LOVE BEGINS, MOST OFTEN, with a special tenderness of the girl towards her father, and of the boy towards his mother. Then it changes to a more passionate devotion (a kind of vicarious worship) to some person slightly nearer to the lover’s age. “The first propensities of love in an uncorrupted youth,” says German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832), “takes altogether a spiritual direction.”

As noted in our RESPONSE to the PROMPTING NO. 2, the unconscious feminine part of the boy and the man is what Jung calls the anima. The unconscious masculine part of the girl and woman is the animus. Because they are parts of ourselves that are deeply buried, we are never really aware of them in our normal LIFE. But once we become fascinated (falls in LOVE) with a person of the opposite sex, the anima, or the animus stirs to LIFE.

The attraction we feel toward another might be purely physical, but more often the person who draws our attention unconsciously bears some resemblance — physical or psychological — to our mother or father. Remember that this primal relationship is full of charged energy, excitement, and obsessions that are repressed but yearning to come out. A person who triggers these associations in us will be a magnet for our attention, even though we are not aware of the source of our attraction. However, this wishful thinking may be a source of frustration. If our object of LOVE acts in ways that are often contrary to the image we present, or to our expectations, we become hysterical, needy, obsessive, and controlling.

SEVEN therapeautic tonics to loftily LOCATE your LIFE’s BASIC BEARING:

1. BRED in a family spiced by a positive relationship to the parent(s), we will tend to project onto the other person the desirable qualities that our parent(s) had, in the hope of re-experiencing that early paradise.
2. EVOKED by the need to fix an ambivalent relationship with an imperfect parent, we fall in love with someone with whom we hope to subtract their negative qualities and get what we never quite got.
3. ACCORDINGLY, if the relationship to our parent was mostly negative, we may go in search of someone with the opposite qualities to that parent. Often we mistake our target and fall for a dark, shadowy nature.
4. READILY, because we are not really relating to women and men as they are, but rather to our projections, we will eventually feel disappointed in them, as if they are to blame for not being what we had imagined.
5. INDEED, the relationship will often tend to fall apart from the misreading and miscommunications on both sides, and not aware of the source of this, we will go through the same cycle with the next person.
6. NOW, everyone has particular mixes of the masculine and feminine. For instance, there are men who are more psychologically feminine than women and women who are more psychologically masculine than men.
7. GRANTED, they are heterosexual, the man will be drawn to masculine women who have the qualities he never developed in himself. He has more of an animus than an anima. The woman to feminine men.

LOVE is to the soul of the one who love, what the soul is to the body. And Nietzsche did his reverence for it: “The chastest utterance I ever heard: Dans le veritable amour c’est l’ame qui envelope le corps – In true love it is the soul that embraces the body.” Using the word Eros (in Greek mythology, the god of love) to describe LOVE, German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860), in The World as Will and Idea (1819) affirms:

Eros is the first, the creator, the principle from which all things proceed. The relation of the sexes ...is really the invisible central point of all action and conduct, and peeps out everywhere in spite of all veils thrown over it. It is the cause of war and the end of peace; the basis of what is serious, and the aim of the jest; the inexhaustible source of wit, the key of all illusions, and the meaning of all mysterious hints...We see it at every moment seat itself, as the true and hereditary lord of the world, out of the fullness of its own strength, upon the ancestral throne: and looking down thence with scornful glance, laugh at the preparations made to bind it, or imprison it, or at least limit it and, wherever possible, keep it concealed, and even so to master it that it shall only appear as a subordinate, secondary concern of LIFE.

At the center of LOVE is WILL, the will-to-reproduce, which is a will-to-live; and its eternal enemy is death. But perhaps can it defeat even death? It can, by the strategy and martyrdom of reproduction. Every normal organism hastens, at maturity, to sacrifice itself to the task of reproduction: from the spider who is eaten up by the female he has just fertilised, or the wasp that devotes itself to gathering food for offspring it will never see, to the man who wears himself to ruin in the effort to feed and clothe and educate his children.

Reproduction is the ultimate purpose of every organism, and its strongest instinct; for only so can the WILL conquer death. And to ensure this conquest of death, the will-to-reproduce is placed almost entirely BEYOND control of knowledge or reflection.

The law of sexual attraction is that the choice of mate is to a large extent determined, however unconsciously, by mutual fitness to procreate. Each seeks a mate that will neutralise his or her defects, lest they be inherited. A physically weak man will seek a strong woman and vice versa. Each one will especially regard as beautiful in another individual those perfections which he or she lacks, nay, even those imperfections which are the opposite of his or her own.

The physical qualities of two individuals can be such that for the purpose of restoring as far as possible the type of the species, the one is quite specially and perfectly the completion and supplement of the other, which therefore desires it exclusively. This manifests itself in the profound consciousness with which we consider and ponder every part of our object of love, the critical scrupulosity with which we look at a woman or man who begins to please us. The individual here acts, without knowing it, by order of something higher than him or herself.

BEYONDISM FORMIDABLE FORMULA for SELF-ACTUALIZATION
(The ‘head’ and ‘tail’ of Activating your SELFHOOD) in regard to:
Assuming the responsibility of LOVING for personal NOURISHMENT.

1. FACE the challenges and shortcomings of your partner as though they were yours, and nobody else.
   Core Choice #31: Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light. Hate can only be driven out by love.
   Sure Score #31: It is better to be hated for what you truly are, than to be loved for what you are not.
2. ONLY once in your mortal LIFE, you find someone who can completely turn your world around.
   Solid Stance #31: You tell your partner things that you have never shared with another soul.
   Catalysing Consideration #31: Your LOVER absorbs everything you say and wants to hear more.
3. REAL lover is not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when humorous.
   Mighty Mission #31: Does not hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough.
   Vivid Vision #31: Builds you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special.
4. MUSTER strength in knowing you have a true friend and a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end.
   Gaining Ground #31: Your hope and security is in knowing that there is ONE who is a part of your LIFE.
   Capturing Clouds #31: LIFE seems different, exciting and worthwhile; colours seem brighter and brilliant.
5. UNLEASH your LOVE to your partner as if everyone is keenly watching, and want to learn from you.
   Lofty Leap #31: You are in LOVE when you cannot fall asleep because reality is better than your dreams.
   Merry Momentum #31: A true LOVER is one who knows all your weaknesses and assists you to cure them.
6. LIVE each moment of your ‘existence’, like it is heaven on earth, and LOVE like you will never be hurt.
   Holy Hearken #31: No pressure, jealousy or competition; only a quiet calmness when together.
   Divine Distinction #31: No faking; can be yourself and not worry about what is thought of you.
7. ACCEPT the LOVE you think your partner deserves, and give the LOVE you think you can appreciate.
   Prudent Planting #31: Simple things mesmerises you like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or a storm cloud.
   Hoped Harvest #31: Open your heart knowing that it may be broken one day, thus feeling dreamlike joy.

#31. To the extent I aspire to strengthen the bond of my RELATIONSHIP,
Which is the most timeless understanding of the concept of LOVE?

Love is by acclaim the most interesting of all forms of human experience.
To love is ultimately to affirm LIFE, create new families, and new generations.
Love is the subtle thread that connects us with other people and with the universe.
Love is a deep spiritual force that surpasses any other mental or bodily sensation.
Love is a human expression of the creative force that gives LIFE to individuals.
It is only in love that we give or find value and meaning to our human existence.
In love, it beomes unnecessary to take a drug, in order to feel awake and alive.

#31. I, ___________________________, intentional on strengthening the bond of my RELATIONSHIP, do DECISIVELY DECLARE that, a LOVELY relationship is that in which, each appoints the other guardian of his or her solitude. As I accept the realisation that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up if me and my partner succeed in loving the distance between us which makes it possible for us to see the other whole and against a wide sky!

In this reference, as a BLESSED BEYONDIST, I hereby, make an ABSOLUTE AFFIRMATION that, my relationship is geared towards marriage. I have understood that, marriage is basically ‘leaving’, ‘cleaving’ and ‘becoming’, as exemplified in the most popular Biblical passage (Gen 2.24): “A man shall leave his father and mother, cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” Leaving in this context is not something merely geographical – moving away from parental home – but something that is psychological, in other words breaking away from the original parental ties. I have observed that, socially, many couples enter into a wedding ceremony, but psychologically they are not prepared to move from one relationship to another. I am informed by authoritative sources that, marriage is intended to be, in part, a clean break with the former parental relationship. The word ‘leave’ does not mean, of course, that a couple now abandon their parents and show no more concern or interests in them. What it means that the couple ceases to be controlled by their parents and authority changes hands. When one member of the marriage looks back at parental ties, and hankers for the comfort or securities of the parental home the relationship becomes very uneasy. Cleaving symbolises the fact of assertively giving oneself to the new relationship. It means a commitment to hold on to one another and advance against every force or threat, which would seek to divide us. Cleaving is not a once and for all affair. It is a continuous thing that a couple must strive for from day to day. Becoming one flesh, refers to the sexual relationship in marriage. But one must understand that only when the first two steps have been taken – leave and cleave – does the sexual relationship have its fullest meaning. Some people approach marriage simply in order to be ‘one fresh’ with their partner – they see marriage as predominantly sexual. Others approach marriage in order to ‘cleave’ to their partner – they see marriage as merely companionship. And some approach marriage as a way of getting out from under the authority of their parents, or break with unhappy parent-child relationships. They see marriage simply as ‘leaving’ a past relationship – an escape route from an unhappy past. I contend that, no marriage, however, can be properly established unless the stages come in that order – leaving, cleaving and becoming one fresh. There can be no true intimacy until these three steps have been examined and understood.