Trans-evaluation of love and friendship

(an exercise in writing)

by Justin Zijlstra

These are the necessary virtues:

1. The capacity to move autonomously and behave with the utmost care,
2. To be able to either tolerate or accept the will sublimated through your physicality,
3. To know how to create and prioritize thinking to create space in the mind,
4. To experience rivalry in friendship without sympathy, but not without empathy for one another.

Love for someone else is for me a dangerously elusive concept, but it does not seem to be so illusive according to the standards of many people or even by a higher ethos these days. Who is predisposed and who circumvents his own tendencies? Why does one laugh at the wise man as though he had been a satyr?

I only want to answer -- only even want to ask -- what is reasonable. Some anchors are useful and therefore should only be questioned when it is necessary.

Love for ones self is only possible when one is fully integrated with others. One can experience this in a sensual awareness when one listens to music sometimes. Then when thinking about some of the highest moments that are the moments of height and wither (or the withering heights), one needs to ask oneself why these feelings are experienced. Some introspection may lead to historical reflection, of course. But that is not my task. I'm here primarily as a first person reflection. Yes. I define myself to be such.

The psyche and psychosomatic pathologies are ways discomforting to ones self. One must not become burdened down with them but be aware of the signals. One is often in the position to misforgive one another on lapses and slips that can upon reflection be seen as conscious mistakes. Robust personalities compensate for this, weaker or less observing personalities or youngsters don't recognize what is going on.

Love for me is the full acceptance through all its paradoxes of the body and therefore the self.

One can love another by being dependent but the highest kind of relations are those where each sees in the other's eyes at each moment the existence of those virtues identified at the beginning of this article. One party to the relationship does not have one kind of urges, while the other has another. We want to find progressively deeper layers of ourselves, which is only possible with a kind of fearlessness. One does not want to suffocate parts of himself by installing schemata (morals/ideals/idols) on the psyche, these schemata have sluggishly been developed throughout the ages, only for the lazy. Understanding these deeper layers eventually comes down to listening to the body itself. Once these underlying facets of our individual selves are recognized many of our frustrations will be lost and one finally becomes integrated.

There is a synergistic rivalry derived from mutual passion. The highest relations are those where you intellectually see each other move but the moments in dialogue including silences stop time altogether. This requires mutual understanding of a kind similar to "knowing each other" obviously but also a recognition of how each of your minds handle silences. Thought experiment: "What will your mind do if there is silence and most importantly what associations will you have? Do you think you can figure out the reasons for these associations?" A deeper question is: "Which feelings accompany these associations?"

Tension recognized creates, but creation does not eradicate the tension.

Art is the result of recalling what one senses.

Rivalry makes great minds enjoy life and little minds crawl and smother.

Introjections in to my experience is the consumption of behaviour of others which you don't always comprehend but unconsciously see as useful, you'll recognize the behaviour and then the post decision will be if it is eventually good or not to your constitution.

Real friendship is something temporary often and permanently in rare circumstances. Real friendship for me is fruitful friendship and not the cultural imperative of "behaving as a friend".

Congenial friends are to be created by each other. One can create and optimize environments, if you know your behaviour deeply you'll recognize these words. If not, you're either alone without friends, culturally biased and thus blinded or you don't have a sense for the things written above. I suppose you should either reread in adagio or andante and integrate or do something else and come back later when you do recognize. But then I don't mind being read as a satyr, I write for the ones who do understand, you are the surplus.

The ultimate question for me regarding this all is. Why can't I behave just purely and autonomously, why do I unconsciously sometimes have an inner public? Sometimes subtle anxiety prevails as when taking a glass of water, for example, I experience a subtle turmoil, which gives me insight in retrospect. This insight is a sight of Maya or The Veil of behaviour. Which leads me to the last part:

Last words on effective writing.

I often see rationalisations in writings. Effective writing is fiercely recognizing what you experience mentally.

For the glass of water this would have meant that I possibly hid something from myself initially and possibly but not exclusively from the other person.