Do You Hate Me?

"I'm with you until the end of time."  Matthew 28:20

     
The Flame

by Cheap Trick
LISTEN HERE

Sometimes the things we mean to communicate and what we actually do are not the same. Our interactions with others may be muddied by our own personal feelings and by prior experiences with any given individual. Then there is the issue of relational 'history,' or the old habits making changes or deviations seem difficult if not impossible. So when we talk to our friends and loved ones, misunderstandings and disappointments are inevitable. Resentments may boil and we often feel sudden flashes of
intense emotion, hatred even.

A good hypothesis here may be that the one feeling the hatred towards another is  projecting his or her feelings or attributes onto that other person, maybe some guilt or over- aggressiveness; however the deepest truth here may be that the hurt and twisted   angry feelings are small when viewed from the lens of self hatred now being projected onto our partners, loved one or friend.

Our impulse, like that of a child who has just been criticized about a small misdeed by a parent, is to become emotional, upset, angry, to take the superior position. So then we don't have to feel the regard of another, to 'protect' ourselves from feeling anything at all.

 The truth is, you may not be as horrid as you think; maybe someone did do something upsetting--do you now hate me? I already feel awful disappointing you; rather than getting mad and criticizing me, can you tell me in a more positive way?

Matthew 28:20

Liking and Knowing

Vision of Love

1990-- by Mariah Carey

Listen Here

Treated me kind, sweet destiny

Carried me through desperation to the one
that was waiting for me

You took so long, still I believed

Somehow the one that I needed would find me eventually

Somehow the one that I needed would find me eventually

I had a vision of love and it was all that you've given to me

I had a vision of love

And it was all that you've given to me

Prayed through the nights, felt so alone

Suffered from alienation, carried the weight on my own

Had to be strong, so I believed

And now I know I've succeeded in finding
the place I conceived
I've realized a dream

And I visualized the love that came to be

Feel so alive, I'm so thankful that I've received

The answer that heaven has sent down to me
You treated me kind, sweet destiny

And I'll be eternally grateful, holding you so close to me

Prayed through the nights, so faithfully

Knowing the one that I needed
would find me eventually...

"Every person is indescribably complex, and so to speak, an uneven good."  --Karol Wojtyla, later John Paul II

Liking a person is very closely connected with knowledge, "who you turned out to be...," records the lyrics. The base of attraction is an impression, a disposition to regard the other as a value; it is the developed commitment to think of that person as a certain good. Such commitment can only be enacted by the will.
 'I want,' is implicit in 'I like.' Thus the will is committed by attraction, and attraction commits the will. This may be difficult to grasp intellectually; yet the song Vision of Love  makes this point emotionally, poignantly.

"Every person is indescribably complex, and so to speak, an uneven good," writes theologian Wojtyla. "Man and woman alike are by nature bodily and spiritual beings; they are such a being, seen by one another; in this way, each attracts the other.
All the potential goods or values that a given person may respond to derive from the object of this attraction. Each, then, attracts the other. For example, in y's attraction to x, the value most strongly in evidence is one which y finds in x, and to which y reacts most strongly."This one could say is the visioning, the imaging that the lyrics here speak to.

Also there's fact that y is particularly sensitive to it, particularly quick to perceive and respond to it. The mind, the thinking process, therefore plays a part in attraction, combined together with the emotions, such that a potent guide emerges in the mix as an important feature, strikingly evident in attraction.
"But this fact creates a certain internal difficulty in the sexual lives of persons. This difficulty is inherent in the relationship of experience to truth." Feelings often arise spontaneously. Where feelings are functioning naturally, they are unconcerned about truth. This is lust.
Truth for a man is a task of both his experience and his reason. This is why in any attraction, especially one of a sexual nature, the question of the truth about the person towards whom attraction is felt for, is so important.

Often people "generally believe that love can largely be reduced to a question of genuineness of feelings; although this is impossible to completely deny, we must still insist, if we are concerned about the quality of the attraction and the love of which it is part, that the truth about the person who is its object, play a part at least as important as the truth of the sentiment.'

"These two truths, properly integrated, give to an attraction [wholeness], the elements of a genuinely good, and genuinely cultivated love. Thus the object of attraction is seen whole, as a good, as a thing of beauty.
A human being is beautiful and may be revealed as beautiful to another human being." Love is a commitment to the good of each other. "For power is made perfect in weakness."
--2 Corinthians12:9-10

In View of Naturism

"Clothe yourselves in the Holy Spirit." --Bible, Romans Chapter 8

SECRET 

by Madonna
LISTEN HERE

Things haven't been the same

Since you came into my life

You found a way to touch my soul

And I'm never, ever, ever gonna let it go

Happiness lies in your own hand

It took me much too long to understand

How it could be

Until you shared your secret with me

Mmm mmm

Something's comin' over, mmm mmm

Something's comin' over, mmm mmm

Something's comin' over me

My baby's got a secret

You gave me back the paradise

That I thought I lost for good

You helped me find the reasons why

It took me by surprise that you understood

You knew all along

What I never wanted to say

Until I learned to love myself

I was never ever lovin' anybody else...

Mmm mmm, my baby's got a secret

Mmm mmm, my baby's got a secret

Mmm mmm, my baby's got a secret for me
Recently the Simple Mind came across an interesting series of articles in the Chicago Tribune, a major daily American newspaper. Its subject was curiously selling real estate to those who wish to pursue an active, natural (read naked here) lifestyle, in a residential development with those who also  wish to live within the society of other Naturalists, at least on a part time basis. The article follows a local real estate agent who sells properties to those who have this specific interest.

The reporter relayed an interesting conversation about a couple, man and woman who are involved in this community. One comment they made was rather striking. The woman stated that Naturism has helped her with her body image, made her more self confident. Huh... Well, that's interesting that one is confident sans habits and not confident with clothing on. They comment that when the 'clothing is stripped away... all pretenses all worrying how you look...'

It sets one to thinking: Is the physical, what you see, all that you get...? Is it the only truth that the reality of ones' being is merely physical, or is there truth in (invisible, seen with the heart's eye) a spiritual dimension? After all spirits need no clothing; it is of no concern to them. So are these persons really spirits or are they both body and spirit? Does their clothing make any sense in context?
We learn in the same article about 'manners.' It is for example, rude to look below the chin or even to giggle when in such company. 'Clothes free' does not actually make these prejudices insolvent, then, does it? So what might be going on here?

In a spiritual sense we are all naked creation, born naked, without the benefit of any psychological jargon like 'body image.' If the Holy Spirit is naked then what does it matter if any spirit is clothed or naked? Angels for that matter are one, parted not from their respective bodies. They, like the rest, impart both body and spirit, we learn. So maybe we are in our true state when we are most transparent, the most open, the most receptive to loving our self as we love our neighbor.