Journals X-XII will form a trifecta of posts regarding aspects of personhood I consider often. These cover the influence of Wisdom, Authenticity, and Love. Together, these Journals can be called the Thoughtful Trilogy.
These considerations are my domain and so they may not agree with Yours.
My hope is to share a lens, not a law.
I love You.
When the first draft of this post reached 5,000 words, I knew I had to scale back and try again. That draft has been saved for another day.
For now, what I have to say about Love ought to be said in few words:
Love is a meadow. I will meet you there.
Love is not loving. This is crucial to understand.
Patience is key. Patience is the revelation of Love.
Hate, hope, mercy, envy, anger, despair, and other such illusions are not the domain of love. They are the domain of the human. Love is beyond the human.
I have read as a child that there are but two forces: Love & Fear.1 All other human illusions come from these forces. I have read as an adult that these two forces come from one source: Dao.2 I do not know if either of these things are true, but they feel correct to me, and they always have since the first days I encountered them.
If you are to Love truly, then you will be considered a martyr for Love. You will be criticized for your martyrdom by those who do not recognize True Love. Even those with whom you may share True Love may lose their way and criticize your efforts to practice Love. Their opinions are not your efforts in Love. Heed them not but remember you are ignorant also. Do not oppress others with your convictions—that is not Love. If others cannot see the meadow, it is not your job to lead them there.
The sanctity of Love is not a secular thing, and you need not be an anchorite for Love. Take that concept however you may.
The greatest practice you can aspire to is a Love that encompasses the reality beyond yours. If we cannot love a spider, then we cannot grow in love. If we cannot love a spider’s venom, then we cannot grow in love. The surest way to grow in love is through radical self-doubt.3
The practice of Love is the practice of patience and forgiveness. You cannot let others walk over you, but this is not what it means to ‘turn the other cheek.’ What does it mean to turn the other cheek? Falling in love with spiders. Consider this.
What is important to others’ conception of Love is not what is important to your conception of Love.4 This paradox drives conflict in Love. This is why it is important to aspire to a Love that encompasses the reality beyond yours: most of reality is the reality beyond yours. Do not expect others to grant you this courtesy; rather, if you are to expect anything of them, then expect that they will not grant you this courtesy. It will not make your suffering easier, but it will help you to better practice Love for all, including for yourself.5
Others will expect you to meet them on the terms of their reality. You do not have to do this. To resist others’ realities is not to resist Love. However, to Love truly, you must constantly resist your own reality. The space you occupy: preconception, conception, perception; none of these are Love. Love called love is not Love. This, too, is crucial to understand.
There is no one left unloved by those who practice Love truly. There is little action by them informed by anger, hatred, or envy. Though one who loves truly may act from Fear in defense of their self-concept, they may never stray from the path of Love. To stray from the path of Love is to be recalled to the path again. One who loves truly understands this.
All the resolution of all the conflict on Earth is found through Love. This cannot end conflict: conflict will never end, but so long as we maintain Love, then we maintain the capacity to overcome conflict.
Love is inherent in all things, even those things where we may not find Love. Love is not a moral force just as Fear is not a moral force. They are neutral, and it is the actions we take through them which may be judged moral or immoral. The judgement of action is the practice of practicing Love. The judgement of persons (animals) is the practice of practicing Fear.
It is better to have loved poorly than to have never loved at all. It is better to be a fool in Love than to be foolish and in love.
Love is not romance. Rather, romance barely touches Love but only gropes at loving. Romance is also a human illusion.6 This habit of Romance is an idealistic tendency and one must be wary.
Love & romance are not explicitly informed by each other. Love is acceptance whereas romance is attachment. Therefore, I believe romance does not distend from Love but likewise from Fear. Romantic action is manipulation. It is not Love, but loving. This does not mean it is immoral, only that it is manipulative. Romance is not a moral thing. The actions we take in romance are moral things. Where romance seeks to secure, Love seeks to release. To equate love and romance is to adore a flower and call it a meadow; to mistake fleeting beauty for abundance. The illusion of romance cannot sustain the patience of Love. To truly Love is to step beyond romance and into a selfless reality of kindness and humility.
Likewise, Love & sex have almost nothing do with each other, explicitly. The former is an evolutionary function whereas the latter is merely a biological necessity for the survival of the species.7 Love precedes sex in all manner of engagement. Sex is a dialogue. Love is language. You may be eloquent but communicate poorly; you may communicate well with a limited vocabulary. You must be wary of what this looks like in yourself and others. One is a crisis of self-concept, whereas the other is a crisis of perception.8 This is my current impression as someone who has struggled on both fronts in past years.
Love & hope have no responsibility to each other, and little relationship. Hope distends alike from Fear also. What hope there is in Love is destroyed by Love. My True Love has no need of hope and so hope will find no friend therein. This is a difficult thing to understand, and I encourage deep reflection about this: Hope is not a moral thing; hope is an attachment. When practicing Love, it may be better to avoid hope; for, hope may lead you astray from Love.9
I have recently received pushback for this perception on hope. If I have also alarmed you, then consider this: Where is the hope in the sound a flower makes when it blooms in the moonlight?
All these ideas are fair and interesting, but what do they mean for the practice of Love? What do we do with this Love, and how do we navigate such things as hope and romance and sex and hate and anger and mirth and mercy and all the ten-thousand things that come to us humans in our daily living? Where does Love bring purpose? Is it the duty of Love to bring purpose? Where does Love bring clarity? Is it the duty of Love to bring clarity? Just as the astrologer expects the stars to give them not only the seeds of life but also to guide their life, must we practice Love and expect that Love will bring us into some answer or fulfillment?
No. I do not think so. I think the practice of Love is the practice of being more than mere animal while also recalling and honouring the animal we cannot escape in our being. To Love truly is to Love what is unloved in our nature. To Love truly is to Love what we cannot want to be.
None of this is easy, and not many are trying for this anyway.
I wrote this piece and the others to expand on thoughts I’ve had throughout the past eight years of study and practice and I will be the first to admit that I have struggled often in practice. In all the illusions of life I have struggled, first because I did not recognize them as illusions and now because I too often recognize their illusory nature. Amidst this, my practice of Love has been a guiding path. What is important to me is to return and continue: to engage with practice wholeheartedly and to forgive myself when I am too eager or too apathetic.
If you wish to practice Love, then practice it however you wish. My words here are not a prescription, but a small shot of something that will surely warm you some way. This, too, is Love.
I have nothing more to say than to repeat my mantra from earlier. Consider it, and you will have considered the whole of my philosophy:
Love is a meadow. I will meet you there.
Thank you, Sweet Reader.
I read this in a newspaper when I was ten.
I read this in Daodejing. I recommend 9781590305461. Give that number to your local bookstore. They’ll know what to do.
This may also be known as Negative Capability, Zen, wu-wei, and many other such concepts. It is good to foster healthy doubt.
This includes the entirety of this text.
“You can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest,” to paraphrase that great philosopher Jack Sparrow. This idea has more value than we credit it.
Biological and evolutionary benefits can still hold illusory qualities.
The paradox in my statement should be apparent. Consider this also.
See footnote 7 above. It is easy to be led astray.
Of course, to be lead astray is also the practice of Love. Contradictions, all the way down.