TRUE LOVE...and how to have it

By MARGOT CARPENTER
November 2001

In the many years I've had the honor of teaching Aesthetic Realism to women, I have seen without exception that Eli Siegel, the poet and critic who founded the education Aesthetic Realism, has explained love, for every man and woman -- and for all time. He showed what love is, for he wanted to know and have good will for every person and every thing.

Aesthetic Realism taught me the purpose of love is to like the whole world through knowing another person. Love goes wrong when two people use each other to have contempt -- to look down on other people, and disdain, put aside the rest of the world. These principles which profoundly and happily change people's lives in Aesthetic Realism consultations, are what Aesthetic Realism consultant Jeffrey Carduner and I have had the great pleasure of teaching organizations of singles in the New York tri-state area. The one I'll tell about now, took place at the Central Queens YM & YWHA.

The director of the Sociable Singles, a national organization of professional men and women, 33-55, had contacted the Aesthetic Realism Foundation asking for speakers after hearing about the tremendous success of a talk for senior citizens by Aesthetic Realism Consultants Anne Fielding and Jeffrey Carduner which had taken place there.

Announcements sent out by the Y appeared in Queens and Long Island papers, with our title, "Aesthetic Realism Explains Love and What Interferes!" As many more people than usual arrived, the director told us excitedly, "You've got a great turnout! One woman came all the way from Long Beach. This is great!"

As we looked at the individual faces of these women and men, we knew they brought to their listening, so many experiences, feelings, thoughts -- and Aesthetic Realism could understand and make sense of every one.

"Aesthetic Realism explains love," Mr. Carduner told them, "because it magnificently and truly explains people and the world. People today hope for love, but also go through a lot, and are bitter and cynical. Magazines, books, and talk shows abound with advice, yet love still fails." Our listeners nodded; this is what they felt. Jeffrey Carduner said, "We are tremendously grateful to have been among the people who studiedwith Eli Siegel, the kindest person, with the most knowledge who ever lived." "What we've learned, and continue to learn," I said, "has enabled us both to have love -- the real thing, in our lives, I, for Robert Murphy who I married eight years ago."

"And I," said Jeffrey Carduner, "for Devorah Tarrow whom I feel so fortunate to be married to for 29 years. Our marriages are more passionate and grow deeper each year." At this, they burst into applause.

We told them we'll be talking about four things:

1. How people want to conquer and own a person and think it's love.

2. The reason love goes wrong is because two people use each other to have contempt for the world and other people.

3. Love is the same as the passionate desire to know.

4. The true meaning of sex; and how the fights, tears, nausea, emptiness after sex come from using a person to glorify ourselves and have a victory over the world.

I. We Have Two Motives

"There are two motives in every person," Mr. Carduner explained, "one is to respect the world and like it; the other is to have contempt for it. And we have these two motives as to love." We told them, Eli Siegel describes this in deep, beautiful prose, in an issue of the international periodical The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, titled "What Opposes Love?" We read:

"As Aesthetic Realism sees it, the only reason love is confusing is that it is a continuation of the confusing battle between a narrow like of ourselves and imaginative justice to the world. It is this battle which may take an unbearable form when love, with its powerful bodily help, sex, is ours."

Mr. Carduner said, "Love is using a person to like the whole world. For instance, because you care for a person the feelings of other people -- including your parents, friends, people you've never met are more real to you. We see value in things we didn't before, because of the meaning another person sees in them -- like a certain tree or the way the outline of a building meets the sky. If we really love a person we have a greater desire to know and to think about what things are and what they deserve. We'll say much more about this." I saw the expressions on people's faces lighten. They had never heard a man speak like this before.

Then I said, "Aesthetic Realism also explains the thing in every person that interferes with love. It's the hope to have contempt, which Eli Siegel defined in this principle: "There is a disposition in every person to think he will be for himself by making less of the outside world.' Contempt is ordinary. You're in a conversation, a person is talking, and you're thinking about what you want for dinner, and not listening." There was some laughter of recognition. "But that not listening," I said, "is lessening another person's feelings." We could see they were gripped and learning one of the most important things a person can learn. I continued, "Contempt makes other people's insides, feelings, hopes not real, not as important as ours. Contempt is everyday, but Aesthetic Realism shows it is also the cause of racism, of all injustice: domestic and international. And contempt is the thing that makes love go wrong."

"People don't know," said Mr. Carduner, "that while they want to care for a person, they also want to have contempt for the person. Men want to love a woman, but also get rid of her." "Right," said a woman near to us. "And women," I said, "want to love a man, but also want to manage him and be superior to him." Men and women both nodded. "We do manage a lot," one woman said to another.

II. How Contempt Hurts Love

Next we read this great sentence from the chapter, "Love and Reality," in Self and World by Eli Siegel: "The purpose of love is to feel closely one with things as a whole." But this, we told them, is not how we once saw love at all.

I said, "I thought love meant caring for a person more than anything else and wanting to be with him all the time, and he would see me as the most important thing in the world. We'd make a haven together, away from the ordinary, harsh world, and be devoted entirely to each other."

"I thought," said Jeffrey Carduner, "love was when your eyes meet, your stomach flutters and 'BOING!' This is it! You wouldn't even need to talk. You'd take walks on the beach, go places, and it was as if there was a spotlight on the two of you, everyone else faded in the background. And there'd be a lot of praise; she'd tell me what a great guy I am, and make me happy."

We asked what they've thought love was and many hands went up. Burt, who was sitting near the front taking notes said in a very heart-felt way, "I've felt what you did, but my newer thoughts are that love is being concerned with another's well being, and comfort level. They take into account the money you have, and don't expect to be taken places you can't afford."

Sandy, an attractive woman in her 40's, said with candor and also pain, "I felt some of what both of you said -- the walk on the beach, and wanting to be the most important thing to a man. But men put business first, and a woman is supposed to just be there. A modern man who'll make you most important, can't be found. It'd be wonderful, but he doesn't exist."

One woman, Natalie, who told us later she loved what she heard and that "you really made us think," said she wanted, "Someone I could say anything to without worrying that he'd use it against me or have contempt for me. And I would be non-judgmental (of him). We'd understand." Suddenly, looking at Burt, she added scornfully, "And money shouldn't get into it. I know Burt, he's always thinking about money."

Someone in the back called out thoughtfully, "She (just) expressed contempt for him." And there were many excited comments as everyone, including Natalie, saw this was true. Then she looked straight across the room and said sincerely and so gracefully, "I apologize, Burt." We were 16 minutes into our 75 minute discussion and already they had started to learn what contempt is and be against it. Linda, who sat by Natalie, thrust her hand up, "Are you coming back again?" she asked eagerly. Even as people expressed notions of love that were, they would soon learn, false, the respect Aesthetic Realism makes for brought out deep thought in them. One woman said later, "I never heard people here speak in that way about themselves."

We then read from the beginning of one of Eli Siegel's great works, Aesthetic Realism and Love, saying, "As Mr. Siegel describes Madeleine and Rupert, with humor that is beautiful and critical, he explains the mistake being made right now by people all over America."

"Somewhere, instead of having her mother tell her what to do, she's going to be a queen telling a young man what to do.... Madeleine will feel: "With Rupert...everything goes my way. ...I look sulky and he shivers....I smile, bells ring.' Madeleine is using Rupert to hate the world with....Most people have thought the rest of the world is dull but love is a way of getting to a special world where someone will be at one's knees....That is a false sort of love."

"This," I said, "is exactly what I did." And I told about one man I knew, Peter Ryland. "I didn't like the world and, like Madeleine, I felt if I could get someone's devotion, I would be happy and like myself. I centered my life around Peter -- cooked him dinners, even did his laundry. In return he was supposed to adore me, tell me he loved me every time we spoke, even if he was in his boss's office. but it was never enough. I didn't know it, but I saw Peter, as I had my mother, as existing to praise me. I was trying to manage a man, and make a separate world where I was superior to everything, including to him."

Only Aesthetic Realism teaches that unless we are trying to know who a person truly is, we don't love him. "I didn't want to know him a bit," I said. "We went together for three years, yet I couldn't tell you if Peter was a Democrat or Republican, or what he thought of the Viet Nam War -- which was going on then. His feelings and thoughts were unreal to me." Their expressions were serious. I continued, "I only saw Peter in relation to me. I didn't know it, but I was really having contempt for him."

I felt very moved as I told these women and men, "This way of seeing would have run how I was with men forever, making love impossible for me, had I not met Aesthetic Realism and learned what love really is. In a class discussion with me and another man, Mr. Siegel explained, so it could change, the anger and pain I had with every man I had known."

Eli Siegel: Mr. C. thinks that with all your being favorable to him, you're looking to have contempt for him. You think that with all his...being enthused by you, he wants to have contempt for you.

Then Mr. Siegel asked me this clear, beautiful, crucial question, "If a man goes after you, do you respect him more of less?" I said, "I don't know." Eli Siegel, "Do you think it's necessary to know?" It is.

I'm grateful to Aesthetic Realism that I can be proud of my purpose with a man. Because I heard critical questions like these, as Robert and I began seeing each other, I was sure I wanted to know him, and I wanted him to be stronger, to like the whole world, not just me! And through him, my knowledge and feeling have increased tremendously -- about books, carpentry, history, architecture, cooking, how a building is constructed, and about children, who he teaches Aesthetic Realism to in classes, consultations, and at youth centers in the Metropolitan area with consultant Barbara Allen. He stands for a world I want to hold close to me, and that makes me more myself.

III. Does Our Motive in Sex Strengthen or Weaken Us?

Jeffrey Carduner said, "One of the things I'm most grateful for is how Aesthetic Realism sees sex. It is revolutionary, tremendously kind and sane, and different from anything else. And Aesthetic Realism for the first time makes conscious that we have a motive in everything we do, and this includes sex very much." Many persons were leaning forward in their seats. "We either have a good motive as to sex, to strengthen the person we're close to, to respect them, or we can use sex as a means of revenge on a world we see as not giving us what we want."

Then I continued, "People don't know this and the confusion about sex is enormous. And there's a great deal of pretense about it. Articles and books about sex are everywhere; people buy them, go to counselors, and try the recommendations. The main idea presented is how, technically, to have the utmost pleasure. Nowhere is a person's motive talked about." Mr. Carduner added, "People get pleasure, but feel awful anyway. The manuals don't stop the arguments or the feeling we've cheapened ourselves." Men and women nodded, agreeing, and one man, showing the cynicism of many people in America, said boldly from the back, "If you think of sex in terms of love, forget it."

We read a section from An Outline of Aesthetic Realism by Eli Siegel titled "Sex Is Either":

"Sex is either the means of having the world just the way we want it -- that is, having contempt for it; or it can be the means of making the ordinary things of the world take on more meaning. Sex, therefore, is always either for contempt or respect. The chief thing wrong with sex is that it so easily can be used as a means of ecstatic revenge on a world which we see as not having been good to us. Sex often is revenge not expression."

"The way men generally have used sex," said Mr. Carduner, "has made them dislike themselves and made women suffer. I was representative. My desire was to conquer women, not to know them. After I'd gotten what I thought I wanted from a relationship, I'd become angry and disgusted with a woman and she with me." I noticed Burt along with the other men were riveted; and women had a look of wonder, hearing a man speak so self-critically with such ease. People are thirsty to hear honesty on this subject. Mr. Carduner continued, "In an Aesthetic Realism class, Mr. Siegel asked me:

"In getting pleasure, do you think you have more respect for the world or less?"

JC: I've seen that I've had less.

ES: When you conquered a woman, did you respect her more?

JC: Oh, no, I don't think so.

ES: Do you believe it made for not liking yourself? This is what men are most cowardly about. They cannot say, "The way I am with a woman makes me not like myself."

Hearing what Mr. Siegel said with such courage and depth to a man stirred our audience enormously. One woman, Adrienne, said, "Most men don't show they don't like themselves." "Aesthetic Realism," I said, "shows ethics in men and women are exactly the same, and when a woman sees this, it makes for enormous, new respect for men." They had it!

We told them: Eli Siegel saw the subject of sex, like poetry, art, history. "If two people are close to each other," he said, "and they do not use the occasion to be fair to all things ...they are interfering with the nature of things....Sex ought to be the highest point in good nature."

I said, "What I went through is so representative of women today. I often felt nauseous after sex and sometimes would cry, even though I was with a man I thought I loved, and had succeeded in pleasing him and being pleased myself." As we looked in the eyes of the women there, we saw they felt their own turmoil was being described. I was so glad to tell them, "I learned I felt awful because I'd used sex to have contempt, to feel, 'Look how excited this man is about me!' When a woman sees she is after this, and criticizes herself, she is freed to have the big feeling about a man that is really love. As I'm close to my husband now," I said, "we talk about happenings in the world, our work, things we saw, and the emotion this makes for is enormous. Sex isn't separate, but a means of being more fair to everything." Later, Sandy, feeling so understood, looked at us with tears in her eyes and said with new hope, "That's it!"

IV. The Love People Hope for Is like Art

In the final portion of this class, we were very proud to tell them, "The solution to our deepest and sometimes most painful questions, Aesthetic Realism shows, is in the art of the world. Eli Siegel stated, and we have seen it as true in thousands of instances, "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

Then we placed on an easel a large reproduction of a beautiful painting, "Bal a Bougival," by the nineteenth century French Impressionist,Ê Pierre-Auguste Renoir. "Here," we said, "opposites we've been speaking about, that so often pain people in love, are beautifully one -- mind and body, assertion and yielding, intimate and wide, two individual people and the world."

When we asked what they saw, they were thoughtful and then many hands went up excitedly. "Isn't he aggressive?" one woman asked. "Look at that look!" -- another agreed. "Him?" said a man, "What about her?" "She's a coquette," someone said. We asked: "Is the man's purpose to conquer this girl or to be affected by her? See how tenderly his hand is on her back, and his outstretched hand is not clutching. "I see it!" Natalie said. Some persons moved closer to the painting.

"How are mind and body made one here?" we asked. People were thoughtful, "Well, we see their bodies," said a man. I said, "The girl's dress is soft, yet sharp with it's red trim. Does Renoir show a woman's mind to be alive and keen through that vibrant red hat, and the red trim?" They were surprised to see these had to do with mind. "Isn't this how we want to be seen by men?" I asked.

One man said meditatively, showing how the ideas we had presented affected him, that it wouldn't be as good if they were just concentrating on each other, "it would be too enclosed; the world wouldn't be present."

Everybody wanted to speak. Another man said, "But look how close their heads are." We looked. Mr. Carduner said, "See this space?" And we pointed to a tree in the background between them and seeming to rise from their hats. And we saw Renoir relates this couple to other people, to many objects, to pavement, even old cigarette butts, and a little bouquet of violets fallen on the ground. This woman and man are not isolated, they are with the wide world. This is what we look for in love.

Afterwards, many people came to thank us and asked for more information about Aesthetic Realism. Many asked, "Will you come back?" And many wanted to tell us about their lives. I was particularly moved as Sandy, who represents women everywhere said, "I was married twice, once to a professional baseball player and then to a commercial artist." Her eyes were very happy. "So much of what you said applies to me, the contempt ...we had such contempt." Her pain had been explained and she'd gotten new, solid hope. I was grateful to tell her, "Eli Siegel understood women, what we feel to ourselves, inside. Every woman has a right to know this."

The director of the organization was radiant, "It was really great! Great!" she said, "You covered a lot of ground. I learned so much!"

When the education of Aesthetic Realism is standard throughout America, love won't go wrong. All people will be able to have the passionate, wide, deep feeling they hope for in love, love that makes the world a kinder, fairer place.

Margot Carpenter, a poet and writer on women's issues, is a consultant on the faculty of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation with the teaching trio The Three Persons. Originally from Miami, Ms. Carpenter was a soloist with the Miami Ballet. In Aesthetic Realism public seminars she has given papers on important women in literature, history and the arts, including some of the great prima ballerinas of the world. She studies in the professional classes taught by Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism Ellen Reiss. To learn about Aesthetic Realism consultations for individuals which take place in person and by telephone to many parts of the world, you may contact the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation, 141 Greene Street, New York, NY 10012, (212) 777-4490, and visit the website: www.AestheticRealism.org