I want to share some important thoughts from a book from Viktor E. Frankl. The Finnish name of the book is Tiedostamaton jumala. The original name of the book is Der unbewusste Gott.
There seems to be two versions of this book in English 1) The subconscious god and 2) Man’s search for the ultimate meaning.
Among other things Frankl discusses when a person’s choice of a partner is really the choice of love.
”Id” refers to sexual instinct (I hope I use right translation), ego refers to that something that is ”me” for a person, that ”mystical” I who thinks and feels. Super ego refers to conscience.
Frankl explains that as long as ”id” determines the choice of a partner, the choice is not the choice of love. I think this kind of choice could be described more like choice of lust.
When ego is free from ”id” and makes its own choice, only then the choice is really choice of love when the context is choosing a partner to love. To me this is one of the most important thoughts of the book.
Image courtesy of nonicknamephoto at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Sometimes I’ve wondered when in James Bond movies people often complains about 007’s ego, that should it sometimes be 007’s ”id” they should be complaining about… 🙂
It seems that I have forgotten lots of things recently. Luckily I haven’t forgotten anything in oven while making food… Even in this short blog post I had to use dictionary a lot.. 🙂
Recently I started to think, that have I forgotten what kind of person is a strong person. Sometimes in my experience nowadays we live somehow in a heartless weak world. Is it then easy to be strong here? No.
One good characteristic of a strong person is balance in a wide sense. For instance, one characteristic of strength is restrain, what represents balanced person capable of sensible consideration and judgement. A strong person doesn’t easily get upset or angry; one should remember, that hate blinds and makes eventually weak. The ”power” of hatred is only a delusion.
To grow up a strong person is hard and to keep oneself strong is hard; in practice one must have courage to be weak and face the truth: One must face oneself, own weaknesses and win them in order to grow a strong person.
One problem may be blindness to own weaknesses; one may believe that something that in fact represents weakness, represents strength.
If one doesn’t have courage to face oneself — the whole truth about oneself — one doesn’t really have courage to face anyone else either in a true way; one doesn’t really see other people. This may cause one to harden oneself and become ”tough”, what in practice means cowardice. At least eventually.
How could love in this case be strong, which represents real strength. True strength.
We all have inner demons called hate and fear among others, that we must conquer. Perhaps someday we will see a world without wars, when everyone has defeated their own inner demons, particularly fears and hatred.
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In big heart there is room enough to pain too, so that pain or fears can’t suffocate the starting sparks of love. Eventually love will melt all the pain when it gets its chance. Perhaps I’m only dreaming… Though, I hope not.
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I bought a present to my girlfriend recently: Lotus flower crystal candle holder. Along with this gift I wrote a short poetic story about the Lotus flower and us.
We share here shortly some short thoughts in a little different words since the original document I wrote is personal.
I wanted to wish to my girlfriend good health. One of the meanings of the Lotus Flower is well being.
”May our shared tea moments at the Lotus flower vibrate our love to our home; and will the home vibrate the energy of our love back to us even stronger.”
Love and its energy is a strong power to maintain and bring good health.
One profound mystic meaning of the Lotus flower is, that it can provide a sense of cosmic connection and energy within oneness of all being.
In the philosophy of sacred geometry is written lots of mystic philosophy of the Lotus flower.
Below is a video of the Lotus flower:
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When I first posted to this blog my first short thoughts about the meaning of the life, I had completely forgotten, that in 1994 I had first read Viktor E. Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, original name Ein Psycholge erlebt das Konzentrationslager (some kind of direct translation into English could be ”A Psychologist experiences a concentration camp”. The Finnish translation to the book is Ihmisyyden rajalla. Direct translation to this in English is On the border of humanity.
Why this book is so important to me is, that my so called high school (lukio) years were pure hell to me… My math teacher was sure that I would fail the 6 hours examination on math and I can’t blame him: Because of the circumstances while I was at high school, I didn’t at first pass some of the math courses. At lukio in Finland the grades are from 4 to 10 in all the courses. I got some 4s in math and had to try again to get at least 5 to pass the course. It was a miracle that the average of my math grades eventually was even 6 that is really weak grade.
From the final 6 hours exam that is the same (though in math there is more advanced line compared to the other to choose from) for every high school students in Finland, I got eventually cum laude approbatur as grade. At the time the grades for this exam were improbatur (failed), approbatur, lubenter approbatur, cum laude approbatur, magna cumlaude approbatur and laudatur. Nowadays there is eximia magna cum laude approbatur between magna and laudatur.
But I didn’t do the final exam that consists of many days of 6 hours exams with the other students. With my school’s principal I had agreed that I will do the whole exam apart from the other students. This was how in my high school years I did eventually also all the courses after the first year.
Image courtesy of surasakiStock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
After I had read many Viktor E. Frankl’s books, it was after two years when I took the one chance to try to raise my math grades: I got 9 for the 11 math courses, laudatur for the final exam. I was on the ”advanced mathematics” courses at high school. Though compared to university math those high school courses are child play.
I compared often my high school years to Frankl’s experiences. Of course his experiences were whole lot more extreme: He couldn’t be sure if he sees the next morning – or hour… Though, later on my life seeing the next morning hasn’t been very certain…
To emphasize Frankl’s books importance, they made me understand how to live. One point is: No matter how terrible the circumstances in one’s life are, one should strive to see some meaning to live and get even further in life. The worst case that Frankl describes for a human is, that one has only one’s existence. This is where one should try to find meaning to one’s existence, after that one can begin to find meanings to one’s life.
I really should get back to the ideas of meaning of life. As Frankl’s says, he understood, that the highest goal in one’s life is love. But as to meaning of life, Frankl has written that life (some other person) should ask that from oneself; it’s hard to really find the meaning of life by oneself. Even if one can as a word or some kind of concept see love as the primary meaning of life, depending on the circumstances it may be hard to find the right path directly.
One thing that I’ve said to myself sometimes is: Life must be experienced, it’s not be watched on the TV. Only by living, one can learn how to live and get real experiences from which to learn.
Link: Wikipedia: Viktor E. Frankl
The world we live in, is somewhat imperfect and there are many kinds of often invisible walls, obstacles. In addition, to keep one in love is hard, after one believes, one has found love.
But what has one in fact found? Is love the partner, one has found? Or is this love person him/herself, who experiences loving his/her partner? In both of these views can be something imperfect, yet something right.
One substantial failing in these views can be kind of missing symbiosis of love, that at best in coaction would grow love of the both, particularly both of the partners could feel and experience that one is loved by the other.
One fundamental matter is, that it is important, that both of the partners are mentally as much as possible present, when they’re together. This way they can touch each other also mentally, at best all the time.
It is very significant, that the both are able to achieve inner harmony in love, that is the source to everything, they do. In which case for example doing the dishes is not just housework, but when it is done from love, the housework gives something back. Even doing the dishes can thus grow the love of the both, when one doesn’t do the dishes just for oneself, on the other hand not just for the partner, but does the work for both from love for the shared path.
Now doing the dishes (and everything else the partners do) grows the love of the both and the home of the partners is protected by the common love of the partners with kind of harmonic, yet complex, form of love, which makes the home, even if it were as such somewhat modest, a pleasant place to live in.
At the beginning of this post, I brought forth the imperfectness of this world. Can love be measured? If it can be, does it have some maximum value, from which it can’t grow anymore?
One — on the other hand simple, yet complex — point of view of mine is, that in this world living in love, in addition to make this love grow, is ”dynamic” yet harmonic metaphor of the sine wave.
It kind of seems, that in this life, one can’t go only to one direction, at least it is difficult. But when we take a look at the sine wave, we notice, that it goes harmonically up and down, but the direction is always forwards without any limit (as seen in the set of real numbers, in the set R). Aforesaid pointing at the sine wave I was after, is substantially the metaphor of living in love and how to make it grow.
Now it is important, that my point in sine wave metaphor is not the ”downhills” and ”uphills” of life as such, but the fact, that it seems, that in this world there is some kind of limit to love. In the sine wave metaphor I’m after the idea, that as the partners grow their love to each other, in their way the direction is all the time forwards and in their way forwards in life being up and down can mean at best something else than misfortune.
It can be about the strange fact, that sometimes the both partners in a way go inside misery (the bottom of the sine wave), but instead of being in misery in the bottom of life, life can be lived in love remembering, what is important and at the same time the partners are in fact growing their love (at the bottom of the “sine wave”).
Now, when the partners next time ”achieve the top of the sine wave”, love is more varied than before. It is important to notice, that the question is there now more love in a measurable way, is not necessarily meaningful. Better view to love now is, that it has taken new forms and is more varied than before. In other words: More understanding in love.
In the lyrics of the video below, you can hear “Can love be measured by the hours in a day”…
Further reading:
The inspiration to this blog post came from my girlfriend, the Morning Sun; without her this post would not have become into existence.
I remember the time, when I went into seclusion for about a year reading, as it comes to philosophy, Viktor E. Frankl’s books, when I began to experience some kind of intellectual awakening, many kinds of it.
At the time, I started to think about from where kind of feelings such as disgust and even hatred to other people may come from.
I came into conclusion, that sometimes mentioned feelings may in fact be caused by the fact, that oneself doesn’t accept some qualities or customs of others to oneself. In short, if one doesn’t accept something to oneself, one doesn’t accept it to others either. One may even hate such thing(s) in other people and as a result of this, one may even start to hate other people. But one can’t define surrounding life only from relation that one has to one’s relation to surrounding life, particularly one can’t define surrounding life only by oneself!
Furthermore, if one starts to hate people by mentioned above, one may in fact harden oneself and in the worst case denies love from oneself and become ”tough” and violent.
In addition one must remember, that ice is slippery; one who has hardened oneself may be slick and sarcastic (in bad way), but because of mentioned qualities of oneself, one doesn’t aim at constructive solutions with environment, but in fact also with intelligence shatters, because the intellectual operation doesn’t strive from the harmony of love.
Understanding in love will build more permanent solutions to everyone’s life.
This kind of hardness (or ”toughness”) may give an illusion of power, but is as ice; in cold it is stiff, but when morning sun gradually melts the ice, it melts all that stiffness. Similar thing may be seen in all hardness and hatred, when love takes it place on them.
Image courtesy of Liz Noffsinger at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
As it comes to ice, because of all the more warm morning sun, instead of ice in the spring will be eventually water, which is to be absorbed by the land. As a result of this land get’s ”life’s elixir” to grow life on it; and soon instead of stiff ice can be seen one of the colors of the nature, green, in form of grass.
The land beneath the grass may be rough, but if it wouldn’t be rough, one would fall. The land is where one can put one’s steps.
To reader, what is the most powerful power of life? Particularly stronger than hardness, ”toughness” or hatred.
This blog post was inspired by a conversation in one morning with my girlfriend, Morning Sun, when we were talking about life in general and my past.
In love it is possible to find oneness; this oneness makes even absolute equality possible; the lovers are one!
The Bible: ”…and they shall be one flesh.”
”She’s the one” by Robbie Williams: ”I was her and she was me.”
I see the same oneness in all of these three thoughts; the principle of equality in love.
Image courtesy of lekkyjustdoit at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Two messages I have sent to Morning Sun by the phone (published by her permission):
”But how to achieve this love? What is love? The aspiration of non-stable dynamic systems to balance harmony as goal? Harmony – the mathematical beauty, elegance. What is this in practice in this context? Love?”
”We have reached a harmonic function; this has described us as one; here is the equality of love. So we are mathematicians, both of us, ”discoverers”! :-)” [In real life neither of us is a mathematician]
This post was inspired from the philosophy of sacred geometry and of course from Morning Sun.
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