Why Do You Get Attracted To Someone?
Look around you and you will find that most of your friends are looking for different kinds of partners. Somebody wants a partner with lots of money. Somebody wants a partner with lots of sex appeal. Somebody wants a partner with great looks. Somebody wants a partner who is a genius forget the looks. Somebody wants a partner who will only love him or her. And so it goes. Why there is so much dissimilarity in partner preference amongst friends? Friends who are so alike each other in their choices differ greatly when it comes to choice of partners, why? Childhood-Most of us have childhoods where we missed something. It may have been love, or money or something which we felt that other children got, but we did no t Some of us are attracted to one of our parents- mother or father. Some of us developed childhood preferences according to what we were told. This is good and this is bad. These childhood experiences play a major role in our choice of partner. Genes-Our genes not only determine our body features but also our mental make-up. Some of us are very intelligent. Others manage to come somewhere at the bottom of the class. Some understand anything in a jiffy while some others never understand whatever you try. Some of us are emotionally very weak and some of us can take emotional blows with ease. Why so much difference? It is all written in our genes. Similarly our genes decide what we like. Now I hope that I have been able to shed some light upon why we like a particular kind of a partner. If you wish you can try a small experiment. Ask your friends about their favorite celebrity. The difference in answers would be quite revealing. I hope you get me.
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by Michael Berg Author of “The Way”
“Ya’akov loved Rachel. He said (to her father Lavan) I will work for you for seven years, in exchange for your youngest daughter Rachel… Ya’akov worked for Rachel for seven years, but in his eyes it seemed like only a few days, for he loved her.”
It is not often that the Torah discusses love. Therefore, when we find such sections, we should focus on them and try to gain as much as we can in our understanding of love.
Love is a universal idea. Most people believe they feel or have felt love. But, as this section makes clear, what we think of as love and true love might not be the same thing. In fact, they might even be complete opposites. When a person loves someone he yearns to be with them, a day apart feels like years. But, as the Torah tells, in the case of Ya’akov, the opposite was true. Although he was separated from Rachel for seven years, “in his eyes it seemed like only a few days, because he loved her.” What does this mean? If he loved her, the years should have felt like centuries.
Although we are going to attempt to explain in a spiritual way what true love means, the concept is not easily understood. As Rabbi Ashlag says, what we do not truly comprehend and feel, cannot truly be understood by us. Therefore, it is difficult to understand true love, being as in reality, a lot of us have never actually felt it. If we come away with only one lesson from this section, it should be that what we perceive as love, and true love are two totally different things.
Rabbi Yehuda Leib Chasman uses the feeling of mercy and concern that we may feel for others as an example of the difference between true feelings and self-centered feelings for others. There are people who are naturally full of mercy for others. They cannot bear to see someone else suffering. Although this is an admirable quality, the reality is, that this feeling of mercy is centered around their “I”. It bothers them to see others suffer and they therefore want to assist the other person in alleviating that pain and suffering. This is of course a wonderful nature, but the reality of it is that it makes the person himself feel better when he is merciful for others. In other words, we can say that he is basically being merciful to himself.
The same idea is true concerning love. At its core, most of the time when people refer to love, that love is rooted in their love for themselves. This can be clarified with a parable. A man walks into a restaurant. The waiter asks him what he would like. He responds that he loves fish. The fish is cooked and then cut up. The man then proceeds to eat the fish. Is this love? Is this the way one treats someone he loves? This man does not love fish. He loves himself, he loves to fill himself with fish.
Although the story sounds kind of silly, it reveals a very important lesson. All of us use the word love. In this story it becomes clear that, more often than not, when we use the word love with respect to others, we actually mean love for ourselves. In other words, we love what that person does for us, the way he or she makes us feel. The bottom line is that we do not really love others, rather, we love ourselves. What we often feel as love for others is actually just an extension of our love for ourselves.
Therefore, when we love, it is really the “I” that we love. When we are separated from whatever it is that fulfils the “I”, we are upset and we cannot wait for the separation to end: a day seems like a year. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Chasman explains that true spiritual love is above and beyond time. Time does not affect true love for it does not exist on the same plane. This is the love that Ya’akov felt for Rachel. It was true love and was not influenced by time. This is what the Torah means when it says, “in his eyes, it seemed like only a few days,” for their love was true, and, therefore, beyond the boundaries of time. In a few words the Torah reveals what made their love so special, “for he loved her” - their love was not self-centered, it was the truest love, one could have for another person.
This explanation may not be easy to grasp. Let us crystallize the basic lesson, which we can hopefully begin to utilize in our life. If we want to develop spiritually, if we want to begin to truly love others, we should follow a two-step process: Firstly, we should take the time to think and realize how a lot of what we think of as love for others is truly an extension of our own self- love. Then we should try to focus ourselves on loving others, for what they are, and not for what they do for us physically or spiritually. This transformation from self-love to love of others is not a simple one. It takes time and effort but the reward of this process is to truly love others. When we reach that level of love, that is the ultimate, for that love is eternal beyond time and space. May we all merit to achieve true eternal love.
How can I love unconditionally and unlimitedly?
The first step in being fully loving is that you must fully love your Self. And this you cannot do so long as you believe that you were born in sin, and are basically evil.
If you believe that humans are by nature non-trustworthy and evil, you will create a society that supports that view, then enact laws, approve rules, adopt regulations, and impose restraints that are justified by it.
If you believe that humans are by nature trustworthy and good, you will create an entirely different kind of society, in which laws, rules, regulations, and restraints are rarely required. The first society will be freedom limiting, the second, freedom giving.
God is fully loving because God is fully free. To be fully free is to be fully joyful, because full freedom creates the space for every joyful experience. Freedom is the basic nature of God. It is also the basic nature of the human soul. The degree to which you are not fully free is the degree to which you are not fully joyful and that is the degree to which you are not fully loving.
To be totally loving means to be fully free.
We should allow everyone to be able to do anything they want.
That is how God loves. God allows everyone to do anything they want.
It is normal in your society to punish. It is abnormal in your society to simply allow a consequence to assert itself to reveal itself.
Punishments are your announcement that you are too impatient to await a natural outcome. Punishments are someone else's decision that one has done wrong.
Consequences are one's own experience that something does not work. That is, it did not produce an intended result.
In other words, we do not learn quickly from punishments, because we see them as something that someone else is doing to us. We learn more readily from consequences, because we see them as something that we are doing to ourselves.
The biggest punishment that you have devised is the withholding of your love. You have shown your offspring that if they behave in a certain way, you will withhold your love. It is by the granting and the withholding of your love that you have sought to regulate and modify, to control and to create, your children's behaviors.
This is something that God would never do.
True love never withdraws itself. And that is what loving fully means.
I am love. One does not have to practice what one is, one simply is it.
I am the love that knows no condition, nor limitation of any kind.
I am totally loving, and to be totally loving means to be willing to give every mature sentient being total freedom to be, do, and have that which they wish.
Even if you know it will be bad for them?
It is not for you to decide that for them.
Not even for our children?
If they are mature sentient beings, no. If they are grown children, no. And if they are not yet mature, the fastest way to lead them to their own maturity is to allow them the freedom to make as many choices as possible as early as practical.
This is what love does. Love lets go. That which you call need, and which you often confuse with love, does the opposite. Need holds on. This is the way you can tell the difference between love and need. Love lets go, need holds on.
So to be totally loving, I let go?
Among other things, yes. Let go of expectation, let go of requirements and rules and regulations that you would impose on your loved ones. For they are not loved if they are restricted. Not totally.
Nor are you; you do not love yourself totally when you restrict yourself, when you grant yourself less than total freedom, in any matter.
Yet remember that choices are not restrictions. So do not call the choices you have made restrictions. And lovingly provide for your offspring, and all your loved ones, all the information that you feel you may have, to help them make good choices - "good" being defined here as those choices most likely to produce a particular desired result, as well as what you know to be their largest desired result: a happy life.
Share what you know about that. Offer what you have come to understand. Yet do not seek to impose your ideas, your rules, your choices upon another and do not withhold your love should another make choices you would not make. Indeed, if you believe their choices to have been poor ones, that is precisely the time to show your love.
That is compassion, and there is no higher expression.
What else does it mean to be totally loving?
It means to be fully present, in every single moment. To be fully aware. To be fully open, honest, transparent. It means to be fully willing, to express the love that is in your heart full out. To be fully loving means to be fully naked, without hidden agenda or hidden motive, without hidden anything.
And you say that it is possible for human beings, for regular people like me, to achieve such love? This is something of which we are all capable?
It is more than that of which you are capable. It is that which you are. This is the nature of Who You Are. The most difficult thing that you do is to deny that. And you are doing this difficult thing every day. It is why your life feels so difficult. Yet when you do the easy thing, when you decide to come from, to be, Who You Really Are - which is pure love, unlimited and unconditioned-then your life becomes easy again. All the turmoil disappears, all the struggle goes away.
This peace may be achieved in any given moment. The way to it may be found by asking a simple question:
What would love do now?
This is a marvelous question, because you will always know the answer. It is like magic. It is cleansing, like a soap. It takes the worry out of being close. It washes away all doubt, all fear. It bathes the mind with the wisdom of the soul.
What a good way of putting that.
It is true. When you ask this question, you will know instantly what to do. In any circumstance, under any condition, you will know. You will be given the answer. You are the answer, and asking the question brings forth that part of you.
Do not second-guess this answer when it instantly comes to you. When you second-guess is when you fool yourself - and can make a fool of yourself. Go into the heart of love, and come from that place in all your choices and decisions, and you will find peace.
Unfortunately, contemporary culture tends to think of “love” as a way to find personal fulfillment in life. That is, each person in a relationship expects the other to fill up the existential void in his or her life. Ultimately, this is impossible, and so when there are problems, the conflicts are usually about one partner complaining of not getting what he or she wants. In this situation, only one psychological solution can be possible: Take responsibility for your own life satisfaction. True love is about giving, not receiving. If you’re mainly concerned about getting pleasure or security, you’re being selfish, not loving.
But love alone does not make a marriage/relationship last! You can love more then one person and diffrent kinds of love. True love between man and woman is great and it is like a plant/flower it needs constant replanting and constant attention, water, sun light so it can grow.
When you say that you were married for 9 years then divorced. Well, think of your love like a plant, you water it, you change soil, you take it out for fresh air, you bring it in during cold times and keep it warm, you make sure it has sun light and plant food and Vola... your plant grows and grows. if you keep it in a small pot and dont allow it to grow then it might survive because you water it but... the first cold.. or the first time you forget to water its going to die and maybe never revive again no matter how hard you try! Because, unlike when you first got it... you did not allow it to grow and change the soil and water it and give it plant food.. so, the first time you forget to water it will bounce back, second time will bounce back until one day it cant anymore..
Love comes with honesty, open line of communication and respect. Their is a diffrence between love and a relationship. Many people confuse the two. They will say I was inlove then my relationship ended, where did the love go? well.. the love can live and be a healthy aspect of a relationship or it can be killed!
I think, as humans, we have the gift of love and feelings. We need to keep them alive and make good choices in life and open all lines of communications, accept, don't judge and grow together. If you plan on changing the other person, then your love will not stand the test of time!
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