bellalee

All About Love

38 min read

Author: bell hooks

“This book tells us how to return to love” in a way that is free from patriarchal constraints and the matrix of oppression and ignorance created by modern society. It expands love’s definition beyond the notion of romance and emotional attachment — it empowers by providing the language needed to differentiate between love and other, often conditioned, feelings.

Though the ideas presented are powerful, their impact is (in my opinion) diminished through the assertive tone and excessive repetition. The writing leaves no room for reflection or reader interpretation. Instead, hooks seems to be trying to push her ideas onto the reader rather than allowing the reader to slowly digest her worldview as food for thought. Even so, I’d still strongly recommend this book to anyone who struggles with, or even just wants to improve, their relationships with others, as it helped me change my mindset to be more compassionate and understanding towards someone I could not see eye to eye with before. Approaching the book with an open mind and powering through the sometimes tiresome tone is worth it.

notes

  1. Defining love is important because it gives us a starting point
    1. Loss is easier to talk about than love
      1. We don’t know what love is
      2. Love in media is bound by the illusion of a gender binary
      3. Modern society is desensitized to sex and has an obsession with it, yet love is not taught
    2. Love is a mixture of care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, trust, and communication
    3. Love has become dominated by consumerist culture
  2. Love is an action rather than a feeling; it is a choice and a practice
    1. Nurturing our own and another’s spiritual growth
    2. Care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, trust, honest and open communication
    3. Cathexis is the feeling
    4. The first responsibility of love is to listen
    5. Love is rooted in solitude (^ref-55694, ^418722)
  3. There can be no love without justice
  4. Trust is the foundation of relationships
    1. People accept and normalize lying because Patriarchal femininity encourages weakness and Patriarchal masculinity encourages estrangement from selfhood — both require a masking of the truth
  5. Love yourself before you love others
  6. All awakening to love is spiritual awakening (^ref-22259, ^ref-44824, ^ref-43850)
    1. Love is essential to 內丹術 inner alchemy
  7. There can be no love with power and domination (^ref-52812, ^ref-13601, ^ref-51646)
    1. The privilege of power is at the heart of patriarchal thinking (^ref-54962)
    2. Rilke similarly implies that feminism, with women taking the first step, will help create a “more human form of love” (^83bb70)
  8. In a consumerist society, the passion to connect is replaced by the passion to possess (^ref-64824)
    1. Society is conditioned to seek instant gratification, but love requires time and commitment
    2. Living simply creates space for love
  9. Community fills us with love (^ref-30635, ^ref-43288)
  10. Love makes generosity easy
    1. Forgiveness is an act of generosity
      1. It contributes to optimism instead of cynicism (人性本善 / 人性本惡)
  11. Romance is different from love
    1. People see what they wish to see
    2. There is no love exclusively for romantic relationships (^ref-60313, ^ref-2046, ^ref-60075)
    3. True love exists, but it can be scary because it exposes the innermost self, maskless (^ref-41470, ^ref-13453)
  12. Fear of death prevails over love of life in modern society, creating a certain madness and paranoia (^ref-46214, ^ref-30701, ^ref-3362)
    1. Cultures of domination court death
  13. Grief sustains love in death (^ref-14418, ^ref-55047)
    1. Love is both the cause and result of fate (^ref-57629)
    2. Living with love allows one to live without regrets and thus embrace death as a part of life
  14. Healing is an act of communion (^ref-57967)
    1. With others
      1. Healthy interdepedency ^ref-53836
    2. With God (^ref-3283)
  15. Sin as spiritual forgetfulness
  16. Compassion is empathy without judgement
  17. Fear stands in the way of love (^ref-43430, *^ref-51646)
    1. Love gives strength (^ref-37539)
  18. There is a collective wish to return to love as 00 The Fool 🜁⛢ (^ref-9135)
    1. Loving leads to paradise (^ref-50255)
    2. The space of lack is also a space of possibility (^ref-30496)
  19. Healing happens when wounds are embraced
  20. Angels as spiritual guides, daemons (Demian - The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth)

thoughts and reactions

Self-love is similar to the Dao principle of

Transclude of The-Dao-De-Jing-道德經#^ref-44150
releasing ourselves from the constructs created by the environment.

I don’t like bell hook’s writing style in this essay collection because it’s very repetitive — yes, we get it. Emphasis and repetition helps make things memorable, but there’s a fine line between being helpful and being annoying. She writes like the audience is stupid.

Mainstream western media focuses on systems of oppression as the basis, whereas alternative media emphasizes love, peace, and subverting these norms (e.g. Trigun, ORV, Hades, etc.). There is hope yet.

Rather than teaching us how to love, it educates about how society impacts perceptions of love. How can we subtly integrate a love ethic into society?

I think this book is helpful in that it defines love so one can easily identify unloving situations instead of falling victim to them. I know how to love, but sometimes I can be blind to lovelessness.

How can we condition society to be dare to face the unknown? How can we prioritize justice over greed?

quotes

Introduction: Grace: Touched by Love

in the song of solomon there is this passage that reads: “i found him whom my soul loves. i held him and would not let him go.” to holding on, to knowing again that moment of rapture, of recognition where we can face one another as we really are, stripped of artifice and pretense, naked and not ashamed.

Yet young listeners remain reluctant to embrace the idea of love as a transformative force.

  • Reminds me of the core theme of Trigun
    • Love in media is important, not just sexual love, not just relationships
      • Love of all kinds that doesn’t need a label
        • Transcendant
        • Communicated through feelings
          • It can’t be dissected
            • Whoever looks at the matter seriously finds that, as for death, which is difficult, no explanation, no solution, has yet been discovered for love, which is difficult too: there are no directions, no path. Letters to a Young Poet

Famous for work that calls attention to the “inner child”, Bradshaw believes that ending patriarchy is one step in the direction of love.

  • Also reminds me of Letters to a Young Poet
    • One day (there are already reliable signs which speak for it and which begin to spread their light, especially in the northern countries), one day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer just signify the opposite of the male but something in their own right, something which does not make one think of any supplement or limit but only of life and existence: the female human being.
  • Men’s perceptions of love rooted in fantasy

Perhaps this is because all that enlightened woman may have to say about love will stand as a direct threat and challenge to the visions men have offered us.

One: Clarity: Give Love Words

And they know that what we think love means is not always what they believe it means. Our confusion about what we mean when we use the word “love” is the source of our difficulty in loving.

  • Labels create the bondage of dogmas that mutes the song of existence
    • “for their nature tells them that questions of love, even less than all other important matters, cannot be solved publicly and by following this or that consensus; that they are questions that touch the quick of what it is to be human and which in every case require a new, particular and purely private response” Letters to a Young Poet
  • Definition of love is sloppy (Love and death are similar)
    • I think Rilke did well in comparing it to death and suggesting that it requires a journey down the paths of solitude, introspection
      • But of course that’s speaking from my own experiences, I was lucky to grow up in a loving family and not have to suffer the abuse and trauma that many others have in their pasts
        • Then, a purpose for my life would be to help those around me find love, too

M. Scott Peck’s classic self-help book The Road Less Travelled, first published in 1978. Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, he defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Explaining further, he continues: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.”

To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients — care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.

When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect with them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called “cathexis.” … Since their feeling is that of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love.

related

highlights

life was not worth living if we did not know love. — location: [29]

We can never go back. I know that now. We can go forward. — location: [38]

All the years of my life I thought I was searching for love I found, retrospectively, to be years where I was simply trying to recover what had been lost, to return to the first home, to get back the rapture of first love. — location: [39]

I feel our nation’s turning away from love as intensely as I felt love’s abandonment in my girlhood. Turning away we risk moving into a wilderness of spirit so intense we may never find our way home again. I write of love to bear witness both to the danger in this movement, and to call for a return to love. Redeemed and restored, love returns us to the promise of everlasting life. When we love we can let our hearts speak. — location: 44

It is possible to speak with our heart directly. Most ancient cultures know this. We can actually converse with our heart as if it were a good friend. In modern life we have become so busy with our daily affairs and thoughts that we have lost this essential art of taking time to converse with our heart. — location: 49

“The search for love continues even in the face of great odds,” — location: 55

it was a despair rooted in the fear that love did not exist, could not be found. — location: 64

public art can be a vehicle for the sharing of life-affirming thoughts. — location: 74

Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart. — location: 89

Contemplating death has always been a subject that leads me back to love. — location: 127

my first thought as I waited for test results was that I was not ready to die because I had not yet found the love my heart had been seeking. — location: 130

Male fantasy is seen as something that can create reality, whereas female fantasy is regarded as pure escape. — location: 136

Female sexist thinking may lead a woman to feel she already knows what another woman will say. Such a reader may feel that she has more to gain by reading what men have to say. — location: 142

Famous for work that calls attention to the “inner child,” Bradshaw believes that ending patriarchy is one step in the direction of love. However, his work on love has never received ongoing attention and celebration. It did not get the notice given work by men who write about love while affirming sexist-defined gender roles. — location: 150

Perhaps this is because all that enlightened woman may have to say about love will stand as a direct threat and challenge to the visions men have offered us. — location: 155

Ultimately, though, the authors remain wedded to belief systems, which suggest that there are basic inherent differences between women and men. In actuality, all the concrete proof indicates that while the perspectives of men and women often differ, these differences are learned characteristics, not innate, or “natural,” traits. — location: 163

It is far easier to talk about loss than it is to talk about love. It is easier to articulate the pain of love’s absence than to describe its presence and meaning in our lives. — location: 173

This book tells us how to return to love. All About Love: New Visions provides radical new ways to think about the art of loving, offering a hopeful, joyous vision of love’s transformative power. It lets us know what we must do to love again. Gathering love’s wisdom, it lets us know what we must do to be touched by love’s grace. — location: 201

Without a supple vocabulary, we can’t even talk or think about it directly. — location: 208

And they know that what we think love means is not always what they believe it means. Our confusion about what we mean when we use the word “love” is the source of our difficulty in loving. — location: 212

To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication. — location: 232

Since many women believe they will never know fulfilling love, they are willing to settle for strategies that help ease the pain and increase the peace, pleasure, and playfulness in existing relationships, particularly romantic ones. — location: 305

Rather than sharing strategies that would help us become more loving it actually encourages everyone to adapt to circumstances where love is lacking. — location: 302

When we intervene on mystifying assumptions that love cannot be defined by offering workable, useful definitions, we are already creating a context where love can begin to flourish. — location: 313

But definitions can be limiting. Labels create the bondage of dogmas.

Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being. — location: 325

There can be no love without justice. — location: 363

The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be. — location: 480

Lots of children are confused by the insistence that they simultaneously be honest and yet also learn how to practice convenient duplicity. As they mature they begin to see how often grown-ups lie. They begin to see that few people around them tell the truth. I was raised in a world where children were taught to tell the truth, but it did not take long for us to figure out that adults did not practice what they preached. — location: 496

Often, men who would never think of lying in the workplace lie constantly in intimate relationships. This seems to be especially the case for heterosexual men who see women as gullible. Many men confess that they lie because they can get away with it; their lies are forgiven. To understand why male lying is more accepted in our lives we have to understand the way in which power and privilege are accorded men simply because they are males within a patriarchal culture. — location: 525

Estrangement from feelings makes it easier for men to lie because they are often in a trance state, utilizing survival strategies of asserting manhood that they learned as boys. This inability to connect with others carries with it an inability to assume responsibility for causing pain. — location: 542

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung insightfully emphasized the truism that “Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking.” — location: 553

Trust is the foundation of intimacy. — location: 566

Stoltenberg writes: “Loving justice between a man and a woman does not stand a chance when other men’s manhood matters more. When a man has decided to love manhood more than justice, there are predictable consequences in all his relationships with women… . Learning to live as a man of conscience means deciding that your loyalty to the people whom you love is always more important than whatever lingering loyalty you may sometimes feel to other men’s judgment on your manhood.” — location: 572

Indeed, if patriarchal masculinity estranges men from their selfhood, it is equally true that women who embrace patriarchal femininity, the insistence that females should act as though they are weak, incapable of rational thought, dumb, silly, are also socialized to wear a mask—to lie. — location: 579

Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary reason many of us will never know love. It is impossible to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth when the core of one’s being and identity is shrouded in secrecy and lies. — location: 615

Keeping people in a constant state of lack, in perpetual desire, strengthens the marketplace economy. Lovelessness is a boon to consumerism. — location: 629

Dao De Jing chapter 3

To know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others. — location: 633

When we hear another person’s thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, it is more difficult to project on to them our perceptions of who they are. — location: 643

COMMITMENT TO TRUTH telling lays the groundwork for the openness and honesty that is the heartbeat of love. — location: 657

Many people find it helpful to critically examine the past, particularly childhood, to chart their internalization of messages that they were not worthy, not enough, that they were crazy, stupid, monstrous, and so on. — location: 669

Nathaniel Branden’s lengthy work Six Pillars of Self-Esteem highlights important dimensions of self-esteem, “the practice of living consciously, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, living purposefully and the practice of personal integrity.” — location: 680

Sexist socialization teaches females that self-assertiveness is a threat to femininity. Accepting this faulty logic lays the groundwork for low self-esteem. The fear of being self-assertive usually surfaces in women who have been trained to be good girls or dutiful daughters. — location: 718

One reason women have traditionally gossiped more than men is because gossip has been a social interaction wherein women have felt comfortable stating what they really think and feel. Often, rather than asserting what they think at the appropriate moment, women say what they think will please the listener. Later, they gossip, stating at that moment their true thoughts. This division between a false self invented to please others and a more authentic self need not exist when we cultivate positive self-esteem. — location: 725

But we can all enhance our capacity to live purposely by learning how to experience satisfaction in whatever work we do. We find that satisfaction by giving any job total commitment. — location: 752

When we intentionally strive to make our homes places where we are ready to give and receive love, every object we place there enhances our well-being. — location: 792

One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. — location: 807

A culture that is dead to love can only be resurrected by spiritual awakening. — location: 822

psychoanalyst Erich Fromm courageously calls attention to the reality that “the principle underlying capitalistic society and the principle of love are incompatible.” — location: 828

Our national spiritual hunger springs from a keen awareness of the emotional lack in our lives. It is a response to lovelessness. Going to church or temple has not satisfied this hunger, surfacing from deep within our souls. Organized religion has failed to satisfy spiritual hunger because it has accommodated secular demands, interpreting spiritual life in ways that uphold the values of a production-centered commodity culture. — location: 835

The basic interdependency of life is ignored so that separateness and individual gain can be deified. — location: 842

Extolling the transformative power of love in his essay “Love and Need,” Merton writes: “Love is, in fact an intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life… . Life curves upward to a peak of intensity, a high point of value and meaning, at which all its latent creative possibility go into action and the person transcends himself or herself in encounter, response, and communion with another. It is for this that we came into the world—this communion and self-transcendence. We do not become fully human until we give ourselves to each other in love.” — location: 869

Despite overwhelming pressure to conform to the culture of lovelessness, we still seek to know love. That seeking is itself a manifestation of divine spirit. — location: 891

All awakening to love is spiritual awakening. — location: 952

AWAKENING TO LOVE can happen only as we let go of our obsession with power and domination. — location: 958

Living by a love ethic we learn to value loyalty and a commitment to sustained bonds over material advancement. While careers and making money remain important agendas, they never take precedence over valuing and nurturing human life and well-being. — location: 969

But in keeping with a capitalist-based notion of well-being, they really believe there is not enough to go around, that the good life can be had only by a few. — location: 981

Refusal to stand up for what you believe in weakens individual morality and ethics as well as those of the culture. — location: 997

“Nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses, it is tamed by love and care. Any disease of the soul must be conquered by a turning of one’s soul. — location: 1031

Patriarchy, like any system of domination (for example, racism), relies on socializing everyone to believe that in all human relations there is an inferior and a superior party, one person is strong, the other weak, and that it is therefore natural for the powerful to rule over the powerless. To those who support patriarchal thinking, maintaining power and control is acceptable by whatever means. — location: 1063

Materialism creates a world of narcissism in which the focus of life is solely on acquisition and consumption. — location: 1118

Intense spiritual and emotional lack in our lives is the perfect breeding ground for material greed and overconsumption. In a world without love the passion to connect can be replaced by the passion to possess. — location: 1122

Prior to the war, a hopeful vision of justice and love had been evoked by the civil rights struggle, the feminist movement, and sexual liberation. However, by the late seventies, after the failure of radical movements for social justice aimed at making the world a democratic, peaceful place where resources could be shared and a meaningful life could become a possibility for everyone, folks stopped talking about love. — location: 1136

Both men and women remain in dysfunctional, loveless relationships when it is materially opportune. — location: 1193

Significantly, the combination of the lust for material wealth and the desire for immediate satisfaction are the signs that this materialism has become addictive. The need for instant gratification is a component of greed. — location: 1206

To know genuine love we have to invest time and commitment. As John Welwood reminds us in Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love, “dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love—which is to transform us.” — location: 1209

The more attention focused on dysfunctional bonds, the more the message that families are all a bit messed up becomes commonplace and the greater the notion becomes that this is just how families are. — location: 1217

This is the outcome of living in a culture where the politics of greed are normalized. The message we get is that everybody wants to have more money to buy more things so it is not problematic if we lie and cheat a bit to get ahead. Unlike love, desires for material objects can be satisfied instantly if we have the cash or the credit card handy, or even if we are just willing to sign the papers that make it so we can get what we want now and pay more later. Concurrently, when it comes to matters of the heart we are encouraged to treat partners as though they were objects we can pick up, use, and then discard and dispose of at will, with the one criteria being whether or not individualistic desires are satisfied. — location: 1220

It’s the culture of exchange, the tyranny of marketplace values. — location: 1226

The will to sacrifice on behalf of another, always present when there is love, is annihilated by greed. — location: 1242

One of the ironies of the culture of greed is that the people who profit the most from earnings they have not worked to attain are the most eager to insist that the poor and working classes can only value material resources attained through hard work. Of course, they are merely establishing a belief system that protects their class interests and lessens their accountability to those who are without privilege. — location: 1254

Greed is considered legitimate now, while brotherly love is not.” — location: 1260

Greed has a way of severing the cords of compassion.” — location: 1279

While America is full of those who would police our private morals, there is far too little questioning of societal morals. — location: 1299

Marianne Williamson

To maintain and satisfy greed, one must support domination. And the world of domination is always a world without love. — location: 1311

Peck defines community as the coming together of a group of individuals “who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to ‘rejoice together, mourn together,’ and to ‘delight in each other, and make other’s conditions our own.’” — location: 1341

Capitalism and patriarchy together, as structures of domination, have worked overtime to undermine and destroy this larger unit of extended kin. Replacing the family community with a more privatized small autocratic unit helped increase alienation and made abuses of power more possible. — location: 1350

Globally, enlightened, healthy parenting is best realized within the context of community and extended family networks. — location: 1371

Loving friendships provide us with a space to experience the joy of community in a relationship where we learn to process all our issues, to cope with differences and conflict while staying connected. — location: 1385

Learning to love in friendships empowers us in ways that enable us to bring this love to other interactions with family or with romantic bonds. — location: 1390

When we see love as the will to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. — location: 1407

All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way. — location: 1418

Forgiveness is an act of generosity. It requires that we place releasing someone else from the prison of their guilt or anguish over our feelings of outrage or anger. By forgiving we clear a path on the way to love. It is a gesture of respect. — location: 1439

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. — location: 1454

Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community.” — location: 1462

Martin Luther King, Jr., preached: “All men [and women] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” — location: 1481

The love we make in community stays with us wherever we go. With this knowledge as our guide, we make any place we go a place where we return to love. — location: 1499

Like many men, he wanted a woman to be “just like his mama” so that he did not have to do the work of growing up. — location: 1529

They were more than happy when feminist thinkers told them that they did not need to be macho men. But the only alternative to not turning into a conventional macho man was to not become a man at all, to remain a boy. — location: 1535

Initially, I was attracted to this younger partner because his “masculinity” represented an alternative to the patriarchal norm. Ultimately, however, he did not feel that masculinity affirmed in the larger world and began to rely more on conventional thinking about masculine and feminine roles, allowing sexist socialization to shape his actions. — location: 1549

The privilege of power is at the heart of patriarchal thinking. — location: 1556

When someone has not known love it is difficult for him to trust that mutual satisfaction and growth can be the primary foundation in a coupling relationship. He may only understand and believe in the dynamics of power, of one-up and one-down, of a sadomasochistic struggle for domination, and, ironically, he may feel “safer” when he is operating within these paradigms. — location: 1566

In the Mars-and-Venus-gendered universe, men want power and women want emotional attachment and connection. — location: 1555

Much popular self-help literature normalizes sexism. Rather than linking habits of being, usually considered innate, to learned behavior that helps maintain and support male domination, they act as though these differences are not value laden or political but are rather inherent and mystical. — location: 1583

“The aching need created by lack of love can only be filled by learning anew to love and be loved. We all must discover for ourselves that love is a force as real as gravity, and that being upheld in love every day, every hour, every minute is not a fantasy—it is intended as our natural state.” — location: 1595

Marianne Williamson calls attention to philosopher Paul Tillich’s insistence that the first responsibility of love is to listen: — location: 1609

Women are often belittled for trying to resurrect these men and bring them back to life and to love. They are, in fact, the real sleeping beauties. We might be living in a world that would be even more alienated and violent if caring women did not do the work of teaching men who have lost touch with themselves how to live again. — location: 1645

They say we are asleep until we fall in love

Much of the anger and rage we feel about emotional lack is released when we forgive ourselves and others. Forgiveness opens us up and prepares us to receive love. It prepares the way for us to give wholeheartedly. — location: 1678

“The practice of generosity frees us from the sense of isolation that arises from clinging and attachment.” — location: 1687

Tathagatha, comes and goes

This is why it is useful to see love as a practice. When we act, we need not feel inadequate or powerless; we can trust that there are concrete steps to take on love’s path. We learn to communicate, to be still and listen to the needs of our hearts, and we learn to listen to others. We learn compassion by being willing to hear the pain, as well as the joy, of those we love. The path to love is not arduous or hidden, but we must choose to take the first step. — location: 1694

When romance is depicted as a project, or so the mass media, especially movies, would have us believe, women are the architects and the planners. Everyone likes to imagine that women are romantics, sentimental about love, that men follow where women lead. Even in non-heterosexual relationships, the paradigms of leader and follower often prevail, with one person assuming the role deemed feminine and another the designated masculine role. — location: 1722

The very people (many of them men) who had heretofore claimed that “too much talk” made things less romantic find that talk does not threaten pleasure at all. It merely changes its nature. — location: 1785

If men were socialized to desire love as much as they are taught to desire sex, we would see a cultural revolution. — location: 1781

Our culture may make much of love as compelling fantasy or myth, but it does not make much of the art of loving. Our disappointment about love is directed at romantic love. We fail at romantic love when we have not learned the art of loving. — location: 1802

Often we confuse perfect passion with perfect love. A perfect passion happens when we meet someone who appears to have everything we have wanted to find in a partner. I say “appears” because the intensity of our connection usually blinds us. We see what we want to see. — location: 1804

I LEARNED THAT we may meet a true love and that our lives may be transformed by such an encounter even when it does not lead to sexual pleasure, committed bonding, or even sustained contact. The myth of true love—that fairy-tale vision of two souls who meet, join, and live happily thereafter—is the stuff of childhood fantasy. Yet many of us, female and male, carry these fantasies into adulthood and are unable to cope with the reality of what it means either to have an intense life-altering connection that will not lead to an ongoing relationship or to be in a relationship. — location: 1832

John Welwood makes a useful distinction between this type of attraction, familiar to us all, which he calls a “heart connection,” and another type he calls a “soul connection.” Here is how he defines it: “A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other’s individual natures, behind their facades, and who connect on a deeper level. This kind of mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials. While a heart connection lets us appreciate those we love just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further dimension—seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who we could become under their influence.” — location: 1844

Often, a deeper bonding with another person, a soul connection, happens whether we will it to be so or not. Indeed, sometimes we are drawn toward someone without knowing why, even when we do not desire contact. — location: 1851

Describing true love, Eric Butterworth writes: “True love is a peculiar kind of insight through which we see the wholeness which the person is—at the same time totally accepting the level on which he now expresses himself—without any delusion that the potential is a present reality. True love accepts the person who now is without qualifications, but with a sincere and unwavering commitment to help him to achieve his goals of self-unfoldment—which we may see better than he does.” — location: 1866

To know and keep true love we have to be willing to surrender the will to power. — location: 1895

Since true love sheds light on those aspects of ourselves we may wish to deny or hide, enabling us to see ourselves clearly and without shame, it is not surprising that so many individuals who say they want to know love turn away when such love beckons. — location: 1884

Merton asserts: “Love affects more than our thinking and our behavior toward those we love. It transforms our entire life. Genuine love is a personal revolution. Love takes your ideas, your desires, and your actions and welds them together in one experience and one living reality which is a new you.” — location: 1902

Without “falling in love,” we can recognize that moment of mysterious connection between our soul and that of another person as love’s attempt to call us back to our true selves. — location: 1908

Intensely connecting with another soul, we are made bold and courageous. Using that fearless will to bond and connect as a catalyst for choosing and committing ourselves to love, we are able to love truly and deeply, to give and receive a love that lasts, a love that is “stronger than death.” — location: 1909

LOVE MAKES US feel more alive. Living in a state of lovelessness we feel we might as well be dead; everything within us is silent and still. We are unmoved. — location: 1918

It echoes the biblical declaration that “anyone who does not know love is still in death.” — location: 1919

We are asleep until we fall in love

Cultures of domination court death. Hence the ongoing fascination with violence, the false insistence that it is natural for the strong to prey upon the weak, for the more powerful to prey upon the powerless. In our culture the worship of death is so intense it stands in the way of love. — location: 1920

Visionary theologians see the failure of religion as one reason our culture remains death centered. In his work Original Blessing, Matthew Fox explains: “Western civilization has preferred love of death to love of life to the very extent that its religious traditions have preferred redemption to creation, sin to ecstasy, and individual introspection to cosmic awareness and appreciation.” — location: 1934

Merton contends: “If we become obsessed with the idea of death hiding and waiting for us in ambush, we are not making death more real but life less real. Our life is divided against itself. It becomes a tug of war between the love and the fear of itself. Death then operates in the midst of life, not as the end of life, but rather, as the fear of life.” — location: 1964

To live fully we would need to let go of our fear of dying. That fear can only be addressed by the love of living. — location: 1967

Loving makes it possible for us to change our worship of death to a celebration of life. — location: 1971

There is no one among us who is a stranger to death. Our first home in the womb is also a grave where we await the coming of life. Our first experience of living is a moment of resurrection, a movement out of the shadows and into the light. — location: 1998

we who love know we must sustain ties in life and death. — location: 2019

In its deepest sense, grief is a burning of the heart, an intense heat that gives us solace and release. When we deny the full expression of our grief, it lays like a weight on our hearts, causing emotional pain and physical ailments. Grief is most often unrelenting when individuals are not reconciled to the reality of loss. — location: 2023

Love is the only force that allows us to hold one another close beyond the grave. That is why knowing how to love each other is also a way of knowing how to die. — location: 2031

In a culture like ours, where few of us seek to know perfect love, grief is often overshadowed by regret. We regret things left unsaid, things left unreconciled. — location: 2040

Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us “everything we seek can only be found in the present” that “to abandon the present in order to look for things in the future is to throw away the substance and hold onto the shadow.” — location: 2053

Accepting death with love means we embrace the reality of the unexpected, of experiences over which we have no control. Love empowers us to surrender. — location: 2057

Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands. — location: 2071

More than our pain, our self-destructive, self-betraying behavior trapped us in the traumas of childhood. — location: 2095

We longed to be rescued because we did not know how to save ourselves. — location: 2098

The rugged individual who relies on no one else is a figure who can only exist in a culture of domination where a privileged few use more of the world’s resources than the many who must daily do without. Worship of individualism has in part led us to the unhealthy culture of narcissism that is so all pervasive in our society. — location: 2115

Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion. — location: 2125

Saint Teresa of Avila found, in her union with the divine, recognition, comfort, and solace. She wrote: “There is no need to go to heaven in order to speak with one’s Eternal Father or find delight in Him. Nor is there any need to shout. However softly we speak, He is near enough to hear us… . All one need do is go into solitude and look at Him within oneself, and not turn away from so good a Guest but with great humility speak to Him …” — location: 2127

Saint Teresa of Avila found, in her union with the divine, recognition, comfort, and solace. She wrote: “There is no need to go to heaven in order to speak with one’s Eternal Father or find delight in Him. Nor is there any need to shout. However softly we speak, He is near enough to hear us… . All one need do is go into solitude and look at Him within oneself, and not turn away from so good a Guest but with great humility speak to Him …” — location: 2127

Cynicism is the greatest barrier to love. It is rooted in doubt and despair. Fear intensifies our doubt. It paralyzes. Faith and hope allow us to let fear go. Fear stands in the way of love. — location: 2177

The desire to be powerful is rooted in the intensity of fear. Power gives us the illusion of having triumphed over fear, over our need for love. — location: 2191

As our cultural awareness of the ways we are seduced away from love, away from the knowledge that love heals gains recognition, our anguish intensifies. But so does our yearning. The space of our lack is also the space of possibility. As we yearn, we make ourselves ready to receive the love that is coming to us, as gift, as promise, as earthly paradise. — location: 2195

enlightenment comes only as we return to a childlike state and are born again. — location: 2215

Note: 00 The Fool 🜁⛢

The Man Who Wrestled with God, John Sanford comments: “The fact that Jacob could fall in love at all shows that a certain amount of psychological growth had taken place in him during his journey through the wilderness. So far the only woman in his life had been his mother. As long as a man remains in a state of psychological development in which his mother is the most important woman to him, he cannot mature as a man. A man’s eros, his capacity for love and relatedness, must be freed from attachment to the mother, and able to reach out to a woman who is his contemporary; otherwise he remains a demanding, dependent, childish person.” — location: 2227

Love does not lead to an end to difficulties, it provides us with the means to cope with our difficulties in ways that enhance our growth. — location: 2241

Peace is found not in the absence of challenge but in our own capacity to be with hardship without judgment, prejudice, and resistance. — location: 2255

Wuwei

I read Letters to a Young Poet over and over. I am drowning and it is the raft that takes me safely to the shore.” — location: 2309

Fearful that believing in love’s truths and letting them guide our lives will lead to further betrayal, we hold back from love when our hearts are full of longing. — location: 2328

When angels speak of love they tell us it is only by loving that we enter an earthly paradise. — location: 2332

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