Love comes from your Soul. Like comes from your head (EGO) and they don't always agree.
I love many people, but don't necessarily like everything they do.
But I wonder if this is a cop-out? I mean really, if we get so separated between what we say we love and what we say we like and dislike aren't we becoming dangerously separated from reality?
So, in Nature's Laws there's a recognition of hierarchy. There's high thinking, high emotion, high states of motivation, and there's low. Key to this hierarchy is recognition that the low stats of thinking, emotion and motivation get the same result on paper and the high ones.
Consider it like a piano keyboard. You can play a song with the low notes, you can play a song in a high octave with high notes, but the cool music we love, usually has a blend of both. So, there are some people stuck in the high notes who can't make logical choices, and there are some stuck in the low notes just gunning for a fight at every corner. So, the question is: How do we bring these seeming opposing ends of the spectrum Love and Like together?
Let's begin with the fact that the SOUL can only love. It doesn't choose, prefer, like, dislike, want, need, desire, should, comply, conform, speak, agree, disagree. The Soul can only love and the only limits to how much of that love you can experience, witness and feel, is the degree to which your likes and dislikes block it.
On the other hand, your EGO, mind or religious beliefs, ideas and values can never love. They can only like and dislike. So, we have a problem Houston.... Our identity is built from the stuff that limits the stuff that we want most of. We want a lot of LOVE yet, we're attached to a lot of beliefs... in fact, without the beliefs, values, religious ideals, likes and dislikes we won't survive a day in the real, competitive world of business, family, resources, providing and caring.
Do you have to make a choice of one or the other?
In a sense yes, Because every moment of every day you make choices. Which bus to catch, what to wear, which coffee to drink and what exercise to do. We make those choices based on EGO.
However, there is a simple answer to all this hocus-pocus.
The higher up the hierarchy you go, the more you integrate what you like and dislike with what you do and think and feel. In other words to rise us the hierarchy and live more from love and soul than from ego and mind, you need to overcome the EGO's grip on your likes and dislikes.
At the bottom of the hierarchy, your likes and dislikes are black and white. In other words people call it "Love and Hate" but they really mean "Infatuated (mistaken for love at lower levels) and Resentment (defined clearly in the world as Hate). And it's this bottom end fight flight response to the world that causes: stress, violence, anger, hate, war, jealousy and greed - many of which are considered cultural norms in some families. Have you ever heard a parent scream at a child "Make up your Mind?" That's the low end of the hierarchy breeding in the family culture.
Bottom of the hierarchy people hang out with top of the hierarchy people. But they rarely see eye to eye nor do they want to. But a person who can play the whole keyboard from top to bottom can at least have compassion for the energy wasted at the bottom.
Love is the most energy conserving state. THat's why it attracts people as they become more mature. They have less energy to burn. Love, on the other hand, for a young person really is not about energy conservation or anything much more than extreme like (infatuation) and the heartbreak of inevitable resentment.
Simply, we can't live in harmony with the outer world until we can live in harmony with the inner world and that harmony, inner wealth, comes in the form of alignment between LOVE and LIKE. Love can't shift, but the EGO with its likes and dislikes can become more moderated. Accepting and, as the Buddha suggested, walking the middle path which, in spite of much misinterpretation of conservation, means to not be so radical in sticking to what you like and dislike.
Simply, you can do this EGO confronting step by looking for the two sides in everything.
Innerwealth < http://www.innerwealth.com > is a real life, everyday, raw and nature based awareness that helps people live from the inside out. It opens hearts from past challenges, frees vision, inspiration and life purpose and gives rise to true human potential in all the seven areas of life. Innerwealth is also a process, a process that helps people deal with everyday challenges, tap their intuitive nature and live, in a sense, guided from within. A leaders edge, a lovers heart. There are twenty books in the Innerwealth Series, including Sacred Love and Innerwealth, plus "the Laws of Nature for Better Relationships" weekly blogs and podcasts. Chris Walker also runs consultations, interventions and seminars on Innerwealth at work and at home. < http://www.innerwealth.com >
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Source: Ezine