At least that’s what Leonor Casalins said.

She said that “all this stimulation offered day after day” could lead to a bigger desire and need of having a partner, “frustrating” those who don’t have but want. According to her, “there is a need to share life with someone e some moment” and “most people need a partner”, among other “biological needs”.

This reminds me, once more, of Viktor Frankl, who once said:

By his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of the what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.

This is a fact: by loving we allow ourselves to show our potentialities. And, usually people is unaware of that. We know that love is good, and relationships amazing, but we just don’t know why.

And we keep searching and searching for this true love to come, to make ourselves more complete, more unique, more humans. Like Majnun searching for Layli everywhere:

It is related that one day they came upon Majnun sifting the dust, and his tears flowing down. They said, “What doest thou?” He said, “I seek for Layli.” They cried, “Alas for thee! Layli is of pure spirit, and thou seekest her in the dust!” He said, “I seek her everywhere; haply somewhere I shall find her.”

Baha'u'llah, The Seven Valleys, p. 6.

Maybe we should be aware our Layli could be everywhere. But should we be looking for her everywhere? I don’t recall reading Majnun ever finding her, just like the poem from Saná’í:

Never the covetous heart shall come to the stealer of hearts,

Never the shrouded soul unite with beauty's rose.

Frankl explains us that by searching pleasure by itself we shall end up frustrating both the will of pleasure and the will of meaning. Furthermore he adds that pleasure should be the secondary effect of our meaningful actions. Only this way, the “covetous heart” can progress to a degree where it shall attain the hearts, and the “shrouded soul” “unite with beauty's rose”.

Labels: Bahá'u'lláh, couples, emotions, Frankl, love, relationships

# posted by SAM @ 22.2.07 0 comments

Arriving at Rome and passing through her, anyone’s life could change. Having been in Italy, before, in the North, I am amazed with the difference and the beauty that Rome so proudly exhibits.

And I am not even talking about that pride in being pretty, but about that one pride that can lead an entire civilization to such a decline that converts it in the tale of the world. Lets look at history: what happened to the Macedonia of Alexander (the Great!!!)?, where is the Mongolia of Genghis Khan?, where did the Egypt of Ramses loose itself?, in which atrocious situation we can find the Persia of Cyrus, of Koorosh or of Darius?

The arrogance of the lords of power leads always to a fall, with the consequent difficulty in getting up. It is said, in physics, that all that goes up has to go down. I should disagree! We can rise and progresses, piano a piano, we can even toddle, walk, and even run, and go lontano. But we do not need to consider ourselves the holders of divine and absolute knowledge!

The extreme organization of Milan and the extreme chaos of Rome…

The taciturn monotony of the fashion city versus the joyful life of the capital of the Empire …

In Rome, people is capable to love and hate, simultaneously. They step on each other (literally) to get into a bus, they offend to demonstrate anger, they mock the unknown at the same time they appreciate differences.

The Rome of the Empire is today the lost Rome, the Rome in search of si stessa, looking for her place in the world. Fluctuant between lefts and rights as almost every European capitals, Rome symbolizes the world civilization, incapable in conceiving her origins in a past that melts cultures (how much of the Roman Apostolic Christianism, for instance, isn’t resulted from the Mithraism Zoroastrianism?), that looses herself in a present of high diplomats and sages at the same time that underestimates herself as the tale of Europe, struggling to go back being who she was not knowing who she is …

ROME, ROMA, the first letter of ROMANCE! ROME, city of Christianity. ROME, cradle of the old order. When shall you wake up, rise and strive to become the City you were once?

The city that can held the bridge towards new world order, where worldly dichotomies between nationals and foreigners, between northern independentists and southern nationalists, between poverty and wealth, between religious exclusivity and the impetus of integration nullify themselves and your citizens are converted in the heralds of a new world order?


When will your paúra be converted in an active force?
Let it be Let deeds, not words, be your adorning, oh sweet and long-missed Rome!

Labels: feelings, human nature, leadership, love, relationships, religion, travel, world citizenship, world unity

# posted by SAM @ 16.2.07 28 comments

I have just read an interesting article named “Make love, very healthy to your work life”, based on Stuart Brody's study, recently published in the New Scientist. Several people were monitored to check how can sex influence stress levels.

And, he found out that those people participating as volunteers in the investigation, practicing observed sex presented lower stress-related blood pressure and performed better on public speeches.

You could think that whoever makes sex in public is able to make anything in public, but, according to Brody, this is because some cranial nerve is controlling some of our psychological processes, releasing oxytocin, the hormone that works out during sexual act, and that has a calming effect!

Now, remember what Frankl could say about this: sex shouldn’t become the means to a good speech, but the reason to start giving yourself to others. Making love could be, just like giving speeches, a experiential value that allows you to connect with another human, a human that, just like you, is able to give and to receive!

Labels: emotions, fear, Frankl, human nature, love, reasons, relationships, sex

# posted by SAM @ 12.1.07 0 comments

Only through reflecting, and the positioning between those two extremities, will there be forward steps in the relationship. Better said, why speak of relationships when we can talk about meeting? It is by meeting the other that I see who I am, that I see how I act, how I think, and react. It is through this communication (that in Latin could mean “put in common”) that commitment appears (“sending myself to the other”).

And how do two lives become one, one twofold life? Some great thinkers affirm that the human being is a giving being. That means, the same way it is the nature of the fountain to outpour water, showing itself alive and transmitting life, it is the nature of the human being to endow himself incessantly – endow his richness, endow his time, his energy, his values, his support and his love to all those surrounding him.

Nevertheless, it needs preparation; a firm and conscious effort of self-knowledge and knowledge of the other. It is this way that, once more, we come to the meeting. It is in this meeting that the “I” and the “You” transcend to a monadic “We” in which the human being becomes able to overcome his limits.

Knowing the other means knowing myself; because I reflect myself on the other, as a shadow that manifests itself only when there is a light to shine.

And this light might well be Love! A love that should not be blind, but, once again, conscious!

And the problem comes when love, which is born blind, wants to remain blind– or better – when we insist to remain blind, afraid of knowing the real character of the other, the companion we have idealized, afraid that knowing we no longer want him/her; afraid of being abandoned; afraid of solitude: afraid!

Sam Cyrous
(published in Psicologia Actual, Portugal, March 2006).

Labels: communication, couples, fear, human nature, love, relationships, self-knowledge, transcendence

# posted by SAM @ 8.1.07 0 comments