Discipline + Attraction: The Two Poles of Love
Blog post brought to you by Laila Katie Helms
Discipline and Attraction: The Two Poles of Love
What actually carries someone forward on this path — discipline, or attraction? At this year’s gathering, Amany Shalaby and Nura Laird are preparing a session built around a simple answer: both, always both, and never really opposites at all.
Two poles, not opposites
Amany reminds us that discipline taken to an extreme becomes a rigidity that is harmful. Attraction taken to an extreme becomes chaos — a false freedom that is also harmful. Neither pole works alone. As Nura put it, they’re not opposites so much as two ends of a single polarity, swinging back and forth, the way Jamal and Jalal alternate — first drawn in by attraction, then needing discipline to keep the love moving and growing, then finding attraction renewed on the other side of that work.
Think of the early stage of any real relationship: attraction brings you together, but discipline — showing up, doing the work — is what lets the relationship mature, and leads to a renewed attraction.
A remedy tailored to you
Discipline doesn’t look the same for everyone, and that’s by design. Amany offered a simple image: two people, one with high blood pressure and one with low blood pressure, need completely different remedies — and each has to stay consistent with their own. The same is true walking this path. Your discipline might not look like your neighbor’s discipline, and that’s not disagreement. That’s just two different remedies for two different people, both walking toward the same Unity.
Loving someone while walking differently
Nura shared something personal: a close friend in her local community with whom she disagrees completely on a difficult political question. They’ve had hard conversations about it. They still don’t see it the same way. And they’ve made an explicit agreement, spoken out loud: love each other anyway, no matter what.
That’s the real test of this teaching — not loving people we already agree with, but staying in real friendship with someone whose views differ sharply from our own, without either pretending the difference away or letting it become the whole relationship.
