Love, intimacy, resonance, hate: Online and in person

Heidi writes

Can we define what love is? Obviously not really. Some people understand it as romantic love, sexual attraction, others as something transpersonal, the energy of the Universe and maz things in between, as for instance the love for a grandchild.

The women of WOMEN MATTERS started the conversation with sharing their experience with the 5 day marathon of the Integral European Conference online. In average 8 hours a day in front of the computer, seeing many faces on the screen, and meeting only a few at a time in workshops, with breakout groups, in Zoom.

Is the intimacy which arises among completely strangers in certain workshops real intimacy? Or is it only resonance? Why seems it to be easier to show your true face to a complete stranger than to people with whom you have a history and who you will meet again sometime soon? Or do these connections thrive better in the physical presence of the others?

Exploring these questions we went deeper and deeper. What happens when you lose a dear friend or partner whom you love and whose love you cannot feel any more? Is love living in memories? Or can you still perceive it despite the other person is gone?

What is the opposite of love? Indifference, not hate. What is underneath the hate which is firing up in public life in the US these days – and surely for a very long time until the police killed an innocent black man. Why do people who should protect us, inflame themselves in the fire of hate?

Well, in the conference Dr. Loraine Laubscher explained this phenomenon well by means of spiral dynamics. Pathological ego stage, the “red” stage, produces these outbursts of destructive energy, regardless if you are a policeman or another person. It depends on the level of development of people, not on their profession or their race. We all go through these stages, and when we do that in an healthy way, we grow up and become mature. The unhealthy way of all stages create negative emotions and destructivity, expressed in different ways, according to the specific stage.

Also love can be explained by the level of development in which people are located in the given time. The expression of love will be completely different on every stage, spiced by the individual proclivity. This was the subject of Dr. Tom Habib’s presentation at the conference. You can have a glimpse of it in a podcast I held with him a few days ago and which I will publish next week.

Coming back to the conversation of the 5 women posted here: We went through the conversation in a way which is very much like the U Process, described by Otto Scharmer. We have created a sense of connectedness, even intimacy, by the deep listening and from there taking further perspectives and developing our conversation in a wonderful satisfying co-creative way.

OUR PRESENT TEAM