Question
How is it possible that love can so easily turn to its opposite?
Please no platitudes...this is as deep a question as i know how to ask. i know about duality, polarity, opposites, yin/yang, etc. But can someone take me deeper into understanding the essence or the reasoning that turns one from love and acceptance to meanness and attack. It is difficult to understand out of my own psyche, because i would never hurt or harm another. i am told not only that it is i who trigger this, but that i am the only one who brings this mean behavior out in the other; yet i do nothing of note, other than just being who i am. So the "firing pin" seems to be within the attacker, and is set off inexplicably. How do love and hate reside in the same person? i simply cannot comprehend such reversals. Does one go to the opposite extreme out of their own hurt and pain or simply because there is an undeveloped aspect within them yet to be brought to light and healed? Talk to me...
Your Answer:
One reason is that the contrast between a happier person and an unhappier person highlights and accentuates the difference. Then the unhappier person can blame the happier person for causing that revelation or the showing up of the unhappier person's relative unhappiness. The happier person isn't to blame but gets the blame, because the unhappier person is frightened, disturbed, agitated by the revelation of their relative unhappiness.
So all happier people get dumped on by unhappier people. Suddenly the unhappier person sees their unhappiness, and it is shocking. It throws them.
The conditions of happiness are 1. consciousness (obviously) 2 a good experience, not a bad one (obviously) 3 permanence, unchangeableness. The third condition is impossible to satisfy in material things which all change and pass away. But people have in them (unaware of it) this awareness of real perfect happiness, so they are not satisfied with imperfect happiness. The human heart cannot be satisfied with less than all three conditions. But people know of only the material existence, the outer material appearance of life, so they continue to seek it there, and find intermittent happiness, ups and downs, gain and loss. It is only because they know (deep inside) that there is a perfect happiness that they are never happy with imperfect happiness.
People need to take full responsibility for their pursuit of happiness, not scream for it from someone else, like a child. When one is in a relationship, it is easy to fall into thinking: this person should provide happiness to me, they are failing in their duty to me.
You know duality, but do you know that duality is essential for unity? There is no union without separation. If there was no duality, there would not be any unity. Unity on its own would be unexperiencable, because everything needs contrast for recognition (experience). There is no revelation (coming from darkness to light) without darkness. Darkness is the mother of light, in this above sense.
Realising this (not just recording it in the mind as a platitude) leads to acceptance of the darkness, the badness, the unpleasantness, the downtimes of life. (Acceptance doesn't mean just passively putting up with it, and doing nothing, It means facing the reality of it.)
There is no reason to be hurt when a lover complains that you are not giving him all he wants and needs. The lover does this because of the infinite thirst inside for infinite perfect love, and from not taking full rresponsibility for his pursuit of happiness, like a child, who naturally turns to its mother for everything, and has not skills and knowledge to take full responsibility for his pursuit of happiness.
Help the lover take responsibility for his pursuit of happiness. Pursuit of happiness is the fun game of life. We are not here to be happy, but to enjoy the game of pursuit of happiness. It is a tough demanding exciting dangerous game. But it is better than being eternally stuck in heaven, perfectly happy, with nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to seek or test or hunt. It is a good game. Ultimately, it is our own souls that have chosen this game, in preference to heaven, with its perfect monotony. Help your lover realise that this is his self-chosen place. We have all chosen this life of ignorance, of limited knowledge, of perpetual thirst for more, this exciting, fun, treasure hunt.
But people have lost their way, they have forgotten why they came to this world, they have forgotten how boring heaven is, they have forgotten the excellence of this imperfect suffering mistake-filled life. They are not pursuing happiness. Hunting is fun. It is the elusiveness of the prey that makes the fun. If the prey came right up to you, it would kill the fun dead. The Greek poet Cavafy wrote: May your road to Ithaca [home, heaven] be long. The amazing thing is that we can be perfectly happy pursuing happiness without being happy. We can be in the most miserable situation, and be perfectly happy hunting happiness, looking for a way to make things better. The vital thing is to resurrrect the pursuit of happiness, to remind people that that is the purpose, the intention of the world, and of our being in it. It is amazing, but people have got so slack and sleepy that they have wandered off from pursuit of happiness. Asking every day, every hour, every situation: Is this the best I can get? What mistakes am I making that are limiting my happiness? What is happening here? What is a good understanding of this event? is this tuned to my self? Is this good *for me* (or is it just generally thought to be fun without people really thinking about it)? (We are certainly making mistakes, because we have limited wits. Not our fault, it is our choice, to make the game possible.) This pursuit is enormously satisfying, thrilling, alive-making.
Your unhappiness is because you have wandered off from this pursuit. Except that, by asking help, you are pursuing happiness. But you can draw your lover into this game too. Ask questions together: What is happening here? What can we do? Draw him into pursuit of his own happiness, into his own hunt. Immediately that you sit down together and pursue happiness, he will be content, he will feel loved.
Surprising but true, we need to learn to pursue happiness. The more we do it, the more intensely we do it, the more often we do it, the more alive and satisfied we feel. Instead, we fall into merely saying: Oh, things are good, Oh things are bad. Being passive, not active. And mentally hiding from reality. Patiently contemplate bad stuff till the solution appears. We are creators, not creatures. The woe of world is our clay. Don’t hide from it, knead it, work it.
We have a greater mind behind our little conscious mind. It will activate only if we face reality, problems. We will experience this greater mind if we use it. We will know our true selves if we mentally engage and connect with problems. There is no limit to the amount that we can wake up, become more active in the hunt, more alive, more satisfied. Let your motto be: You ain't seen nothing yet. However good your life is, there is always more. Life is a treasure hunt. There is good stuff, hidden from your mental sight. Always more. I know, for instance, that the material happiness of every human being can easily (apart from the block about seeking) be - literally, conservatively - 100 times happier. Seek.
