Truths of love in a sea left of wonder.

i had a really nice time in spain with Josiane. We rented a car - drove around costa brava, visited beautiful beaches, the mountains and even the little commercial petrol-shopping enclave of Andorra. So much love, a really special person, beautiful times.

Photos from our trip [first week uploaded, second week still needs to be uploaded as I find time to do so]:

Seb's Photo album ONE

Speaking photos, I also scanned an older art journal of mine, from 2004/5, you can find that album on my art site:

2004 / 5 Journal [year Of elves and saturn]

in looking back at 2007 I can say already that the majority of my dreams/vision board items have evolved, come true or taken form.

I am no longer allergic to coconut, and I can now drink coffee in moderation without ailments - my health is excellent. Youpie!

Financially I am doing fine, and within my long term limits I set for myself, its been interesting this year working only a few months in the summer and then just living by as little as possible the rest of the time.

Most people assume that traveling takes up a lot of money, but given that you don't have to pay rent [which can easily be in the range of 300 to 1,200€ for different people/places]. The real costs of traveling are simply the hostels and forms of transportation you choose. Fortunately I have been able to find people with open homes here and there to mitigate those costs for quite some months. Camping or buying a vehicle to sleep in make you suddenly self reliant low-cost-worthy.

At this point though I am more than ready to get down to rolling my sleeves up. I have my wish/theme eagerly ready for 2008.

This 2007 year's wish was all focussed on the theme of "love". Since this has been an underlying focus, I have spent some significant amount of attention on this subject and learned so-so much.

There are so many different forms of love, and lately I have also been considering the limitations of truth and words in dealing with nearly any subject.

I learned this year that wishes happen even when you don't make wishes. The subconscious wish, a thought of suggestion, is enough to manifest reality. I have seen this occur now time and time again ever since I have started paying attention to my passing thoughts [positive or negative].

I learned a lot this year about the mind-creationist perspective to life - that all your life is formed by your own thoughts - call it attraction or manifestation.

On the flip-side, I've read powerful ideas regarding seeing system thinking and creationist approaches as simply diametrical concepts in a matrix of inner-outer and collective-subjective experiences.

I've seen the pattern of differentiation and then integration reflected in different ideas -be it in the flower of life, ken wilbers concepts of holons / holarchachy, or in my further understanding of love.

for love is in these terms really the release that allows freedom that allows creation.
We love something, and then ultimately our true test of that love is when we can let it go. Whether its loving your children, your partner or a friend - eventually a time will come when you must part each other. Either because of death, drifting or simply growing up.

We desire one-ness, or we come from one-nes [with childbirth] and then separation precludes growth. The saying goes: if you truly love someone/thing - you must set it free. This setting free process though is two fold. For by setting the other free - you set yourself free. And each time we let another person/thing free - we grow a little more, and a little bit more love lives on in this world.

This means that ultimately love is not about possession; but about profession. To "profess" love is to free yourself and others around you.

Krishnamurti has strong founded ideas on the subject; he states that there is only pain when we hold onto the memories of the past, or have fears of memories occurring in the future - but in the present, there is only the present, and only joy. This makes a lot of sense - we talk often about love in terms of commitment, or conditional vs. unconditional love; but there is also another deeper level of love, one which involves the freedom of mind from causal thought.

So love is both the force which draws two individuals to become one, and love is then the ability to allow two individuals to be unique. It is the becoming process as well as appreciation of the moment. Paradoxically it involves thus the absolution of time - as well as the process of time; but only the process of time in the sense that it is the 'becoming' - but not reflection of relative time itself. In other words, it is the result of time passing and one growing with time, but not the reflection of what things were [hopes and fears] or what will be [hopes and fears]. It is firmly bound to the ever evolving present.

In terms of truths, I have read a lot of material this year which makes sense, but is also contradicted by other philosophies. I find it fascinating that mind-creationist [seth/secret], holiarchical [k. wilber] and anti-athoritarian [krishnamurti] ideas can all make sense within their frame works, and yet still contradict each other.

The book "a stranger in a strangers land", a really good scifi book [I do recommend] that I just finished a few weeks ago, it too deals with its own realm of truths, which parallel and also contradict the other above mentioned alternative views - it touches very deeply on the ideas of love and life in its own way. Here again we see yet a different idea regarding the truth of reality, though the roots of the ideas have strong similarities.

Take for example the idea of aggression, action, change. You can call it what you like, but I am referring to the active principle here that manifests change. The male principle, or to the astrologist: the martian principles.

Change, action - is necessary to have life, to have thought, to have time. Without action, there would be stagnation. Seth's ideas state that aggression in the form of asserting boundaries is natural, an animal reacts if you step on its toe - a human should say something if they feel abused - where the issue resides is in the repression of that aggression because the reactions are more violent if repressed when finally expressed, and repression impedes growth - this is sound advice.

But then if you take krishnamurti's ideas, aggression in any form is unfounded, a negative - the logic is solid, though I can't summarize it yet because I am still half way through the book in which this concept is outlined.

These differences of truths is very possible in my mind-view, because I believe, for many years now, that every truth implies an opposite - equally valid truth, in fact, for any truth to exist, its opposite must be created to even allow a truth to be valid. You can't have light without dark, physical life without physical death, finite vs. infinite, oneness vs. individuality etc. etc.

Visually I see this every increasing breadth of truths forming as cells do, each new level of understanding is a split of cells from one into two. An idea expands by splitting into two new ideas, opposed and yet fundamentally identical.

If truth can't be absolute, if it is always context dependent, then it becomes very difficult to determine the value to any truth at all - because the context its self becomes meaningless - devoid of comparative worth to any fundamental baseline.

And yet there is a fundamental line of correctness, life is not random, there is a perpetual forward movement. There is not good and evil, there is simply good and that which seems evil in-order to en-richen the understanding of good. Just like there is no love vs. hate, there is only love and that which expresses hate because it desires love - but in essence there is only love.

So there is relative truth, since truth is deeply personal and context based: building a home for you may be bad for the birds that lived in the tree you cut down to make your home, but to you a home is also a home. And there is also relative truth in terms of values, what you learn has meaning because you are never what you were, you are always more, therefore what experiences [truths] you develop have relatively more value than those you held - even though from a different perspective both the present and past truths are equal, in your/our context they are relative. The two views contradict each other, because we are speaking of relative value while things have absolute identical value - but I think this contradiction only occurs when we forget to see that we are measuring truths in terms of time and personal value.

So to me it is very possible to say:

A = B
and yet A > B.

[this last bit was for the more math-orientated readers]

In my own process of ever evolving relative truths, my differentiation-integrations, in these last weeks of 2007 I feel that there is a complete separation now between my sense of self, my love for others [romantic or friendship], and my path.

I see now that friendship is an expression of the unconditional love. And that all so-called "good" relationships are based on this deep sense of everlasting friendships. And that this is independent of whether two people can and should live their lives together in parallel. The 'conditional' comes in when it involves the perpetuating of connection in physical/reality/practical-related terms.

This makes relationships now seem almost purely conceptual, as opposed to emotional. The two are separate now within me and operate in unison but they do not interfere [for the most part] which each other. I can "love" someone, and then decide that the best way for me/us/you to live is together, or separate - based on what is best for you/we/me - and this will in no way detract from that love, that 'friendship'.

I'm awed by how much I have learned, and I am left with amazement at the thought that I am only 31 years old now - so there is still so much more time to learn so many more things here... what will be the next new level of understanding I will achieve?

yes, I reside in that sea of awe and delightful everlasting loving wonder.