WOMAN AND LOVE

A woman wrote to Barry Long

She had been deeply moved by Barry Long’s teaching, particularly with regard to love. Now she was with another master, a man who clearly loved God, but his teaching appeared to contradict much of what had been revealed to her by Barry Long about the nature of man and woman.

The new master was emphatic about the responsibility of the individual. For example, it would be avoidance of responsibility to regard ‘unloving actions’ from men as being in any way responsible for the state of a woman. In confirmation of this, a woman in the group associated with the new master had spoken of experiencing deep peace after surrendering to her abusive husband.

A man in the group had been approaching the correspondent over a period of time and had proposed marriage. She didn’t have a wholehearted response to him and was worried about his irresponsible past, including gambling debts. Should she drop her reservations and go with him? Perhaps love would develop in her. Surely a truly loving woman could turn around a man’s weaknesses?

The situation had raised great self-doubt in the woman. Had she misled herself with romanticism? Would coming to see Barry Long help her sort it out?

Barry Long's Reply:

It seems that the most difficult thing to grasp for a sincerely motivated woman like you is the simplicity of truth and the simplicity of love; that they are two distinct qualities or states in divine intellect.

The realisation of truth or God alone does not imply the realisation of real love. Love has to be lived and in this piece I’ll be describing precisely what that means. Although the realisation of truth does not lead to the living knowledge of love, the realisation of love through living leads to the realisation of truth.

Two masters means confusion

Your main problem is you have two spiritual masters. So you are divided. Give yourself wholeheartedly to one truth or the other — and live it. Either way, if you are ready, will lead you to your death while you are alive. But that’s pretty rare.

The reason it’s rare is because spiritual aspirants expect to get something from the master, instead of being responsible and dying — which means not yielding — to the clamourous ignorance of their human nature. All the master does is point the way according to his realisation. All masters’ realisations differ in method but are the same in end result — provided the master is really a master of truth and love.

There’s no doubt that the master you are currently with is a master of truth. But you keep writing to me for answers. If you come back to my teaching I have nothing to give you other than what is already in my books, tapes, videos and writings — and in my presence and words at my seminars.

While you stay away you are increasingly out of touch with the continuous revelation of my truth. As you would be similarly out of touch with your current master if you left him. You want it both ways which is the human failing in the spiritual life. I can’t give you anything. Best to stay where you are — and really start dying to your troublesome self.

Now to your other problem or confusion.

Why are you here?

You are here to enjoy your life. That does not mean pleasing yourself. The word enjoy derives from the Latin, to rejoice; and the shorter version is joy. Joy in our human ignorance has become synonymous with pleasure and getting. But joy is not pleasure or an effect of getting; it is simply joy. And if you (or anyone) don’t know in your own experience what I’m speaking of you’re dead from the body up.

You are woman, the intelligence of God in female form. That state is realised, made real as your living life, by you becoming more intelligent. And you become more intelligent through experience.

Most experience leads to knowing. Knowing relates to the world: how to drive a car, run a business, be a doctor, a scientist or to do or become anything. It involves an accumulation of experience which is supposed to culminate in what the world would call an expert, connoisseur, genius, or something. That’s knowing. To know anything requires only the senses and the common human intelligence of awareness.

But knowing, no matter how impressive, cannot lead to the realisation of God in female or male form. That requires knowledge.

Knowing is not knowledge.

Knowledge certainly requires experience, but the experience of your whole life from the time you were born. That totality of experience is common to everyone. But what finally produces knowledge out of experience is the capacity to be CONSCIOUS of experience rather than being just aware.

To be conscious of experience is to be free as an uninterrupted state within of personal consideration, which adds up to being free of fear. It also means being free of aimless thought and bothersome emotions. You are then innocent — and life is seen without interpretation for the simplicity it is.

Conscious love between man and woman is the ultimate state of knowledge in existence. It requires a high degree of intelligence or consciousness. That does not mean such intelligence is not within everyone’s reach. The intelligence is there for all — provided the individual has acquired sufficient knowledge of what appears to be love in existence between man and woman.

The most immediately available experience for this is the love life. For love in existence, despite any protestations to the contrary, begins with the irresistible attraction between man and woman. It’s what makes the world continue, or makes the world go round, as they say.

What have you learned?

What does conscious knowledge of love between man and woman teach woman? What has it taught you about man? I’ll answer for you. Man hurts.

Every woman on earth has been hurt by man’s love. If she hasn’t, she hasn’t lived. But the question is, why does she keep getting hurt? Why does she keep going back for more pain, more passing pleasure and passion, more heartbreak, familiarity, disillusionment, disappointment and confusion?

The explanation, like truth, is simple: after all her experience she still hasn’t REALISED that man’s love, the way he loves, hurts. Oh, she KNOWS it; but it’s still the unconsciousness of knowing, not knowledge. The result is she keeps hoping and trying; and eventually compromises with man’s love; or she cuts off from him in frustration or fear; or turns to her own gender for love; or busies herself in the world; or finds cruel solace in drugs or alcohol.

And yet every woman has yearned within for completion with man which she has correctly intuited (like you) somehow exists. But the message from all the men of truth on the world scene that I know of, is that in having that conviction, you’re a romantic — a pathetic female whose intuition or knowledge of love is inferior to theirs. To me, if love is not continuous romance it’s not love. And what is romance? Romance, to me, is constant delight. But in existence, it takes two.

Your difficulty is that you haven’t learned yet from your experience, haven’t made your intuition real. You are thinking of being with a man who says he loves you, has asked you to marry him and yet you don’t have a ‘wholehearted response back to him’. You say he ‘brings with him a rather irresponsible legacy of gambling debts that you find not very inspiring of confidence in him as Man’. You find your ‘heart sinking at the prospect of taking on yet more turgidity and denseness.’

Are you crazy? You want to go in there again and suffer, of your own volition? You have the usual forlorn hope of reforming man even though you don’t love him (which if you did passionately enough might make a bit of a difference but I wouldn’t wager your life on it). You’re tempted to take on this man and his problems. What a predictable disaster for love on earth.

How could you possibly enjoy your life tied to such a partnership which would certainly end miserably anyway, like all your (and every woman’s) previous love relationships with man?

Barry Long

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