[Love Notes / Lovebook]

We want to say that you do not love anyone to the degree that you do not love everyone. But is this right?

Proof #1:

In order to love yourself or anyone, you need the wisdom to know who you are, who other people are, and what is best for yourself and others. Only to the degree you grasp this can you embrace, cherish, uplift and help anyone. Because only to the degree you understand yourself, others, and what is best can your essential self relate meaningfully, positively, and helpfully to anyone.

As Something Deeperists, we argue that one attains wisdom to the degree one organizes one’s feelings, ideas, words and deeds meaningfully around the Soullight shining through all things, including each person’s heart/mind/matter. And we recommend following one’s inborn guardrails — the push towards awareness, clarity, honesty, accuracy, competency, kindness, open-heart & -mindedness and shared joy — to get better and better at organizing one’s feelings, ideas, words and deeds around the Light within and without that alone Knows that and in what sense it is “True” to say we are all in this together.

We argue elsewhere for this position extensively (read: obsessively), but the gist of our philosophical position is that if the above sketch of Reality is essentially correct, then there is a path for our thoughts/actions to be meaningful for us: We can escape relativism and indifference to our own thoughts and actions (without a meaningful insight into the Reality of Love, who can honestly care about anything?) via whole-being insight into the Light within. Of course, the Light is wider and deeper than our feelings and ideas, so we will never have literal, definitive, exclusive, or 1:1 insight into Reality. However, it still seems that we could organize our feeling/thinking well enough around the Light within that we could have adequate poetic insight (not literal, but still adequately meaningful and accurate) into that and in what sense it is True to say we are all in this together. And that insight is both the starting point and endpoint of wisdom: The path of wisdom is to work every day to gain more and more active insight into that and in what sense it is True to say we are all in this together.

Therefore, from the point of view of Something Deeperism, to love anyone requires insight into the underlying spiritual Reality. And that underlying spiritual Reality proclaims that we are all in this together and must respect and love one another: We are all here together to embrace, cherish, uplift, and help all of us together.

Proof #2

The second argument is related to the first.

To love anyone, we must open ourselves up to them from our soul out through our hearts/minds/bodies. Otherwise how are we to embrace, cherish, uplift, and help their whole beings with our whole beings? And to the degree we fail to accomplish that, we fail to truly love the target of our love.

But we sentient creatures all flow together as one. The Light / Love creates, sustains, shines through, and love-lifts everything. We are bound together in the Light / Love. We are One in the Light / Love. Therefore, to the degree we open ourselves up to anyone, we open ourselves up to anyone.

Difficulties

Those arguments make great theoretical sense. At least to confirmed Something Deeperists like your authors. And we really can’t see how anyone who thinks love is anything actually meaningful could reasonably argue that it is nothing but the goo and froth of animal hoots and hollers. But let us set aside our relentless campaigning for Something Deeperism and return to the matter at hand.

Here’s Jesus in Matthew 5:46 (KJV):
“For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans [tax collectors] the same?” [Let’s not forget that “tax collectors” had a different literal and connotative meaning in first century Jerusalem than they do here and now.]

Ah yes, there is a sense in which many people very much love those closest to them while not at all loving anyone else. Indeed, the quantity of evil justified by loyalty to one’s friends, families, or etc is legion, is Evil.

Hmmm.

If you most fundamentally love your own heart/mind/body, then you will love those close to you to the degree that they stir your heart/mind/body.

If you most fundamentally love your own Soullight, then you will love everyone to the degree you love yourself. You are still just a person and will have a special affection and delight for those that stir your heart/mind/body, but to the degree you are wise, you will most fundamentally embrace, cherish, love-lift, and help everyone.

I’m not sure about that “help” part. After all, you cannot help everyone. There are seven billion people. Well, you can help them all, but not directly, only by practicing wisdom and loving kindness to and with those within your purview.

In any case, the question of whether or not you can love anyone without loving everyone hinges on how wise you are. To the degree that you are living folly, you overlook the Love Light shining in and through all things, and you therefore love yourself and others to the degree you and they please your own heart/mind/body. To the degree that you are living wisdom, you live in and through and for the Love Light and you therefore love love yourself and everyone as children of the Light.

Most Useful Lovers

Do you ever think it is better to be loved by selfish people than selfless people? Selfish people will merrily sacrifice others for those closest to them. But selfless people can’t really accept those terms.

Hmmm.

We should all work with all our might to protect and improve representative democracy. Because a healthy representative democracy makes it easier to be both wise and safe / secure / thriving / happy. The more corrupt a state, the harder it is to both protect yourself and those close to you and be decent.

Wisdom must protect itself. Wisdom must work for healthy democracies — for transparent governments where awareness, honesty, accuracy, competency, generosity, kindness, and shared joy are valued. In that setting we can all work together to keep our government healthy because, though we may have many differences, we are agreeing on those fundamental values without which none of our thoughts or actions can make sense to any of us. To the degree our government is free of dishonesty, bad intentions, and corruption, we share an essentially meaningful relationship to our shared government.

True that! But aren’t we dodging the question?

To the degree one is in a nice safe snug timespot where it is relatively easy to be both good and decent, then it is clearly better to be loved by selfless people than by selfish people. The more selfless someone is, the wiser that person is and thus the more that person understands how to actually love and how to actually help. [Note that in all our writings when we say “wisdom” we mean “active spiritual insight”]

But what about those living in a totally corrupt state? Shouldn’t they prefer to be loved by selfish people? Hmmm. Not really. The more corrupt a state is, the more terrible everything is for everyone, including the rich and powerful, who must deal with the dangers of an essentially capricious and wanton state as well as the sickness of participating in a system that is killing itself and everyone within it.

We’re all in this together. That is our starting point, our goal, our endpoint, and our quest. Let’s get to it and keep to it!

Note that human beings are things of degrees. Wisdom is our shared path; not a victory chant. We need to join hands and keep working together for what is best for all of us: aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, generous, kind, shared joy.

Author: Punch & Judy Smith, with the Society for Star Wishing & Dream Fishing
Editors: Bartleby Willard, Amble Whistletown
Copyright: AM Watson

For more on our philosophy, see the Something Deeperism Institute.
And/Or consider purchasing A Readable Reader (start here) or First Essays (if you like the essays in A Readable Reader [which also includes stories and poems]).
Superhero Novella works with many of the same themes, but it’s a novella: metaphysical pulp fiction. (also available at !Buy the Books!)
For more on politics, see Supporting Biden is a Moral Imperative, Representative Democracy is a Spiritual Good, & I Don’t Know What to Say About Complex Systems

[Love Notes has more on Pure Love & Win-Wins]

[Lovebook has Love Notes, Win-Wins, Advertisements for Pure Love, & More]

[This is a work of Something Deeperism]