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Okay. This question is probably going to piss people off, but i am asking it anyway because i want to understand other perspectives than my own. How are love and fear opposites? From my view, love and apathy or indifference are the opposites, and the very reason for so much of what we experience is related to apathy, not fear. Fear and security seem to be opposites from where i sit, and these two dichotomies also represent a considerable source of conflict in our world. When a person cannot "see" outside of their own perspective, outside of their own world, outside of their own little "bubble," is this the result of being afraid, or being self-interested, and not invested in humanity as a whole? Because that is the bottom line. Our shared humanity is where the power is, where the source of our greatest strength lies. In recognizing and honoring our similarities and truly experiencing the world as though you are not alone, or the group with which you identify is not necessarily at odds with the rest, but at odds by choice, by separation, and this because of a belief that somehow we are inherently different, and inherently more or less deserving, accordingly.
Just my thoughts..what are yours?

Actually I wouldn't say apathy is opposite, but rather the direct opposite of love is selfishness. Caring only about what you want and acting in the best interest of only yourself. Selfishness has always had a negative tone and most people label people selfish who are that outright, but the truth is we are inherently selfish, or our physical form is. When we lose connection to our true self, our spirit, and let our brain and instinct take over we act out of selfishness. All emotions, greed, jealousy, fear is really just selfishness. I have a great quote on this stored somewhere and will try to find it and post it. All problems in this world are rooted from this very fact that people are not acting out of unconditional love and compassion for all. Everything is about what makes you comfortable or what you want. It should be quite clear selfishness/ego is about acting out in your best interests and what you want, while love is the opposite of acting out for the benefit of all and be humble what you do. Fear is just an offspring of selfishness as is apathy.

Grytho, contrary to popular belief, Love is actually congruous with self-interest, not the opposite or antithesis. Look at it this way.......those who run the planet are clearly not connected to love on many many levels. So according to you, they must be acting out of ego/self-interest. They are acting out of false-ego, yes, but to call it self-interest is only to give credit to disease where credit is not due......looking at the earth as an organism, the same way you'd look at a human as an organism, the earth currently has a disease.......what the controllers are doing currently is propagating the growth of the disease.....yes, it may SEEM as if they're getting some benefits from doing so (control of resources, things like that) but those benefits are actually the product of disease......what is in their true self-interest is to connect to love/the truth so that they can heal, so that the earth can heal, so that the universe can heal. All scales must be healthy; THAT is the true self-interest of all.

When you are connected to love you still use your ego.......but the truth fuels it instead of lies.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you, except you are partially right. First I think there is some confusion between the terminology we use here. One must love oneself first in order to have love and have compassion for all. If you do not love yourself you cannot love others, simply because you are just another manifestation of everyone else. We're all the same. If cannot love yourself you cannot love others and this is true in reverse that when you harm others you truly do not love yourself.

I'm sorry but I just don't see how someone who loves all, acting in harmony with other beings and spirits, can still act through ego. When you are connected at that level you are just one consciousness. There is no more ego because you are not separate. You and all those connected to this consciousness are acting according to the same one will, not your prior ego will which is just the will of the physical brain, not your true spiritual self.

You're just gonna have to trust that I'm telling you the truth then buddy.....your ego exists, period. What do you think spirit is? Spirit creates ALL. I can't really think of much else that I can say without starting into argument, because I can't come up with the right words to express what I know at this moment....It seems like you've got a bias against ego based on painful experiences and a lack of understanding though.

Try not to take what I'm saying as insulting your intelligence; know that I'm not trying to mislead you, and that the spirit, which created/creates ego did not do so without reason.

Edit:One more thing to mention, in reference to your prior message, is that even though the entire universe is indeed ONE thing.....being/organism/consciousness.......that doesn't mean that in a state of health and wholeness all of its parts act based on one will......all of its parts/components act based on one SPIRIT......Free Will is indeed real, and multiple components of the same consciousness system can have individual will and still work together in harmony.

LOVE

Edit2:I guess I should clarify something I said in my first post.....I wrote that when you are connected to love, you still use your ego.....I should have said that ego still exists, and the spirit can act through it.....I see the ego as a sort of.....tool for expression on certain scales/in certain situations.

Edit3:To address something that mrr said in her original post.....a reason for apathy is that you have become conditioned not to follow certain natural impulses.....in other words, you are afraid to follow those impulses/to go down those roads....so metaphorically, you're only allowing part of yourself to live, not the whole of yourself.....so you get used to living at say 90%, you get used to the feeling of part of your self being atrophied, and that wears on your will......which is how apathy can come about. It gets played out as "Why bother putting lots of effort into activity X? Part of me is in a state of unlife/death/being stunted, and therefore it's possible that that could happen to other parts of me also.....why should I put full effort into life when I'm not even being allowed to fully live?" The good thing is, which is how this ties in with love/fear, is that by addressing reality with truth/love you can overcome any fear, and find out that you CAN go down those roads that you were conditioned through pain and fear to avoid.

I don't view this as an argument just a discussion. However, I don't see how you can say trust me and that you're telling the truth as if you know for certain. I'm pretty certain you don't know its 100% true and its just what you believe based on your experiences. I suppose your experiences are correct and mine are not. You assume I have the lack of understanding. I will say that your edit of statement that still use ego I will agree with. I was put off when you put it that way, but when you say it still exists, that I will agree. Only if you are successful you have tamed it from being selfish, which is what ego is by nature. You are predominantly listening to your inner self and not the selfish ego. The ego is the term I use to represent to selfish desires that strive to break you away from harmony.

I would also like to clarify that I did not mean to imply there is no free will. Of course there is otherwise we wouldn't even have these problems. We'd all be in harmony and never have experienced this world. Its our free will that has gotten us into trouble and have made us become trapped to physical existence. However, just because we have free will it doesn't mean we will not act on the one will. That one will is what keeps us in harmony and when we decide not to follow it is when we start to fall.

The point I'm trying to get across, which you don't agree with, but I know to be true, is that the ego is not inherently false......it does not by nature tend away from harmony......it is the conditions that it is under that can make it do so. I was not trying to imply that your experiences are not valid, but I was and am saying that I know what I just stated to be 100% true. The truth is the truth regardless of whether it is believed or not. You're "pretty certain I don't know its 100% true and it's just what I believe based on my experiences", which is actually an insult towards me, because it says that based on your experiences, you believe that it's more likely than not that I couldn't know what I say I know. You don't even know me I on the other hand didn't make any personal statements about you, I made general statements about existence in this reality.

I apologize if you took that as an insult. I do not mean to say that you don't know what you're talking about. It just seemed to me you were being close-minded and trying to say what you believe is true is without question true. However, I'm saying it is indeed possible to question what you believe and may not be 100% true. That doesn't mean I don't value your belief or opinion. I just didn't feel like you were respecting mine. And you did make a personal statement about me saying I have a lack of understanding and I feel the same way in that you don't know anything about me.

Anyway, you simply use the word ego as meaning the spirit. We're using the word in different ways. When I speak of ego I'm talking about it as the representation of the selfish side of oneself. When I refer to spirit or inner self I'm talking about the part of us that is always in harmony with the universe and in touch with its will. As an old example think of old cartoons or shows which portray the the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other. The devil represents the selfish side of yourself which I call ego, and the angel represents the side thats in harmony and I call that inner self or spirit. You just equate ego as spirit and that is the being that you are. I don't use that word to mean that and use it as a representation of the side of your being that is disharmonious. As I see it this whole discussion is literally just misinterpreting things as our terminology is not the same.

I do understand where you are coming from in that even when acting in love you are acting in self-interest as you want to be in that world that is full of love. Self-interest and selfishness are two different things though or at least in my terminology it is as selfishness is acting out in self-interest that is not in harmony, just doing what you want without caring about consequences. I should have paid closer attention the first time I read what you wrote as now I see where we got disconnected.

Anyway, if there is one thing I know as well its that on internet discussions of any kind a sentence can appear negative or angry etc. when its not. So just want to let you know I do love you even though I don't know you and even though we may possibly disagree

So I did make a personal statement.......d'oh

Actually, the reason I did make that personal statement is because I'm aware of the "semantic difficulties" that have made this discussion a difficult one, as they are quite rampant in our society....

Personally, I think, in reference to myself on my path, I am really just too eager to go out and give my opinion to people too strongly.....while I know I've got a lot of important things to say, this thread has shown me that I still have a lot of observation of myself to do, to learn more about the things that are blocking my understandings from being communicable to most people. Often is the case (as it is in my case) that because of the massive amount of forces negatively interfering with each other on earth, we can believe that our intent is good when it actually is not. Here I am trying to make the case for ego not being inherently false, and I'm partly using my false ego to do so

Thanks for understanding and having a heartfelt discussion grypho

I dont really have an answer for you Mrr, but i have always liked the scene in the Donnie Darko movie about fear and love so im going to link that and you guys can check it out for yourselves if you dont know what im referring too.