What is the most valuable thing in your life?

What is the most valuable thing in your life? Is love the most important thing? How about money or power? Is your child and family the most valued aspect of your life? How about education and health? I think it is important to understand what we value most. It gives us perspective and understanding of who we are. To “know thyself” is an admonition and echo from ages past which still speaks to us today.

I guess it could be argued that no one thing is most important. Perhaps, that a combination of things is most important. I ask you to you to profess and define what is most important to you. I think the answers will surprise us all.

I am not at liberty to say what the number one thing I cherish the most is, but everything else is minor in comparison but pertains to my existence more.

For me, I have been compelled to realize this question, almost against my will, so it is close to my feelings and situation. I also can not divulge the exact circumstances, at this time. However, all of my concerns have shrunk next to my concern for my family. Not that the other considerations do not pop up at times, but they are waning.

Don’t tell my wife, but my books are the most valuable things in my life…
shhhhhhhhh…

Kropotkin

I assert that there is something all humans possess which is more fundamentally valuable than anything else. It is consciousness. It is in consciousness that all of our experience is held. Everything we have and value is in consciousness. It can be argued that the only thing we own is consciousness. Our bodies are vessels for the existence of consciousness and we are just renters - tenants in our bodies. All of our experience is in our minds eye. Through the eye of consciousness the entire universe is unveiled. The most valuable thing is consciousness.

I think it is hard to argue that anything is more fundamental or valuable to each of us than consciousness. Our consciousness contains everything that we physically and mentally experience. Love, hate, sex, God, trees, mountains, stars, galaxies all are only in our minds eye. I am not saying that trees or galaxies are not real or separate entities from ourselves. What I am saying is that our individual contact with them is only experienced through our individual awareness. Our awareness is the framework upon which all our experience is filtered. Our awareness holds the entire universe, God or no God, ourselves and everything we have ever done or will do. So I ask you, what is this thing – consciousness?

There are two fundamental attributes of consciousness. I call them gifts. The first gift is volition – we have the ability to choose. We not only have the ability to choose, in fact we are obligated to choose – something. We make choices all the time, every day. The second gift of consciousness is love. Love and all of its attributes and permutations are present in consciousness. Love is a continuum of feelings that spans the gamut from extreme positive, to the extreme negative - all the way to hate. In order for love to exist we must be able to define its opposite – hate. Love in all of its transformations is emotion.

Our predilections for one thing or another is a curious blend of want and desire. In other words – volition and love or emotion is what forms most of our awareness or consciousness. The substance of our consciousness is mostly concerned with emotion and will. There are other aspects to awareness like recognition, memory and sensory input; but volition and love most fully define our individual consciousness. There is another special aspect of consciousness call pure awareness or stillness. Let’s set this characteristic aside for the time being, perhaps we will discuss it later.

Well let’s be practical and ask where does consciousness come from? I would say the Holy Spirit but this answer is amorphous. So let’s not argue about the existence of God. Let’s focus on what we know and feel and can prove to ourselves. We know consciousness exists and that we all have it. And we know or sense consciousness has two main characteristics – volition and love - desire and emotion. Is there a logical association between volition and love and our behavior that we can be certain of? Can we deduce a causal relationship in human behavior which explains it? I think we can.

Consciousness is not so much a thing as it is a phenomenon. It is consumed with experience and yet everything is claimed and defined in it – both physical and metaphysical. Aside from the spiritual dimension love can be explain on a very practical level. Love exists and is initiated between a mother and a child. From the moment of conception a mother loves her child. Why, because it is not different from her – it is her. A mother loving her child is the same as loving herself, because they evolve as one being. Where did a mother learn love? Answer – she learned it from her mother. Love is born in the mother-child bond. Love of self is learned from a mother or mother figure.

Love has another attribute which reverberates in consciousness - desire. Love speaks to the existence of will in consciousness. Love and will co-create each other in consciousness. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two. Love is not solitary, nor is volition. They need each other in order to exist. We need a push or predilection in order to make a decision. A will needs a desire and a desire needs a will. They don’t exist separately.

I believe love has a spiritual dimension and origin that precedes all of physical existence. However, the defining of God is difficult, if not impossible. Therefore the practical unfolding of the mother-child bond is enough concrete proof of loves origin and existence. We do not have to answer first cause. We do not have to explain how or why the universe exists – it just does. We don’t have to say God created love. We can see a real origin for love and we know it exists, it is true. The mother child bond is enough of an explanation for love. We don’t have to know the origin of the chicken or the egg. We don’t have to explain or prove the universe exists. We know love exists and we know where it comes from. Love is very practical.

However, we are not always aware that loves is the basis of all civilization. Society is held together by collective agreement. The first collective agreement is between a mother and child for the relationship to persist. The mother-child bond is the basis of all relationships – family, hunter/gatherer group, village, town, school, commerce, city and nation. We live in society by collective agreement. All of our institutions are held together by collective agreement and all of these institutions are patterned after the first collective agreement. I would call the mother-child bond the first contract. It is a contract that surpasses all others. It is the mother of all contracts literally and figuratively.

What I mean or what I ask - is there a thing which surpasses everything else in your existence in value? I say it is consciousness because everything is contained in it. All other values are a subset. Now a person could argue that life is the greatest value, but we need consciousness in order to appreciate life. This is the existential principle – existence precedes essence.

So what is love?

My crazies. They’re my crazies, you can’t has them. mine.

Nice post Woodart.

Surely we can describe/define “selfish love” … it permeates human existence … no?

OTH … agape/unselfish love … there is so much less empirical evidence/manifestation … making description/definition much more difficult … no?

Here are some of my views on love…

Love is an act of giving.
We give to whom we cherish and cherish to whom we give.
Love is both a leap of faith because it wants to exist and a knowing that it does exist.
Love wants to persist because it is its own reward.
Love is bound by sacred honor.
Love is held at the apex of consciousness and permeates the entire being.
Love yearns for expression and strives for contact and continuation.
Love is holy.
Love is a secret dwelling on public display.
Love is a contract between two souls; extremely fragile and infinitely powerful.
Love is a bridge between the heart and desire.
Love is helpless to defend itself and at the same time indestructible.
Love lives beyond life’s boundaries.
Love is the elixir of eternal life.
Love is infinite and lives in the smallest places.
Love is a lamp in the depths of the darkest night.
Love is a guide and messenger.
Love is a dwelling in the heart of consciousness.
Love is gentle and kind.
Love is quiet and screaming for expression.
Love lives for itself and a companion.
The gift of love is beyond measure.
The measure of love is the gift of a companion.
Love has power beyond imagination.
Love can only be given, never taken.
Love hears the rhythm of the universe.
Love is a creative force.
Love is its own reward.
Love is learned from a mother.
A father, sister or friend can be a mother figure and teach love.
Love is held in consciousness.
Love is the most valuable and powerful thing in consciousness.
The amount of love one has is directly proportional to our ability to give it.
Love transcends time.
Love is accepting.
Love is patient.
Love is a sweet power.
Love is a song that the heart hears.
Love is a yearning that wants to connect.
To find love, look inside, and see outside.
Love and imagination walk hand in hand.
Love sees great distances and small places.
Love craves itself.
Love feels the others pain and delight.
Love is fragile.
Love is a force only limited by imagination.
Love is the most power force in the universe.
Love is held in the mind’s eye and so is the universe.
Love is what binds us to the universe.
Love is a force of nature.
Nature manifests love.