Introduction
In the final session of OSWG’s second channeling intensive, Q’uo explains the relationship between the concepts of respect and green ray love. They begin by defining respect as according dignity to another as an equal part of the Creator. They then characterize green ray love as seeing yourself and the other as part of the same whole, which requires that one first respects the other. Q’uo considers the situation of opening the heart to another who cannot return the act, as well as the situation in which mated entities struggle to maintain an open-hearted connection.
Group Question
What is the difference between loving someone and respecting someone?
Channeled Message
(Joseph channeling)
We are those of Q’uo. We greet you in the infinite blessings of our One Creator. We are pleased to join this circle once again to address the poignant topic of the distinction between love and respect.
We ask that you treat our words as thoughts from another self, as ideas that may or may not be helpful. We encourage you to consult your own judgment about the use of our words. We do not wish to be seen as bastions of dogma.
We begin, then, with the nature of respect. For it is the simpler concept. There are multiple things that this word might entail. There are at least two kinds of respect. First there is respect that is a kind of admiration in which a person must earn your respect. This kind of respect is like the judgment that an entity is now mature. It suggests that failing to gain respect is a consequence of having behaved in a way that is judged by the other self as insufficient in its propriety to one’s situation. Maturity is a typical mode in which this form of respect is either accorded or withheld, but one might fail to gain the respect of others in their capacity in a special role, such as a prominent institutional leadership role. In which case, the expectations of behavior tend to be more stringent.
Another sense in which we might take the word “respect” is that in which each individual is treated as the kind of individual it is. This would be more akin to what you may call “dignity”. In this sense, to fail to respect a person is to disregard the person as an equal to oneself in the sense of being a mind/body/spirit complex apprised of its own free will and engaged in its own evolutionary path, which is the most important path in the world to that person. Hence, the respect in the sense of equality, the dignified form of respect; is an expression of the equal status of each entity as a spark or a portion of the Creator.
We believe it is the second concept that has the most connection to that of love: the equal dignity form of respect. We believe that the other concept is more specialized in its usage.
What, then, is the relation between this form of respect and love? Well, now we must say something about the concept of love. This concept is more difficult to characterize, for much of what is contained in the concept is a reference to an experiential state. How can one tell or describe a loving experience to an individual whose green ray has never been opened? To this person, the word “love” will have a distinctive character and yet fail to capture the green ray experience. In other words, the word “love” will have some meaning for such a person, but despite their belief that they may understand what you have in mind in your account of a green ray interaction, then you and this other person will be speaking past one another. So we must be careful in using this word “love” to carve out the experience of the green ray interaction.
This, perhaps, is one of the reasons we use the word “unconditional.” It distinguishes this form of love from the other possible meanings. But then, what is it to unconditionally love? Notice that loving is not the same as accepting, because one might perfectly well accept that another is as they are and yet feels no fondness for the other. This, then, suggests that fondness is a mark of unconditional love. We might suggest that perhaps fondness is too hedonistic a characterization. The green ray love is not all flowers and chocolates. The condition of relating to an individual through the open heart is a condition of metaphysical or emotional intertwinement with the energy of the other in the sense that you are in the interaction seeing see the other as part of the same whole as you. But in such an interaction, it may not be the case that the experience of seeing the other as part of the same whole as you is necessarily a happy one. Rather, the tendency will be that the valence of feeling rises and falls together with the other in the mutually open-hearted connection. That is, when two entities interact with one another through the open heart, the joys are mutually felt; the sorrows are mutually felt. And the discordant emotions between the two are negotiated in an oscillating fashion until harmonic resonance is achieved.
How, then, does respect figure into this condition? In truth, just as acceptance is a fundamental requirement for the open heart, for the loving relationship, so too is mutual respect. In fact, mutual respect is even more foundational than acceptance. After all, you can believe that another person deserves or is well accorded respect. You can more than just believe; you can be convinced or you can operate under the conviction or under the strong desire to treat others with dignity and yet not accept them. So then, you see that there is a layering or a nesting or even hierarchy of progressive attitudes that must be ascended to arrive at the unconditional love, the compassionate open heart. Respect is much more a matter of the orange ray, as acceptance is more a matter of the yellow.
Notice also that in loving another it will not always be the case that the other loves back. Not every relationships is between two individuals who opt to see each other or who are capable of seeing each other as part of the same whole of sharing their affective states, of sharing their joys and sorrows, sharing their attributions of significance, the wins and losses. It is entirely possible that one loves another who cannot love back. And in this condition, which is very common, one takes joy in the other’s joys and sorrow in the other’s sorrows, under the understanding that the other cannot return and may not even appreciate it fully. And yet, even though the other does not appreciate fully the offering or even understand the nature of the offering, even so, to the loving individual, it is worth the offering. For in any situation in which you open your heart to the other and offer the unconditional attitude of belonging to the same whole, of sharing the same joys and sorrows, in so offering to the other person, you open an opportunity for them to come alive to the possibility within themselves.
An opportunity, however, is not the same as a signal, or a call, or a beacon. In the case of the opportunity to reciprocate love, it must be noticed by the other self. And often the other self does not notice. Thus, the open heart is often a sorrowful experience because one gives so often to the other what one knows the other simply cannot yet fully appreciate and hopes one day it will. There is something deeply foolish, you might say, about the hope that another would notice the opportunity to reciprocate love in a universe full of distractions. But the foolish willingness to continue with an open heart, to remain open receptive to the possibility of love from another is part of what grants the strength to continue on.
We would like also to comment on the possibility of allowing oneself to become a doormat. The worry that may arise or the concern that may arise that, in describing or in thinking of the benefits or the value in maintaining an open heart even with those who cannot reciprocate that one may set oneself up to be taken advantage of. And we say to you: there is some truth to this. Indeed, you will be taken advantage of. But, by far, it is more common to simply not be recognized or not be understood in the offering. And the occasions in which you may actually touch the heart of another may seem well worth the occasions when the other makes of you a chump, so to speak.
We should then comment that the kind of protection that you may want from the other who may not appreciate you offering of love is the protection from the other who does not respect you. Since failing to respect you as a being whose concerns fundamentally matter is already itself an expression that such an entity is not prepared for the open heart. So we may suggest that if there is a bet you are to hedge in terms of your outward expression; if there is a protection that you wish to put in place, then respect is a helpful concept.
But how can one maintain an open heart, how can one offer unconditional love to another who does not respect it and yet not place oneself in the position of being taken advantage of? Which is to say, what does it mean to be unconditionally loving to another self in a way that does not leave you immediately vulnerable to attack from an individual form whom you should reasonably expect an attack? And at this point we may suggest to you that an attack itself can only land if you are in position to receive it. To put the same idea differently, when you offer the open heart to another, when you express yourself to the other as a being whose joys and sorrows you share and the other reciprocates with some kind of attack, you can simply step out of the way. When you know what it is you are getting into, when you understand that this person does not even respect you, the attack looks different. The barbs may fall away. The danger in the relationship is in the situation in which you do not recognize or do not appreciate or simply have had the wool pulled over your eyes about this other person’s failure to respect you.
Then we can say that we encourage you to be open-hearted to all, while at the same time we encourage you to be mindful of the devices that those who cannot even muster respect for you may implement in their attempt to use you for your own ends. We do not encourage suspicion of all. We simply encourage walking with the eyes open.
We feel that this answer extends somewhat beyond the question, but we hope that the connections between love and respect have come through.
So we would now take any questions. We are Q’uo.
Questioner: I have a question, Q’uo. My question pertains primarily to the mated relationship. And though your characterization necessarily painted with a somewhat broad brush these concepts so as to make clear where the delineations lie, in point of fact it seems that a great many relationships involve what one might call sort of ephemeral openings of the green ray love which can as quickly as they open close down again or seem to be somehow situationally tied so that they appear at irregular intervals and it’s a golden moment when both parties to the relationship are able to have an open heart at the same time, but very often it is not the case. So the question that I have is since it’s true that a loving relationship even one that has to some extent these openings to green ray are also quite frequently permeated by need and that need itself stands in the way of the open heart. So when one finds oneself in the position of having the open heart in relation to another whose heart is not able to be opened at that moment because of some structure of need that they are carrying, would you say it is a facet of the quality of respect to allow that need to have its sway without pressing the other individual for something that that person cannot at that moment anyway provide?
We are Q’uo. We believe we grasp the question. The need that you speak of is a function, as you know, of the distortions of orange and yellow ray, depending on the kind of need you may have in mind. The mated entities that experience the ephemeral opening of the heart and who come together in the mutual understanding that this ephemeral open heart is the moment that inspired the mating – which we take you to have this situation in mind – in this kind of situation, it is not merely that the open heart moment between the two inspired the mating; it’s that it acts as a signal that the two are indeed treading the same path and see each in the other the possibility to walk further along that path, and the possibility of success in walking further along that path.
The hope, when this moment inspires the two to deepen their relationship, is often that future moments may yet be enjoyed. The hope might also be that the two can recognize that not all such future moments will be mutually open hearted. We take you to be getting at the situation in which one of the entities maintains the open heart and the other recoils back into a kind of protective or defensive posture. And we do not mean defensive in the sense that what comes from the open-hearted one is an attack; more in the feeling that there is a hunger or a longing or an emptiness felt within the self and it is hoped that the other, who has the open-heart, has on offer what may fill that need. So in such a condition, when the open-hearted entity in the relationship offers the love and the one who in this particular moment has not been able to access the open-heart feels the need that the other may fill, the entity who feels the need may not be able in the moment to accept what is on offer from the open-hearted. Thus, a conflict may ensue.
However, in such a scenario, it is well for the one who in the moment successfully held the heart open to remember the one who currently has the need will, too, have a moment of open-heartedness and that the self, too, may find itself responding with need rather than with the sympathetic or the harmonic mutuality of the open heart. For in the mated situation, the two have agreed to walk a path together and must trust that the other is up to the task, even if, in the moment, a miscommunication or an energetic mismatch holds sway.
Well then, what options are available to the committed entity who finds themselves in a place of an open heart offering what they have to offer and the other seems to want to take something of a particular kind because the other cannot accept the relationship as it is? And there are many options available. The course of action that would be appropriate depends on the circumstance. One might decide that if it’s available, the blue ray is the appropriate nexus of activity, since the blue ray has a more provocative potential that the green ray and may succeed in lifting the other back up and remind the other that they too cherish the open heart. A different entity may find that the best course of action is to humor the need of the other, for a moment may come when you, too, have a need that needs humoring. And one cannot become harvestable all in a moment. If the other’s need is hard to accept, then acceptance is the order of the day.
Regardless, the basis of the mated relationship, if it is a mating and not a caricature of the mated relationships – that is, if it is a spiritual mating – the basis of this relationship is trust that the path is shared, that the way lies ahead, and that each will be there for the other. This is the stabilizing feature of such relationships.
Is this sufficient for an answer?
Questioner: It is, thank you, Q’uo.
We are Q’uo. Is there one last question at this time?
There being no more questions then, we take our leave in the abiding love and generosity and peace of the One Infinite Creator. Godspeed, my friends, on your journeys. And we look forward to our company with you once again. We are Q’uo. Adonai.