Is Love the Answer?
Details
What is love? Are there many forms of Love? Is there always an object of Love?
Can Love be Pure or Unconditional?
Plato describes two types of love, earthly love and divine love. Earthly love is material attraction towards a beautiful body for physical pleasure and reproduction. The beautiful or lovely other person inspires the mind and the soul and directs one's attention to spiritual things.
Divine Love begins with the journey from physical attraction towards beautiful form or body but transcends gradually to love for Supreme Beauty or Wisdom. This Love of Wisdom is Philosophy.
It is said that everyone has pure love within their nature and all strive to express this through creation, to recognise this in others and to experience this within one’s self. This pure love brings stillness. The heart is at rest. This pure, or unconditional love is untainted by selfishness and is unrestricted by any sense of limit.
If love is pure it is governed by wisdom (or goodness). If impure, or conditional, there is attachment (conflict), or at the extreme there is delusion (or evil). By this reasoning, there is no absolutely evil person in the world.
To experience unconditional love we need to give up those things which cover the love ; likes, dislikes, attitudes, demands, expectations etc. We need to meet people afresh as though for the first time, and look towards the true essence of a person rather than that which is transient.
Love is the motive force behind all the processes at work in the world, and even the ultimate cause of hostility.
What are our experiences of Love, is it ever unconditional?
Handout, including quotes:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Du8Ux2wukSYgirUTKd7Z2f5T04iNIQ56/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108914814178375137957&rtpof=true&sd=true
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We have great venue, CAFE QUENCH in Hove, with our own space on the 1st floor.
Walking distance to Hove station. Free parking.
Please arrive in time to order your refreshments and find a table.
NOTE TIME: 2.30 - 4.30 PM
IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND, PLEASE CHANGE YOUR
RSVP.
Donations essential to keep the Meetup group going, either cash on the day, or via PayPal.
https://www.meetup.com/PHILOSOPHY-CAFE/
https://cafequench.wixsite.com/quench
http://www.practicalphilosophysussex.com/