Fear is one of the main tools for growth through Experience.

Light will prevail over darkness because that is the nature of Light.  But, they are not opposed as every one seems to think...  they are simply two parts inherent in this creation we are experiencing.  This is Duality, and we chose to experience it all, light and dark..  until we unite the two within us and become whole.

" If God is Love, where does that leave Fear ?"

It leaves Fear where it is supposed to be, just a tool for us Souls to use in our growth on this world in Duality.  ie:- we feel Fear, it is telling us something important about ourself or our surroundings, and indicates the path for healing/improving/growing, and the remedy for these experiences is Love.  To love ourselves enough to follow the Fear feeling to it's origin in us so we can illuminate it with our own Light and see it for what it is.  The we feel Big Love, the vibration of the Source.

I hope this has been some help for you

Hi Tayesin,

Thank you for your response.  

In regard to the Belief-System, yes and no.  It seems the more I am coming to my "own" beliefs (or, rather I guess it would be "our" beliefs, at some level?)... a clearer "perception" of "reality" is happening.  (I know all these are loaded words I'm using here!   haha.   But there's gotta be some way to describe things.)   This clearer perception seems to be more about Balance, then what I might deem "fairness", or a "benevolent God", or even the "nature" of light.   And, of course, you could say they are still "beliefs", and that there is a difference between believing and Knowing...  but does one truly EVER "Know"?  (They would, I think, cease then to be one.)

About the "primary vibration" of the Creative force, etc....   wouldn't this vibration include all that exists?  Including fear, suffering, etc, as well as Love?

If Light and Dark are two parts to the whole, why would one part be larger than the other, or more powerful?   I would think that the balance would switch.    Yes, at one time we are complete Love/Light, and at another time there is complete Fear/Dark, and yet at another time (perhaps the one that's integrating now?) there is Balance/Nothing/Grey.  And then the entire expanse of variety between these three Main Operations.   Yet, it seems to me that much of the New Age movement (for lack of a better word) seems so much geared towards Light being the ultimate evolution/experience/etc.  

Regarding Fear as a tool.   Is it nessecary?  Aren't there other, more pleasant ways to learn?  I personally have chosen that pleasure be a learning tool rather than pain.  This is taking a while to manifest in my life, yet I continue to focus on it.  I am also realizing that even though I have consciously chosen this, others haven't.   And I am having a hard time watching the suffering of those around me as well.  ... It is this that makes me question... perhaps there must always be a component of fear/suffering... and this "love/light/truth" talk is feel-good explanations that only paint half the picture, but the picture we'd like to believe/know, nonetheless.

Big Love, the Vibration of the Source... would you say this does NOT include fear, pain, and suffering?   Or would you say that the acceptance that there will inevitably be pain and suffering (at least in the physical dimension) is more in line with the Big Love vibration.   This acceptance, and accepting with Love perhaps.   But I am feeling slapped in the face with the reality of the other side of the wheel... and wondered if both sides were equal?

Your post has been helpful, as in it has enabled me to question deeper.   I would love to hear what other thoughts you may have on this.

peace, joya

[Frank]

Hello:

Many people confuse these basic issues so you are not alone. Events are in a bit of a flux, and even the simplest of things can appear confusing. Especially as many websites I've looked at, just tend to parrot what everyone else is saying without actually questioning it.

Fear is an emotion and love is a state of mind. Therefore, love can no more be the opposite of fear, than an apple can be opposite to an orange. In truth, there are no opposites. They are merely belief constructs, relics from the outgoing paradigm, as I call them.

Likewise, with concepts such as balance (in terms of between opposites) and polarity. Forward thinking individuals have already moved away from the old polar constructs, such as the good/bad, right/wrong, perpetrator/victim, god/demon, notions that formed the old judgemental-style ideology, and have encompassed the new, all-embracing construct of Acceptance. Which everyone will do eventually, it'll just take time that's all.

HTH

Yours,
Frank

[joya250]

Hello:

Many people confuse these basic issues so you are not alone. Events are in a bit of a flux, and even the simplest of things can appear confusing. Especially as many websites I've looked at, just tend to parrot what everyone else is saying without actually questioning it.

Fear is an emotion and love is a state of mind. Therefore, love can no more be the opposite of fear, than an apple can be opposite to an orange. In truth, there are no opposites. They are merely belief constructs, relics from the outgoing paradigm, as I call them.

Likewise, with concepts such as balance (in terms of between opposites) and polarity. Forward thinking individuals have already moved away from the old polar constructs, such as the good/bad, right/wrong, perpetrator/victim, god/demon, notions that formed the old judgemental-style ideology, and have encompassed the new, all-embracing construct of Acceptance. Which everyone will do eventually, it'll just take time that's all.

HTH

Yours,
Frank

Frank,

Hello, and I see you've moved this thread.   Thank you.   After I poked around a little more, I thought this thread would be more geared toward the "spiritual development" section -- and here it is!

What you say is very interesting.  When I talk about "balance", I am thinking of it more as the type of the "all-embracing construct of Acceptance" that you refer, rather than balance as a concept or belief.   Balance as being the Natural Order of Things including the Acceptance of the natural order. (though, now perhaps I just assume Balance is the direction of evolution?)  

So, these forward thinking individuals... how do they make their way in the world?   Recognition of duality is not necessarily Judgmental.  But, really, we are discriminating, like attracts likes, etc... It doesn't always have to be the extremes, like the god/demon, right/wrong.  

Ultimately, it is all what we make it, I guess.

The more I practice acceptance, or trying to be "in the flow" (whatever THAT means) I have been feeling, or rather I should say, in-between feeling elated and enjoying it, I feel very defeatist.  

Do you think practicing "acceptance" of, could actually changing ways for the better?   Or will we just eventually become separate from those who do continue clinging to these constructs?

Love vs. Fear
There can be Love without Fear then?  Are you saying that Love and Fear don't exist?

Also, may I ask, what does HTH mean?

peace, joya

[Telos]

Ahh, someone who doesn't reiterate that everything is ying and yang. You are a rarity, Frank.

[Feelflowz]

Joya,

These are terrific questions, very important ones. I don't have anything to add right now, but I'm looking forward to hearing more responses.
Hopefully this will be an on going discussion, because I think it gets to the heart of who we are.  What IS fear?  What IS love?
A wonderful investigation!  Thanks for bringing it to the forumn!

Cheers,
Feelflowz

[You]

God is most certainly not Love without fear. In the bible he commands people to fear him, when they don't he mutilates, kills, or tortures them or those close to them. Sometimes it's even done to those who don't disobey, now that's something to fear!

I don't believe there's any obvious good or evil, light or darkness, it's neat to think but no one's shown it to me.

[Tayesin]

Hi Joya,
Balance is the key, I think.  Since we exist in this Duality, and chose to do so, then it must be up to us to Balance what SEEMS to be in opposition.  So we shine Light into our own darkness, we own it and accept it as ours.  This brings us more towards Wholeness, when we are more able then to Accept further growth and higher awareness.

I tend to disagree with Frank about Love being a state of Mind, due to my own experience of it as a true Feeling.. the characteristic of being in communication with the Source.  But I do agree with the rest of what he wrote, particularly the fact that events are in a bit of a flux....  although the experience and recognition of it as it is now, is much more than 'a flux'.

You excellently illustrated growth by these words.... " It seems the more I am coming to my "own" beliefs (or, rather I guess it would be "our" beliefs, at some level?)... a clearer "perception" of "reality" is happening."

This is what I meant about belief systems confining our experience because of their inherent boundaries, so without such attachments you are free to experience and grow beyond them, just like you are.

Quoting you, " About the "primary vibration" of the Creative force, etc.... wouldn't this vibration include all that exists? Including fear, suffering, etc, as well as Love? "

Yes, it does include all things... yet it Feels like Big Love, meaning the characterisitic it has is Love with a capital L.  All the rest is diversification of the Source as it experienced itself.

As for Fear, it is something we agree to accept about incarnation in a Duality world, and from the Soul's perspective it is only a tool for growth.

You asked, " If Light and Dark are two parts to the whole, why would one part be larger than the other, or more powerful?"

Because we exist currently in Duality, where the darkness was created and then chosen by those beings who wish to work it's experience offerings.  As the Source diversified to smaller and smaller portions of itself, it decided to see how it would react to an opposing experience we call Darkness.  Hence we incarnate in the Duality it created to experience itself more fully.

In this way it is easier to understand why Light is much more powerful than Dark, because we now see Dark as a later creation designed for very specific purposes, to test and experience the parts of the Source that choose to incarnate here.

And you are very correct about the Balance switching.  It does.  We have been existing now in such a switch for sometime, and over the next millenia the pendulum will swing the other way again, as it always does.

Quoting you, " it seems to me that much of the New Age movement (for lack of a better word) seems so much geared towards Light being the ultimate evolution/experience/etc. "

I agree.  This tendency to focus only on Light is unbalanced, in my opinion, as it prevents people from knowing, experiencing, accepting and owning their own portion of Darkness within them, thereby making it near impossible for them to become Whole and aware beyond the Duality.

You Asked, " Regarding Fear as a tool. Is it nessecary? Aren't there other, more pleasant ways to learn?"

Yes there are more pleasant ways to learn..  but we are physical creatures of Fear, it is in our make-up and indoctrinated into us from the youngest age.  So we then need to move through those fears to clarity by whatever means we find that works for us.  There are many methods for delving into our inner fears to find the Core Belief that they are based on so that we can illuminate them with the light of our understanding of ourself.

I have to say, you ask very thoughtful questions.  Back in the 70's my Teacher said to me, " When we know the right questions to ask we will find the answers within them."  And you seem to be doing so as a natural part of your accelerated growth.  This is wonderful.

[Frank]

Hello:

In the light of the further developments of the thread, I thought it might be helpful to expand on my previous response.

As I say, love is a state of mind and fear is an emotion or a feeling. Now, I fully understand where people are coming from when they might disagree, saying love is not a state of mind, but a feeling. This is a point Tayesin has raised and I can well understand many people would agree with him. Myself, I can agree in the sense that we tend to interpret love as a feeling, but I would respectfully point out that this is merely an interpretation.

The study of feelings, emotions, beliefs, etc. is a pet topic of mine. One of the great things about being able to visit non-physical realms in a very controlled way, is you are able to seek out all manner of answers to questions about life within the physical. Questions such as, what is love? Where do emotions come from? How was the universe formed? Why are we here? All these kinds of questions can be answered for you directly, rather than doing what most enquiring people have to do at the moment, which is, sort through layer upon layer of religious and all kinds of other mystical mumbo-jumbo, just to try and get to the bare bones of it.

As I've said a number of times before, I'm not what you might call "well read" when it comes to this topic. I do very much prefer to seek answers within, as that way you get things first hand. No matter how adept a person is, as a result of communicating through language, there will always be distortion. That goes for myself as well, of course, which is why I always encourage people to find out these answers for themselves, via their own hands-on exploration.

In the past, I have read a number of religious-release-spiritual works. I once went through a phase of reading the bible, for example, and spent ages trying to make out where these writers were coming from. What I was attempting to do is step in their shoes, and go back to the times when they were writing these works, to try as best I could to view life from their perspective. Then I would compare what they were writing about, to my own hands-on experiences, in order to try and find parallels in our respective work.

I was amazed at how, when you compare what you might call the core-teachings, these people were really quite knowledgeable as regards non-physical reality. Though a lot of misunderstanding arises directly due to distortions caused through their faulty interpretations. Well, to be fair, people such as myself, today, view it as faulty interpretation. But at the time, to them, they obviously would not have seen it that way.

I guess that's how it all started: ordinary people, viewing non-physical reality, and writing about it. But: with a very much more limited perspective (overall) compared to the more forward-thinkers of today. Problem is, people latched onto this early work and made "religions" out of it. And here we all are, a couple of thousand years down the line, trying to unravel the mess.

Anyhow, let me take the original question and go through it step-by-step. The question was, "I've encountered books, websites, etc. that relate to spirituality and the human condition, which postulate that LOVE is Truth. How can Love be Truth?" Unfortunately, many people talk in these kinds of terms, and publish them on websites and so forth; without fully understanding what love actually is, where it comes from, or how truth relates in this context.

So here's what it means:

When the traditional works say that love is truth, what they mean is, love is a Truth. Now, when something is defined as a Truth, what they are defining is a particular kind of reality. They are making a specific distinction between what we might call a local, physical-focus reality. Say, for example, a chair. This could be said to be a reality, it exists as a physical truth. But it is not a truth in the wider sense of it being a Truth. This distinction is sometimes made more apparent by capitalising the word Truth, when it is meant in a wider sense.

So a Truth, then, has a reality in a wider sense. In other words, a Truth is a reality that is not limited to any particular realm of existence; but is a reality that is present in all realms of existence. So in every realm of existence, you will find there is the expression or manifestation of love.

Love is a fundamental energy, that permeates all dimensions. However, within our physical dimension, we experience merely one aspect of the reality of this Truth we call love.

Given certain conditions, it is possible to adopt an alternate mental state that will allow us to merge our sense of consciousness with the energy of love. Thus we can allow the feeling of this mergence to become manifest within our objective awareness. The actual sensations we feel as a result of this merging (which are rather nice!) we interpret as a particular range of feelings.

There are many other reams of existence where people consciously merge with the energy of love. While their interpretations of the experience may be different from our own interpretations, the actual energy they interact with is the same... it's just their interpretation that is different.

It is unfortunate (though perfectly understandable) that we then put two and two together, and conclude that love is merely a feeling... because that is how we interpret it. But we fail to recognise the wider reality of love as a Truth. This, of course, is something that basic spiritual teachings have been trying to point out for thousands of years! But, like I say, for some reason people took the basic teachings and made religions out of them, and we are only just now learning how to unravel the mess.

Okay, so now I come to the "fear" aspect, in the sense of where it was claimed that fear is the opposite of love.

First, there are no opposites. They are merely belief constructs that we harmonise with for a variety of reasons. Our belief constructs shape our reality. Our reality is not good or bad, negative or positive, etc. Our reality simply is. It is our misinterpretation of reality that leads us into making all manner of erroneous judgements. The concept of "polarity" does of course have its practical uses, for instance, when replacing the batteries in your Walkman. But when we take this idea and apply it to energy, in terms of mental energy, our thinking tends to go way off base.

I'm not going to go into any detail here about how we create our reality, as I wish to remain focused on the theme of love and emotions. But in short, the BIG mistake we make is, we start to think of our lives as something that happens to us, rather than something we create for ourselves. Anyhow, back to emotions:

So fear is an emotion, but is fear a Truth?

No

Hate is an emotion, but is hate a Truth?

No

Is any emotion a Truth?

No

Is emotion a reality?

Yes

Then why is it not a Truth?

Because for a reality to be a Truth, it must be a reality that is present in all realms of existence. Our emotions are physical-realm constructs only.

So emotions are realities that each of us generates, in a local sense, from our core beliefs. More specifically, emotions are communications that present us with feelings about the way situations are interacting with our core beliefs. These feelings are entirely of our own individual creation. Whereas love, being a Truth, is a universally present energy.

In other words, love is not something we generate or something we create, as we do with our ordinary feelings. Love is a universally distributed, ever-present energy we can merge with, and feel the effects of. There is no opposite to love. Love simply is. We confuse it with our locally generated feelings through faulty interpretation.

Hope This Helps

Yours,
Frank

[Naiad780]

I haven't read through all the replies, so my apologies if someone already suggested this.

Love may not be any stronger than fear.  However, fear holds us back and often prompts us to do things that are detrimental to ourselves and others.  We're less hesitant and more rational when we're guided by love (note that I'm not talking about wild hormone-induced love, which is anything but rational )

[joya250]

Tayesin, Frank, and Naiad ~

Thank you all for your replies.  I just wanted to let you know that I am not ignoring you -- just have been entangled in dealing with a pet health issue, and sometimes this type of thinking is the last thing I can do when low-energy/upset.    ....  I will be sitting down with my "thinking cap" on in a little bit, and am sure I will have a response (at least something, if not an "oh yah, that makes sense")  ... but I want to do your thoughts justice by being in the right frame of mind when I do reply.  (again)  haha.

thanks, joya

[You]

Love is a beautiful thing, I love it. Even so, what convinces you that love is not an emotion? Why is love any more truthful than hate? There is love and hate in spades in this world, are you just trying to debase hate? Hate is intoxicating sometimes.