On Friendship

"Friendship must be about something." --C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis wrote a classical interpretation of many emotions central to human life. In his book, The Four Loves, he addresses the meaning of friendship. Drawing upon rich resources such as the ancient Greeks, Romans, traditions borne through millennia, his view may be termed as western, if not universal.

Lewis delineates the many views of friendship; he describes it as mutuality, as 'seeing the same truth, looking outward, much as French writer, St. Exupery does; he explores friends in the context of erotic love; the search for Beauty, the engagement of spirituality, companionship, and he asserts that it's the least jealous of all the loves.

Where Lovers seek privacy, friends experience enclosure between themselves and the 'herd' rushing around them, and they may not be jealous so are often willing to admit another into their circle.
The American poet Emerson posed the question of a friend several times, simply asking, 'do you care about the same truths as I do?' The answer to this is the point at which a companion may move to a friend.
Shared activities and insights may be a draw for companions who 'share the road.' But a deeper, inner sense recognizing certain truths brings them into the realm of friend.

And while friends may not fully draw the same conclusions, they generally agree on the importance of questions. Seeing the shape of the world in similar fashion draws them to similar questions, if not responses.

Further Lewis argues simple friendship is entirely free of the need to be needed. He writes, "in a circle of true friends, each is simply what he is: stands for nothing but ones' self."

While Eros seeks out naked bodies, friendship seeks naked personalities. There is no absolute duty to friend anyone, nor is there a legal contract such as marriage. 

Friendship comes freely, entirely unencumbered with these other types of strictures.
Yet in modern, industrialized societies friendship is so often undervalued in favor of contractualized relationships as if these are somehow inherently better, more legitimate.
One cannot fail to notice the number and degree of divorces that abound in any given community.

Friends form moreover an appreciation of each other. They not only travel the same roads but their values within the realm of truths inform their judgement, leaving them more clear-eyed about one another.
They are observant of a mutual love and knowledge, and this forms itself into an appreciation a sentiment that often leaves one feeling in his deepest heart, humbled, what is he among those seemingly better, how lucky to be.
And when together among these friends, there is the knowledge that each brings out as if by magic the better in one self, the best, the funniest, the most clever, the beauty. In the conversation, the mind opens to something more, a perception of the self previously unknown comes into view. Life has no better gift to give than a good friend or two.

Every Thing in the Tao

"Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone." --Tao Te Ching

As a dancer knows, absorption into the dance becomes the dancer. Without separate consciousness they become the dance and the dance becomes them. It transpires effortlessly, without active thought. This may be thought of as a model, a clear example of non-action.

The dancer does not think and yet they move about with the music in a pure expression. It is so because "the doer wholeheartedly vanishes into the deed." The fuel completely transforms into flame; the wood is the fire. This 'nothingness' is in fact, everything. Can the dancer force the music, can they make the notes unfold in any other way other than as presented? What other response could they offer as a dancer?

Is singularity in the dance, really isolation; is the cooperation with the musicians less obvious? How does the dancer 'hear' the music? The fluid softness, the supple strength of the dancer occurs as a response to the music, to the musicians, when they trust in the great intelligence of the world, the dharmakaya and the simple intelligence of the body to respond physically, to respond appropriately in harmony, in symphony. The dancer then trusts, not only the present functioning of their own body but also of the musicians and the physics of the music itself

The wisdom book, the ancient Tao Te Ching so popular in the west, especially, tells of the intuitive wisdom of the dancer:

People see some things as beautiful
other things ugly
People see some things as good
other things become bad

Being and non-being create each other
Difficult and easy support each other
Long and short define each other
High and low depend on each other
Before and after follow each other
Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything,
teaches without saying anything,
Things arise. Let them come.
Things disappear. Let them go
Have but not possess
act but not expect
When work is done, forget it.
That is why it lasts forever

In surrender, in giving up notions, judgements and demands, the mind grows naturally into compassion. In dance, self-expression is the evidence. In one's own, deep experience, the central truths of living are revealed; paradoxical as they may first seem, this is only the surface. Deep looking and careful thinking reveal that the more solitary we are, the more compassionate we may be; the more we let go of what we love, the more present our love becomes; the clearer our vision, the more the way presents itself.

The Suns of Poetry

For some, poetry aims highly at several things. As an art form it uses language in new and creative ways to express ideas and emotions; it creates its own vocabulary for expression of some of our deepest thoughts and feelings. The poet is, in the words of Indian teacher and mystic, Sri Aurobindo, the result of the harmonizing of
"five perennial powers: truth, beauty, joy, life and spirit." The one he terms, the "poet-seer" is someone who "sees differently, who thinks in another way... the poet shows us truth within its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, reveals it to us..."

Poets seek to illumine, to amplify or lift up in words, images and symbols in the way the visual artist does with his drawings or designs. For Aurobindo the term life carries further meaning than its base, scientific sense. In its use, Aurobindo means to signify "the life of feelings and passions. The inner life, which is infinite." Poets as seers and sages are gifted with the ability to perceive and elucidate upon those facets of living which many feel but can derive no words for meaning. The poet is much loved for the giving of words to otherwise unexpressed longings of ones' heart. Poetry then is the heart of the heart. Sri Aurobindo makes this clear when he writes about matters of truth, beauty and joy:

 Because Thou Art

Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,

My soul blind and enamored yearns for Thee; 

It bears Thy mystic touch in all that is 

And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy. 

Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze 

And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune: 

Thy sweetness haunts my heart through Nature's ways;

 Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune. 

It loves Thy body in all living things; 

Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone: 

The moments bring Thee on their fiery wings; 

Sight's endless artistry is Thou alone
Time voyages with Thee upon its prow
And all the future's passionate hope is Thou.

--Sri Aurobindo

The complete Works of Sri Aurobindo 


 

Pissing In the Wind

"The shadow gone autonomous is a terrible monster in our house..."
The Shadow by Robert Johnson


As children most us learn that you can't spit into the wind or throw sand into the wind; you get back the same result: it flies into your own face! But somewhere along the way to adulthood we seem very often to forget this truth. Many of us seek to level our relations with others by these very means. There are relatively few facts in the world; most are about nature herself. For example, day follows night and night evolves again into day; there is the sun and the moon and all the seasons exerting their force and pull upon earth and its inhabitants.

There are airplanes, and then there are pilots; drivers who drive cars; wind and ice which foils them, sometimes with injurious or deadly results. We like to think of our self as master of all, in control. The sad fact of physics is that often we aren't. For many this provokes a deep anxiety or unconscious dread. We are protective, even defensive of ourselves and our positions. This often leads to a sort of self blindness, not unlike that experienced by the Emperor in the Hans Christian Anderson story, The Emperor's New Clothes. Regular readers here will recognize the theme...
Simple acknowledgment of our desire to make things safe for our self in relations with others goes a long way to enlightening the mind.

In the spiritual life, we seek to find a unity with these unacknowledged parts of ourselves, parts which often riotously erupt at sometimes the most inopportune, the most inconvenient moments. For some the solution, at least temporarily, is to squelch or sequester these emotions, this energy out of sight and effectively, out of mind.
"In the cultural process, we sort out our God given characteristics... we begin to divide our lives." This process Robert Johnson calls, 'shadow making' in his book, Owning Your Own Shadow.
Without some measure of self-regulation, routine social interactions would become potentially very messy on a very regular basis. However these now "forgotten" traits don't often slink away; instead they lay in wait for another time. Lying in the darkness of the anterior mind, the shadow strength builds. In some it provokes deep depression or anxiety, in others a general mental disorder.

There is the sorting process which we think of as culture, by which the facets of the accepted and unaccepted self are rendered either active or passive; the active parts we think of as personality and the inactive become unknown, or from time to time emerge as 'bad manners' which culture seeks to rope in and regulate.
Yet this sorting process is "quite arbitrary," Johnson observes. For the spiritual growth of a person in mid-life, the two must reconnect for a balance, for unity to arise.
The Hindus for example, acknowledge the presence of the gods of creation and destruction simultaneously. In Hinduism, the balance of these natural forces is called Ananda.
In the west, the word we use to describe this same process is religion, from the Latin, it means to re-relate, to put back together again, to restore. It is in this move towards restoration that our spiritual selves find rest, peace and balance of the whole.

The Beauty of Spring

"When you do, you will see that your "first love" may not really be the first..."  Thich Nhat Hanh, Cultivating the Mind of Love
Last night I returned home and heard something really wonderful. There were frogs singing in the night. Frogs, it seems, are one of the great harbingers of spring. They slumber over the winter, buried deep into the mud, protected by a sort of anti-freeze in their blood. When the very first warming of the spring temperatures commence to rain, they emerge from hibernation, as if magically, and serenade the night. Everywhere in the countryside one is treated to their song.
The frogs are singing! Their songs recollect the fine spring and summer evenings spent outdoors in the fresh breeze, the smell of grass, the wet of the dew and the arrival of song birds, creatures of all types. The Robin, a North American species of Thrush, arrived here a more than a month ago; the Cardinal which overwinters here, began its song in earnest weeks ago and now the Woodpeckers join in the busy merriment of spring song. The long winter is done over into the beauty of spring.

The Beauty of Spring is the title of a chapter in a book by Buddhist teacher and monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, Cultivating the Mind of Love. In a very personal and beautiful recollection he writes of first love, his own love, one which the French call the "coup de foudre" or the stroke of love, love at first sight.
This wise monk writes quite simply, "please think about your own first love. Do it slowly, picturing how it first came about, where it took place, and what brought you to that moment. Recall that experience and look at it calmly, deeply, with compassion and understanding. You will discover many things you did not notice at the time. There is a Kung An in the Zen tradition, 'What was your face before your parents were born?' This is an invitation to go on a journey and discover your true self, your true face.
Look deeply into your "first love" and try to see its true face. When you do, you will see that your "first love" may not really be the first, that your face when you were born may not have been your original face. If you [continue] look[ing] deeply, you will be able to see your true, original face, and your true first love. Your first love is still present, always here, continuing to shape your life. This is a subject for meditation."

The Imagining Heart

"The images that we carry about in our reverie, in our dreams, in our deepest waking hearts become vividly real to the aware, awake heart."   --J. Hillman, author of the Force of Character

Reading the book, The Force of Character by James Hillman carefully, one stumbles upon many great and grand insights. It may take a few reads to grasp its themes. "Character used to be spoken of in terms of 'the heart of courage,' or the 'heart of generosity and loyalty.' " It is this heart which Hillman wants to address. He says this is also the heart that consoles the weary, that cooks a meal and shares its comforts with others, and delights in laughter.
But there is a second heart, he says, that is even more familiar. It is the romantic heart of flowers and sweets; we 'give our heart away,'  'we are broken-hearted.'

And  Hillman writes of still another, a third heart. This heart is the one observed and practiced by early "great Christian writers, especially  Saint Augustine." This third heart is the one of inmost feeling, of true character. It is the me-mine, the closet of intimacy, an inward dwelling place." Because this heart is so deep and so private, "Augustine often refers to it as an abyss." Writers over time have elaborated upon this heart, calling it also 'the sacred heart.'
Many practice devotions to realize and awaken this deepest heart. "The Sacred Heart is the heart of compassionate mysticism; it sets out a discipline of love parallel with the path" of Bhakti yoga, a part of Hindu tradition; it sets its path likewise with Jewish mystic tradition, the Kabbalah, Binah a mothering, discriminating intelligence-heart, leading one into an expanding character with regard to charity, compassion and mercy.

The "oldest heart of all, is the Egyptian Ptah, who created the world from the imagination of his heart! While the more recent Christian bible dares to state that the world was created by the Logos, the word which was with God, Ptah states "the same idea, except that for ancient Egypt, the words start out from the heart and express its imaginative power. The world was first imagined, then declared."
Imagination, the 'ability to see things as images, is an ability of the heart, according to Arabic philosopher, Ibn Arabi."
The images that we carry about in our reverie, in our dreams, in our deepest waking hearts become vividly real to the aware, awake heart. "Otherwise we assume them to be inventions, projections, and fantasies," Hillman writes.

This "imagining heart converts such indefinables as soul, depth, dignity, love and beauty-- as well as character and the idea of 'heart' itself into felt actualities, the very essence of life." Without it we only have a bio-mechanical pump to keep us going. And many of us do, when the occasion warrants, write to others, "I love you with all my heart."

Eros Is a Verb

"It was Sappho who first called eros "bittersweet."  --Eros Bittersweet by Anne Carson

While hard to translate when applied to ancient gods, for the woman poet, Sappho who wrote the surviving poem Sweetbitter, the Greek word glukupikron translated into English might be thought of as bittersweet. Meaning a sort of sweetness when applied to eros and then a disappointment, or "first sweet and then bitterness in sequence," writes Carson. She says, "Many a lover's experience would validate such a chronology, especially in poetry..." In Sappho's poem, she does not seem to be recording the history of a love affair as much as she seems to be speaking of its geometry.

Desire is from without; it "creeps up upon its object irresistibly."  Recording in her poem, not the love but the instant of desire, Sappho sees the desire as "neither inhabitant nor ally of the desirer." And often poets write of the resulting crazed feeling of the one who most ardently pursues the beauty of another. "Foreign to her will, it [desire] forces itself... Eros is an enemy. Its bitterness must be the taste of  enmity. That would be hate." The convergence of both love and hate in the same pole constitutes a paradox. It is somewhat cliche to say that hate begins where love leaves off. And yet hate is not the opposite of love.

"There is something pure and indubitable about the notion that eros is lack." In Sappho's fragment 31 she writes of this. Here the poetess creates a stage, mise en scene where the writer herself seems to step mysteriously into the situation, between the lover and the beloved, forming what is a triangle. An obvious answer is that this poem is really about jealousy. Many have thought this about it, while others have thought not. The word 'jealousy' comes from the Greek zelos, meaning zeal or fervent pursuit. "It [jealousy] is a hot and corrosive spiritual emotion, arising in fear, fed upon resentment." The jealous lover fears that another is preferred over them, and that their primary place in the beloved heart is under threat by another. "This," writes Carson is "an emotion of placement and displacement."  Thus the jealous lover covets a placement in the beloved affections, and is filled with anxiety that another will take it instead.

In Italy during the Renaissance period a dance became popular called Jealousy in which pairs of dancers separated during parts of the dance to join with others; at several stages in the dance, one of the dancers must stand alone while others move on. They then rejoin the others. "Jealousy is a dance in which everyone moves, for it is the instability of the emotional situation which preys upon a jealous lover's mind." In Sappho's poem, she does not covet the man's place, nor fear for her own. And she directs no resentment at him. She is simply "amazed at his intrepidness." Yet it is the beloved beauty that so deeply affects Sappho as one in the triangle. And while jealousy may be implicit in this poem, it does not explain the geometry of the piece.

Finally jealousy, it becomes evident, is not the point: "the normal world of erotic responses is beside the point." It is, says Carson, "about the lover's mind in the act of constructing desire for itself." No claim beyond that does the poet make. Sappho perceives desire as a three point function, a triangle. She argues that it's a radical, necessary construction of desire. "For where eros is lack, its activation calls upon a three part structure--lover, beloved, and that which comes between them. Desire moves, and eros is a verb.

The Present of a Secret, the Little Prince

"Men have forgotten this truth... The eyes are blind. One must look with the heart." --The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery

The Little Prince, a story by the Frenchman, explorer, adventurer and nobleman, Antoine de St.Exupery recounts in an extraordinary way some of the most beautiful and deepest truths in the passage of a life. Writing the story of the Little Prince, St.Exupery writes about a person who lives alone on a tiny planet.

He has a flower, unlike any other flower in the galaxy. She is greatly beautiful to him. But pride ruins the serenity of his world, prompting him to travel afar, seeking solace.

His travel brings him to Earth where he makes the acquaintance of many; a fox finally tells him "the present of a secret" which enables the Little Prince to view his planet and his beloved flower through new eyes. The secret he learns, is what is really important in life.

Chapter 20-21:
Good morning said the roses. They all looked like his flower. "Who are you," he demanded.
"We are roses," said one... He [the little prince] was overcome with sadness. His rose told him she was the only one of her kind... here were 5,000 of them all alike..."She would be very much annoyed."
I should be obliged to nurse her... to humble myself also, she would really allow herself... "I thought I was rich with a flower that was unique in all the world; I had a common rose. That doesn't make me a very great prince." And he lay down in the grass and cried.

It was then the fox appeared. "Who are you," asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at..."
"I cannot play with you. I am not tamed."
"What does it mean--'tame'?"
"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties." "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy, like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you... You have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me you will be unique in all the world..."

"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think she has tamed me..."
 "If you tame me," said the fox, "It shall be as if the sun came to shine in my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Yours will call to me, like music, drawing me out of my burrow." The fox continues, Your hair is golden, like the color of the wheat fields... I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat... Please--tame me!" exclaimed the fox.

I have much friends to discover, and many things to understand. "One only understands the things that one tames," replied the fox. "There is no shop where one can buy friendship, so men have no friends anymore."
 "What must I do to tame you?" asked the little prince.
 "You must be very patient," said the fox. Words are the source of misunderstandings. "One must observe the proper rites," said the fox.
 "What is a rite?" asked the little prince.
 "Those are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what makes one day different from another."

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near-- "Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
 "It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm, but you wished me to tame you."
 "Yes, that is so," said the fox. "Then it has done no good," said the prince.
 "It has done me good because of the color of the wheat fields." "Go--again and look at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back and I will make you the present of a secret"...

"You are not at all like my rose," said the little prince... No one has tamed you and you have tamed no one... "You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you." My rose may look like any other, but she is more important to me than any other in the world because it is she that I have watered, she that I have sheltered, she that I have listened to, boasted to, grumbled to, or sometimes said nothing. Because she is my rose.
Returning to the fox, he said goodbye. The fox replied, "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye..." "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important." "Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "You must not forget it." The eyes are blind. One must look with the heart...

Sadhana, the Realization of Beauty

"A thing is only completely our own when it is a thing of joy." Sadhana by R. Tagore

Investigating further into the work of Rabindranath Tagore, he writes in his book, Sadhana several essays on different topics, combined together to create the whole of harmony as he sees it. The realization of beauty, of beauty-harmony, as he describes, is in terms of the realization of what is real.
"The greater part of this world is to us as if it were nothing... but we cannot allow it to remain so... Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost, or they are useful and therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when their utility is lost. Or they are are like wandering vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our recognition and then passing on."
But, writes Tagore, "the entire world is given to us," and our final meaning and powers are taken from a patrimony, if you will."
 What is the function of beauty in the process of realization of the self into this world? It is this question which the author takes on here. Tagore muses that if beauty is present to separate light and shadow, or ugliness and other, then "we would have to admit that this sense of beauty creates a dissension in our universe, and sets up a wall of hindrance."

While disagreeing with this understanding of beauty, Tagore writes that the comprehending of beauty is  unexplored territory, as he sees it. Philosophers have come up with discourse as to its nature, and science writes of issues affecting beauty, but its reality remains wide open for exploration.
Truth, he writes, is everywhere. And "beauty is omnipresent." Beauty often comes to us as a smack, awakening consciousness suddenly and definitely. It then acquires its urgency, "by the object of the contrast." It first rends us with its discords. "But as our acquaintance ripens, the apparent discords are resolved into modulations of rhythm."

At first "we detach beauty from its surroundings, we hold it apart from the rest," but in the end we recognize its harmony with the rest. Appealing finally to our hearts, beauty enters into conscious relationship with us; it becomes us and becomes our joy. Our hearts skip a beat as we apprehend that which is in the world, beautiful, joyful, our very own. Beauty, says Tagore, does not exist without Truth. All beauty is some form of Truth.

"Last night I stood alone in the silence which pervaded the darkness, I stood alone and heard the voice of the singer of eternal melodies. When I went to sleep, I closed my eyes with this last thought in my mind, that even when I remain unconscious, in slumber, the dance of life will still go on in the hushed arena of my sleeping body, keeping step with the stars. The heart will throb, the blood will leap in the veins and the millions of living atoms in my body will vibrate in tune with the note of the harp-string that thrills at the touch of the master."

-- Rabindranath Tagore

Evil Love

"A human being is beautiful and may be revealed as beautiful to another human being."
--Love and Responsibility
by Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II

Love and truth, writes Karol Wojtyla, are inseparable. "When we speak of truth in attraction, it is essential ... that the attraction not be limited to partial values, to something inherent in a person, but not to the person as a whole... there must be a direct attraction to the whole person... And the person as an entity, and hence as a good, is different from all that is not a person... The object of attraction which is seen as a good, is also seen as a thing of beauty. This is very important in the attraction on which love between masculine and feminine is based... A human being is beautiful and may be revealed as beautiful to another human being."

A woman, reckons Wojtyla, may be beautiful in a way all her own, and a man attracted to her through her beauty. Likewise, a man is also beautiful in his own particular way. This beauty must necessarily include the entirety of the individual, not merely his physical nature. Desire also belongs to true love; it is perhaps the most powerful component of human love; this is true because we are all limited beings, social beings and we have need for others. And yet love between man and woman would prove evil, if it went no further than love as desire; it is not enough to love and desire others as a good for yourself, one must however long for and seek that person's good. If this is not present, then an egoism exists.

Genuine love completes the life and enlarges the existence of a person. Love given and received in friendship, in goodwill, with desire, are closely connected. How so? If for example, one person desires another as a good for himself, then they must want that person to be a true good, not false goods. Goodwill is indeed free of self interest, it is selflessness in love. Such love is the love which does the most good to those who experience it; both persons are fulfilled in the exchange.

Evil may generally be defined as the sum of opposition to the genuine needs and desires of individuals. Evil seeks not acquisition but loss or deprivation of an otherwise good. Thus truth is the antithesis of evil. In love, truth is the factor which balances its parts, such as desire, friendship, good will, attraction, tenderness among others. One may, in truth, realize what one experiences to be genuine good or not. Truth allows for the objective evaluation of a possible good, and contrasts that good against its opposite. Thus, in the Christian mind, God is the ultimate; his love is truth to which Christians may aspire.

Sensuality, Sentiment and Love

"Sentimentality must be clearly distinguished from love"  --Karol Wojtyla

So much of our deepest, spiritual longings center around acceptance, both of self and other. We want to freely love and be loved, what some call "unconditional love."

Yet in the everyday world, in the practice life, this can be confusing, contradictory even. We consider the element of free will and its role in love, yet with free will and our natural responses to others, love and sex can become disordered, confused for something that it ultimately may not be. 

Writing in his book, Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla notes that, "however, as we know, a human person cannot be an object for use. Now, the body is an integral part, and so must not be treated as if it were detached from the whole person." 

Doing so threatens to devalue a person. Let me say here, there is no such thing as pure sensuality, such exists in animals and is their proper instinct. What is "completely natural to animals is then, sub-natural to humans." 

This is to say that sensuality by itself, while a natural response to a body of the opposite sex, is not love. Sensuality may be love when it is open to inclusion of the other elements such as desire, friendship, good will, patience, understanding, and so forth.
Alone, sensuality is notoriously fickle, seeing only a body, turning to it simply as a possible object of enjoyment. And it is not only the physical presence of a body which may trigger sensuality, "but also the inner senses such as emotion and imagination (a sense-impression); with their assistance, one can make contact with a body of a person not physically present."

However this does not go to show that "sensuality is morally wrong itself. An exuberant, and readily roused sensual nature is the making for a rich, if not more difficult, personal life." Sensuality can indeed be a factor for making a free will love, an ardent and fully formed love.

Sentimentality as an experience must be and is clearly distinct from sensuality. As previously stated, a sense-impression typically accompanies an emotional response (a "value" response). Direct contact by persons of the opposite sex are always accompanied by a direct impression which may be an emotion. The inclination to respond to sexual values such as masculine or feminine, should be called sentiment. 

Sentimental susceptibility is the the source of affection between persons. In contrast to sensuality where the most immediate sense-impression is perhaps the body, sentimental regard views the person as a whole; it includes the body in its sense-impression, but does not limit itself to that aspect.
Sexual value then continues as the totality, the oneness of the person. Affection is not an urge to consume.

It is appreciative, it therefore goes with the values ascribed to beauty, to a strong feeling and value for a person in their masculine or feminine natures. 

However in affection, in sentimentality, a different desire than simple use or lust is evident; it is the desire for proximity, for nearness, a longing to be together in a physical presence. Sentimental love "keeps two people close together, it binds them, even if they are physically far apart. 

This love causes them to move in a similar orbit. It embraces memory, imagination and also communicates with the will." Tolerance, understanding and tenderness enter into their relationship. Being a love not wholly focused on the body, this love is sometimes called spiritual love. 

However with distance, sentimental love may turn to disillusionment. So it is not always immediately apparent that a particular sentimental love is really able to discern the true, inner values of a person. Thus love cannot be "largely a form of sex-appeal."
For a human love to grow, Wojtyla says, "it must become integrated, a whole to a whole, person to person." 

Without this developing integration, a love is not a durable, human love; thus it simply dies.