Regarding venting, ranting on a forum, angry retorts are one thing, conclusive retorts with an absolute sense of righteousness are closing remarks that conclude the topic and may effectively close down communication between all parties. While the effective rant can actually increase understanding between all parties and build a thread towards further understanding.
The venting type of comment may appear abruptly and as if final. In the venting comment, it is easy to detect anger on the part of the sender by simply focusing in on how the comment makes you feel. This type of comment effectively is designed to shut down further conversation thus implying the furthest truth has been reached for all concerned. It is controlling behavior on the part of the initiator. Being on a rant on the other hand is not venting, nor manipulation, nor closing the topic with conclusiveness and supposed authority. It keeps the thread open for further comments.
Ranting is to let off steam build up and arrives at a different location with a different objective than venting. Letting off steam or ranting has a different effect than judgmental venting does. The reader is allowed to enter the mind of the ranter and identify with the sender, whereas the venter is closing the topic with assumed authority and no invitation to enter the world of the sender implying a superiority complex over the reader or readers, or an attitude of I've said all I'm going to say type of attitude. Again, it is important to discern what the words make you feel in the first impression of reading someone.
In ACIM (a Course In Miracles) it is true, a loving being does not ask another to share a grievance. A grievance cannot be shared, as love can be shared. You can feel bad for someone if they need sympathy, but that is not the same thing as when a love feeling is shared with another by a positive remark.
A grievance vented about to another is entirely different than critical analysis of sharing the way one feels in detail by prefacing the observation
It is how I feel. To prequalify any statement you can start with "I think." Or I perceive this, or you can say "I see, sense, touch, from what you said. You will get my drift, that one person cannot say they know, for another person. The knowing is an individual "feeling." And so we return to the idea of owning our feelings, yet not forcing another to agree with us.
Thus the prequalifying statement can be determined as an opinion but not an assertion of righteousness wrested from the other. Further communication can then commence to the invitation such as "what do you think?" Unless of course, you don't give a hoot what they think. You may on the other hand wish to pursue a topic without assuming that you know everything in the world and nobody can add to your knowledge. In this case, I assume you wouldn't be on a forum but perhaps out golfing or competiting in sports.
In both the sender and receiver is allowance then when self expression is allowed. There is not absolution, but a type of sharing that does away with guilty inferences, slam and dunks, rudeness or saracasm on either part.
Guilt, to take on or to give to another has nowhere to go, while descriptive sharing does have an effect on both the giver and receiver to continue.
This is a description on what love feels like between two or between nations. It is a joining, not a separative device.
Venting on the other hand does not ask for assistance in unraveling a question or concern. It frequently picks a scapegoat thought system. It points a finger at something that is wrong or someone else that is wrong and whittles away at it, until satisfied, the ego disowns the thought completely as coming solely from it's own self, the ego. Thoughts leave not their source. To say, a grievance cannot be shared. This is how we are inventive of our own problems.
This is how we blow them up into something that did not happen, because it was all in the mind of the one who carried the grievance. In many cases grievances are justified in talking about them, in a way that leads to a possible way to avoid the painful circumstance that may have occurred, being reported in words on the internet. If this is not concluded, then the topic stagnates and ends there as no one knows what to say, to make it all better.
There's not enough bandaids to fix everything. This is why I say a grievance cannot be shared. Only love can be shared, to make it expansive in a troubled world.
Indeed, love of one's self can be shared as long as there's is not guilt being foisted on another, such as pure gossip and clipped, abrupt statements imply. Loving another can be shared. Love increases in the world due to the nurturing of it verbally and otherwise.
Venting alone is an emotional outburst. It should, or could be contained within the walls of the counselor's office who knows what this energy is about and can stick a pin in the balloon of self righteousness indignation, while ranting can be like venting in one sense, the intention behind the rant or vent has to be determined before knowing what to do about it.
Much the same it is with children who throw a tantrum. They do not have self control yet. It is the parent that teaches self control through communication, but not by attacking the child's body as in a punishing way.
A good rant is appreciated by movie goers in the theater of life, as they identify with the struggles of the hero or heroine on such a rant that sets the receiver on the straight and narrow path of the common truth.
To identify is the common love. The common inspiration. It is a type of sharing. A type of oneness. To over-identify is considered immature at the least and can be construed as any number of negative assertions entirely away from the common objective of loving behavior and peaceable conduct, to say cooperative conduct which is helpful as opposed to denigrating.
For example, the people would never judge the hero or heroine in a movie where the good guy defeats the bad guy by defending the common good.
Here, identification with the common good is what happens.
The same identification happens with a thought system of study. One identifies with the steps of the program as beneficial and productive soul growth, while a proponent focuses on another belief system labeling the mispercieved thought system as cultish, incomplete, lacking in something or another. It is then attack feelings may occur. Or, if the thought system needs to be explained, defensive feelings can arise and clutter up the logical processes at that point. It is important again, to be aware of what you are feeling, whether you are writing something, or reading someone else. For in general, a feeling is easily picked up by those of us who are not even claiming to be psychic.
It is then that self control should be demonstrated by understanding the other person rather than attacking them in an effort to destroy what it is that brings them joy to share.
There are many ways to agree, the same as there are many ways to disagree and they can all be done in wrath or in allowance as the intention which brings forth further sharing.
Somewhere between kindness and self righteousness is a middle ground of balance in the self controlled individual. Empathy is one such item and can be learned.
A person who is always in disagreement with everything said and done is an unhappy individual that nobody wants to especially be around. If this unhappy camper find nothing to disagree about they can quickly find something to vent about, by finding something that another loves to talk about and then disagreeing simply because that's their behavior pattern, and so begins the process we are now calling trolling.
A troll necessarily trolls as a cat does it's catting. Such is the mind's propensity for creating unhappiness and discontent, in it's own locale or in group settings. A troll needs recognition of it's trolling activity which is not necessarily beneficial to the whole of the parties or party to whom it is perpetuating it's trolling activity upon. This is where the purposeful rant comes in. One may say it is myself ranting and joke about it, to lighten up the tensions. While the observer within all of us, can observe intentions intuitively.
To say in other words, the intention is what's important to look at. Is it a rant or a vent? None of us can be certain of anything, except for the love we feel inside of us which certainly needs expression. In a justified rant for instance, the intentions are good and if truth is revealed in the rant towards the common good, the common truth, the ranter is in actuality believing in the wholeness of the one to whom the rant is directed. In these cases they have associated before, and have a relationship to some degree or other. They have, so to speak earned the right to correct each other in a non threatening manner.
While extending unconditional love is the world's best corrective tool to solve perceived problems of communication, certain trigger words can achieve the opposite effect creating defensiveness which leads to further attack thoughts as others may join in further offering similar attack thoughts.
The argument for and against thought systems, or beliefs provides grist for the mill of the egos participating. Truth itself is necessarily illusionary in a world that is physically incapacitated to hear the voice of common truth, that which is called God is a voice of truth known in the heart, it is the love of unconditionality, the love that has no reason necessarily to exist. It just is.
I conclude therefore, that it is all of us who made the world and all of us will continue to make the world according to the meaning we apply to it, and we call this reality. Reality is personal, it's relative. And thus every man, woman and child has need of a personal guiding force within. Something which appears motherly or fatherly or greater than it's own self, while engaged in soul struggles here on earth. While it is not the real world if it is our illusions we continue to make of it. I conclude that man needs an intermediary teacher, that stands between him and All That Is unknown and that is the wholly whole spirit. The spirit of love, of truth and gracefully flowing, truth consumes all in it's fire; a fire that does not burn so much as it simply warms the heart cockles.
I must have come from Greece. I just wrote the word cockles, stemming from Grecian origins.
love is all about becoming vulnerable and letting go of control.
