Love And Will 2

It was in reading the chapters from part I of Rollo May's Love And Will titled as follows;

Paradoxes of Sex and Love,
Eros in Conflict with Sex,
Love and Death,
Love and the Daimonic,


that I recalled my post Everything and Love, in which in my own way I was trying to express some of the themes which I feel come through in those chapters. And I had intended to explore those themes in greater detail here. However, as the days have gone past I find the matrix of thoughts and feelings which held the vestige of a post has slipped by, passed into that which was. Perhaps in holding the chapter titles in mind and reading the post referred to readers might glimpse something of their own truth.

In part II of the book May looks at the will and explores wish, will and intentionality. For me his thesis brings to mind interdependent origination, the question of to what extent we ever choose and exercise 'free will' and aspects of desire; that leading to growth (Eros) and that leading to enslavement (lust in all its forms). And out of that little pot; vitality. And when I look around I see a great number of people who seem to be asleep; their vitality gone. May seems to be saying something similar and as ever the root of it goes back to fear.

Discussing intentionality in therapy, May under the heading From Wish to Will makes the point that the raw experience of a beautiful day and the fact that one can increase the pleasure by sharing it with a friend 'has profound implications for life, love, death and the ultimate problem of human existence'. He refers to Tennyson looking at the flower in the crannied wall; '...I could understand what God and man is.' I can't claim to have had that experience of God (Buddha nature, the Source...) although I have experienced beauty and the feeling that it is but only half a thing when not shared. But I do feel this need for the awake vital raw experience of authentic living. Might it be stated as Eros the divine life force seeing its own expression?

May goes on to make a point about indiscriminate love or 'Hippie love' as he terms it. It is important here I think to remember the date of the book; 1969. And I would agree with him that a here today gone tomorrow in the moment love lacks commitment and begs the question just how deep such feelings run. I think it important to hold in mind non-attachment, acceptance and that an enlightened being loves all. But this love is outside the scope of everyone I know. Aspects of it are present but we are human and preference always creeps in; the resonance when like parts of the unity come close. Something bigger comes out of giving over time and choosing to keep giving requires selection of who to give to and accept from.

Opening the third part of the book is a chapter titled The Relation of Love and Will and it opens with a quote from Schopenhauer;

'Sexual passion 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 to all allusions, and the meaning of all mysterious hints... just because the profoundest seriousness lies at its foundation.... But all this agrees with the fact that the sexual passion is the kernal of the will to live, and consequently the concentration of all desire; therefore in the text I have called the genital organs the focus of will.'

Yep, 'The Red thread koan'! And how often we talk of people having guts and/or balls. Having, being had, making and bonding; the desire to create and the desire to merge. I'll post later on subsequent chapters.