From: amanda@INTERCON.COM (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: morality of love as force
Date: 13 Sep 92 03:57:00 GMT

oispeggy@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Peggy Brown) writes:
> Rather a limited worldview IMO.  In quaballa, don't you want the 
> sephiroth to be balanced?  There is a place for hate and anger 
> as well as love.

Of course there's a place for them.  It all depends on where you want to go.

> > ...the opposite of love is indifference, not hate.  

> I've heard this commonly said and I don't agree.  Love is a 
> strong emotion, so its opposite would have to be an equally 
> strong emotion, thus hate.  Indifference is neutral, between the 
> two extremes, and can be used to *transcend* personal experience.

This is a very eastern view.  Another way to look at it is that hate is 
simply a variation on love, and that what characterizes them both is the 
degree of attention.  For example, in dysfunctional relationships, love and 
hate can be so intimately intertwined as to become indistinguishable.  Love 
and indifference cannot be mistaken in this way for each other.  To take your 
characterization (though I disagree that love is simply a strong emotion), if 
love is strong emotion, its opposite "would have to be" the total absence of 
emotion--something that completely counteracts it.

Love and hate most definitely do not "cancel each other out..."

> Also, there are different types of love (you might think of more):

In this context, I am talking about love most similarly to what you describe 
as Agape, although in particular circumstances it might be expressed in other 
ways as well.

> When I made the comment about being disinterested, I did not rule 
> out Agape, or compassion.  This is an impersonal love.  (A few, 
> like Mother Theresa, make it personal, but that is an exception.) 

To me, that makes it very worthy of attention.  To me, the personalization of 
Agape is a very central process in spiritual development.  This is one major 
aspect of middle eastern religions (Judaism, Christianity, and at least some 
branches of Islam) that differentiates them from most of the other religions 
of Eurasia, and one of the reasons that, for example, I do not think of 
myself as a follower of any eastern religion, despite the great insights I 
may gather from many of them.

> I think our difference of opinion is caused by you two interpreting 
> my comments in terms of a judeo-christian view, which often 
> causes one to see things as dualities (good/evil, hate/love, 
> male/female, good/bad).  I prefer a more transcendent approach, 
> That's all.

No, I don't think that's all.  Grin.  My life could be used as a textbook 
example of transcending dualities, for one thing :).  I think that the 
difference is not dualist/transcendent, but personal/impersonal.

> What about perfect hate?

I haven't had much experience of it.  Can you define or describe it?  Insofar 
as I can imagine hate becoming perfect, I find it indistinguishable from 
perfect love.

> And there are many who would 
> find your view and Amanda's view limiting.

And, no doubt, the converse is also true.  There's more to life than 
transcendence...


Peace,

Amanda Walker
-- 
"I think you should profit from the mistakes of others.  You don't live long
 enough to make them all yourself."      -- Lowell Ferguson