Is it really Love? Spiritual Way of the Six Loves

    Why is jealousy so intense?  Why does it become so consuming?  We explore some possible answers to these questions in this episode.  One reason jealousy becomes so intense is the urgent questions we feel when our significant other seems to be interested in a possible rival.  We worry that when our partner gets close to another person we will lose the specialness of our relationship.  However, the main reason we feel intense jealousy is that we feel our very sense of self is directly threatened.  Why we feel this way brings us back to the false self, a topic we looked at in the episodes on spiritual love.

     In the next episode we will look at how the false self plays into jealousy and contributes to the intensity of jealousy.

This podcast series is based on my book The Six Faces of Love which can be viewed at craigowen.net

     We begin this episode with a definition of jealousy.  With jealousy defined, we can now take a close look at the experience of jealousy.  What is it that we go through when jealousy has a hold of us?  As we saw with envy in the last episode, jealousy has both its good and bad aspects.  Jealousy can alert us about serious feelings for someone we had not noticed before.  Jealousy can warn us that we are bumping up against the limits of what a relationship can sustain regarding stress or other problems. Too often jealousy is not positive, but very negative.  It can be so overpowering that it can destroy the very relationship it is seeking to protect.  Why is jealousy so intense?  How does it become so obsessive as to turn destructive, as it did with John and Kara?  We will begin to answer those questions in the next episode.

This podcast series is based on my book The Six Faces of Love which can be viewed at craigowen.net

 In this episode we look at two different but related emotions:  Jealousy and Envy.  People often get these two emotions mixed up.  For example, someone may notice your nice new car.  They come up to you and say "You have a lovely car.  I sure am jealous of you."  What they really mean is that they are envious of you. Or say your wife, girlfriend or significant other starts talking to a handsome younger fellow at a party.  You start to feel uneasy and a little anxious, and then you decide it is time for you and your partner go back home and wash your car!  This would be an example of jealousy. 

 It is important to know how jealousy and envy are different.  We will continue to talk about jealousy in the next Episode.  I will give a formal definition of jealousy which we will unpack in the style of earlier podcasts. 

This podcast series is based on my book The Six Faces of Love which can be viewed at craigowen.net

We begin the first of several episodes on the troubling emotion of jealousy.  If you have ever felt love for anyone, you almost certainly have experienced jealousy.  Not much is said about this emotion, but it is something that I expect many, if not most people wrestle with.  I tell the story of John and Kara.  This is based on a tragic but true relationship, where jealousy became deadly.  I did not know the people personally, but I may have passed them on the street.  The terrbible climax of this story occurred not far from where I used to work and live, and it affected me greatly.  All kinds of questions come to mind- why would anyone feel so desperate as to take their own life and the life of the one they supposedly loved?  How can jealousy go so wrong?  Can jealousy be stopped or at least controlled?  Before we can start to answer these questions, we must first be clear about what is jealousy.

In the next episode, we will take a look at this emotion of jealousy and get a handle on what is it exactly.  We will study a close cousin of jealousy that it is often confused with it- envy. 

This podcast series is based on my book The Six Faces of Love which can be viewed at craigowen.net

In this episode we wrap the last few episodes on love and happiness.  How do the different loves relate to happiness?  How does romantic love fit into happiness?  How does spiritual love fit into happiness?  If we are plugged into the Plan or Process that is at the heart of happiness, what might the lifeafter look like?  These and other issue are what we will look at in this last installment  on happiness.

Beginning in the next episode we will start looking at the dark side of love, the problem of jealousy.  It is a huge problem for many people, yet I have not seen much written about it.  We will look at one story of jealousy, work out a definition of jealousy, see how it works and how it can go wrong.  Most importantly, we will try to come up with suggestions on how to get a handle on jealousy before it turns destructive.

This podcast series is based on my book The Six Faces of Love which can be viewed at craigowen.net

     In this Episode we will begin looking at the relationship between love and happiness.  We will look in particular at one of the two questions we ended with last time:  How do you know when you are in the flow of the Plan or Process of my suggested definition of happiness?  What is the everyday evidence we look to in holding onto the hope of this approach to happiness?  Several episodes back, I was looking for an explanation of happiness that would meet several demands.  One was that this would be accessible to all people. Two, that it would be durable through difficult times. Finally, it would offer a more encompassing worldview than the simple view "Love will make you happy" or "happiness is moderation in all things." It is my hope that this episode will show how these demands can be satisfied.

    In the next episode we will take up the last of my two questions, how
do the different loves relate to my suggested definition of happiness.

This podcast series is based on my book The Six Faces of Love which can be viewed at craigowen.net

   We continue to explore my suggested definition of happiness.  Happiness has been notoriously hard to capture.  One famous saying suggests you never catch happiness when you seek it directly, it only comes to you when you are busy doing other things, like a butterfly gently landing on your shoulder. I borrow a phrase from another writer who describes this slippery aspect  of happiness as "transcending anticipation." Transcending means something that rises above the present moment, that stands beyond time.  Anticipation is the feeling or desire that we want to arrive somewhere, achieve something, but we never quite get there. Jill is experiencing "transcending antipication" in the vague restlessness she feels.  We look at what that is and where it comes from in this particular episode.

   The next episode will be one of the most important I will ever post in this series.  We will look at two questions.  First, how can you tell when you are in the Plan or Process I talk about in my suggested defintion of happiness?  Second, how do happiness and love fit together?  We can pull together some of the key observations about love we have seen in earlier episodes and get a general view of love and happiness, a goal towards which we have been slowly working these past several months.

This podcast series is based on my book The Six Faces of Love which can be viewed at craigowen.net

In this episode, we will take a look at my proposed definition of happiness and see how it applies to Jill's situation.  What I suggest is a religious definition of happiness.  While I am writing from a specific religious tradition, I have tried to make my definition of happiness as broad as possible.  It is my hope that my definition of happiness might be a source of interfaith dialogue between the different religions.  Finally,  I cannot claim with certainty that my definition of happiness is completely original with me.  I have not seen this definition anywhere in various articles or books.   It is possible some theologians or philosophers may have come up with a similar idea over the centuries, but I have not had time to read widely enough to know.

     In the next episode, we will continue our discussion of my proposed definition of happiness.

This podcast series is based on my book The Six Faces of Love which can be viewed at craigowen.net

     In Episode 17, I take a look at an ancient definition of happiness.  This view of happiness goes back at least 2,500 years to the time of Aristotle in ancient Greece. The story of Jill from the last episode is a good illustration of Aristotle's view on happiness, good and bad.  While it is a familiar idea, I do not think it measures up to what people are really seeking.  Looking over an approach to happiness that does not work will get us closer to an understanding of happiness that will work. 

     In the next episode, I will offer my suggested definition of happiness.  We will spend the next few episodes unpacking that definition to see what are its implications.

This podcast series is based on my book The Six Faces of Love which can be viewed at craigowen.net