Thomas Campbell

[poliphilo]

I've been spending much of the past 36 hours watching videos on the site I highlighted yesterday. I'm particularly taken with Thomas Campbell- physicist and shaman (shaman isn't a word he uses himself but what else do you call a teacher and healer who travels between the worlds?) "The opposite of Love" he says, "isn't hate but fear". Yes. To which I'd add that it's a lot easier to conquer hate than it is to conquer fear. If the object of our existence is to become Love, then that's one hell of a mountain we have to climb.

And of course we're not going to do it in a single lifetime.

Or in ten

Or in fifty.

Comments

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

I have always felt that love and hate are essentially the same substance, and the same essence -- the key difference lies in the absence, or presence of a critical level of fear. Love, once it reaches that fear-saturation point, becomes hatred. Hatred, once enough fear leaches out of it, becomes understanding, reconciliation, compassion, and even love.

They are so very similar, I cannot think of them as opposites, but as conjoined twins. After all, when you have loved someone but can love them no longer, isn't it most often hate, or something like it, that follows next, unless you put effort into resisting it?

I think I have to go with indifference being the true opposite there. Possibly disdain as the 'opposite' flavor of hatred, just for symmetry's sake -- again, judged by the presence or absence of even a trace amount of fear.

Your mileage, of course, may vary.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When you're freeing yourself from the influence of someone you once loved it's normal to hate them for a time. Then, when the separation is complete you can go back to loving them in different way. That's been my experience, anyway.

I think Love and Hate are very imprecise terms.