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  %LOVE HONESTY GENTLE OPEN RESPONSIVE LIBERATE JOY 940424

    If  the first commandment is that we should  love  God
and each other as our own selves---it follows that we must
love  our  own selves as we love each  other.    There  is
confusion,  however, as to just what is essential in love.
Too rarely have we  focused  upon honesty as an  essential
aspect  of  love in our love relationships with God,  with
ourselves and with each other.

    If we are not honest with God, with ourselves and with
each  other---we  are not in love with God,  ourselves  or
each  other.   People who are in love are honest with God,
with themselves  and  with each other.   Love and  honesty
are   inseparable  because  love  has  to  do  with  being
connected  in  open  and  honest  communication  which  is
mutual, balanced, respectful, non-manipulative and free of
fear.

    Love  casts  out fear which motivates dishonesty,   so
that those  who  are in Love can be open and  honest  with
each other---in intimate relationships where they are/feel
safe and free to be vulnerable without any sense of a need
to  be  defensive.     People  who are  in  Love  are  not
defensive  because  they give and receive  free  gifts  of
security  which  is  known as  the freedom  to  be  safely
vulnerable.

    In  the absence of the  giving and accepting of love's
gifts of  true  security---people  are defensive. They use
secrecy,   silence,   insensitivity,   non-responsiveness,
deception,   misleading  behaviors/appearances,   implicit
dishonesty  and  overt dishonesty as tools to be  used  in
manipulative and violent defenses.   Defensiveness  breeds
defensiveness   and dishonesty.  Love  engenders gifts  of
true security through the giving and accepting of gifts of
the freedom to be safely vulnerable.

    People  who are in love feel no need to be in  control
or to be preoccupied with issues of control; for issues of
control   breed  fear,   defensiveness  and   manipulative
dishonesty.

    People  who  are  in  love are  not  preoccupied  with
proscriptions,  prescriptions,  regulations, rules,  laws,
formalities,   conformities,  rebellions, punishments, and
judgments---because  such  preoccupations destroy contexts
within   which  people  are/feel  safe  and  free  to   be
vulnerable without any sense of a need to be defensive.

    People  who  are  in love seek to openly and  honestly
describe to each other their own experiences, perceptions,
feelings, fears, joys, hopes, aspirations, etc.  They seek
to listen sympathetically to each other in their offerings
of such honest descriptions; helping each other to be/feel
safely vulnerable in offering such descriptions.  They are
preoccupied  with  open and  honest  descriptions---rather
than  with  prescriptions and proscriptions which engender
fear which drives out love.

    People  who often engender fear in others---are not in
love.  People who seek to control, discipline, manipulate,
guilt,  shame, excommunicate and otherwise be in charge of
others---are  not in love;  for they engender  alienative:
fear,  anxiety,  tension, contention,  defense,  conflict,
dishonesty,  deception,  secrecy and evil relationships in
general.   They  increase  evil relationships.  They do no
overcome evil.
                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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