Leo

[integral]

6 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I mostly experience these emotions when I am dealing with certain family members.

One of my siblings is very transactional and controlling in nature. In addition, this member is fixated on material things, comparison, and requiring to feel important and above others, else they are so demolized their work and mood suffers. I have a lot of trouble maintaining cordial relations with them due to my intense dislike and disgust - that turns into contempt - for these behaviours. It very much can affect how I treat this person when I am having an off day. Because I recognise these qualities are rooted in deep deep self esteem and self value issues. So on the one hand I understand and have compassion - but I am frustrated by their unconscious unwillingness to admit any fault. I know they operate with the above principals from a place of pain. But their arrogance and hubris in claiming they have no such issues frustrates me a lot.

It is a large pain point for my whole family. A big chunk of conditioning I am working on.

It's tough when it's family because there's a deeper obligation and you can't cut them off for the most part.

I've had people in my life like this, and I was able to cut them off.

The family members I have that I don't wanna deal with I limit contact to as little as possible.

In the end, it's not healthy to be exposed to toxic people. It doesn't matter how developed or mature or enlightened a person is. Constant exposure to toxic people is unhealthy.

It would be better if you had a big break from them and had no contact for a while to get a fresh perspective. That might help the healing or development process.

[Monster Energy]

Leo is like Obi-Wan and @UnbornTao is Anakin. I like Anakin more, but Obi-Wan is probably right.

 

 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@integral I agree - thanks for you wise words

I appreciate it! 

Edited 1 hour ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Sincerity said:

I think it's a tad more complex than that.

Parents could care about you, for example, and yet still have a very limited love. The best they can do, which can be not very much.

The difference, colloquially, is in the degree. Love is fundamentally inclusiveness of identity. That which you include, accept, embrace, you love; that which you exclude, reject, deny, you don't. Colloquially, weaker identification might register as "care", stronger identification might register as "love".

 

3 hours ago, Sincerity said:

I'd argue that there could be a truthful enough model (which is still only a model, but hear me out) of levels of love.

I'd say that unimposing love is above imposing love, for example. Basing this simply on my own love realizations and insights into what God is about. Does God impose? (question is flawed from the start, but roll with it? )

Whatever you choose to do as a human is less than God's love. And that includes refusing to do something. If you refuse to do what you think and feel to shield somebody else from yourself, you lack love for the impulse to do that thing.

But yes, that's besides the point in a discussion about human love.

 

3 hours ago, Sincerity said:

Regarding tough love: I can share honest masculine feedback with my best friend, and he can do with me. But we both understand that we don't know what's best for each other, and this is always stated when giving our views. Maybe it's not "tough" love anymore, but then again: maybe the virtue of "true" tough love (that thinks it knows what's best for someone and imposes it) is not so high from the start.

Is this not what I'm actually saying though by saying "I can't know whether you actually need therapy, it's my guess, my feeling"? See how you're gotten caught up in a word game? This is what is called equivocating, @zurew will attest to this, he is a master at pointing it out. I have already said I don't know what is best for Leo. To then conflate this with what I "think" I know is best for Leo, that is equivocating.

Yes, I will say what I think is best for Leo, but I will also say I don't know what is best, so I'm having a "honest masculine feedback" like with your friend.

 

3 hours ago, Sincerity said:

Ultimately, I think imposing love lacks respect. When you think you know better than someone what's best for THEM, in a way you think you're above them. Also note: unimposing love can be expressed in both a feminine and masculine way. I realize it might sound only feminine, but I'd invite to question this assumption. With feminine/masculine, the question is indeed of style and both are good.

I don't see how in the discussion about therapy, I lacked respect for Leo. Maybe in the original topic and leading up to the therapy discussion, "exposing" his faults, it had a definite element of harshness and "lack of respect", but that I was fully aware of, the Machiavellian that I was in that moment. But then let me also not draw your attention back to why I thought that was a good idea and what the content of the post clearly contains (and what level of harshness and lack of respect you can find there).