Learning to love. Friends or Lovers?

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Friends or Lovers

Friends are about loyalty; lovers, about fidelity. Friends are about confidence; lovers are about trust. Friends are about secrecy; lovers, about intimacy. Friends are about sharing; lovers are about mutuality. Friends are about numbers; lovers, about exclusiveness.
The origin of the word ‘friend’ comes from the Proto-German, meaning ‘freedom’. Friendships set us free, since they accept us unconditionally; but drop the second letter ‘r’ and it turns to ‘fiend’!
‘Lover’ comes from the Latin: luber, meaning ‘desire’ (de-sire- pertaining to the master?).
Where ‘friendship’ implies ‘freedom’, ‘lovers’ imply ‘commitment’.

Last night a friend of mine was going on about ‘men’, and how happy she was without them. “They are so different from us” she said. And of course, we all know she´s right. Men and women are different. Our perception on life and our experience of it, have been proven to be reactions from different parts of the brain, as seen in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI’s). Even orgasm is integrated with different sensorial responses! A study we made in the Mexican National Autonomous University proved young boys initiated their sexual lives at around 14, with a ‘friend’; where young girls started at around 16 years of age, with a ‘boyfriend’. Boys don´t necessarily relate sex with emotions; girls, do. It is a physiological response.

Male erection is an autonomic response with a neural loop round the spinal cord. Women´s eroticism excites a response from the spinal cord, through the emotional mid-brain in the hypothalamus, to the rational cortex, before deciding to respond, sexually. One responds instinctively, for a couple minutes; the other, with an unconscious response to what could end up being a 9-month pregnancy.

Such differences make for different interpretations of what a ‘friend’ or a ‘lover’ implies. Nowadays, with ‘free’ open relationships among teenagers, sex is not a negotiated right. It is as freely given, as it is, taken away. Mutuality or exclusiveness are not conditioned. The effect of open pornography in marriages is just making sex a sport, covered up in lies. Truth and fidelity are now obsolete. So what is the difference?

I have come to believe that the difference is 'commitment'; not only contractual or social but in soul. We are bound by soul, to love, being responsible for each other´s spiritual growth! Sexual intimacy with a lover is a binding spiritual commitment. If women's awareness of inner consciousness is more developed, we are responsible to help our lover grow. 
As life turns the spiral of chance, lovers return. We owe each other a kind word; reassurance, in failure; memories, to keep the cold nights warm; gratitude, to lessen the burden of failure. They may need help or council. It is no longer about sex or possessiveness; but about ‘loving’.
Lovers get to know the soul where friends only touch the surface.

Learning to love: Be There

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Learning to Love: Be there

We have each other to hang on to. In these times of uncertainty, where institutions, religion, family and social structures are breaking down, we have each other.
To love is to be there for one another. My parents taught me that. No matter what we’ve done, how we’ve differed or how far we’ve roamed, they have always been there for us. In life or beyond, such loving gives us structure and faith.

Cells grow an inner cytoskeleton to give their shape inner strengthen and make them locatable and dependable for cohesion in tissues. We have to develop inner trustworthiness to be there, for others. It requires generosity to give when we have enough; self-denial to share when others are in need; patience to listen when we are tired; strength to always back our loved one and side with him even when he is wrong. Loving requires walking alongside our lover; to be there for him when he needs us. It´s not about carrying him, or having him, carry us. It is about holding hands and giving a helping hand when asked.

Our loving may not be mutual and it may not be fair.  We differ in needs. For some of us, selfless loving and patience come easier than for others, bound to more materialistic demands. It should not deter our loving, much as parents who, though more evolved than their young ones, still accompany them along their growth. We are not the same. I learned that the hard way, when, as a medical intern I helped give birth to an anencephalic baby. The fact that an innocent newborn was unjustly bearing such a physical anomaly, shook the very basis of my belief in divine justice. I realized that the notion that we are all the same, is totally false. Some of us are fat, young, ugly or more or less intelligent. Some seem more evolved in loving than others. Whatever the explanation for our differences, we must continue learning how to love. It is not about what we do, but about why we do it. We can continue doing the same thing we do daily, but evolve to spiral doing it with different intentions:

- Our eyes first have to learn to see; then observe; then discern and identify right from wrong; to finally overlook wrong and choose to see only goodness.

-Our mouth has to learn to talk; then learn to keep quiet; then speak the truth; and finally speak only kindness.

-Our ears have to hear; then listen; then filter gossip and negativity; and finally choose to tune into harmony.

- Our hands, in balance, have to give and take; develop justice and compassion; then generosity and gratitude; to finally unite in prayer.

- Our feet, in balance, have to first stand up, take a stance and confront a problem; then, have fortitude to take a step, always in balance with prudence; then, develop tenacity to try again, always with patience; and finally, to walk alongside to accompany our loved ones.

- Our heads have to think; then understand; then comprehend; and finally be wise.

- Our heart has to feel pleasure; then accept pain; then forgive and finally love.

 

These are the steps we must take, each at his pace to learn to be there for others, much as angels are there for us.

 

Learning to Love. Lovers

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Lovers

We have each other for love. The idea of God, without Love-made-manifest through Man, is an abstract. God man-ifests (and woman-ifests) His Love through Man (and Woman!). In loving Man, I love God (and I mean Man as Higher Self).

 A Lover is one who touches the Soul. It is not just anyone. We all live surrounded by people, oftentimes, alone. A Lover is that moment of awareness of HigherLove recognizing and embracing the Soul. Lovers are not bound by contract, social mores or conditioning. They give mutual, exclusive and inclusive Love, freely and freely (if not despairingly), receive it. This Love comes from passion. Chemistry recognizes it and empathy relates to it, most of the time, identifying with shared pain and dejection. If destiny has it, this Higher Loving will come from a husband and last throughout marriage. Out of marriage, psychologists call it ‘satellite relationships’. It is not about adultery, infidelity or treason. It is about Loving from the Soul.

Throughout the hardest moments of my life I have always had a Lover, whether a husband or not. Through it all, there was someone to love me. It is as if Lovers were the fingers of God-ness reaching out with Love, to us. It sounds ‘X-rated’ but it’s not. Lovers continuously ratify unconditional acceptance, vindicating that we are worth being loved. In my case it was as if, having challenged God´s Love through sin, I were trying Him to see if He would still forgive me, and Love invariably, reappears in my life. Not everyone needs this sort of ‘saving hand’! However, through different moments and different people, the experience of Higher Loving seems to be the same.

Yesterday, I heard a talk show where women were sharing problems with loved ones. One said she could not relate to the husbands´ infidelity, others were complaining about. Rather, she had fallen in love with one of the other Kindergarden mothers! Much to everyone´s surprise, the expert being consulted, said that although society would certainly deem it unacceptable, she should open her heart up to the experience of receiving Love; not necessarily physically, since that would be conflicting with her religious beliefs, and certainly not openly for she would destroy her marriage and lose her children.  

Such advice shook me. I am still trying to work my opinion around it. What is certain is, that the space where Lovers relate, is not external. It is a private, intimate internal experience. Lovers share the hearth of the Soul where we interact with God. Given their sacred uniqueness, Lovers should be kept private. This inner capacity to cherish Loving, secret, makes it holy, and as such, will kindle warmth in our lives forever.

Learning to Love. Eroticism

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Eroticism

“Praised be the three aims of life, virtue (Dharma), prosperity (Artha), and love (Kama)”. This is the introductory invocation in the Kamasutra. It goes on saying “Love is necessary to satisfy the mind; ethics, to satisfy the conscience; and spiritual seeking for peace of soul. Without food and clothes, the body becomes thin and weak. Without eroticism, the mind become restless and unsatisfied. Without virtue (ethics), the conscience goes astray. Without spirituality, the soul is degraded.” Thus, Master Vatsyayana describes the science of moral eroticism, leading to spiritual realization and not the sating of the passions or the encouragement of pleasure seekers.

Whether love surges from an abstract ideal or from a feeling or passion, it is manifest in the body. If there is no body there is no Eros (living vital energy). As a Science, eroticism follows natural laws; as a spiritual guideline it is a path of human development where “I”, becomes “We”. It all starts with the body and its senses.
Twitter wisdom says that without loving oneself, one cannot love another. However, it’s worse.…if I don´t like my body I will reject anyone who comes close, doubting his intentions, which I defensively see as malicious. In a society where the cult for a perfect body makes people spend fortunes for the physical torture of re-designing one’s body, it is hard to accept, much more, love one´s imperfections.
My boobs are beginning to sag and I am fatter. How can I love my body that way? (Thank goodness aging comes with losing one’s sight, so that imperfections are much less visible! ) What is heightened is sensitivity. Touch, warmth, softness, all relieve the tension of resistance that melts into the acceptance of a safe embrace. In the arms of our loved one, looks become irrelevant. It is all about feeling. Fusion begins with kissing, exchanging breath and chemical receptors in the saliva that unchain the physiological reactions of desire. In the Kinsey Institute, sexual therapy requires you to hug your partner and regulate your breathing to his or her rhythm. This allows us to develop awareness with a keener focus on our loved one. Thus we open up to a shared reality, in the here and now. Mutuality becomes commonality and the skin ceases to be a barrier. Time is suspended and the “quick of my being skips a beat”.