What Happens When Love Is Self-Enclosed?

If humans are essentially self-enclosed or self-interested or idiotist psychological systems (a la Freud), then "love" is just the name for a kind of psychic imperialism among psyches. One bag of appetites and emotions (he) tries to arrogate control over another bag of appetites and emotions (she -- or vice versa), all for the first bag's own benefit, like a war between oversized amoebas. If human beings are conceived strictly in terms of what finite-banausic [not operating on a refined or elevated level; mundane] mentalities ... can comprehend, then "love" will necessarily look like a "magical" or illusionistic pseudo-cure for our necessitated animalistic (and deterministic bourgeois-"rationalist") natures. Our natural power of self-centered delusion projects for itself a cure for its self-enclosure, and calls this fantasy "love." Uncountable are the times that this grandiose fantasy has failed, and actual finite human beings could not live up to the narcotic infatuation or "salvation from self" that they needed out of one another.

 

 

Kenneth Smith

 

So I add that when feeling love for someone the dominant role should be played by the soul. The soul yearns to give for givings sake and to love for the sake of the significant other. This requires one to step out of his/her ego and self centeredness and to be elevated to the lofty plane we call imitatio dei - emulating the traits of the Divine.

 

For more information I direct you to the biographies of Rav Aryeh Levine, Rav Kook, the Chazon Ish and the Lubavitcher Rebbe to name just a few.

 

I hope that one day people are referred to YOUR biography for examples of soul-level loving.