Truetalk has been writing since he was a teen, and only in the last five or so years has he taken himself seriously as a writer. He lives in the Vancouver area of BC, Canada, where he has lived for most of his life. He finished his degree in psychology at Simon Fraser University in ’95 when he started his counseling practice for individuals and couples. He recently completed his PhD in psychology and philosophy at University of Life in Black Rock City. His counseling practice though broad in a practical sense, is specialized in alternative relationships, including the various forms of polyamoury, polyfidelity, or what ever other poly-like relationship you may be working on. He has studied the human psyche for almost his entire life, and has a thorough understanding of consciousness, human psychology, and our current social structure and how we as individuals or groups function and dysfunction within our culture and general social milieu. He would love to hear any feedback from the readers of this community, answer questions or even take requests or topics to write about.

Previous editions of this column can be found in the Monthly Columns Archives.

Love and light

First I want to write two things at once, but that can be hard, especially when their separate ideas on a categorical level. I must choose to write on one and leave the other until later. I will introduce both now, and then choose the latter. One is personal and painful, yet I will present it in some indifferent and philosophical way, so as to make it easier to read; the other is more about the nature of love, how it functions and manifests in our perceptions.

Love and light. We have grown to understand one a lot more than the other, and I am sure we all know which one I mean. Well, I am writing to tip the scales of knowledge back towards the other, so that we can better understand love. I have been thinking and pondering, focusing my attention upon and learning about love, and have found a number of common features of love with light; in some cases there are distinct seemingly divergences in their nature or form, where they act in opposites, but mostly they appear to be very similar energies. This is my description and understanding of another common feature between light and love. Light is known to be either a wave or a particle of energy, depending upon the choice of the perceiver, or how one chooses to see light travel. Well, I would say that love has this same feature, that it can be perceived as either a wave or particle of energy. As an energy, love too is like this, it has the paradoxical quality of being both a wave and a particle. This observation must have implications upon the way love is experienced, and I feel that it may be the distinction between a polyamorous vs. monogamous love connection. I will get into this more another time, but now will ask you all to offer what your thoughts on this are. I would like to conduct some research here on the nature of love and to do that I must ask people what their perceptions of love are. If you would like to share with me whether you think you see love as a wave or a particle, I would be most interested and appreciative for your comments and stories.

I have also recently come to see how time might fit into love, and why it is so hard to use time with love. Even though I know that time plays an important role in love, I have in that past not been able to go beyond the inclusion of time in love. Like it takes time to create a connection, that you need to give your time to another, and receive their time, and share some time too, but I have always had a real hard time with when love starts, if it travels with speed, like light does. Analytically, I have explored when we feel love to start within a given relationship, but I have not ever been able to identify and name how it happens that two people meet somewhere and at some time and end out allowing love to grow, or not being able to stop love from growing. Now, again using our current understanding of the speed of light, which is the inclusion of time in light, I see that the question of the speed of love is meaningless-love transcends time. When talking about love, the connections we form that manifest love, we tend to talk about or notice how the timing was just so. There was a synchronicity which brought the two people together, and in that way allowing love to manifest. Still, as I have talked about before, you can block love and not allow the connection to manifest love, or even the full potential of that love, while still allowing love to manifest, but under your own controls. This will create a relationship that may involve love, but it is not free, there are controls, needs, expectations and rules for the love to stay alive. The point being that it was the timing which started the love, and this is not linear unlike the speed of light, rather love has a non-linear movement, and thus cannot have a measurable speed. Thus, maybe love does not 'transcend' time in the sense of how our consciousness grows through the process of struggle, integration and transcendence. Rather the way time works in love is non-linear, its complexity is defined by relativity, psychology and a non-linear time.

I want to go further with this thought, and say that the relativistic conceptualization of the universe, including the effects of gravity, and the flexibility and dynamic nature of time/space through the speed of light, and the quantum and atomic understanding of matter are connected also to love. That depending upon the energy that you have, which can be understood as mass and therefore a force of gravity, or attraction, you will attract different or more or less people towards you for the possible creation of love. Also the kinds of people can be seen as the atomic and smaller energies of personality and individuality playing on each other. It is as though when two people meet, their coming together ignites or results in the creation of love, which acts as a bonding energy, thus creating complexes of energy; but not creation, maybe potential for love. But all of that is just active, creative imagination, the creating of metaphors to facilitate an understanding of love. There may be other visions still. Thus I will not go further like that.

Instead I will end with those two ideas, that love manifests as either a wave movement or a collection of particles. Since I am just starting to do research on the topic, I would really appreciate any and all input on whether you see love as a wave or particle of energy (truetalk@ shaw.ca). I also said that timing is hard to measure with love because it is non-linear, or that the movement of love is non-linear, thus it cannot be measured as a speed, rather only as a timing, or synchronicity, thus love moves differently than light.

Then the second thing I wanted to write about here is more happening than just being. I will have a hard time writing about it, but feel the urge and need to do it anyway. I will start with the feelings. I am feeling sad, hurt, alone, but I am thinking: I want to be single, I deserve the very best, don't just give yourself to anyone; I also think: I will never touch another woman sexually again, and that thought hurts more, I feel sad, and lonely with that thought. Then my thoughts and feelings go to this past weekend. I went to a festival called Fools and Fairies up on the sunshine coast near Roberts creek and crystal lake.

This was a wonderful event, unlike the feelings that seem to be connected with the festival. There was a large piece of land with a forest all around, very rough ground full of trees and small open meadows, and there were smaller trees too that were just starting to blossom. They were just beautiful. There was a small body of water, like a pond, and there was also a river nearby with a small waterfall that you could touch. There was a huge tent erected on one of the upper flat fields of grass, with a huge stage and sound system built inside. It was a wonderful space for ritual and dance, and we did both. There was also a smaller wooden structure on a lower field that was used as an outdoor kitchen which sold all kinds of healthy and nutritious foods. There was also lots of free filtered water. The people were all in costume. Everyone was nice, and imaginative, creative and friendly and intelligent. There were venders three too; people selling all kinds of natural beauty, costumes, and crystals, sage sticks incense and more

I went with a friend, I met her a ways back at a different party. Her and I hit it off well that first night that we met. We connected physically and mentally quite a bit that night, and I felt that there was some trust and respect created between us. Then we did not see each other for a long time, I had kind of forgotten about her, in a way, though I did think sometimes that I should call her again, but I never did. She did one day call me. We hooked up, had a nice time again, and ended the night together cuddling gently in her bedroom.

We soon had plans to go to a festival together, the Fools and Fairies that I mentioned at the beginning of this. We saw each other again a few more times, including gong to another great house party together. We continued to have good times together and talk a lot and enjoy each other's company and more. I was starting to think and feel that maybe we would have some kind of deeper and intimate relationship. I mean why not? She is intelligent, funny, sweet, considerate, good looking, she has a good family, she is working in a similar field of work as me, and we can talk about all kinds of things. We have so much in common, we make each other laugh and laugh. We did have a super good time together going, staying and being and then coming from Fools and Fairies.

Still one more thing happened, and it is this that confuses me, and for which I am writing all of this out. She told me she is not taking this to the physical level, and that she just wants to stay friends. Our connection will now be blocked on the physical level, that is my words and conclusion from her words to me. I feel both anger and sad when I think about that moment. I was playing with the idea of her and I fooling around in the woods, I was playing in the moment, and suggested that we could create a group mission, as opposed to a solo mission, which we had been talking about, saying how fun they are. I suggested that we could create a group mission, and she asked me what that might be. I said, "let's go make it our mission... to go into the woods and make out." She quickly said that she did not want to go there with me, she even asked if I would still be her friend , because she had said that to me the first time we met, and I explained how that made me feel the first time, which was a bit rejected and sad. I say yah, probably, and I though how much I like being wither, and that though I was very sad that she did not want to give herself to me physically, she did not want to become intimate with me, but still I like her company a lot better than most of the women I know and hang with today. Later I told her I was just kidding that I would remain her friend for sure. Today I have other thoughts and more of the same feelings, and these feelings have continued to grow and evolve as time passes and this gets written.

I then started to also think that I cannot bear hanging with her knowing that she does not want to take our connection to the next level. She would rather make the small amount of love between us stagnate and idle, than allow it to grow and move somewhere. There felt to me an inevitable movement towards this next step in an intimate connection, the need to become physically intimate. Though we are physical already, in that we kiss a bit, even cuddled once ; and when we just met she made out with me lots. Also I don't understand why she is hesitating. There are no red flags going up, I think for her, nor for me (except for this non-green flag of not wanting or being able to move the relationship to a more intimate and yes physical love), so why the hesitation and reluctance to take it to the next level? What is preventing it, why is it not going further?

As I wrote this out I had new thoughts. These ones told me to pursue her. Every good woman wants to be pursued. I would like that, and I think I will. Of course since I am leaving for most of the summer I will not be able to pursue her all that much physically, but still I could become more intimate with her. So in the end I am still sad, but I am not angry. Now I am hopeful, I feel I still have a chance. All that good timing is to be used to energize me into action, so that I will not miss this potential love between her and I.

We have talked again since then, and me writing this out, and we have had excellent communication on and around this topic. I also wrote her a love letter telling her that I was okay with what happened and was actually rather thankful. I took my part in the taking of blame too, and mentioned who my emotions got in the way of my rational and passionate behaviors in and around her. We talked about what we both felt, and I found out that she is attracted to me physically, and that she was feeling more pressure to be physical than desire, so she reacted by saying no, you do not get what you expect. I explained that I was not expecting anything, and I think my actions showed that too, since we had such a good time all weekend together. I was always happy to be with her for whatever activities we were doing. She also explained to me that there are complications still with other guys, and she does not fully understand the poly way of having relationships. I am also new to the actual living in a poly-relationship, but am eager to try, and am often unsure what to do, or how to proceed. I once again see how timing is so critical in the creation of a strong love connection, and that though our timing has been excellent for creating intimacy, we both also have a few psychological forces that keep things blurry and create confusion or misunderstandings. Now I will just allow things to happen, with the intention of growing closer to this woman, I will watch for the timing of things, and be attentive to when our intimate relationship it is to begin.

Truetalk is a contributing writer as well as a member of this online Community. He can be contacted here or through our message board Forums.

Truetalk ; May 25, 2007

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folks have read this article.