Vision Battlesword [00:00:01]:
How are you feeling today, Sharu?

Sharu [00:00:03]:
Feeling great. A little. Little lower energy, but still feeling with it. Yeah, feeling good. Nice.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:12]:
Tell me a little bit about yourself. Like, who are you, Sharu?

Sharu [00:00:16]:
Who am I? Yeah. Wow. Well, I started out, my spiritual awakening was on a dry desert dance floor under the full moon, where I was really connected to the raver anthem in motto. And then I saw this altar at this gathering, and I was like, what is this? Like, this feels, like, resonant. And there happened to be a sadhu there at this event. Like an indian, like a hindu mystic, you know, that just are taken care of. They're just devotional, and they live off of the temples. So he was there, and long story short, took me to these hot springs and did this thing to my third eye and gave me this meditation, and it shot up my kundalini.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:13]:
Whoa.

Sharu [00:01:13]:
Yeah. I was, like, 22 years old.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:16]:
Just meet a random stranger, and they shoot up your kundalini?

Sharu [00:01:18]:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it was, like, electrical engineering major, and then suddenly I had this guy that had a guru that was 1000 years old that, like, helped me see angels and dragons and stuff. So, yeah. So music and spirituality have always been intertwined.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:38]:
That definitely gives me an idea of who you are. Okay, well, thank you for sharing that. Well, you came here, as I understand it, with a burning desire to talk about gratitude today. Does that still feel good for you?

Sharu [00:01:52]:
It just felt like a really beautiful place to get into because it's just such an important space, one of the most important spaces to be in. You know, not all the time. It'd be nice, but that would be a lot. But, yeah, I agree.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:11]:
It tends to feel good, whatever it is. But that's what we're going to figure out, starting with my first question. What is gratitude?

Sharu [00:02:21]:
So, saying it's seeing the hidden order, or I dare say, the perfection. And that could make people's nose crinkle, but ultimately, it's seeing that, like, wow, that's just the way it should be. Yeah, there's this. It's like a state of appreciation for what is.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:40]:
Yeah. And then, of course, this brings up the other word that we've also been talking about. When you say something like, what is, makes me think of acceptance. So what you're telling me or what I'm hearing from you right now is that sort of deeper gratitude has to do with coming to an appreciation for the hidden order of things, which helps us to balance our judgments. Meaning maybe there's something that we judged as bad out of alignment with our pursuit of pleasure. And then there's a form of gratitude where we come to realize, or we come to have an awareness that actually everything is exactly as it should be. Or that there is an element of perfection to the state of affairs, to my life, to reality, where I can see the good, which doesn't necessarily mean I stop seeing the bad, right? But I can see what is. And I see that what is is as it should be.

Sharu [00:03:41]:
You still see it. It's kind of you. You release the. Even the judgment of the good and bad, and you see it for what it actually is. But, like, through this kind of balanced perception, because acceptance is more kind of solemn and like. But then when they come together, it's kind of like hidden order. That means it's not visible, which is like, wow. Like, there's this feeling that comes from that.

Sharu [00:04:07]:
I think it's interrelated. Even thinking about it now, it's gratitude happens, and then it feels like the love is next, even though it's simultaneous. But it's almost like, yeah, they're very similar.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:20]:
Well, did you say something to me the other day when we were talking about love? That your opinion or belief or perspective on it is that it is the transcendental emotion that signifies to us or that we feel during the experience of reunification of, like, reunification of two souls, seeing that connection through the. Everything, the. All the source or whenever we feel like. Sometimes we talk about this idea of universal love. The word love, to me is very interesting just because it seems to have many different meanings depending on different contexts and frames, right?

Sharu [00:05:04]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:05]:
But there is something about it that it seems to me, in talking to different people, seems to me is the same, that we're somehow describing something that is the same in all of these different experiences, whether we're referring to platonic love or what might be called romantic love. This idea of universal love, meaning, like the love that I have access to all the time by myself, doesn't require another sentient being to experience, to feel it and maybe other forms as well, that I'm. That I'm not mentioning right now. Do all of these things have something to do, in your opinion? Do they have something to do with reconnection or re merging? Like the dissolving of separation, I guess, is really what I'm trying to say. What do you think?

Sharu [00:05:51]:
Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's like, again, the same. This acceptance for what is. But it's acceptance is kind of like you were saying this, like, base level. And seeing somebody for who they truly are, you know, is like what we all want. We all want to be, like, loved for what we are, you know? So I feel like love definitely elevates us to that level of seeing all of someone and all of a thing.

Vision Battlesword [00:06:19]:
Okay. And how's that different than gratitude? See, this is what I mean when I say we're doing real time processing.

Sharu [00:06:27]:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:06:27]:
And isn't it fun?

Sharu [00:06:28]:
Yeah. Good. That's great. I'm curious what you think. Cause I'm still struggling to know how the. Like, again, I would wanna, like, look it up to be able to parse out of what the difference is.

Vision Battlesword [00:06:43]:
I think we will. As you know, there's these books sitting next to me right here. I think we will. And also, like, I want to challenge us to go a little. To go a couple more rounds just with our own thinking and experience and memory and processing from my side. There's something in it about relief. There's something in it about. It's a little different than love for me, although the two are connected, as you mentioned, like, one definitely can follow the other in both directions, but, yeah, there's something about it that's a little different than love, where love is maybe a little more.

Vision Battlesword [00:07:22]:
A little less conditional or more unconditional in a particular way, where it's like, it's just something that I feel because I'm feeling it. It's just something that is happening because it's happening because for whatever the reason is. And you mentioned another word earlier, which is awe. And I want to double click on that at some point, too, because I feel like there's something really important that's connected there in terms of, like, you kept using the word wow, which made me think of the word wonder, like, wonder and awe and astonishment and surprise in a delightful way. Like, somehow that's all connected to love and maybe gratitude, but. But when I think of gratitude, like, my mind is immediately going to an ayahuasca ceremony that I had last year, I believe in this case, where sometimes ceremonies can be challenging, sometimes they can be uncomfortable. And remembering the sense of gratitude that I have had many times, actually. But that time in particular is coming to mind when the experience begins to soften, when the experience begins to become more comfortable, less challenging.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:38]:
And then even on the other side of that, what someone might even describe as, like, rough experience, or in certain ways, maybe even you could call it violent. But coming out of that or coming through to the other side of that, oftentimes there's an opening up into a sense of bliss and a sense of euphoria and a sense of not just relief, but, like, way beyond relief into joy and love and the emotion, the transcendental emotion of that exquisite moment of just. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There's something really unique about that, and it has something to do with those words.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:23]:
Like, I wanted to bring it back to that too. Like, what's the relationship between gratitude and thanks to?

Sharu [00:09:29]:
Hmm. It's relatively the same thing. I guess thanks would be. Is more kind of like casual or gratitude. You're describing this, like, bigger feeling, but they could be the same thing.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:40]:
In one of the recent conversations I had on this series with Olivia, she was offering me a reframe that I thought was really interesting, which was moving from a passive into an active state of mind method of engaging with the moment from a passive into an active mode. With regard to gratitude specifically, the frame would be I am grateful for versus thank you for, whereas one feels more passive and the other feels more active. I'm just trying to identify, like, we talk a lot about gratitude, and there's a lot of gratitude practices, gratitude journals, gratitude mantras, the idea of choosing to embody the experience of gratitude as being, like, a very healing or an element of positive manifestation or personal taking agency in terms of improving one's experience. But yeah, I'm wondering about that, like, passive experience or the passive idea of experiencing gratitude versus the active idea of giving thanks. Like, in that moment in my ceremony, I was actively giving thanks to grandmother in that, like, thank you. It's not like a, oh, this is nice. I'm in gratitude. It's like, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:00]:
To me, it doesn't seem like it has to be a matter of formality because we can be thanking God in a very serious way.

Sharu [00:11:11]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:12]:
But that thinking. Thinking is the action is the verb corresponding to gratitude.

Sharu [00:11:18]:
Mm hmm. Yeah. I'm seeing, like, the gratitude being. Right. This kind of sitting back and watching and, like, allowing. And the thanks is. Maybe it's leaning a little bit on the first kind of gratitude. Thank you.

Sharu [00:11:33]:
This is helping me.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:34]:
That's a good point.

Sharu [00:11:35]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:36]:
Interesting.

Sharu [00:11:37]:
So there's less of a leaning in. It's just like a sitting back and, like, allowing to being. Thank you. Grass. Like gratitude for grass. You know, it's not like asking anything or giving anything.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:51]:
It's just being with.

Sharu [00:11:52]:
Yeah. Being with. Yeah. And that goes back to, like, whatever it is. You have this, like, appreciation.

Vision Battlesword [00:12:00]:
Can you have gratitude without love?

Sharu [00:12:03]:
That's where we're getting back into eventually opening up the dictionary. Yeah. Because it just feels they're so close. Because when you have gratitude for it, yeah. You see it for what it is, and you're. And there's that movement, this emotion from that, which is what an emotion is, but it's not a dualistic. It's a transcendent.

Vision Battlesword [00:12:25]:
Right. It kind of comes back to qualia in almost. In a way, it's like, can we ever really know anyone else's, any other sentient beings subjective experience? As we exchange these labels with each other, we really can't know with any level of certainty. At least, I guess that's what we're told. Good opportunity for me to requestion some of my own beliefs. But the common thinking is that you can't know what someone else's inner state is like. So if someone looks at an object and I say, well, I think that's red, and you agree with me. Yeah, that is definitely red.

Vision Battlesword [00:13:00]:
And yet, maybe it's the case that internally we're seeing wildly different. We're having wildly different actual internal experiences, even though we both can't agree on the label of that in the external world. So that just makes me think of love and gratitude in the same way. Especially if we're then externalizing those emotions in some way. Like the shape of the way water crystals freeze or something like that. It's hard to know how much data we can really extract from that because.

Sharu [00:13:32]:
It'S like, well, yeah, exactly.

Vision Battlesword [00:13:35]:
I don't know what you were really thinking about exactly when you were praying over the water.

Sharu [00:13:38]:
Yep.

Vision Battlesword [00:13:40]:
Well, you kept coming back to as it is, as it should be, which, again, makes me think of acceptance. So what's the relationship between gratitude and acceptance?

Sharu [00:13:50]:
Right. So acceptance, from what you were saying before, and it makes sense to me, is like, the first engagement or level, and maybe it's, like, simultaneous. Then there's this kind of opening of this, like, bigger feeling that's all encompassing. That's gratitude. Because you could just kind of mutely accept a thing, but not necessarily have gratitude for it. So then what's the difference here is, because acceptance is just as it is. And then there's this added thing of this feeling of gratitude.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:23]:
Mm hmm.

Sharu [00:14:24]:
So the difference is there's an appreciation, right? Yeah, an appreciation even. You're like, oh, that bad thing that happened, I appreciate it because of the equal good that came out of it. And then there's this gratitude.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:38]:
Yeah, that's another word that's interesting in this whole universe, which is appreciation, which is not exactly the same as desirable or pleasurable. What I'm trying to say is we can. I guess what I'm trying to say is the way that I generally understand the word appreciation and see people using that word, it's something that we can have for another thing that isn't necessarily a judgment. It can be more intellectual than appreciation. It's like there's almost a way of using the word appreciation, which really sounds more like understanding.

Sharu [00:15:15]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:16]:
Completeness of awareness or something along those lines.

Sharu [00:15:19]:
But there is this. Appreciate has like a good kind of tilt to it.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:24]:
Yeah.

Sharu [00:15:25]:
So it's not necessarily, like balanced.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:28]:
Right.

Sharu [00:15:28]:
And, yeah, it's interesting.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:30]:
Yeah, you're right. There is some sort of an inherent positive judgment that appreciation seems to carry. It's like, even, for example, I strongly disagree with your perspective. I can appreciate where you're coming from.

Sharu [00:15:45]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:45]:
I just think you're really wrong. But there's still that appreciate. It's like there's a nod, there's like a tip of the hat to validation of some sort.

Sharu [00:15:55]:
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:56]:
Interesting.

Sharu [00:15:57]:
And it like, allows a thing to exist, you know?

Vision Battlesword [00:16:00]:
Yeah, right.

Sharu [00:16:01]:
You're like, I'm not discounting your opinion. Appreciate that.

Vision Battlesword [00:16:04]:
Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at. It's almost like empathy. There's like some sort of connection between appreciation and empathy. Meaning like, at least my understanding of the word empathy or the way that I use the word, has very much to do with being able to model, to virtualize another sentient being's perspective and to really appreciate where they're coming from. Not necessarily identifying with it, not necessarily agreeing to it, certainly not necessarily actually feeling or experiencing it, whatever that experience is, that perspective, but truly trying to, in a somewhat detached way, embody it or model it or appreciate it. I guess that's the only word I can really keep coming up with, even.

Sharu [00:16:51]:
Though there's more probably.

Vision Battlesword [00:16:54]:
Yeah. There's something strange about using that word in that way. But does that make sense, though, from a perspective of what we mean when we say to appreciate something, there is something about knowing it fully, knowing it completely, and being able to internalize that.

Sharu [00:17:12]:
Some level, and the fact of acknowledging, then it appreciates in value.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:19]:
Yeah. It's another interesting connotation.

Sharu [00:17:21]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:22]:
Appreciation also means growth.

Sharu [00:17:24]:
Yeah. It's like showing maybe a law of reality that when we, like, acknowledge it and see it and are aware of it, then it goes up in value. Wild because we're seeing it and looking at it. Therefore it has our attention. Therefore it is now valuable because God coming through us is looking at it. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:47]:
The connection to value and valuation that somehow is inherent to acceptance, empathy, all of these different things that we're talking about. To say I appreciate your perspective also means I acknowledge that your perspective has value, even if it's only value to you. But I do appreciate that. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, let's come back to acceptance real quick. So, as I mentioned to you before, we kind of started the recording here. In a previous conversation, GLAAD and I did some exploration on acceptance specifically. And after an hour or so, we kind of came to the conclusion that acceptance is actually a very, very low frequency in the sense that.

Vision Battlesword [00:18:32]:
I don't mean that it's low in the sense that it's negative or undesirable. But what I mean to say is that we actually came to the conclusion that it's about as close as you can get to unfiltered truth, to unfiltered reality, where it's sort of like pure sense perception combined with totally unlensed, a totally judgment free experience of whatever data. It's a judgment free experience of the natural data of existence. I guess that's about the best way I could sum it up right now. How does that feel for you?

Sharu [00:19:14]:
What I was telling you earlier, which prompted this conversation, was I often see that it still has a judgment in it of that that thing is wrong. I accept that that thing is bad. You know, I accept that I got hit in the head. So it's kind of like it's not done. There's still this. You're accepting through your voucher, which has judgments that this is the data that you're receiving.

Vision Battlesword [00:19:40]:
So is it possible to go one step further just with acceptance? And I agree with you that acceptance is not gratitude and that it's not done. I agree. I don't think anything is done, per se. But is it possible, do you think, to go one step further with acceptance or one layer deeper, however you want to think of it all the way to. I felt the impact of an object, and this is what it felt like with actual no judgment on that. Just like this is actually what happened, or this is what my memory can recall, or in this very particular moment, I feel the upward pressure of the table on my legs. Period. End of sentence.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:25]:
You know, not and it's uncomfortable. Not and it hurts.

Sharu [00:20:29]:
That feels more like an observation where your acceptance, you wouldn't be like, it's kind of like this active. I see that this thing hit me in the head and I accept that. It's kind of like I receive, like I accept something. I receive that I, like, get the data. I guess I receive the data, but.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:52]:
It'S like, but that's not acceptance.

Sharu [00:20:53]:
No, that is acceptance. Acceptance. Is this like reception of what you perceive to be your perception? Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:02]:
Are we saying the same thing? Where does the judgment come in? In reception?

Sharu [00:21:06]:
Yeah. So I guess in that case, I guess for the way that people use it, they'll use the word I accept this when speaking of something that they judge is wrong.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:16]:
I agree with that. Yeah, I agree that that's how people speak of it.

Sharu [00:21:20]:
Yes.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:20]:
Many times.

Sharu [00:21:21]:
Yeah. So that's what I'm talking about. So what you're talking about is like receiving an observation or like receiving a input.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:30]:
Yeah. I think where I'm trying to go with it is just, I'm not necessarily trying to redefine the word, but I think I'm trying to maybe just get to the deeper truth of the word.

Sharu [00:21:39]:
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. That's like another one. That's like a double to accept something like to receive it.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:45]:
Exactly. Yeah. That came up in my conversation with GLAAD too, that we thought was really interesting because, yeah. There's this whole other universe of the word accept, which has to do with it feels more like agreement. Well, there's the physical, tangible, except you're agreeing to receive.

Sharu [00:22:05]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:22:05]:
Right. But then there's also like, I can't accept your behavior.

Sharu [00:22:08]:
Yeah. I can't accept, I will not receive this. Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:22:12]:
Which of course carries a judgment, but it carries both a judgment and it carries a rejection. What GLAAd and I again kept coming back to Washington, reality, essentially, what we decided was whatever it is that we're doing when we're judging or making meaning of things is implicitly some form of a rejection of the facts, of the truth of these observations. It's putting some kind of distance, emotional, psychological, spiritual distance between us and the unfiltered truth, where the truth is your behavior, which, as you've said, it is.

Sharu [00:22:55]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:22:55]:
It is what is your behavior? So like, true acceptance would be, I absolutely accept your behavior, even though I don't agree with it, I don't want to be in a relationship with it. I have my own ideas about what I think of it and what I would prefer to choose for myself in terms of how I would like to present. But none of that is relevant to the fact that your behavior is absolutely real. And I accept it in the same way that what happened to me when I was at six is absolutely real. And I accept it. I accept that something hit me in the head that later I was told was a baseball, and that happened. And then from that baseline of unfiltered reality, now we get to have agency in building up whatever meaning we choose.

Sharu [00:23:47]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:48]:
Or emotional content we would like, or judgment that we'd like to put on that, whether it is gratitude or resentment or whatever that may be.

Sharu [00:23:57]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:58]:
What do you think about that?

Sharu [00:23:59]:
Yeah, that feels. That feels right. It's like, this is that baseline. You're, like, accepting reality.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:06]:
Yeah.

Sharu [00:24:06]:
Yeah. And then how you make meaning is another thing.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:11]:
Right.

Sharu [00:24:11]:
And what's interesting about the through line with love, gratitude, and meaning is mean means the middle, and you find equal, good and bad, to see what it actually is, so you make meaning out of it.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:26]:
Wow. Yeah.

Sharu [00:24:27]:
So that's where a whole. I just. My mom bought a book and sent it to my house, and it happened to be by Viktor Frankl.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:35]:
Oh, yeah.

Sharu [00:24:35]:
On a logo therapy, which is actually where meaning, making the meaning of our life is the most important thing to, like, install in somebody for their mental health or for anything. And it's love, the middle, when two opposites come together and create the mean. Create the meaning, you know, it's pretty cool.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:57]:
Wow. Okay. That's. Yeah, that's excellent. The connection between love and the mean, which is where we meet in the middle, the mean between extremes, which is also the root of the word meaning.

Sharu [00:25:11]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:12]:
And then I've been looking into a bit of sacred geometry lately and have just, you know, come to learn and perhaps appreciate the Vesica, the Vesica Pisces, as the representation of that, just what we're talking about, that union, the union of separate entities, which kind of represents that space where love can manifest in the mean. In the meaning. What is the meaning of love? What a funny question. Anyway, great. I think we're getting somewhere. So is there a process where we start with a. Let's say we start with some meaning. We start with some judgment.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:57]:
We start with some emotional content about an experience that we don't prefer that's unpleasant, that is, let's say, associated with some different vibration than love or gratitude, like guilt or shame or pain or anger or fear. And where we can progress, make a progression through first breaking down the original meaning till we get to the root of acceptance, which is just what is the base reality, and then from there, reinterpret, or we reframe, or we choose a new meaning of that base reality, which then manifests as gratitude or love. Is that how it works?

Sharu [00:26:45]:
Yeah. And I even thought of something, too. You're saying, oh, these things aren't love, but it's like, actually, it is love, and you just have to find its polarity. Then there's love from there's always the other side of it in each moment. There's always the other side of each moment to create love. So no matter what's happening, it's always balancing out to create love. And you're seeing that hidden order, and that's what brings the gratitude and the love.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:17]:
Okay. This is that moment where I feel like we're about to do some new stuff. So this is cool because. Yeah, I love how you're bringing this. You're bringing me out a little bit of my typical vision battle sword, linear thinking model of step a b c d equals profit kind of thing. But, like, yeah, the complexity, the truth is more complex than, oh, I've got bad through acceptance to good, but rather both the bad and the good. The love and the fear. The extremes and the mean are all present.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:55]:
They're all just present. So what is it exactly?

Sharu [00:27:59]:
That's only our perception.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:00]:
Yes.

Sharu [00:28:01]:
Of it, where we're not seeing the hidden part to make it love. So let's go into those moments and then actually sit with it and ask the question, how does it help you if it's bad? Or how does it hurt you if it's good? And there's always that other side.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:19]:
Right.

Sharu [00:28:19]:
And that's how you break, like, infatuations and fantasy. Like, this thing is always good and never bad. And it's like, well, it's quantumly entangled with that other side a lot of the times. Anyways, and this is where I get tripped up a little bit.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:35]:
How's that?

Sharu [00:28:35]:
Um, because I, like, I'm always looking for the hidden order instead of just being like, I feel fucking great, you know, like, um, which I do a lot, but it's. I'm like, oh. But, like, this fantasy comes with it. You know, it's polarity, so watch out. So that's just what I've been grappling with this last, like, month within myself and how it's just kind of changed me or, like, muted certain things. We're, like, prioritizing that neutral, that zone instead of just feeling what I feel. Yeah. Anyways, that's a little tangent.

Vision Battlesword [00:29:10]:
It feels relevant.

Sharu [00:29:11]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:29:12]:
Yeah. So you keep coming back to this thing, which is probably the thing, like, the most important concept, I think, that everything else we've been talking about is kind of orbiting around, which is hidden order. It's like, that is the reframe. That is the mean, the meaning that really helps us a lot of times to accept and become grateful for whatever our experience is, or whatever our experience has been, is when we can broaden our perspective or see other perspectives or see the bigger picture of how, oh, this fear actually is a polarity on a spectrum of love, or this trauma really is a polarity on a spectrum of growth or whatever that is. And we can see the bigger picture, the hidden order of, oh, this is actually all as it should be. This is. This makes sense. And I think that that's a big part of how we find comfort to have an idea that we know why.

Sharu [00:30:18]:
Yeah, there's one thing in this, the logo therapy, that's really cool is like, the meaning is always changing, but the fact that there is meaning is always there, it's never changing. It's like dynamic, yet always present.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:32]:
Yeah. This whole idea of the mean and the mean between extremes and polarity and stuff makes me think of the process of dialectic, or particularly like hegelian dialectic. Are you familiar?

Sharu [00:30:45]:
No, but the person that I've studied with does, talks about dialectic a lock. So I'm sure I'm somewhere around the ballpark, but I know I haven't.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:54]:
Pretty simple concept. I mean, it's a huge body of knowledge, body of wisdom, but like, in short, it can be summarized as a kind of a. It's a process of synthesis, synthetic process. Meaning we start with a thesis. The thesis is the current state.

Sharu [00:31:10]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:10]:
The status quo.

Sharu [00:31:11]:
Right. Oh, no, I remember now. Dialectic is instead of like a debate, you're like a dialectic. You're both not saying this is so, and you're looking for like a higher order of truth.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:25]:
Yes, that would be kind of socratic dialectic. So the word dialectic, I don't want to step out of school here, but basically just means conversation. It just means back and forth. Two people talking dialectic. That's basically it. So as opposed to monologue or like one person pontificating, it's like two people are going to try to figure some stuff out or at least exchange information. But the word dialectic, as I'm using it here for a moment, in a more technical way or in a more specific way, is a kind of concept of how we arrive at. Well, how we get to the mean and how we progress through waves or stages of development and create new ideas or create new information.

Vision Battlesword [00:32:13]:
Progress on any spectrum that you care to, you know, take any spectrum, starting from the current state, the thesis, which could be an idea, I think, therefore I am. Or it could be a political system. Or it could be, you know, any state of affairs, an emotional state. The thesis is resentment, whatever. And then first going 180 degrees from that to the antithesis. The antithesis being ThE Complete rejection of the thesis. The reaction, the revolution, the counter institution, whatever. Whatever that is.

Vision Battlesword [00:32:51]:
That would be considered to be the equal and opposite force or method. And then realizing that the antithesis is equally wrong, if you will. Or rather that the antithesis isn't the antidote to the thesis. But rather is a perspective that also contains a partial truth. And then the reconciliation, the third step of the dialectic is the reconciliation of the thesis and the antithesis. Into the synthesis. Which is the mean between the extremes. But which also is the integration.

Vision Battlesword [00:33:30]:
WhiCH is greater than the sum of the two parts. In other words, the synthesis, the final theory, the new society, whatever it is, contains both, but also transcends both. So just thinking that through of, like, how we get to the maximum experience of that, like, really deep, transcendent gratitude. That hidden order of perfection of as it should be, we're good and bad. Are reconciled with total appreciation as well as acceptance. Maybe there's a stage there where we have to go all the way to the other side. So that we can get the full picture.

Sharu [00:34:10]:
Yes, exactly.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:11]:
You want to expand on that.

Sharu [00:34:12]:
Yeah. And that's really the process of self development. You know, it's like collapsing those transient Personas or those polarities into themselves. And then it goes to something more, uh, synthesized. And what did you call it? Like, stronger or like somehow more integrated or or somehow more mo better. I think it's mo better.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:38]:
Yeah. All of those things. I think it's yeah, it's well, the phrase in integral theory is transcend and included.

Sharu [00:34:46]:
Mm hmm.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:47]:
So it's greater than the sum of its parts?

Sharu [00:34:49]:
Greater than the sum.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:50]:
But it still contains. Fully contains.

Sharu [00:34:52]:
Yes.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:53]:
Fully validates.

Sharu [00:34:54]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:54]:
Those individual parts as true and partial.

Sharu [00:34:58]:
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:00]:
Maybe now would be a really fun time to hit the book. What do you think?

Sharu [00:35:03]:
Sure.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:04]:
Okay. You want to start with gratitude or start with acceptance?

Sharu [00:35:06]:
Well, I think the biggest thing is gratitude versus love. Like, what what is to old english people talk about? What do they say? Why are we saying these words? What's happening here?

Vision Battlesword [00:35:18]:
Okay, let's go straight to it. Let's see what gratitude is all about.

Sharu [00:35:22]:
And so also, while you're looking that up, just like this process is. Yeah. Essentially, like going into a moment of perception. Where there's this judgment of seeing one side or the other. And then being able to go in with actually, like, a moment of perception where you actually, like, see where you are in that moment and kind of, like, around the time that you are. And then from there, you can actually do the work and ask these certain questions to reveal this polarity or, like, the other side, to then get you into the state of the mean, the gratitude, the love. And it's like a permanent, somatically, like, unfolds that judgment or that holding.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:05]:
The process you're describing. This has to do with unpacking a memory or a stored experience. Yeah.

Sharu [00:36:12]:
A moment of perception.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:13]:
A moment of perception, which could be called a memory.

Sharu [00:36:15]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:16]:
And we want to do that because we have a sense that that particular moment of perception has some kind of charge associated with it.

Sharu [00:36:24]:
And we keep having those same experiences come into our life again and again because of that polarity. Like a magnet will then attract its opposite to get you to collapse it and love it.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:35]:
Wow. Okay. So these stored moments of perception that are charged just like a magnet or like an electrical system, they have a charge, which means they're now attractive, or they have a polarity. At any rate, maybe they're repulsive, or maybe they're attractive. They're charged, and they could also be considered triggers, because when that charge gets activated, then we are going to have a tendency to repeat or recreate, replay some aspect of that experience. And then what we could do, the opportunity would be to. Okay, now give me the language again, correctly. What do we do with the moment? A moment of perception.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:17]:
We go into it.

Sharu [00:37:18]:
Yeah. We actually go into the moment as objectively as possible through observation of that moment. Like, oh, I was in vision's front room, and it was about somewhere around fall of 2024. It's like, we need that time space vector.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:35]:
Okay.

Sharu [00:37:36]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:36]:
So what are we doing right now? We're recalibrating our memory.

Sharu [00:37:40]:
Yeah. And you're like, oh, he was verbally aggressive to me. And then.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:45]:
But that's a judgment.

Sharu [00:37:46]:
Right. That's what I'm saying. So you're like, but it's pretty objective. You know, there was this verbal aggression, you know? And so then you could, from that process, find the other side in that moment. It's like, if who is being verbally supportive in that moment? And if it's just me and you, then it's like, someone in my psyche. And there's always, like, this equal support relative to any challenge. And I really feel like that's how, like, psychics are created. They have, like, really intense experiences, really, really challenging experiences.

Sharu [00:38:21]:
And there isn't this kind of external support around. They'll go and pop into this, like, universal support, and then contact an ancestor that suddenly they can just talk to all the time or just develop this connection to this universal consciousness or intelligence.

Vision Battlesword [00:38:38]:
That's a cool theory that I want to explore. How do we locate? How do we first identify and then locate one of these charged moments of perception that may be related to a pattern we're experiencing in our life so that we can then re explore it.

Sharu [00:38:55]:
And to collapse it, balance it, neutralize it, or find the mean, bring it to that zero point.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:03]:
But how do we find it?

Sharu [00:39:04]:
How do we find it? Well, it's all relative to, like, what is currently giving the feedback or the trigger in your life right now. And then, like, oh, this person was verbally aggressive. So, like, okay, now go to a moment where you were verbally aggressive to somebody, and then somehow through asking that, it'll pop up. Oh, yeah, the one time my mom did this. And, okay, where were you? You're in the kitchen, like, you're five, and that's how you go and find the moment.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:32]:
Got it. Okay, so now I've got a moment. Now, what's the first step? To, like, re entering in that moment and bringing it back online.

Sharu [00:39:41]:
What's the first step is just, like, closing your eyes and, like, seeing that space that you're in. Then you would ask the questions that would bring up the polarity, what was going on in your life at that time? Because I see, like, with kids that get bullied, they're maybe, like, overly supported at home. And so then it's always contrasted and balanced out with, like, an external enemy or, like, a bully. Yeah. It's just this whole process of questions around self inquiry.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:11]:
What kind of questions are you asking?

Sharu [00:40:13]:
First one is, like, where this first question of where it is.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:16]:
Locating space.

Sharu [00:40:17]:
Locating the space and time.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:18]:
Got that.

Sharu [00:40:19]:
And then the next one, if you're saying, like, I'm never verbally aggressive or I've never do that, you're kind of, like, not seeing that part of yourself, and it can kind of loosen it up. Like, where have you done that too?

Vision Battlesword [00:40:32]:
Where am I reflected in this experience? Or what is my reflection in this experience?

Sharu [00:40:37]:
And then it depends on how. What level of acceptance someone is with something where I can either ask, okay, when you did that verbally aggressive thing in your own form, how did it serve them? How did it help them? How did it benefit them?

Vision Battlesword [00:40:54]:
Interesting.

Sharu [00:40:54]:
Yeah. And then you go back to the. And then you get those answers and it starts to be like, oh, well, it got them to, like, being themselves and, like, have agency and. Okay, great. So now let's go back to the other moment, the original one that you're triggered by with your mom. What did it get you to do? Like, well, you know, it got me to, like, really think about what I wanted to do with my life. And at that time, I was not. I was kind of checked out, so.

Sharu [00:41:19]:
Ah, thank you, mom, for yelling at me. I see how it helped me. And, you know, if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have been so engaged in my life. I wouldn't have been so, you know, all the things, all the data that comes out of it, you know, then there's that, like, tear of gratitude and love, and then there's even other steps of, like, in every moment, there is always love happening. There is always the balance happening. And so in every moment, there's always equal challenges to support or good and bad. And so that's where it's really trippy to be able to go in and find where the exact opposite either in your own psyche. You're like, oh, at that moment, like, I felt my mom.

Sharu [00:42:00]:
You find as many as the supports as possible to, like, balance out that challenge, and then it's just like, whoa, now we're in the, like, God view. Synchronicity of everything is always in this state of love.

Vision Battlesword [00:42:13]:
Hmm. You said something in the middle there, which is dot, dot, dot. It depends on what stage or level of acceptance the person's at the time. What's that little, like, subroutine about acceptance? What does that mean? I guess, what's the modification based on.

Sharu [00:42:31]:
That if someone, you know, that really has an identity that is attached to this judgment, and they're not really ready to let that go because, yeah, that thing was really wrong, and that really did happen to you, and that is becomes, like, their stance. You know, they're maybe less willing to accept or see the other side of it. So it's like there's a whole process of feeling out. And so that's why the first question is, okay, where have you done that yourself? And that kind of butters them up to be able to, like, let go of this story that they have and unhinge from that story? Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:43:10]:
Yeah, I use that technique a lot myself, and I believe it's very effective. I've seen it be very effective for myself. And, yeah, there's something really interesting about reversing the polarity to see what that feels like and, like, how much information you get from that. It's almost like. It's like reflection of a reflection of a reflection. It's like what I'm noticing is that you're getting to that hidden order by sort of creating almost like a mirror maze of perceptions to where. It's like, no matter where you look, it's like, you know, it's just like reality in all directions. And so it's like, yeah, first, the first reflection is, okay, this happened to me.

Vision Battlesword [00:43:55]:
I have a judgment about it. I call this talking aggressively or whatever the judgment is. So maybe, you know, depending on my level of acceptance, I might be able to go directly to, okay, well, aggressive is a judgment. What did I actually see in here? I actually heard and saw, you know, a certain type of facial expression. I can visualize that. I heard a certain volume and tone of voice. I can replicate that in my memory. Like, I heard these specific words.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:23]:
This is what I actually heard. This is the. I can accept that that is the truth, like, that happened. But I. It could be the case that it's very difficult to immediately disconnect from or discharge that meaning or that judgment in just a linear way. And so the technique can be, okay. Can I think of a time in my life when I have acted aggressively or spoken aggressively towards someone else and put the shoe back on the other foot and, like, now embody that, which is a process. I think there's partially in that.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:56]:
One could call that a process of empathy. But it's. At the very least, it's like the initial reflection. It's like, okay, now I can see myself in the mirror. And then you said, now let's take the reflection of the reflection and say, like, well, how do you imagine that other person, that in that dynamic, when you judge yourself as aggressive now, how do you imagine what are all of the different outcomes or experiences, positive and negative, that could have occurred for that person? Are there any positive things that you can imagine for them? Sort of like, empathizing now with yourself? Well, yeah, I was kind of harsh, and maybe you could call it mean and a little bit aggressive and whatever, but, like, you know, it was tough love, and that was just the kick in the pants that they needed. And look at where their life is now. And like, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's like, I wonder.

Vision Battlesword [00:45:50]:
It's so interesting that you could imagine going through that process any number of times, taking any number of different perspectives to just get a more and more and more and more complete picture of that moment in space and time. In your memory until that hidden order really just kind of emerges.

Sharu [00:46:11]:
And then there's this, like, love or gratitude. Yeah, what's the difference?

Vision Battlesword [00:46:19]:
But that's so interesting, the connection between hidden order and love and gratitude. There's something there that we're, like, tiptoeing all around, I feel that has to do with. And that word. I kind of want to circle back around on that word perfection, because you, like, put a little pin in that right at the very beginning of the whole conversation. Like, there's charge here. Yeah, put a little pin in that. I'm kind of curious about that. But one way or another, it almost seems like there's something about that same thing that we talked about with love, about it being the kind of universal emotion of reunification with God, in a way.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:02]:
And part of that is when we reunify with each other our little pieces, our individuations, divine sparks of that get to commune, at least on a one. On one level or in a, you know, plurality or whatever it is that it looks like. But that is really what it's all getting back to, even when we're, you know, even when we're talking about the love between two people. And maybe that's what's emerging when we see that hidden order. Maybe what's happening is we're having at least some level of an appreciation of the divinity in all of this, the holiness in all of this, the perfection.

Sharu [00:47:42]:
Mm hmm. Yes.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:44]:
Okay. Love that. All right, let's see what the book has to say. That was fun. I got gratification. Gratitude. There we go. The quality or condition of being grateful.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:56]:
Okay, not super helpful, but we'll go.

Sharu [00:47:59]:
To grateful, I guess.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:59]:
This is interesting. A warm sense of appreciation, kindness, receive, involving a feeling of goodwill toward the benefactor and a desire to do something in return. Gratefulness. Wow. That really encapsulates a lot of what we talked about. Right. So appreciation, kindness, received. So that's the transactional component, kind of that we talked about with thanking, feeling of goodwill toward the benefactor.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:28]:
That's a cool sentence in the. In the. Yeah.

Sharu [00:48:30]:
So that's. That can be love.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:32]:
Right.

Sharu [00:48:32]:
But it's not necessarily in this sentence, I think.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:36]:
Yeah. Feeling of goodwill, feeling of good will to me. Yeah, there's good goodwill. Feels like affection.

Sharu [00:48:46]:
Like, go up.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:47]:
Yeah. Best wishes, blessings.

Sharu [00:48:50]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:50]:
But then that phrase, the benefactor, is interesting because you could.

Sharu [00:48:54]:
The thing that is that you're having gratitude for.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:58]:
Correct. But then benefactor gives it, though. True. And also the word benefactor to me is a synonym for God.

Sharu [00:49:07]:
Oh, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:08]:
In a certain sense.

Sharu [00:49:09]:
I love that.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:10]:
And a desire to do something in return. Which brings us back to sacred reciprocity, which we also touched on. An expression of thankfulness, a free gift, a gratuity, a reward, grant contribution, or money made to the sovereignty. Oh, see, this is often the case with the Oxford English Dictionary, and it's just another. I like it. It's interesting because it gives a lot of these historical and political contexts to things of how our language has actually been corrupted over time. But, yeah, apparently a gratitude as a noun is like an offering, a money offering, especially to a kingdom. A tip.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:50]:
That's right.

Sharu [00:49:50]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:51]:
That's right.

Sharu [00:49:51]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:52]:
Wow. That's interesting. It's a pretty small definition for a word that's seemingly important. That's what we got. Yeah. Do you want to see acceptance?

Sharu [00:50:00]:
Sure. Well, actually, love, just because we're trying to get the, like, crosshairs on.

Vision Battlesword [00:50:06]:
I can do that.

Sharu [00:50:06]:
How? They're different.

Vision Battlesword [00:50:08]:
It's kind of shocking that I've never actually looked up the word love in this dictionary. Even as much time as I spend trying to define it, I just flipped to the page that the first word is lotus eater.

Sharu [00:50:23]:
Funny.

Vision Battlesword [00:50:24]:
Oh, my goodness.

Sharu [00:50:26]:
Is it like pages?

Vision Battlesword [00:50:27]:
Yes.

Sharu [00:50:27]:
Oh, geez. So this is where it's tricky, because it's like, what version?

Vision Battlesword [00:50:31]:
The opposite of gratitude in the sense of the size of the definition corresponding to the size of the word. Wow. Okay. Lots and lots and lots of citations. Okay. One, that disposition or state of feeling with regard to a person which, arising from recognition of attractive qualities, from instincts of natural relationship or from sympathy, manifests itself in solicitude for the welfare of the object, and also in delight in his or her presence and desire for his or her approval. Warm affection and attachment.

Sharu [00:51:14]:
I don't wanna hang out with that guy. Who ever wrote that?

Vision Battlesword [00:51:17]:
It's not bad.

Sharu [00:51:18]:
No, I know.

Vision Battlesword [00:51:19]:
It's from a cultural perspective.

Sharu [00:51:20]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:51:21]:
It's pretty complete.

Sharu [00:51:21]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:51:23]:
But wow. Yeah. Kinda cold. Viewed as an abstract quality or principle, an instance of affection. That's interesting.

Sharu [00:51:33]:
It's really tricky because. Yeah. Love is seen as, like, support, you know? Affection.

Vision Battlesword [00:51:40]:
Yes.

Sharu [00:51:41]:
The whole other half.

Vision Battlesword [00:51:42]:
Yes. I think this is really interesting to me because I independently kind of arrived at this conclusion just from my own self reflection and analysis, with dialectical processing and. Yeah, I kind of arrived at that conclusion that when we say love in this culture, nine times out of ten, what we really mean is affection.

Sharu [00:52:05]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:05]:
Which is really interesting.

Sharu [00:52:07]:
Yep.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:07]:
Wow. Let's see. A formula of request that the person addressed will convey the expression of the speaker's or writer's affection to a third person. Wow.

Sharu [00:52:19]:
Yeah. Maybe if there's a definition of the state rather than the action.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:24]:
Sure. There's a religious definition. This one has everything to do with sex. Sex. More sex. Wow. Highly connected to sex.

Sharu [00:52:37]:
Yep. Make love.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:39]:
Well, no, I mean, like, it gets. For example, definition number six is an animal instinct between the sexes and its gratification.

Sharu [00:52:47]:
Mmm. That makes sense.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:48]:
We're not even talking about making love there.

Sharu [00:52:50]:
That makes sense.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:50]:
Yeah, it does kind of.

Sharu [00:52:52]:
You know, the merging back into itself.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:58]:
Talks about fondness for one's work, as in a labor of love. Wow. It literally has a definition that says an ambiguous phrase which has been employed with contrary implications. It's like, we don't know.

Sharu [00:53:13]:
Sorry about that, bro.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:17]:
As a noun, a love, a sweetheart, a beloved person.

Sharu [00:53:21]:
Mm hmm.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:22]:
It really doesn't talk about an emotion. That's really interesting. Tennis.

Sharu [00:53:28]:
Yeah. And this. This is really the most important thing to really get clear on what. What we're talking about with love.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:36]:
Yeah.

Sharu [00:53:37]:
Because. Yeah, because it's just. It's not articulate enough. And we use it. We use it all the ways that we can use it, but there are lies in the confusion between. When people are in love.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:49]:
Man, this is really, really interesting. It's sex or affection other than the love that God has for you. Maybe we should at least check that one.

Sharu [00:53:59]:
So that. Yeah, that's probably the closest thing that we're looking for.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:03]:
Let's see here. Where was it? Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Well, it's still sex. The personification of sexual affection, usually masculine and more or less identified with arrows, amor or cupid of classic mythology, sometimes feminine, capable of being identified with Venus. Again, we're still talking about sex. There was. There. I swear to you, there was a religious.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:26]:
Oh, okay. That's right. It was way over here. Here we go. Yeah. Here we go. In religious use, applied in an imminent sense to the paternal benevolence and affection of. Of God toward his children, to the affectionate devotion due to God from his creatures, and to the affection of one created being to another, so far as is prompted by the sense of their common relationship to God.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:52]:
This is a really dry meaning, Oxford. Yeah.

Sharu [00:54:58]:
Isn't it? Like what language has. Like how? Like hundred different words for love. Like, I forget which one. Like brazilian or Eskimo or. Remember, there's some language that I don't.

Vision Battlesword [00:55:08]:
Know, but there's certainly a lot of other languages or other, I should say. It seems to me that many other languages have more than one word, at least.

Sharu [00:55:18]:
Yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:55:19]:
And, like, for example, there's at least four main types of love in Greek. Ancient Greek.

Sharu [00:55:26]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:55:26]:
But, yeah. I've often thought that this. There's something strange about our language, and obviously, I think that it highly influences the structure of our psychology that we have this one word.

Sharu [00:55:41]:
I know.

Vision Battlesword [00:55:43]:
And we've pretty much been given sex and affection to work with here, even though we've got, like, we know that there's something of this experience which you can't even really talk about because we don't really have the language for it.

Sharu [00:55:54]:
Yeah. And it's just unfortunate that it seems English does such a shitty job.

Vision Battlesword [00:56:00]:
Yeah.

Sharu [00:56:01]:
About it, because I feel like, clarifying that would just, like, help society so much. We should just go on a love campaign.

Vision Battlesword [00:56:09]:
I think we should.

Sharu [00:56:10]:
Let's define love for everybody.

Vision Battlesword [00:56:11]:
I think. Yes.

Sharu [00:56:12]:
And then everybody's gonna get in arguments. Cause, like, no, love is this. We're like, no, it's not. Love is not that. This is love. We have decided this is what love is, and now society is fixed.

Vision Battlesword [00:56:25]:
That would be the most anti loving, the love project that I can imagine. But, yes, I agree with you. Let's do it. The love project. We are going to create the book of love. The whole dictionary, just one word. Figure this out.

Sharu [00:56:42]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:56:42]:
Yeah. That's interesting. It really does come back to that, though. I agree with you. There's something that's like the nexus. That's the central center point of all of these different things that we're touching on. Gratitude, appreciation, forgiveness. Oh, I'm sorry.

Vision Battlesword [00:56:58]:
We didn't even talk about forgiveness. That word only just now came up.

Sharu [00:57:02]:
But from our exploration, there seems to be a tilt in the affection direction.

Vision Battlesword [00:57:07]:
I mean, I think that for sure is a big part of it.

Sharu [00:57:11]:
Yeah. Because that's what anybody off the street would be like. Oh. It's when you, like, you know, care about somebody and, you know, you. You love them, you show them support. Right. And that's what's missing. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Sharu [00:57:24]:
Like, the meaning has both sides, and you're only talking about the, like, feel good part, and love is all the parts.

Vision Battlesword [00:57:31]:
Right. I mean, I think Oxford isn't wrong.

Sharu [00:57:35]:
Sure.

Vision Battlesword [00:57:35]:
In the sense of, like, absolutely. Love has a lot to do with. Or maybe flip it around and say, sex and affection have a lot to do with love. Yes, but it's almost like.

Sharu [00:57:48]:
But what is happening?

Vision Battlesword [00:57:49]:
The soul has been extracted from the definition. The spirit itself has been extracted from it. It's only the meat suits component.

Sharu [00:57:59]:
So you said affection and what else?

Vision Battlesword [00:58:01]:
Sex.

Sharu [00:58:01]:
Sex. Yeah, but both of those are when. Right. An object and the other object are in relation.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:11]:
That's exactly right. Like, it even uses the term object. It's like, it's very. It's objective, but it's also objectified. It's. It's like a mechanical definition of love, which, again, I mean, like, that is a part. I mean, that's the physical component of it. These practical day to day activities of demonstrating care and support and devotion and all of the different, you know, ways that the behaviors that we enacted that we could call synonymous with love or expressions of love.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:46]:
But it's like, what is that actual thing? The fact that the dictionary never even attempts to describe a subjective experience or emotional state, that is really fascinating to me.

Sharu [00:58:59]:
And this is where my personal exploration, where I've really kind of detached from, almost rebellious against this, like, love, you know, because it's like this kind of blinders only the good part. And so it's kind of dropped me out of this, like, romantic play that can happen with that. Like, oh, and love. And just, like, love, you know? So I'm not going after that experience for somehow, you know, it's just kind of allow me to be, like, objective and just being, like, actually, like, do I want this person in my. In my life? The good and the bad, you know?

Vision Battlesword [00:59:41]:
What's the bad part of love?

Sharu [00:59:43]:
Right. Well, whatever it is that you are perhaps care about and want to show affection for, that there's, like, a polarity to that feeling, perhaps.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:55]:
Yeah. You know, so I had a conversation with Tiffany on the topic of love specifically. And in exploring that, we were kind of inspecting, like, what does love feel like to me, me specifically. And I noticed a polarity to it. Or rather, I noticed that it was complex. I noticed that it wasn't simple. A simple. Just a simple state of something like bliss or joy or just something that was uniformly ecstatic, let's just say.

Vision Battlesword [01:00:27]:
But that it came with kind of ache, a kind of. I don't want to describe it as sadness, because that's a different emotion to me. But it came. Yeah, it was achy. There's a part of it that wasn't ecstatic, that was more heavy, that was more contracted, which is not to say that I don't enjoy it. And it's not to say that, like, I don't like it, but rather that I could feel kind of those two sides of it simultaneously. The euphoric part, the ecstatic part, is.

Sharu [01:01:02]:
The quantumly entangled nightmare to the fantasy, and our unconscious knows of the other side. So it hurts. Right. When we're, like, repressing and pushing. No, I just want the fantasy part. But our unconscious, then we have to push in our unconscious the other side of. And that's the part that that's, like, hurts, maybe.

Vision Battlesword [01:01:24]:
Yeah, it felt a little. It feels a little hurt y. Mm hmm. And then, of course, there's a part of me that wonders if that's just shadow of my own experiences or if that's a natural part of someone else I was talking to suggested to me that it's similar to what you just said. Someone else suggested that that's the part that is still anchored to separation. So the love is the reunification. It's like in the Venn diagram, it's like the ecstatic part is the part in the middle, the reunification part, but there's still that achy part, which is the part hanging out of the Venn diagram that is still aware of the separation.

Sharu [01:02:07]:
Yeah. Right.

Vision Battlesword [01:02:08]:
But that's what you're kind of saying in terms of the entanglement to the messiness of relationship or the human experience, that we're never going to fully and truly know each other. We can only approximate and get closer and closer, and we still. But we still can't help ourselves, I think.

Sharu [01:02:30]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:02:30]:
Doing it.

Sharu [01:02:31]:
Yep. Yeah. It's the perception that something's missing, you know? So it's like, why do it? You know? But it's why we're here. It's the mystery and then discovering the answer again and again. My whole thing is, it's just they were all one. Or if we're all white or all black, there would be no perception. So that's why all the myths is, like, oh, God, separated itself to have an experience of reality, you know, to experience itself. And so there's always this, like, perception of something missing or this shadow, to be able to have contrast, to have an experience.

Sharu [01:03:09]:
Otherwise, you couldn't see if there was no contrast of something missing. It was all white. We're all one. You can't see any. There's no experience of creation, right. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:19]:
It's the separation that literally creates the possibility of experience.

Sharu [01:03:24]:
Yes. And so we want to, like, reunify to that oneness, but it's temporary. We get that. Then we have that merge state, and it is this upward and frequency synthesis that happens, and then we maybe can stay there, but then there's, like, the next one, the next greater mystery of what's missing, and it just keeps going.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:46]:
It'S almost like the tension, the pain of this whole reality is that we want to have our cake and eat it, too.

Sharu [01:03:54]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:55]:
We want to be source, we want to be reunified. We want to have the non dual experience, but we want to come down here and play the earth game and be separated and have all the particles and the materials and the different planes of energy and all of the different things all separated out so that we can look at it and see just like what you were talking about. When we're re experiencing and re investigating the charged moment, it's like taking all of the different infinite possible perspectives on what this thing is. We want to be able to do that, like, oh, but now I'm separated. I want to be back. Oh, now I'm back, but I want to be separated. Interesting.

Sharu [01:04:34]:
Yeah. The existential vacuum necessary.

Vision Battlesword [01:04:37]:
It's a great phrase.

Sharu [01:04:38]:
It's from the logotherapy.

Vision Battlesword [01:04:41]:
What does gratitude feel like to you?

Sharu [01:04:45]:
Yeah, gratitude feels more. Almost feels like this. My body kind of goes back and in. You know, it's like this allowing. You know, it's not like a going towards, like, where love can. Oh, I just want to, like, rise with you in this. You know, gratitude feels like just seeing, like, omnispherically and, like, non locally to be super abstract. You know, it's like this, like, allowing that happens, and it's still this, like, in the heart kind of, like, grateful for that.

Sharu [01:05:19]:
But it's like this kind of bigger view that happens.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:23]:
You know, detecting that a lot of how you experience things is very visual.

Sharu [01:05:30]:
Is that right for you? I don't know. Yeah, usually I'm more of, like a knowing or feeler.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:36]:
Got it.

Sharu [01:05:37]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:38]:
What is the somatic experience of gratitude in your body?

Sharu [01:05:42]:
Yeah, it's like a loss of boundary.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:45]:
Like, it feels like kind of a dissolving. Okay.

Sharu [01:05:47]:
Whereas love feels like an energizing loss of boundary.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:51]:
Okay. Yeah, I see.

Sharu [01:05:53]:
You know, it's like an ascent, ascension, energy, and gratitude is ascension, but, like, more wide horizon expansion too. I don't know.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:03]:
I'm imagining, like, the difference between melting and boiling.

Sharu [01:06:08]:
Mmm. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:09]:
Does that resonate?

Sharu [01:06:10]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:11]:
Like, gratitude is like melting.

Sharu [01:06:13]:
There's an arousal with the love, whereas.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:16]:
Yeah, whereas love is like going from liquid to gas.

Sharu [01:06:20]:
Yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:21]:
And gratitude is more like going from solid to liquid.

Sharu [01:06:24]:
I do vedic astrology, and it's really cool to see these themes. And so I'm kind of drawing upon those in some ways with, like, the. The ancient vedic constellations that give more detail and actual mythological symbols of nature. And these laws of reality. And so there's this part where it's all about coupling, and then the next constellation is the, like, result of that coupling, you know, which is the, like, love. And it's basically the root function of transformation, the result of the opposites coming together to make that better thing. And then the result is the bliss or that transcendent God feeling.

Vision Battlesword [01:07:11]:
Yeah. What you're saying reminds me again of that hegelian dialectic thing that I mentioned earlier, where it's like continual remixing of the two things into the new, greater thing and then the splitting of that and the remixing into the new, greater thing and the splitting and the remixing, which is also, I guess, just yet another way of describing kind of like, what the universe is doing on the whole.

Sharu [01:07:36]:
And then so even more information, like, the Sanskrit of this word is aroha, which means arousal, or, like, red, the color red. So it's like, literally this heating up and boiling like you're describing. That's cool. The Sanskrit's so neat and that it's like root, we could hear arousal and aroha, you know, it's, like, cool to see that. Eros. Oh, yeah, that too.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:07]:
Anyways, well, what is the color red? What is the. What are any other kind of symbolisms or meanings?

Sharu [01:08:14]:
Mmm. Yeah. Passion.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:16]:
Yeah.

Sharu [01:08:16]:
Anger. Heat rising.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:19]:
Very energetic.

Sharu [01:08:20]:
Mm hmm. So, yeah, I just wanted to mention that because it's just so cool to see all the language and systems pointing at this thing called love.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:31]:
Yeah.

Sharu [01:08:32]:
Yeah. And just to get more perspective or understanding.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:36]:
Well, what are your thoughts now that we've kicked this concept around a bit about gratitude? Have you had any new insights or new awarenesses since we've been talking? What are you thinking about gratitude right now?

Sharu [01:08:49]:
Yeah. It's like these two different states that we couldn't really decipher, but now I'm really feeling it. It's like this kind of more like allowing energy with gratitude.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:03]:
Yeah.

Sharu [01:09:04]:
Where the love feels more like agency somehow. And that might be more exciting because then we're becoming a creator. Like, we're becoming. We're like action. Like God got us in action, whereas gratitude's God goddess as is. So it's like the beingness and then the doingness is the love, maybe.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:28]:
That is an awesome insight. I like that.

Sharu [01:09:32]:
And everybody says love is a verb, right? Yeah. Like, all the sex worker people talk about that. They're like, love is a verb, you know, and that they might mean something different. Oh, okay. Whoops.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:45]:
I don't know.

Sharu [01:09:46]:
Or the relationship coaches well, what does.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:49]:
That mean to you? Love is a verbat or just what you.

Sharu [01:09:52]:
Well, just what I just said.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:53]:
Yeah.

Sharu [01:09:53]:
It's like, actually, like a dharma what something does.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:57]:
What's dharma?

Sharu [01:09:58]:
Yeah, like the nature of something.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:01]:
What's the difference between karma and dharma?

Sharu [01:10:03]:
Karma is the action. So currently, this couch is doing couch karma. It's like its action is.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:10]:
It's couching.

Sharu [01:10:11]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:11]:
Okay. But it's dharma is just couch.

Sharu [01:10:15]:
Right. Okay.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:17]:
All right. That's helpful, actually. I've never had anybody explain it to me so simply so I could really understand.

Sharu [01:10:23]:
I've done a lot of research on these two words. Yeah, okay, that's cool. But, yeah, karma is just cool. It's like a phenomenon. It's like action.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:33]:
Got it. Okay. So is there a dharma karma relationship with gratitude and love?

Sharu [01:10:37]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:38]:
Is gratitude dharma and love is karma.

Sharu [01:10:40]:
Yeah, that's using that logic. But then it's like, yeah, I kind of feel like it transcends that binary somehow.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:47]:
And yet there is a binary that's being described which actually really resonates for me. Suddenly makes a lot of sense. But the binary that you were describing a moment ago. Is, again, coming back to that kind of passive versus active. Or giving versus receiving.

Sharu [01:11:02]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a being or a doing.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:05]:
Being or doing. Yeah, but that makes sense. That really feels right. That true gratitude is a peaceful state of receiving. And true love is some kind of a state of giving.

Sharu [01:11:21]:
Yeah, yeah. And this, like, contributing somehow. Upward movement of ascension or transcendence somehow.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:29]:
And maybe acceptance is the mean.

Sharu [01:11:33]:
Yeah. Right.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:34]:
Between extremes.

Sharu [01:11:36]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:36]:
All three of them are really totally coherent.

Sharu [01:11:39]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That's cool.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:41]:
I think we made a lot of progress here today.

Sharu [01:11:43]:
Yes.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:44]:
This feels really good. How would you like. So with these kind of insights that we've generated right now. Like, how will you take this back into your own life? And what would you like to do with it? Or how would you imagine to integrate it?

Sharu [01:11:59]:
I think just starting collect data of, like, oh, there's some gratitude. Okay. You know, let's see the difference. And also, it still continues of this, like, to really get more clear on. On love. And so there's this still, like, okay, how do we, like, describe this so that people can understand, like, what I'm talking about?

Vision Battlesword [01:12:27]:
I think we could probably get a fair number of people to sign up for our love project.

Sharu [01:12:32]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:12:36]:
But no joke. That would be really. That would be really cool. Yeah, it's a bit audacious. Yeah, I'm here for it.

Sharu [01:12:43]:
Yeah. Basically, like, giving you a whole bunch of other words to use, and then you could still use love, but you'd be like, oh, this is what I mean when I say love. And probably the love love. You wouldn't have to say it. It would just know that you mean that kind of love anyways.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:04]:
No, I think it's so important. I mean, yeah, like, all of these things that we talk about on this series and that we've been talking about in this conversation, it's just like, it would be great. It will be great. It is great that we're talking about it and that, like, there's. These concepts are so foundational to our human experience. And yet. Do you remember getting the love talk when you were a kid? Or the gratitude talk or the acceptance talk? Maybe we get the sex talk talk. If you're lucky, you get a fair step in the right direction on how to deal with that.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:39]:
But we don't even really talk about these things or define them. And you're just kind of supposed to figure it out as you go along, pick it up from the environment and from your experiences. Yeah. I think it's really helpful to start to crystallize our own awareness and understanding of, like, what love really is and what it really means and how it manifests in the world. Because it's something. I mean, we talk about it constantly, but it's like one of those things where I don't really. I'm not entirely sure we mean the same thing exactly when I say I love you.

Sharu [01:14:14]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:15]:
It'd be cool if we could connect more deeply in that word and in that space.

Sharu [01:14:20]:
Yeah. Beautiful.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:21]:
It's been a beautiful conversation.

Sharu [01:14:22]:
Sure.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:23]:
Thank you so much for this.

Sharu [01:14:24]:
Yeah. My honor.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:25]:
It's a lot of fun.