The Meaning Of Love

An acclaimed philosopher offers a systematic mapping of the various facets of love. In his widely acclaimed trilogy The Nature of Love, Irving Singer traced the development of the concept of love in history and literature from the Greeks to the twentieth century. In this second volume of his Meaning in Life trilogy, Singer returns to the subject of his earlier work, exploring a different approach. Without denying his previous emphasis on the role of imagination and creativity, in this book Singer investigates the ability of them both to make one's life meaningful. A “systematic mapping” of the various facets of love (including sexual love, love in society, and religious love), The Pursuit of Love is an extended essay that offers Singer's own philosophical and psychological theory of love. Rich in insight into literature, the history of ideas, and the complexities of our being, The Pursuit of Love is a thought-provoking inquiry into fundamental aspects of all human relationships.

The New York Times bestselling author of Life After Death, delivers her most compelling and enlightening story yet about young, deep love, the ways in which people across the world express their love, and the lengths that they will go to have it. Powerful and sensual, Midnight is an intelligent, fierce fighter and Ninjutsu-trained ninja warrior. He attracts attention wherever he goes but remains unmoved by it and focuses on protecting his mother and sister and regaining his family’s fortunes. When Midnight, a devout Muslim, takes sixteen-year-old Akemi from Japan as his wife, they look forward to building a life together, but their tumultuous teenage marriage is interrupted when Akemi is kidnapped and taken back to Japan by her own father, even though the marriage was consummated and well underway. “There’s not one drop of inferiority in my blood,” Midnight says as he first secures his mother, Umma, and sister, Naja, before setting off on a global journey to reclaim his wife. Midnight must travel across three countries and numerous cultures in his attempt to defeat his opponent. Along this magnificent journey he meets people who change him forever, even as he changes them. He encounters temptations he never would have imagined and takes risks that many a lesser man would say no to, all for the women he loves and is sworn to protect.

America's leading expert on love and relationships writes with insight and clarity on the meaning of love, offering readers a welcome opportunity each day to reflect on the love in their lives. Kingma exults in love's power to change us--to help us grow emotionally and spiritually--and explores love's many-faceted possibilities. 365 line drawings.

As a woman with a husband and other partners, philosopher Carrie Jenkins knows that love is complicated. Love is most often associated with happiness, satisfaction and pleasure. But it has a darker side we ignore at our peril. Love is often an uncomfortable and difficult feeling. The people we love can let us down badly. And the ways we love are often quite different to the romantic ideals society foists upon us. Since we are inevitably disappointed by love, wouldn’t we be better off without it? No, says Carrie Jenkins. Instead, we need a new philosophy of love, one that recognizes that the pain and suffering love causes are a natural, even a good part of what makes love worthwhile. What Jenkins calls “sad love” offers no bogus “happy ever afters”. Rather, it tries to find a way properly to integrate heartbreak and disappointment into the lived experience of love. It’s time we liberated love.

Although Steiner did not often speak or write about love explicitly, love is at the very heart of his whole body of work and the foundation of his hopes for humankind and the Earth. Steiner teaches that, without love, nothing is possible; with love, however, we can do everything. Love is always "love of the not-yet." To love is to create; it is to selflessly enter the current of time that flows toward us from the future. Reality, true knowledge of reality, is impossible without love. Only through love can we truly know as we are know, can we encounter the world and its beings in a living way. Without love, knowledge becomes manipulation, domination, control; the world becomes a space of dead things. But, when we know through love, we enter into a pattern of dynamic, potentially redemptive relations and the world becomes a living world of beings working for the good. This collection gathers all of Rudolf Steiner's main lectures and writings related to love. From earthly love to the nature and function of spiritual love, these pieces are essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of humanity and the Earth. Love and Its Meaning in the World is essential reading for anyone who'd like to gain a deeper understanding of our true mission as human beings and the purpose of evolution on Earth. Chapters include: "The Division of the Sexes" "Lucifer and Christ" "The Mission of Reverence" "The Buddha's Teaching of Compassion and Love" "Faith, Love, and Hope" "Love & Its Meaning in the World" "'I'-Feeling, the Soul's Capacity to Love, and Their Relationship to the Elemental World" Love mediated by the senses is the wellspring of creative power, of what is coming into being. Without sense-born love, nothing material would exist in the world; without spiritual love, nothing spiritual can arise in evolution. When we practice love, cultivate love, creative forces pour into the world.... For human beings, love is the most important fruit of experience in the sensory world. Once we really understand the nature of love, or compassion, we will find that love is the way spirit expresses its truth in the world of the senses.... "We may even say that, in love, the spiritual world awakens in the physical. The more truly a soul inhabits the spiritual worlds, the more it experiences lovelessness and lack of compassion as a denial of spirit itself." --Rudolf Steiner

The love molecule, the feast of love, the grand reunion, the song of the soul, the universal force of love, the experience of true love, heartbeats, breath, destiny, chocolates, pure unlimited love, the breath of life, the art of love and faith, eternal light, the gift of unconditional love, remembering the divine source, beloved, Rumi, whispers of the heart, soaring as a soul, the wisdom of the heart, pouring love...... that's what awaits you between the pages of this book. For Love alone is the Greatest Power.

Written in 1894 (CW 4) "Materialism can never provide a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with one's forming thoughts for oneself about the phenomena of the world. Materialism therefore takes its start with the thought of matter or of material processes. Thus, it already has two different realms of facts before it: the material world and thoughts about it. It seeks to understand the latter by grasping them as a purely material process. It believes that thinking takes place in the brain in about the same way as digestion does in the animal organs. Just as it attributes to matter mechanical and organic effects, so it also ascribes to it the capability, under specific conditions, to think. It forgets that it has now only transferred the problem to another place. It attributes the capability of thinking not to itself but to matter. An in doing so, it is back again at its starting point.... The materialistic view is not able to solve the problem, but only to shift it." (pp. 18-19) Of all of his works, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is the one that Steiner himself believed would have the longest life and the greatest spiritual and cultural consequences. It was written as a phenomenological account of the "results of observing the human soul according to the methods of natural science. This seminal work asserts that free spiritual activity--understood as the human ability to think and act independently of physical nature--is the suitable path for human beings today to gain true knowledge of themselves and of the universe. This is not merely a philosophical volume, but rather a warm, heart-oriented guide to the practice and experience of living thinking. Readers will not find abstract philosophy here, but a step-by-step account of how a person may come to experience living, intuitive thinking--"the conscious experience of a purely spiritual content." During the past hundred years since it was written, many have tried to discover this "new thinking" that could help us understand the various spiritual, ecological, social, political, and philosophical issues facing us. But only Rudolf Steiner laid out a path that leads from ordinary thinking to the level of pure spiritual activity--intuitive thinking--in which we become co-creators and co-redeemers of the world. This volume is arguably the most essential of Steiner's works. The thoughts in this book establish the foundation for all of Anthroposophy. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is a translation from German of Die Philosophie der Freiheit (GA 4).

How does one talk about love? Is it even possible to describe something at once utterly mundane and wholly transcendent, that has the power to consume our lives completely, while making us feel part of something infinitely larger than ourselves? Taking a unique approach to this age-old problem, the nameless narrator of David Levithan's The Lover's Dictionary constructs the story of a relationship as a dictionary. Through these sharp entries, he provides an intimate window into the great events and quotidian trifles of coupledom, giving us an indelible and deeply moving portrait of love in our time.

An exploration of human behavior examines the innate aspects of love, sex, and marriage, discussing flirting behavior, courting postures, the brain chemistry of attraction, divorce and adultery in societies around the world, and more. Reprint.

Sustain loving relationships and set yourself up for emotional wellness in your fifties, sixties, and beyond with this valuable collection of advice from two psychology experts. "Drs. Mayer and Jacobs use their clinical wisdom and story-telling abilities to bring to life the challenges for couples as they age. Their advice will help strengthen long-term relationships to combat the rising trend of Gray Divorce."--Janis Abrahms Spring, PhD, author of After the Affair and Life with Pop With couples divorcing at higher rates than any generation before, and longer lifespans leaving people unwilling to settle for an unsatisfying partner, it's more important than ever to refocus and strengthen your relationship. The only question is: how? In AARP Love and Meaning after 50, husband-wife psychologist team Julia Mayer and Barry Jacobs -- with 50+ years of experience between them -- identify the 10 most common challenges to sustain loving relationships: The Empty Nest * Extended Family * Finances * InfidelityRetirement * Downsizing and Relocating * SexHealth Concerns * Caregiving * Loss of Loved Ones AARP Love and Meaning after 50 offers insights and anecdotes, do it yourself assessments and follow-up exercises, and tips for connecting through the difficult times. With this book, you'll find deeper meaning and greater satisfaction for the decades ahead--together.