So something I have just recently come to terms with for myself is that Love and Lust are two entirely different things.

In other words my love is so pure I can't understand the idea of lusting after someone I love.

In other words if I were to pursue someone lustfully then it would not be someone that I love.

For me the two really don't have anything to do with each other.

For me it's love or lust

so how bout all of you? love or lust or love and lust?

Love is an all inclusive package, it is affinity and attraction of the entire being.

Lust is physical and detracts from emotional and spiritual connection.

that sums it up well

I do lust after my partner big time, but I love him deeply too. Most of my men I've lusted after before falling in love with them, with my current one I loved him as soon as we met, but I didn't feel anything more than that for a couple of weeks, lol! There's nothing wrong with a healthy dose of lust, and it can & does go hand in hand with love

Well said...

That said, I absolutely love, am in love, and unconditionally love my beloved... but I sometimes lust after him too - a purely physical/sexual attraction - which is fun! But less wholesome if not accompanied by love.

I notice that different religious and cultural traditions have different attitudes on the spiritual nature of sex.

Personally I don't feel love and lust are opposite. I think they work best when together.

ive just understood this concept a while ago when i started liking my best friend..

she was so not my..erm.."type"..but we connected so amazingly,i fell in love.
that was a huge step,a giant leap,an evolution for me..cos its usually lust first then love..

i collected my guts to ask her out,and its been 7 months now..the lust easily came after that..

i'm in lust
i'm in love
i'm lost

Lust is desire for the gratification and pleasure of having a sexual encounter with another person, a want to enhance one's sense of self through validation, sexual conquest and sexual release/satisfaction. It is a superficial animal attraction, and comes from a place of deep lack, seeking fulfillment through others. It is the mind's belief that it can find satisfaction through pleasure, an egoic desire for self enhancement through the validation gained from having another person reciprocate your lust and confirm your attractiveness. Pleasure when engaged in unconsciously only begets pain.

Love is the joy of Being combined with an overwhelming gratitude for all that is. Love is spiritual, it is not an emotion, for it arises from beyond the mind. Between two people it is a merging of concsciousness in the presence of two becoming one, the recognition in another of a deep oneness within yourself. It comes from a place of overflowing fullness, completely selfless, seeking nothing. To feel love for someone is to be grateful for their being to the point where your heart overflows with joy. It is a state of deep peace, contentment, and bliss.

The same thing happened to me! At first I was weirded out by it... wondered what was wrong with me, but it kicked in after about 2.5 months (we do long distance so I don't see him that much). Woooooooooooooooo

Love your last little quotes too

Lust doesn't come from a deep lack, IMO, it's a natural desire for the human sexual contact drive, to see it as something so dismally unimportant is to miss out on a beautiful & fun part of the relationship; drive, desire, want, passion, lovemaking

Agreed, though people usually do not love in that way with their partner, there are often conditions, expectations and disagreements - it does seek, sadly.

I would not judge either of these to be either 'good' or 'bad', and I am especially not saying that Lust is something 'bad' or 'wrong' - it just is what it is. The point is that, when you persue your desires for want of fulfillment, you will create suffering for yourself and others. The Buddha identified Desire as the cause of all suffering, and called it the tree which grew in the mud of ignorance. This does not mean that it is something wrong or 'Sinful' (although the original meaning of Sin did not mean 'bad' at all, it only meant to 'miss the mark' or 'fall short', like a pitfall), but simply that it will create suffering. The ignorance is firstly ignorance that you are creating suffering and how, and secondly that you are already fulfilled and whole, and that is is only a mental delusion which prevents us from seeing this.

If you are seeking satisfaction or fulfilment outside of yourself, through trying to satisfy the desires of the body, you will be dissapointed. You cannot have what you want at the same time as wanting it (though you can enjoy having something) - because if you had it, you would not 'want for it'. It would not be lacking. Therefore if you want for fulfillment or satisfaction it goes that you are not at this moment fulfilled or satisfied in yourself, and this is the state of suffering, the unawakened state. You will suffer because it means that At This Moment you are not yet satisfied, yet there is only ever this moment, now, so if you can't be fulfilled or satisfied now, you can't ever be so. Future is an illusion created by the mind, which you think about in the present, and only ever comes AS the present. Time is the illusion, the reality is that this moment, Now, is the Only moment, and is the space through which all time flows. That is the true meaning of eternity and 'eternal life', which does not mean 'life for infinite time' but 'life without time'. (Anyone who's into the Bible, this is what it means when God says "Before Abraham was, I AM")

When you are awakened you can still enjoy the pleasures of the world, and physical relationships can be a thing of great beauty, but you no longer want them to satisfy or fulfill you, and without placing unrealistic demands on 'having' these things, they will not cause you to suffer.

Love is a lot harder to pin down, especially in the world today, for it one word used in many contexts and can have a whole range of different meanings. The sense I was refering to was what I call 'true love' which is a love without attachment to form, a love that is all-pervading, all including, selfless and deeply peaceful - it is a blissful state of wholeness and deep satisfaction, which in themselves bring forth gratitude and joy.

To me, love and lust are simple, I would like to think they are I guess, but they really aren't, their are many gray lines.

To me, love is giving and lust is taking.
Love is from the spirit, and lust is from the physical body.

But as living beings, we are both, so we have to make both work.

Love is totally sacrificing and only thinks of others first, lust thinks of itself as first, with no concern for others. So ideally love and spirit find common ground to find balance. If we are too spiritually we cannot function here on earth, and if we are too earthly, the same applies for different reasons.

So both spirit and body has needs which need to be met, together they find find common ground and help to full fill each other.

I guess I could of made this shorter if I had thought about what I wanted to say exactly first, but I guess even here I am verbal processor, it drives my wife crazy, thinking out loud all of the time.

human love and lust are the same

The first form of earth energy is a dark kind of sexual energy that takes upon forms of lust and near that of the reptile / mammal brain, it's the earth energy vibe which heals everything inside the body/mind mechanism and that is why 'Lust is evil' because those who have alot of lust are also very damaged emotionally, as the first way to healing is getting in contact with this lust-vibe which is really the earth-vibe.

Though there are of course odd harmonies of this vibe that can take upon absurd proportions and lead to odd results, but generally it's a very healing vibe and making that inner demon connect to the lust and giving it the sexual-ride of it's life-time makes that area of the emotional body healed and integrated, so it's really a form of love in a more primitive vibrational form.

In this case primitivity doesn't mean that it's bad or evil. For example the reptile brain inside is so primitive that it has no concept of lying or cheating, and can simply not do it because it doesn't exist in it's world, but then again the human brain part knows all those things

The first connection point for the earth energy is the feet and then the spine beginning, and it's form is different shades of lust and desire and it's very pleasurable to go through them and one gets healed at the same time, the same energy when arised further becomes forms of love and so forth

But like all good 'spiritual people' I also thought that all forms of lust and desire are outright evil and bad and had to actually struggle to get away all those imprintions and programmings of my mind and noticed that no it's actually a good form of healing that happens if one accepts it and lets it and to be honest it seems like the different forms of lust and desire are there because one are neglecting patterns of ones own emotions, instead of going with them...

In my view there can be many types and many levels of lust.

When you see something in the store (like a computer etc) and you want it, to me that is a version of lust ... so materialistic

Then you can lust after someone ... sexual.

Since we seem to be talking about sexual lust I think it is alright as long and both parties are interested, but I dont think you should follow your lust if you are involved with someone and your lust isnt for them.

But as I like to say, its alright to look and admire but dont touch.

To me there isn't anything evil about lust as long as it is towards someone you love, but I experience them as two different levels of emotion. My love for my husband is a sort of ever-present gratitude for his presence and a sense of being calm and whole when he is around. My lust for him however is an animal need to me, not evil. But it comes and goes like any other need, like hunger, like thirst.

But at the same time I feel incapable of lusting after someone I do not love. I never have had the desire for sex with anyone I did not first feel great love for.

I started this post to get a feel for how I feel. I love seeing things from everyone's perspective it helps me understand my own thoughts and feelings so much better.

Here is where I am at now. I feel that when I truely love someone that love overpowers lust though they can dig it up if they like.

I think my real issue is not between love and lust, but in the 'relationship box'

I know here on IS many people have a different level in their relationships but my idea of the real world relationship disgusts me
it is a box
they put your love in a box
and that breaks my heart

I can't stand the thought of someone trying to limit my love to purely romantic and lustful
when so much of true love to me is a free thing that knows no bounds
I do not understand jealousy when it comes to love
I would not be able to have a relationship with a normal person because I could not limit myself to loving them most, or first, or only
and my love would vary depending on the situation

perhaps that is where the problem is I can't stand having this fixed idea of love when it is always changing and I love so many people in so many ways and everytime I have been in a relationship I always feel that it is limiting my freedom to love everyone

the expectations and the ideas of I'm more important to you and you're more important that me
and we're more important than everyone
that just doesn't work for me

I can't contain my love to the relationship box

Btw, I recommend getting the right 'lust-vibe' from nature and wilderness and especially trees give a quite good mapping for the right vibration. Currently there's so much interference and abuse on that sector that it's horrible, although those responsible will be made apparent soon...

You're right, society does put love and relationships in a box, which is very limiting and causes a great deal of pain.

Society tells us that it's only ok to have a relationship with one person at a time, and that if you feel something for someone else then that's 'bad' and 'wrong'. It lays down all these rules which must be followed, and says that it is a great sin to break them.

I believe this is a form of collective ego, and comes from the basic unconsciousness in which people feel unfulfilled, and are constantly looking outside of themselves for some satisfaction. So when they feel love with someone they become very dependant on that person to sustain their feeling of love, which will inevitably lead to pain and suffering because all forms are temporary and constantly changing. We believe that love is dependant on another person feeling a certain way about us because we think we are getting our love from them - when the opposite is the case, that love comes through us, and in the unawakened state only does so because our minds tell us that we have satisfied the material criteria to feel it. Love is merely our natural state of felt oneness with being and a gratitude for existance, it is part of who we are, feeling and knowing ourselves directly in our oneness with the totality. But because most people are identified with their minds, they only feel love in the beginning of relationships, when we feel like we've found love, that we've got there, and the other person gives us validation and seems to be the 'proof' the ego needs to allow the love to be felt, at least for a while. Soon however, the circumstances will change, and our mind, believing these had to be just so for there to be love, cut us off - which causes heartbreak.

At least that's how I can best describe it from my experiences.

yeah that makes sense to me

I've always kind of didn't really get Monogamy... I mean I wouldn't sleep around on someone if it went against their values but still I couldn't stop myself from loving others just as much so it's like an emotional betrayle or emotional affair...
which is ridiculous
Love is meant to be shared not put in a box
besides my heart won't fit in it