To Love Me Is To Know Me

on romantic love, religion & projection

Gabor Mate’s son Aaron is one of my favorite journalists and Gabor has written a book with his other son. But it’s his wife, the invisible member of the family, by whom I am utterly intrigued. In his interview with Russell Brand, Gabor said, “My wife’s allergic to romance. Whenever she catches me putting her on a pedestal she says, ‘Stop that.’ You’ll just make me pay for it later.”

Such a wise woman! One of my daughters is in a long-distance relationship, which is making her boyfriend more romantic when they’re together, when she needs time to get back to feeling familiar. He has their procession song picked out and she’s wanting casual time where they both hang out on their phones. When she says it seems like a lot for him to visit, requiring trains, Ubers and hotel rooms, he replies, “How many dragons may I slay for thee, milady?” Or something like that.

She’s begun to ask the question, “Is this really about me? Or is this an image he has of himself as a romantic?” It’s a question that takes courage to ask.

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At an aerial performance Friday night I met a charming guy whose opening line was that he’d just bought alien abduction insurance. I assured him that we were all conspiracy theorists and he was in good company. His daughter-of-the-heart, who he’d come with, was one of my favorite aerial buddies. He was sensitive and cried at a particularly moving piece.

My dance teacher, Gina, MC’d the show with three costume changes from Superman to a sombrero and ‘stache. She made each intro both personal and hilarious, reminding me why live amateur shows are so important in a community. It was a magical night and at the end, Gina walked up to the guy and said, “Make sure you get her phone number.” I was getting serious smitten vibes.

And I wasn’t wrong. When we texted the next day, he told me I was grounded, clear, centered, open, knew when to close, more than an empath—a smart clairvoyant. I asked if he got that from watching my videos and he said my videos espouse extra spiritual value. We arranged to meet for coffee the next day and he signed off, “Sweet lover of life, you have any number of affirmations: mentally, physically and especially spiritually. I adore you.”

During our 4-hr coffee date, one story led to another—for him. When I managed to get a word in edgewise, he would stare into my eyes and say he loved my mind … or my hair. Then get back to where he left off. He had us hold hands in some tribal technique while he asked me to tell a story about my father. He announced three times that we were getting married, slipping the ring from his finger onto mine. And that we’d been happy together in a past life. Bonus points if you’ve seen the Past Life Technique from JP Sears’ How To Be a Spiritual Pick Up Artist:

I drove us to the beach, since he didn’t have a car, where he put his arm around me, had our ‘first kiss’ by the ocean, and held my sweaty hand on the way back. I stopped by my home to give him a tour and then drove him back to his trailer.

I went to my 5-hr dance intensive but gave up halfway and poured myself a whiskey on ice to watch the sunset. I got a text from him saying, “Perhaps you are now, after your intensive, in a spiritually mentally socially physically particularly satisfying place. And you’ll text me a question to which I will reply with every word bringing tender compassionate mercies to the world.”

Instead I talked to my daughter and debriefed for three hours, then went to bed. Mid-morning, I sent him an apology that I didn’t feel I could match his energy but was grateful for how he made me feel and happy to have met him. He shot back, “Thereza - Did you get my email? I wish for mutual encouragement rather than a relationship.” In other words, you can’t reject me, I rejected you an hour ago.

I checked my junk folder to see what this mutual encouragement was. It stated my view as echoing Karl Marx that religion was the opiate of the masses. And it gave six books I should read by “modern science scholars and professionals who are betting there’s an eternal outcome from acting as if God exists.” This list includes Francis Collins who readers will recognize as head of the NIH, one woman who worked on the Hubble, and Ben Carson. All, he wrote, “have found their scientific understanding and religious beliefs to be mutually enriching rather than contradictory.”

I tossed back my leftover watered-down whiskey and laughed.

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For the first time in my life, thanks to all of you, I can laugh at this with no reservation. There was a time I’d be kicking myself for being so stupid once again to think anyone wanted to hear my ideas without sex as a bribe. The slight of “Here little girl, read these before you open your mouth and say something embarrassing” would land. But a couple thousand of you say otherwise.

It’s a double whammy. You don’t want to be presumptuous and think that a guy is attracted. After all, economics and ultimate reality are my gender neutral small talk. Then, it turns out he thinks you’re only blathering nonsense because you’re attracted to him. And instead of blaming him, you blame yourself for being so naive you thought he was interested in what you had to say.

There’s the adage, “To know me is to love me,” but I think it’s the reverse. I think it should really be “To love me is to know me.” Every pedestal is a projection from which you will be toppled as soon as you speak your mind, not his. And empty words of affirmation are just ways of shushing you because he didn’t understand a word of what you said.

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It’s a particular cruelty to put a woman on a pedestal, and then make her pay for not meeting expectations. All the compliments become things she was foolish to believe. It makes her not trust herself. Instead of making her feel good, they become barbed.

And don’t we all deserve to be adored? There’s the Oscar Wilde saying, “She was plain but would have been pretty if someone had told her often enough she was beautiful.” It makes you stand straighter, makes life a little more interesting. And isn’t that what we all want?

The oldest form of superiority, or cold hatred, is men over women. It only turns hot when challenged. Why not let sleeping superiority lie? There are times I get included as one of the guys, like I did with the Tonic Masculinity boys. As long as I said nice things and didn’t challenge how they used my term, they liked me fine. When I did challenge it, they showed their true face. Amusement became anger. This revelation is important, because it shows the truth beneath the civility.

Conflict, however, is exhausting. As we enter into this holiday season some who I respect are seeing this as a time for truth-telling. I might listen for clues that someone will be receptive. Most of the damage has been done but not all of the consequences are in. For some people, they’re starting to connect the dots you pointed out three years ago. The best scenario is they come to you and say, “You know, you may have been right.” If you can’t imagine that, they’re probably not ready to hear it.

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What’s the similarity between romantic love and religious worship? They’re both ways of projecting the ego onto a person or deity and making them a reflection of the self. They are pretenses of selflessness that make the ego invulnerable by elevating it as the object of devotion. Then one’s own superiority can be praised in another form.

The most ruthless people I’ve known in the business world were religious. So were the most moral people I knew outside of it. If you make God in your own image, that’s how it works. Would the moral people have been immoral without a religion? Certainly not. Caring about other people came first and religion was a vehicle.

Would the ruthless people have been just as unscrupulous without religion? Absolutely. But they wouldn’t have gotten away with it. Religion, like government, provides the justifying rationale for immoral acts. Morality doesn’t need religion or government to justify it.

And what’s up with a God who doesn’t want to be known? That seems like a God who doesn’t make sense and doesn’t want his authority to be questioned. Love wants to be known.

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The most sincere form of love is giving attention. I don’t know why we call it ‘paying’ as if it’s a transaction. Having a true conversation, reading deeply, taking time to understand what someone means before responding, all this only adds to the light in the world. It doesn’t compete or try to impress. Agreement is beside the point, literally. The shared question is the quest.

The wild enthusiasm this guy brought to meeting me wasn’t a mistake. Was it? The mistake was making it conditional. His former pick-up line, before he came up with alien abduction insurance, was that he ran workshops on how to start your own cult. That got my mind racing!

In the cult of Terezania, everyone’s afflicted with Terez Syndrome and can’t stop blurting out nice things that make people feel good about themselves. The churches are dance studios with ample kitchens. The gods of Terezania have many names and love everyone unconditionally. They’re hiding in every person we meet, waiting for an invitation to come out and play. That’s the cult I want to start and I hope you join.

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For more on cults of affirmation, here’s The Utopian Imagination on Naomi Klein:

In Russell Brand's interview, Naomi asks "What does the world look like after we win?" She states that we need a vision, a revival of the utopian imagination. I talk about the arrogance of hopelessness, and propose AA groups for activists addicted to it. We need to find our people, who take seriously that we will win and develop pragmatic visions. I quote Ursula K. LeGuin's speech that "Hard times are coming ... We'll need writers who can remember freedom." I suggest that our utopia-planning committee fall madly in love with each other and rigorously challenge ideas while adoring the person—something for which Russell's viewers are perfect.

and this is We Need to Agree to Agree:

As Ukraine and the Great Reset wreak havoc, we need to share a purpose, a process to separate truth from lies, and a plan. And perhaps, like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, we need to consider six impossible things before breakfast. I look at things I never thought I'd question, like climate change and Elie Weisel. I debate good vs evil, big vs small, Franklin vs Hamilton, and Trump vs no one. And I wonder how to bring together the dozen journalists left who aren't deluded: Matthew Ehret, Robert Malone*, Aaron Mate, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald and Russell Brand.

*oh how things have changed ;-)