Editorial The text appeared, with minor modifications, in the author’s book "Introduction to Neurolinguistic Programming" published in Romanian in 2015.

Love story

Gabriel Suciu, Romania

Gabriel R. Suciu is a sociologist. He is interested in NLP and creativity. He has written two books – “Erving Goffman and the Organizing Theories” (2010) and “Introduction to Neuro-Linguistic Programming” (2015) – and some articles, like: “Multiple Intelligences” (2011). E-mail: gabriel_remus_suciu@yahoo.com, gabriel.suciu@ymail.com

What is love?

If the world was made up of atoms, the love would be a chemical reaction that would propagate in the human body and it would be consumed through an exchange of fluids between two or more participants. As a general rule, it would take, on average, four years, with a beginning, a climax, and an ending. Then a new cycle would begin, and so on. Therefore, some loves would be fashionable, while others don’t, the importance of a person being given by the number of his collection of loves.

And if the world, instead of being made up of atoms, would consist of stories… the medical picture shown above would change its meaning. For it would be one of many and endless stories told, even! one of the most sterile and uninteresting. A fact that is even more evident if, in the above presentation, the word “love” would be replaced by the word “flu”. Therefore, the following lines will present another story that makes up the fabric of our world, a story about love...

“Once upon a time, just in the times long past of Antiquity, when in Thrace a child of royal blood saw the sunlight for the first time, his parents rushed to call Orpheus. Since its birth, the child promised to achieve things that would remain deeply engraved in history, for the name had common roots with the word , roots that in Greek culture made reference to a lack, an absence.

And as time passed on, this child acquired the knowledge of lyre and voice, a knowledge learned from the god Apollo himself. When he was starting playing, wild animals became mild, the trees start changing their places, the waters start changing their channels, and the rocks began to sob.

And gathering lot of people with his music, as well as from the earth as from the heavens, one day, Orpheus encountered Eurydice, a mountain nymph. And from that moment something inexplicable became evident in the hearts of the two, this being a good reason for which they have decided, shortly, to tie their lives in marriage.

But only half the story is told, for the nymph Eurydice was coveted, at the same time, by Aristaeus who was planned to kill Orpheus and to remain only with her. And, after a while, Aristaeus moved to action, hiding in some bushes on the path that Orpheus and Eurydice would pass. Becoming aware of the threat, Orpheus took the hand of Eurydice and they ran through the forest.

Their run last for a while until, at some point, Eurydice stumbled and fell. At that point, Orpheus and Aristaeus saw Eurydice’s glimmer of life going off hastily, because she stepped on a nest of snakes, and a viper bitted her, causing her death. Following the death of Eurydice, Aristaeus vanished into the woods, leaving Orpheus to mourn his wife.

The lack of Eurydice was so great that Orpheus thought to go to the underworld to free her and bring her to life. Once there, he started to play with his lyre and his voice: Hades, the god of this world, began to cry alongside Persephone, his wife; while Cerberus, the three-headed guard, began to yelp, covering his ears with its fiercely paws. In this way, they were persuaded to give back Eurydice to Orpheus. With one condition: to look at his beloved nymph only when they were together in the world of the living.

Full of courage, Orpheus went back to the living world, playing the lyre and voice, and being attentive to the footsteps of his beloved one. As he was approaching the exit, his heart was beating ever louder. For once on the other realm, Orpheus returned to avidly look at Eurydice. But he saw only her shadow, for not paying enough attention to Hades and Persephone’s condition that stated not to look at his beloved than when both of them would be in the living world. While Orpheus was in the world of the living with a step, Eurydice was in the underworld with another step.”

This story has a structure, which is widely discussed by Joseph Campbell in his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” (1949), which was followed by a pleiade of other authors who refined his statements, among those followers being Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts with their book “The Hero’s Journey” (2009). These authors show that the stories – and in this case this love story – differ only in content, because they are similar in form. And this form, this pattern that is observed every time, has the following elements:

• The call
• The acceptance of the call (the refusing of the call not being viable)
• Crossing the boundaries (or, in other words, the initiation)
• The confrontation with the demons and the shadows
• The formation of the self
• The transformation
• The return

These elements of the structure of stories will be analyzed separately and will be pointed out in the story of Orpheus, Eurydice and Aristaeus:

1. The call. The purpose of the soul is to awaken, not to sleep, and the call awakens the soul. More specifically, this call implies that there is a challenge, a crisis, or a transition: something has been lost and should be (re)-found, something has died and should be brought back to life; something full of vitality was wounded and should be healed. In the story of Orpheus, Eurydice and Aristaeus, the call occurs when Eurydice stepped on the nest of snakes, one of them biting her and causing her death.
2. The acceptance of the call / the refusing of the call. To the call, the hero can respond positively, accepting it, or he can respond negatively, refusing it. When the hero accepts the call, the journey is sure to happen. But when the hero refuses the call, most of the times, his reason in this world is questioned – his life would be lost in oblivion, or would merge with the death. And the above story of love depicts Orpheus as accepting the call, and Aristaeus as refusing the call.
3. The boundaries. The word “boundaries” has several meanings. It can mean a physical separation between two territories or between two mental areas; and it means that once someone steps from a point to another point, there is no turning back, and no changing mind(s), because the only way is straightforward. The world of the living and the world of the dead are two territories, are two physical and mental areas, and even if in the story it is not mentioned anything about the fact that there are certain boundaries that define them, the reader discovers that Orpheus descended into the underworld and therefore he passed these borders, these boundaries and thresholds.
4. The guardians. The guardians are those characters which help the hero to complete the journey: even if the hero is the only one involved in this trip, the guardians can help him from time to time. The god Apollo is such a guardian, for from this god Orpheus learned to play with the lyre and with the voice in such a charmed way.
5. The demons and the shadows. While demons are external negative forces, the shadows are internal negative forces. And both of these two forces (i.e. the demons and the shadows) feed on, and become stronger because of, anger, frustration, guilt, grief, shame and other such feelings that disturb the hero journey. For instance, Hades, Persephone and Cerberus are demons - if you consider that the world of the dead is something outside like a physical territory; or shadows - if you accept that the world of the dead is something inside like a mental zone.
6. The self. The self is different from the ego: while the ego is concerned with the eternity of the present, well the self is concerned with the presence of eternity. The self is essentially spiritual, while the ego is essentially material. Orpheus’ spiritual and material achievement is a fact because he changed the nature of minerals, plants and stones, not to mention that he transformed the human nature, only to, finally, change the nature of spirits and gods, for he is the only hero who has ever had the power – in Greek mythology – to raise someone from the dead.
7. The transformation. The transformation process presupposes that a thing is, and is not, itself, in the same time, as this thing integrates its opposites – like death and life, indifference and love, sorrow and joy, and so on. This is the reason why it is said that the love has the power to transform something into something else, as it is said that the music has the same mysterious powers, both those sayings being true in the case of Orpheus.
8. The return. As every journey has a beginning, so every journey has an end, and the end involves the returning of the hero. At this stage, the hero gives something and receives something else: he shares treasures and resources acquired during the journey; and he receives, in return, the recognition of its virtues by the others. In the love story above, the recognition came much later, after the contempt and the hatred were present in their true nature. For..

“While old, after so many years when Orpheus sang his love for Eurydice, one day, at sunset, he outraged the priestesses of Dionysus precisely because he hasn’t bestowed his love. So they have ripped trees and boulders and threw them on Orpheus, even if none of them has reached the target just because of the music that divert them from their path. So, finally, the priestesses seized the poet and tore him piece by piece.

This was one of the endless stories that the world of everyday life is made of, and this was one of the endless stories that are even more real than any chemical reaction of some particles of atoms. This was one of the endless love stories, alongside of mine, yours, his or her. Blessed be the ground our loved ones walk on...

References

1. Campbell, Joseph (2004) ”The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, Princepton University Press

2. Gilligan, Stephen & Robert Dilts (2009): ”The Hero Journey”, Crown House Publishing Limited

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