love [luv]: n. warm affection; benevolence; charity; sexual passion; sweetheart
Announcements:
Continuing assignments: (1.) Hug at least one person each day. (2.) Love at least one person each day, unconditionally.
For Nov. 17 - 24, 2000. Read: "Teach Only Love" by Gerald Jampolsky.
For Dec. 4 - 8, 2000: Read "The Law Of Unconditional Loving" by Greg Anderson.
For Dec. 11- 15, 2000: Read "A Question of Definition" by Leo Buscaglia
Assignment: The best place to start your autobiographical reflection is here and now, with your present love profile. Write an autobiographical essay based on the following questions:
1. Whom do you love? In what ways?
2. By whom are you loved? In what ways?
3. How satisfied or unsatisfied are you with your love life, in the broadest sense of the term?
Reporters:
| Date | Student | "Falling In Love" |
| "Dependency" | ||
| "Love Is Not A feeling" | ||
| "Love Is An Addiction" | ||
| "Love Is Discipline" | ||
| "Counterfeits of Love | ||
| "Love Is Separateness" | ||
| "Human Needs And The Experience of Love" | ||
| "We Are Love" | ||
| "The Risk of Loss" | ||
| "The Risk of Independence" | ||
| "The Risk of Commitment" | ||
| "The Risk of Confrontation" | ||
| "Relationships" | ||
| "The Sexual Expression of Love | ||
| "You Can Do It With Love" |
Major Requirement for this Course: An Amorous Autobiography: Charting Your Love Journey
The students are invited to chart their love journey in life like a strand of pearls, each pearl being separate from the rest yet intertwined together by a common thread. Thus, each experience of love is unique but each is part of your own life. No one can own your experiences except you.
There is no right or wrong feelings, thoughts or behavior. What you will be writing based from the questions given will trace the topography of your heart. There are no invalid answers, no abnormal feelings, no demonic thoughts. Whatever you write expresses your life, a once-told tale, an unrepeated drama. No one has the same story to tell as you. No one will judge you, question you or label you. I, as your teacher, am just the "silent listener"--but I listen with my heart. I will not judge you, question you nor label you. I will be there in your love journey, content at the thought that you are moving on, that you are growing and that what binds us together is not only our humanity but our gift for love.
Assignment: Submission of your entire Autobiography.
Assignment: Write your 5th autobiography based on the following Guide Questions:
1. To get a measure of whether your love relationship is creative or destructive, whether the eros that binds you to others is heavenly or demonic, consider which are centrifugal and which are centripetal. Which spin you into larger circles, and which pull you into ever smaller circles?
2. With whom do you feel large, expansive, bold, energetic, inventive, generous, in touch with your own gifts and creative vocation?
3. With whom do you feel small, fearful, resentful, defensive, possessive, constricted, ashamed, cut off from your own gifts and creativity?
Assignment: All the people who have loved you and whom you have loved are linked in the intricate story you tell yourself and others about your life. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, friends, lovers, mates, ex-mates, take on the roles of faithful heroes and betraying villains, saints and fools, helpers and rascals.
1. Review what you have written so far in your autobiography. Who are the central characters--faithful and false lovers or friends--in your amorous autobiography?
2. Assess the kind of love story you have so far narrated in your autobiography. Do you tell your love stories as tragic tales of fated relationships in which you were the victim, as heroic romances in which love conquers all, as ironic episodes that prove we should not expect too much, as comedies in which fools loved and won or lost but never wisely?
3. Is there any thing you would like to change in your love-life to create a different love story in the future? If so what? And why?
Assignment: As you reflect on your strengths and limitations as a lover, you will inevitably be drawn into your past to recollect memories of the gifts and wounds that shaped your style of loving. Write another autobiographical essay based on the following questions:
1. What style of loving was practiced in your family? What was the vocabulary of love--touch, discipline, food, gifts, nurturing your talents?
2. Do you feel you were unloved, ignored, abused?
3. How is the past still controlling your present? How did your family's way of loving and not loving shape your present life?
Assignment: At the very beginning and at every step along the way, it is important to be as clear as you can about what unfulfilled longings and unmet needs are driving you. Write another autobiographical essay based on the following questions:
1. What is the nature of the love vacuum in your life?
2. Do you feel cheated? Abandoned? Not loved enough?
3. What would fill the vacuum--a lover, an animal, a mate, a child, a parent, a friend, God?