Archive (3) Love is... META

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( 3 ) Archive: “The LOVE Is...” Metta pages
Love Poetry and Quotes & ValenTimes

Archive: “The LOVE is...” METTA pages
• LOVE Poetry, Aphorisms and Learning Quotes
• Whole METTA Sutra - more Words of 'Loving-Kindness'
* What is authentic Friendship ?
* ARCHIVE of Expressing LOVE Learning-Quotes
To read Here just begin to SCROLL ▼DOWN
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“Love & Other Difficulties”

Rumi, Rilke, Buddha & Others on
'Relationship' & 'Romance'
A Tint of Rose Color & Insightful Thorns,
for Valentine's Day is Any Day to nourish
an all-grown-up literate consideration
of Love with meaningful poetry & quotes

Hey, and If Valentine's Day may be coming! . .
• Or even not ~ Give a Gift of "Wise Love" for an Non-Valentine's Day
find & copy/paste Poems, Aphorisms & Quotes from this Buddhist Archive
Feb 14th ~ could be your special "Metta Day" • A Loving-Kindness Week

'Love' This collection and a tasty is not in any only some here's something sweet cream authentic full here contemplation. very best words In the Middle a community then wear these the origin the game was Proceed with modern around 'Love' us - or sadly, often infantile wisdom-perspectives a deeper understanding "Just like before you can ~ Eagle Berns
Do you have Please feel friends and – our most e l u s i v e of emotions.
of words that follow is literally our compiled 'labor of love' –
hodge-podge gathered up from a jillion sources. This ARCHIVE
particular order. The world's literature on love is Huge, but
of it maturely intelligent and not naive sentimental sugar. Oddly,
else instead of innocent confections of strawberries and
sprinkled with chocolate hearts... the taste of wit, wisdom and
freedom in "all my relations" ...And maybe in grazing & reading
you’re sweetened heart will flow with some good conversation or silent
We've tried to gather together and offer you some of the
available. Good vibrations & good words is all we got !
Ages, romantic young men and women drew names from
basket to see who their Valentines would be. They would
names on their sleeves for one week. This is said to be
of the expression, "Wearing your heart on your sleeve." Often
fixed.
Caution: We suffer with 'Love' because many of our post-
expectations, 'notions', 'models', ‘pressures' & 'conditionings' all
that are still woefully un-matured and under-developed in
traumatically damaged. And our communication-skills are
and ineffective. Many of the enclosed pieces suggest some
that may help you to accelerate and develop into
of 'Love' – our most e l u s i v e of emotions.
flowers in a vase, you have to arrange yourself
Give yourself to anyone else."
some of your own favorite quotes that you would forward to us?
free to reproduce anything you read in this email to send to your
loved ones... and enjoy! – with all the warmth of our Metta ~ Akasa

'Love'
exists
only
in the
True
Friendship.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Love
is Friendship
set on Fire!
[Jeremy Taylor, English Anglican Bishop & Writer 1613-1667

"Let go forever of the idea you are in any way separate from the web of all living beings.
Let everything you do be 'informed' by the understanding that "all things are interconnected".
Find ways to relinquish the obsessions and excesses you have used as a substitute for Love.
Accept in their place this gift - the infinite pleasure of Joy in your boundless heart of kindness."

~ The Buddha ~ from the Metta Sutta, The Discourse on Loving Kindness.
__________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
They say 'Love' lives in the blood.
I've known love as a sort of 'blood' itself,
a blood of all that is unseeable.
If so, the 'Work' of Love
is to hold each other - and deeply listen.
Love is the flowing blood of Spirit.
And only when riding that deep river
are we aware of what is fully Holy ~
namely Everything.
~ Mark Nepo
"A Flower
is a Leaf
gone Mad
with Love !!!"
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ( 1749-1832 )

"Your task is not to 'seek' for Love -
but merely to seek and find all the 'barriers'
within yourself, that you have built against Love."
~ Rumi
"Love and Compassion are Necessities -
Not luxuries.
Without them humanity just cannot survive."
~ The Dalai Lama

"When I see I am Nothing - that is Wisdom.
When I see I am Everything - that is Love.
And between these two, my life flows."
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
" Kindness and Generosity
are more important than Wisdom,
and the clear recognition of this –
is the beginning of Wisdom. "
~ Theodore Issac Rubin
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
"Let go forever of the idea you are in any way separate from the web of all living beings.
Let everything you do be 'informed' by the understanding that all things are interconnected.
Find ways to relinquish the obsessions and excesses you have used as a substitute for Love.
Accept in their place this gift - the infinite pleasure of Joy in your boundless heart of kindness."

The Buddha ~ from the Metta Sutta, The Discourse on Loving Kindness.
______________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
The poor, poor passionate porcupine
how sorrowful to hear
it is your fate,
that your dear porcupine mate
can never, never come too near.
~ Irish folk verse
_______________________________
____________________________
LOVE is . . .

" Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."
~ Iris Murdoch
" Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition."
~ Alexander Smith
" Love exists only in the Friendship. Love is Friendship set on fire."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
" Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile."
~ Adida
" Love doesn't just sit there like a stone - it has to be made, like bread,
remade all the time, made new."
~ Ursula LeGuin
______________________________________
______________________________________
. . . I make a most appreciative bow
to the "Uber-Realistic Buddhist-mind" in
getting this issue below refined & clarified ~
Nayake Hom'ru was such a joyful man !
"The Buddhist absence of 'Attachment' –
is not necessarily at all, in any way,
the absence of profound loving." ~ Sri Balangoda Ananda Maitreya (1895-1998)

__________________________________________
Love exists only in the True Friendship.
Love is Friendship set on fire!
~ Jeremy Taylor, English Anglican Bishop & Writer, 1613-1667)
____________________________________________
'Friendship' marks a life even more deeply than 'Love'.
Love risks degenerating into obsession –
Friendship is never anything but true sharing.
~ Elie Wiesel
" You come to Love not by finding the 'perfect' person,
but by seeing an 'imperfect' person perfectly."
~ Sam Keen
" The best relationship is the one in which your Love
for each other exceeds your Need for each other."
~ Rainer Rilke
" Talk not of wasted affection - affection never was wasted.
It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist."
~ Longfellow
" Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all."
~ St. Augustine
Everything has to do with ‘Love’ & ‘Not Love’. ~ Rumi
" The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn is Just To Love and Be Loved in Return "
~ Eden Ahbez/Nat King Cole song 'Nature Boy'

"One does not become Enlightened by naively 'imagining' images of light
~ but only by making the mind's darkness consciously illuminated." ~ Carl Jung
There are many Positive as well as Negative charged 'Idea-Words' all affiliated in the name of LOVE
for you to bravely and un-naively explore on your own .. and even add some of your own ! ~
Abandoned, Absence, Absolving, Abuse, Accessibility, Acknowledging, Addiction, Admiration, Adoration, Adultery, Affection, Agape, Aggression, Alienate, Allurement, Ally, Amity, Amorous, Angry, Animosity, Antagonism, Apathy, Appreciation, Ardent, Ardor, Attachment, Attentiveness, Attraction, Availability, Awe, Bewitch, Bitch, Bitterness, Burning, Captivate, Caress, Caring, Charm, Cherish, Clinging, Coldness, Comforting, Coming On, Committed, Companion, Compassion, Compromised, Camaraderie, Concern, Confidant, Confused, Consideration, Consort, Controlling, Convenience, Court, Craving, Creativity, Darling, Demanding, Dependency, Desire, Devotion, Doubting, Eager, Ecstasy, Embracing, Empathy, Enchanting, Engorged, Enthralled, Entitled, Envy, Estranged, Excited, Expectation, Exploitation, Fascination, Feeling, Fierce, Fiery, Fixation, Flame, Flaming, Flirting, Fondness, Forgiving, Foxy, Friendship, Frigid, Generosity, Given Up, Grace, Grateful, Gratitude, Grief, Halfhearted, Harmony, Heartfelt, Honey, Hostility, Hope, Horny, Hot, Hugging, Hunger, Hurt, Indifferent, Infatuation, Insatiable, Intimacy, Irreconcilable, Isolation, Jealousy, Jilted, Kindness, Liking, Listening, Loathing, Loneliness, Loss, Longing, Lovable, Love, Lovely, Lovesick, Love-struck, Maitri, Malice, Marriage, Mate, Maternal, Merging, Misogyny, Metta, Misanthropic, Missing, Moody, Mutuality, Naivety, Needy, Non-Abusive, Non-Attachment, Obsession, Openness, Oppress, Paranoid, Pardoning, Partner, Partnering, Passion, Paternal, Persecute, Pine, Playmate, Praise, Projection, Reciprocal, Recognition, Regard, Rejected, Resentment, Remorse, Resolving, Responsiveness, Romance, Seductive, Sensual, Serving, Sexist, Sexy, Solitude, Spurn, Submission, Surrender, Suspicious, Sympathy, Tantalize, Temptation, Tenderness, Thankful, Thankless, Tolerance, Touching, Turn-on, Trust, Uncompromised, Unconditional, Understanding, Vengeful, Voracious, Yearning, Warmth, Whining, Wishful, Withholding, Wounded, Wondrous Divine Callings & Wisdoms ... and so many, many more 'experiences' eternally constellating around our human 'thesaurus' as it manifests Love.
I'm sure we forgot some .. email us - and Add some of your own... ~ AkasaLevi@msn.com

The opposite of love is not hate – it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness – it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy – it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death – it's indifference. ~ Elie Wiesel
The great 12th century Sufi poet Hafiz said
something so contemporary & important –
"Out
of a great need
we are
all holding hands
and climbing.
To not love now
is a disastrous dismissal.
Listen,
the terrain around here
is
far too
dangerous
for
that."
____________
____________
... and
the children
listen best
to sunshine
and the whispering
of the wind
They understand
the flowers
the clouds
and they pray
you and I
will find a better way.
~ Nick Rath
________________________________________________________________________________
We're encouraged by The Buddha's relaxed, warm, intimate Non-Attachment Practices ~
never a protective, aloof, 'spiritually-styled' indifference or an obsessive cult co-dependency...
BE KIND to YOURSELF
" You Yourself,
as much as anyone in the entire Universe,
deserves your OWN affection, care and love.
You can explore the whole universe looking
for someone else who is more deserving of
your love & affection than you are yourself...
and you will not find that person anywhere.
To be maximum effective -
“The Practice of Loving-Kindness”
must absolutely begin with yourself ! "
~ The Buddha
________________________________________________

500 BC ~ as The Buddha tenderly said ~
" Just as a mother would give her own life to protect an only child,
cultivate the same boundless love towards all of life. So long as you
draw breath, find ways to cultivate this quality of Loving-Kindness –
this tender quality of mind, which of all qualities is said to most fully
& accurately reflect the truth of who you are. Let go forever of the
idea that you are in any way separate from the web of all living beings.
Let everything you do be informed by the understanding that all things
are interconnected. Find ways to relinquish the obsessions & excesses
you have used as a substitute for love. Accept in their place this gift –
the infinite pleasure of joy in your boundless heart of kindness."
"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle,
and the life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared.

Generosity brings happiness at every stage of its expression.
We experience joy in 'forming' the intention to be generous.
We experience joy in the 'actual act' of giving something.
And we experience joy in remembering the fact
that we have given and been given to...
Teach this triple truth to all:
A Generous heart, Kind speech, and a life of Service and
Compassion are the things which renew humanity."
~ from the Metta Sutta, the Buddha's Discourse on Loving Kindness
May you and all beings
live with a peaceful loving heart
and fully enjoy
a healthy, happy body and mind !
~ The Buddha
____________________________________
~ Love is . . . learning-quotes ~
HOW ? Find a quote that speaks to you or challenges you and learn it.
Or at least, semi-learn it, get intimate with the quote. Let it in. Way in.
Then walk around all day mumbling it softly to yourself as it increases
its depth within you. ‘Pondering’ quotes a lot leads to ‘contemplation’
that leads to ‘realization’. This is a form of affirmation-work. Build-it-in.
Keep coming back here to this site’s Loving-Kindness section – & LOVE.
WHAT’S Below is only a semi-organized, yet huge compilation of Western and
Asian pieces on Love & Difficulties- so you'll want to patiently scroll down ... and
make the best s l o w use of it. Love or Love-sick ? Don't strive, search or seek
for 'answers' or resolves ... or worse, ‘demand’ answers – simply come back to
these special ‘words’ from time to time... recall & ponder a lot . . . it'll sweeten...
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Q: How do you make a person
fall in love with you?
A: "Tell them that you own
a whole bunch of candy stores."
~ Del, age 6
You know quite well, deep within you –
That there is only a single magic,
a single power, a single salvation ...
and that single force is called 'Loving'.
Well then, you must love your 'suffering' too!
Do not resist it, do not deny it, do not flee from it.
Embrace it. Practice continual acts of 'embracing'.
It is your aversion to the suffering it that hurts –
nothing else.
~ Hermann Hesse
They drew a circle that shut me out –
Calling me a heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win –
We drew a circle that took them in.
~ Edwin Markham "Outwitted"
The best thing is not to hate anyone –
Only to Love.
That is the only way out of it.
As soon as you have truly forgiven
those whom you intensely hate –
You have begun to truly let go of them!
Then you have no reason to 'hate' them –
You simply just gently forget.
~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, Islam Sufi
In the end we will conserve only what we love.
We will love only what we understand.
And we will understand only what we
have been taught.
Teach "Love" ....
~ Baba Dioum, African ecologist
You come to Love not by finding the 'perfect' person,
but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.
~ Sam Keen
Do you love me because I'm beautiful,
or am I am beautiful because you love me?
~ Oscar Hammerstein

On reflection,
one of the things I needed to learn MOST
was to allow myself to be loved.
~ Isha McKenzie-Mavinga, The Quaker Reader

I love people.
I love my family, my children –
but inside myself is a place
where I live all alone –
and that's where I renew
my springs that never dry up.
~ Pearl S. Buck

To fall in love is easy,
even to remain in it is not difficult –
our human loneliness is cause enough.
But it is a hard quest worth making to find
a 'comrade' through whose steady presence
you become steadily the person you desire to be.
~ Anna Louise Strong
Love doesn't just sit there like a stone –
it has to be made, like bread,
remade all the time, made new.
~ Ursula K. LeGuin "The Lathe of Heaven"
The pain of love is the pain of being alive.
It is a perpetual wound.
~ Maureen Duffy
Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others,
and the delight in the recognition
~ Alexander Smith

If there is any kindness I can show –
or any good thing I can do for a fellow being –
Let me do it now - and not deter or neglect it –
as I may not pass this way again.
~ William Penn
In her 1965 essay "The Imagination of Disaster",
Susan Sontag said . . .
that modern Americans live in an age of extremes. Under continual threat of two equally fearful,
but seemingly opposed, destinies –
Unremitting Banality and Inconceivable Terror.

Arise all you women that have strong hearts –
whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
From the bosom of the devastated Mother Earth,
an earthy voice full of buried sons goes up
with our own. Disarm, Disarm !
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
~ Excerpt from Julia Ward Howe's proclamation that created Mother's Day in 1870.
I love you, gentlest of Ways –
you who ripened us ...
as we wrestled with you.
~ Rainer Rilke
... and
the children
listen best
to sunshine
and the whispering
of the wind
They understand
the flowers
the clouds
and they pray
you and I
will find a better way. ~ Nick Rath

~ Mother Teresa
There is more hunger for Love and Appreciation in this world than for bread.
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible.
We can do no great things - only small things with Great Love.
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten
that we belong to each other.
~ Mahatma Gandhi
What good you do is of little significance,
But it is very important that you do it !

Become the change that you want to see in the world.
____________________________
It is not how 'much' you Do –
but how much Love you put into
the 'doing' that matters.
People really don't care
how much you know,
until they know
how much you care."
~ Cavett Robert
___________________
" be of love
a little more careful
than of anything else "
~ e e cummings
_________________________
"A spiritual-awakening which does not
awaken the sleeper to Love,
has roused him in vain"
~ Jessamyn West ( 1902 –1984 ) American Quaker author,
notably The Friendly Persuasion ( 1945 )

Rilke
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, (1875-1926)
the world-renown German existential philosopher, poet and author
of "On Love & Other Difficulties" and "Letters to a Young Poet"

Highly mature, sobering letters and poems on love - show Rilke's profound understanding
of men and women and his ardent spirituality. His radical books, were written over ninety
years ago in the avant-garde' bohemian Paris of Picasso. Rilke introduces the contradictory
concept of solitude as a blessing. He seems to have this way of reaching into your inner-
soul and grabbing ahold of 'your reality' and making you face it, in a tone of controlled urgency,
in a passionate sort of way. Experimental openness to experience, on comprehending
what is most difficult - and turning what is most alien into that which we can most trust. ....
~ John J. L. Mood
________________________________________________________________________________
from "ON LOVE & OTHER DIFFICULTIES" (1908) by Rainer Rilke
some deep comprehension-reading ~ certainly not for lovers of the naive ...
" The point of marital or any relationship is not to create a quick commonality
by tearing down all boundaries - on the contrary, a good relationship is one
in which each partner anoints the other to be the guardian of their solitude,
and in this they show each other the greatest possible trust. This I hold to be
the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard
over the solitude of the other.
For, since it lies in the nature of indifference or insecurity of the common crowd
to recognize no solitude – then love and friendship are specifically there for
the purpose of continually providing the ‘opportunity’ for solitude.
And only love and friendship are the “true sharings” which do rhythmically
interrupt our individual periods of deep solitary emotion. _________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
A merging, a true and absolute togetherness between two people is an impossibility –
and where it does seem to exist nevertheless – it IS still a narrowing, a hemming-in,
a mutually-compromised-consent – that really does limit one party or both of their
fullest freedom and development.
But once the realization is accepted - that even between the closest people,
infinite distance continues to exist – a wonderful living side-by-side can then grow up
for them - IF they succeed in loving the expanse, loving the distance between them –
which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole being
before an immense wide sky ! "
"On Love & Other Difficulties" ~ the above was adapted, added to, and edited by Akasa Levi
from Translations and Considerations of Rainier Maria Rilke by John Mood; W.W. Norton, 1975
and The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Stephen Mitchell & Robert Hass; Vintage, 1989
- both as translated from Rilke’s original German editions.

~ and most famously - Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" (1903-1908)
" Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your own heart.
Try to love the 'Questions' themselves - like locked rooms
and like books that are written in a foreign language.
Do not right now seek for the Answers. The 'Answers'
which cannot now be given to you - because you would
not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything -
Experiencing everything !
At present, you need to live the Questions. Perhaps you will
gradually, without even noticing it, live along some
distant day into the true Answer. Your answer."

Of course –– If you want some more Rilke – read on ~
"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." ~ Erich Fromm
_____________________________________________________________________________________
...more Rilke on personal Solitude
and Love being so difficult.
Immature Expectations
=equal=
Discouraging Disappointments
~ from Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet ( 1903-1908 )
<> People have, with the help of naive common 'conventions',
totally oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward
the easiest side of the easy - but it is clear that we must relate
to what is difficult. It is good to be solitary, alone - for solitude
is enrichingly difficult. That something is difficult must be
a reason the more for us to do it.
<> To Love is Good - Love being so difficult. For one human being
to love another - that is perhaps the most difficult of all our life-tasks –
the 'Ultimate Work' for which all other work is but preparation. For this
reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet
'know' love: they have to learn it. To practice it. With their whole being,
with all their vital forces, gathered close in around their lonely, timid,
upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But 'learning-time' is
also always a long, secluded alone-time.
So being 'loving' is solitude itself - for a long while ahead and far into life –
it is an intensified and deepened loving-aloneness for she or he who Loves.
<> Love is at first not anything that means 'merging', giving over and uniting
with another - for what would an authentic ‘union’ be of something unclarified
and unfinished? Love is a high inducement to the individual to fully ripen,
to become 'whole' for themselves for another's sake. Love is a great exacting
claim upon you, something that chooses you out and calls you to vast things.
Only by the task of working on themselves - might young people use the love
that is given them. Merging, surrendering and every kind of communion is
not yet for them - who must save and gather-in for a long, long time still.
<> Whoever looks seriously at 'Love', finds that love & other difficulties
of the heart, haven't any explanation, any solution, any hint of a ‘way’ yet
to be discerned. Love is a ‘problem’ that we carry wrapped up & hand on
without opening - and as beginners we are not up to it. Instead of losing
ourselves in love, in all the light and frivolous play - behind which people
have hidden from their existences - but instead, we must hold off and take
this Love upon us as an apprenticeship.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
__________________________
Rilke in 1905, an early 'feminist-male', went on to say ~
. . . But this is what 'young people' are so often and so disastrously wrong in doing –
they ( who by their very nature are impatient ) fling themselves at each other when
love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness,
disorder, bewilderment. . . And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap
of half-broken things that they call their 'communion' and that they would like to call
their happiness, if that were possible, and their future?
. . . And so each of them loses himself or herself for the sake of the 'other' person –
and loses the other, and then many others who still wanted to come. And loses
the vast distances & possibilities, gives up the approaching and fleeing of gentle,
prescient Things in exchange for an unfruitful confusion, out of which nothing more
can come. Nothing but a bit of disgust, disappointment, and poverty, and the escape
into one of the many 'conventions' that have been put up in great numbers like public
shelters on this most dangerous road. No area of human experience is so extensively
provided with conventions as this one is: there are 'live-preservers' of the most varied
invention, boats and water wings. Society has been able to create refuges of every sort
-- for since it preferred to take the "Love-Life" as an amusement – it also had to give it
an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as popular public amusements are. ( Britney, Paris )
It is true that many young people who "love falsely" for instance – simply surrendering
themselves and giving up their solitude. The average person will of course, always
go on doing that. And feel oppressed by their own failure and want to make the situation
they have landed in livable and fruitful in their own, personal way. For their nature tells
them that the Questions of 'Love' - even more than everything else that is important –
cannot be resolved publicly and according to this or that agreement.
That they are 'Questions', intimate questions from one human being to another - which
in any case require a new, special, wholly personal answer. But How can they, who
have already flung themselves together - and can no longer tell whose outlines are whose?
Who thus no longer possess anything of their own.
How can they find a way 'out of themselves', out of the depths of their already buried solitude?
They act out of 'mutual helplessness', and then if, whit the best of intentions, they try to escape
the 'conventions' that are approaching them ( marriage, for example ), they fall into the clutches
of some less obvious but just as deadly conventional solution. For then, everything around them
~ is convention. Wherever people act out of a prematurely fused, muddy communion, every 'action'
is conventional. Every 'relation' that such confusion leads to - has its own convention, however
unusual in the ordinary sense of immoral it may be. Even 'separating' would be a conventional step,
an impersonal, accidental decision without strength and without fruit.
Whoever looks seriously will find that ~ neither for 'Death', which is difficult, nor for 'Difficult Love' ~
has any clarification, any solution, any hint of a Path been perceived. And for both these tasks –
which we carry wrapped up and hand-on without opening, there is not a general, agreed-upon rule
that can be discovered. But in the same measure in which we begin to test Life as 'individuals' –
these great Things will come to meet us, the individuals, with greater intimacy. The claims that the
"Difficult Work of Love" makes 'upon our development are greater than life' - and we, as beginners,
are just not equal to them. But if we nevertheless Endure and take this love upon us as 'Burden' and
'Apprenticeship' - instead of losing ourselves in the whole easy and frivolous game behind which
people have hidden from the most solemn solemnity of their Being. Then "a small advance" and a
"lightening" will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us. That would be much.
We are only just now beginning to consider the relation of One Individual to a Second Individual
'objectively' and without prejudice. And our attempts to "live such relationships" have no model
before them. And yet in the changes that Time has brought about - there are already many things
that can now help our timid novitiate.
The Girl and the Woman, in their new, individual unfolding - will only in passing be imitators of male
behavior and misbehavior and repeaters of male professions. After the 'uncertainty' of such transitions,
it will become obvious that women were going through the abundance and variation of those - often
ridiculous – 'disguises' just so that they could purify their own essential nature and wash out the
deforming influences of the male-sex. Women, in whom "Life" itself lingers and dwells more immediately,
more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths
than light, easy-going 'Man'. 'Man' who is not pulled down beneath the surface of Life by the weight
of any bodily fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves.
This "Humanity of Woman" - carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation –
will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations
of her outward status - and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it.
Someday, and even now, especially in the countries of northern Europe, trustworthy signs are already
speaking and shining. Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the
mere opposite of the male, but something in itself - something that makes one think not of any mere
'complement' and limit, but only Life and Reality ~ The Female Human Being.
This "Advance" - at first very much against the will of the outdistanced men - will transform
'The Love-Experience', which is now still filled with error - will change it from the ground up,
and reshape it into a 'Relationship' that is meant to be between one human being and another,
no longer just one that flows from the man to the woman. And this more 'Human Love' - which
will fulfill itself with infinite consideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding
and releasing - will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle –
the Love that consists in this: the 'Two Solitudes' protect and border and greet each other.
And one more thing: Don't think that the Great Love which was once granted to you, when you
were a child, has been lost - how can you know whether vast and generous wishes didn't ripen
in you at that time, and Purposes by which you are still living today? I believe that that true Love
remains strong and intense in your memory because it was your first deep aloneness and the
first inner-work that you did on your life.
–– All good wishes to you ! Yours, Rainer Maria Rilke
The real voyage of Discovery consists
not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes.
~ The Tao
~ Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)
Sufi mystic poet from eastern Persia in what is now Afghanistan

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded.
Someone sober will worry about events going badly.
Let the lover in you just be.
Your task is not to seek for Love –
but merely to seek and find all the 'barriers'
within yourself that you have built against Love.
Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of Love.
_______________________________________
~ Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)
French paleontologist & philosopher of the avant garde
The day will come when, after harnessing
the winds, the tides and gravitation -
we shall harness for ourselves the energies of Love.
And on that day,
for the second time in the history of the world,
we will have discovered fire.
♦Ω♦
~ Buddha's
METTA SUTRA
chant excerpt ~
Be Happy !
May I be happy.
May you be happy.
May all beings be happy.
May they live in safety & joy.
May all beings be totally free
from suffering & anguish.
May we all discover our
own inner-peace & freedom.
All living beings ~ everyone,
whether weak or strong,
graceful or awkward,
healthy or disabled,
handsome or plain
smart or foolish,
seen or unseen,
near or distant,
man or woman,
old or young,
rich or poor,
born or yet to be born.
Be free from suffering !
May they all discover
their own freedom within.
May they all establish
their own peace within.
May they all be happy -
independently happy,
un-conflicted happy,
un-complicated happy,
un-conditionally happy,
un-compromised happy,
non-circumstantially happy.
Happiness without 'reasons'.
May ALL Beings Be Safe, Peaceful & Free,
Liberated, Joy-filled, Nourished & Happy Within !”
~ Buddha's METTA SUTRA ~ main chanting excerpt ~
The Kara’niya Metta Sutta ~ Sutta Nipata 1.8
PTS: SN 143-152 ~ trans/ed: Akasa Levi
" WE ARE EACH OF US 'ANGELS' WITH ONE WING ~
WE CAN ONLY FLY BY EMBRACING EACH OTHER "
~ Lucian de Creszenza
_________________________________________________________________________
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE
~ Love is . . . the learning-quotes ~
HOW ? Find a quote that speaks to you or challenges you and learn it.
Or at least, semi-learn it, get intimate with the quote. Let it in. Way in.
Then walk around all day mumbling it softly to yourself as it increases
its depth within you. ‘Pondering’ quotes a lot leads to ‘contemplation’
that leads to ‘realization’. This is a form of affirmation-work. Build-it-in.
Keep coming back here to this site’s Loving-Kindness section – & LOVE.
WHAT’S Below is only a semi-organized, yet huge compilation of Western and
Asian pieces on Love & Difficulties- so you'll want to patiently scroll down ... and
make the best s l o w use of it. Love or Love-sick ? Don't strive, search or seek
for 'answers' or resolves ... or worse, ‘demand’ answers – simply come back to
these special ‘words’ from time to time... recall & ponder a lot . . . it'll sweeten...
We have just enough religion to make us hate,
but not enough to make us love one another.
~ Jonathan Swift
Love is the only sane
and satisfactory answer
to the problem of human existence."
~ Erich Fromm
‘Friendship’ marks a life
even more deeply than love.
Love risks degenerating into obsession,
Friendship is never anything but sharing.
~ Elie Wiesel
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity,
ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.
And we should consider every day lost
on which we have not danced at least once.
And we should call every truth false, which
was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
In the consciousness of the Truth he has perceived –
a man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or
the absurdity of existence… and loathing seizes him.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
There is a proper dignity and proportion
to be observed in the performance
of every act of life.
~ Marcus Aurelius
All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
~ Aristotle – 350 BC
It is unbecoming for young men
to utter maxims.
The gods too are fond of a joke.
~ Aristotle – 350 BC
When the power of love
overcomes the love of power
the world will know peace.
~ Jimi Hendrix
To be Trusted
is a greater compliment
than to be Loved.
~ George MacDonald

The first duty of love is to listen.
~ Paul Tillich
The thought manifests as the word.
The word manifests as the deed.
The deed develops into habit.
And the habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care.
And let it spring from Love,
born out of concern for all beings.
~ The Buddha
To love and be loved
is to feel the sun from both sides.
~ David Viscott
Nirvana or lasting enlightenment
or true spiritual growth –
can be achieved only through
the persistent exercise of real love.
~ M. Scott Peck
If I am unaware of Love, I live drably.
If I become intoxicated with Love, I live in dreamland.
If I recognize Love, and shake its hand –
then comfort, dreams, and sometimes intoxication
become mine to drench in and give away as well.
~ Nellie Curtiss
If we deny love that is given to us,
if we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss,
then our lives will be empty, our loss greater.
~ Tanis Half-Elven
Hatred ever kills, love never dies.
Such is the vast difference between the two.
What is obtained by love is retained for all time.
What is obtained by hatred proves to be a burden
in all our own realities – for it increases hatred.
~ Mohandas K. Gandhi
Let us not be satisfied with just giving money.
Money is not enough, money can be got –
but people need your hearts to love them.
So, spread your love everywhere you go.
~ Mother Teresa
Do you love me because I'm beautiful –
or am I am beautiful because you love me?
~ Oscar Hammerstein
All Love that has not ‘Friendship’ for its base,
is like a mansion built upon the sand.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
We cannot see any bad in a lover.
We choose to ignore any bad in a friend.
~ so far unknown
The Loving are the Daring.
~ Bayard Taylor
The only Gift is a portion of Thyself.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts,
Of kindness and of love.
~ William Wordsworth
To laugh often and love much -
To appreciate beauty,
To find the best in others,
To give one's self....
This is to have succeeded.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
~ Lao Tzu
We find Rest in those we love –
And we provide a resting place
in ourselves for those who love us.
~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
Love grows by Giving.
The love we give away –
is the only love we keep.
The only way to retain love –
is to give it away.
~ Elbert Hubbard
Love doesn't make the world go 'round.
Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
~ Franklin P. Jones
The ‘story’ of a Love is not important –
what is important is that
one is capable of Love.
It is perhaps the only glimpse
we are permitted of Eternity.
~ Helen Hayes
Bitterness imprisons life – love releases it.
Bitterness paralyzes life – love empowers it.
Bitterness sours life – love sweetens it.
Bitterness sickens life – love heals it.
Bitterness blinds life – love anoints its eyes.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
Authentic “Love” is a permanently
self-enlarging experience.
Falling in love is not.
~ M. Scott Peck
Let those love now - who never loved before.
Let those who always loved - now love the more.
~ Thomas Parnell
Only Love interests me – I am only in contact now
with things that revolve around Love."
~ Marc Chagall
Love ‘talked about’ can be easily turned aside,
but love demonstrated is irresistible.
~ W Stanley Mooneyham
Love can be understood only ‘from the inside’ -
as a language can be understood only
by someone who speaks it –
as a ‘world’ can be understood
only by someone who lives in it.
~ Robert C Solomon
I hold it true, whate'er befall
I feel it, when I sorrow most –
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
~ Alfred Tennyson
Love from one being to another
can only be that two ‘solitudes’ come nearer,
recognize and protect and comfort each other.
~ Han Suyin / Elizabeth Comber
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
~ Henry David Thoreau
On reflection,
one of the things I needed to learn
was to allow myself to be loved.
~ Isha McKenzie-Mavinga
Love is the only force capable
of transforming an enemy into friend.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
________________________________________________
If I keep a green bough in my heart,
the singing bird will come.
~ Chinese Proverb
A heart in love with beauty never grows old.
~ Turkish Proverb
Age does not protect you from love,
but love to some extent protects you from age.
~ Jeanne Moreau
Those who love deeply never grow old –
they may die of old age, but they die young.
~ Sir Arthur Pinero
The human heart, at whatever age,
opens only to the heart that opens in return.
~ Maria Edgeworth
Love is blind – Friendship closes its eyes.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche . . .
Love is blind – Friendship tries not to notice.
To have a friend, be a friend.
~ Old English adage
Self-love, my liege,
is not so vile a sin,
as self-neglecting.
~ William Shakespeare
The more the soul knows,
the more she loves,
and loving much, she tastes much.
~ W.H. Murray
Love is never ‘lost’ –
If not reciprocated, it could still be used –
It will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
~ Washington Irving
My bounty is as boundless as the sea –
My love as deep - the more I give to thee,
The more I have – for both are infinitely.
~ William Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet"
________________________________
d i f f i c u l t i e s . . .
‘Trouble’ is a natural part of life –
if you don't share it,
you don't give the person who loves you
a chance to love you enough.
~ Dinah Shore
Love is not blind,
it sees more - not less.
But because it sees more,
it chooses to see less.
~ Rabbi Julius Gordon
Can there possibly be a Love
which does not make demands
on its object?
~ Confucius
Never let a problem to be solved
become more important
than a person to be loved.
~ Barbara Johnson
Always there remain portions of our heart
into which no one is able to enter –
invite them as we may.
~ Mary Dixon Thayer
The heart of ‘another’ is a dark forest, always -
no matter how close it has been to one's own.
~ Willa Cather
There are no Guarantees.
From the viewpoint of Fear,
none are strong enough.
From the viewpoint of Love,
none are necessary.
~ Emmanuel
Better to have loved and lost,
than to have never loved at all.
~ St. Augustine
Love never dies a ‘natural’ death.
It dies because we don't know
how to replenish its Source.
It dies of blindness
and errors and betrayals.
It dies of illness and wounds;
it dies of weariness,
of witherings,
of tarnishings.
~ Anais Nin

It is not a lack of love,
but a lack of friendship
t hat makes unhappy marriages.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
It is best to love wisely, no doubt –
but to love foolishly is better than
not to be able to love at all.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray
Quarrels in France strengthen a love affair –
in America they end it.
~ Ned Rorem
Love is an act of endless forgiveness,
a tender look which becomes a habit.
~ Peter Ustinov
The face of a lover is ‘an unknown’,
precisely because it is invested
with so much of oneself.
It is a ‘mystery’ – containing, like all
mysteries, the possibility of torment.
~ James Baldwin - Another Country, 1962
‘Love’ is only half the illusion –
The lover – but not his ‘love’ – is deceived.
~ George Santayana ~ The Life of Reason, 1905
To be loved for what one is –
is the greatest exception.
The great majority,
only love in others, only what they lend him :
– their own selves or their version of him.
~ Goethe
Sometimes I wonder if men and women
really suit each other.
Perhaps they should live next door
and just visit now and then.
~ Katharine Hepburn
I have yet to hear a ‘man’ ask for advice
on how to combine marriage and a career.
~ Gloria Steinem
Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes.
There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.
~ Henry Kissinger
In real love you want for the other person's good.
In romantic love you want the other person.
~ Margaret Anderson
Love is Fire.
But whether it's gonna warm your heart
or burn your house down you can never tell.
~ Jason Jordan
For two people in a marriage
to live together day after day
is unquestionably the one miracle
the Vatican has overlooked.
~ Bill Cosby
‘Indifference’ is the strongest force in the universe.
It makes everything it touches meaningless.
Love and hate don't stand a chance against it.
~ Joan Vinge
A successful marriage requires falling in love
many times, always with the same person.
~ Mignon McLaughlin
The pain of love is the pain of being alive.
It is a perpetual wound.
~ Maureen Duffy
To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong admit it,
Whenever you're right shut up.
~ Ogden Nash
My advice to you – is to get married.
If you find a good wife, you'll be happy.
If not, you'll become a philosopher.
~ Socrates

______________________________
Love is the best medicine,
and there is more than enough
to go around once you open your heart.
~ Julie Marie
Love and Magic:
Both have a great deal in common.
They both enrich the soul,
they both delight the heart.
And they both take practice.
~ David Copperfield
In those whom I like
I can find no common denominator.
In those whom I love
I can find a common denominator –
They all make me laugh.
~ W. H. Auden
If we deny love that is given to us,
if we refuse to give love
because we fear pain or loss,
then our lives will be empty,
our loss greater.
~ so far unknown
People are lonely because
they build walls instead of bridges.
~ Joseph F. Newton
If we are incapable of finding peace in ourselves –
it is pointless to search elsewhere.
~ Francois de la Rochefoucauld
Each friend represents a ‘World’ in us,
a ‘world’ possibly not born until they arrive –
and it is only by this meeting that a new ‘world’ is born.
~ Anais Nin
The heart sees better than the eye.
~ Hebrew Proverb
A merry heart does good, like medicine.
But a broken spirit dries the bones.
~ Proverbs 17:22
A friend knows the song in my heart
and sings it to me when my memory fails.
~ Donna Roberts
If a man be gracious to strangers –
it shows that he is a citizen of the world,
and that his heart is no island,
cut off from other islands,
but a continent that joins them.
~ Sir Francis Bacon
If you don't love everybody –
you can't sell anybody.
~ Dicky Fox ( Jerry Maguire's Mentor )
There is much satisfaction in work well done,
but there can be no happiness equal to the joy
of finding a heart that understands.
~ Victor Robinsoll
Tis the business of little minds to shrink,
but he whose heart is firm,
and whose conscience
approves his own conduct,
will pursue his principles unto death.
~ Thomas Paine
There is no exercise better for the heart
than reaching down and lifting people up.
~ John Andrew Holmes
7 days without a laugh makes one’s heart weak.
~ Abigail November
If I create from the heart,
nearly everything works –
if from the head, almost nothing.
~ Marc Chagall
Have a heart that never hardens,
a temperment that never tires,
a touch that never hurts.
~ Charles Dickens
One of the painful and hardest things in life –
is having words in your heart that you can't utter.
~ James Earl Jones
It is only with the Heart that one can see rightly –
what is ‘essential’ is invisible to just the eye.
~ Antoine De Saint-Exupery
I am sure of nothing
but the holiness of the heart's affections.
~ John O'Donohue
If your head tells you one thing
and your heart tells you another –
before you do anything, you should first decide
whether you have a better head or a better heart.
~ Marilyn Vos Savant
People have to learn sometimes
not only how much the heart,
but how much the head, can bear.
~ Maria Mitchell
The human heart does not stay away
too long from that which ‘hurt’ it most.
There is a return journey to anguish
that few of us are released from making.
~ Lillian Smith
In your Heart - keep one still, secret spot
where dreams may go and sheltered so
may thrive and grow.
~ Louise Driscoll
Gratitude is the Heart's memory.
~ French Proverb
It is not the glittering weapon
that fights the fight –
but rather the brave heart.
~ Greek Proverb
If you find it in your heart
to care for somebody,
you will have succeeded.
~ Maya Angelou
Nobody has ever measured,
not even the poets,
how much a heart can hold.
~ Zelda Fitzgerald
It is easier to gnaw through bone
Than the hide of the heart.
~ Diane Glancy
What we have most to fear is failure of the heart.
~ Sonia Johnson
When you reach the Heart of Life,
you shall find beauty in all things.
~ Kahlil Gibran
A woman's vision is deep reaching
. . . the Heart is her world.
~ Betty Grable
The heart that gives—gathers.
~ Marianne Moore
Those who don't know how to weep
with their whole heart,
don't know how to laugh either.
~ Golda Meir
The best and most beautiful things in this world
cannot be seen or even touched.
They must be felt with the heart.
~ Helen Keller

May we sing and dance together and be joyous,
but also allow each other to be alone?
Even as the strings of a lute are alone,
though they all quiver with the same music.
Will you give me your heart... and take mine,
but not into each other's keeping?
For only the hand of life can contain our hearts.
May we stand together,
yet not too near together –
For the pillars of the Temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress
grow not in each other's shadow.
I don't want to build my life around you –
I want to include you in the building of my life.
~ Kahlil Gibran
It's a habit of yours to walk slowly.
You hold a grudge for years.
With such heaviness, how can you progress?
With such attachments,
do you expect to arrive anywhere?
~ Rumi, "Bismillah"
We have found that for men who believe that they are loved
by their wives, there is a huge difference in coronary cases.
A sense of security comes from feeling loved, which is
profoundly beneficial to a person’s health and well-being.
~ Deepak Chopra
Wishing in Gladness and in Safety,
May all beings be at Ease –
Let no one, through Anger of ill-will
wish any harm upon another being.
So with a Boundlessly Open Heart
Should one cherish all Living beings.
Enlightened Happiness
and Genuine Satisfaction
has to be Unconditional –
An Inner Happiness
not based on any conditions,
circumstances or outcomes.
~ The Buddha.
A tall order we're all working our 'practices' towards...
_______________________________________________
Centuries ago, innocent people used to believe
that if a woman saw a robin flying overhead
on Saint Valentine's Day after Mass –
it meant that she would marry a sailor.
If she saw a sparrow, she would marry a poor man & be very happy.
If she saw a goldfinch, she would marry an affluent gentleman.
Who ever sees goldfinches these days?
In the middle ages, young men and women drew names
on a wood chip from a bowl to see who their Valentine would be.
They would wear these names pinned to their sleeves for one week.
This is said to be the origin of the expression, "wearing your heart on your sleeve."
__________________________________________
‘Three Passions’ have governed my life –
The Longings for Love, the Search for Knowledge,
And unbearable Pity for the Suffering of humankind.
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought Knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of people.
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and Knowledge led upwards to the Heavens,
But always Pity brought me back to Earth –
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life – I found it worth living.
~ Bertrand Russell
When I say I love the ‘oppressor’, it sounds preposterous – men who brutalize people.
You're going to Mississippi to create social change - and you love them in your desire
to create conditions which will redeem their children. Loving your ‘enemy’ is manifest
in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power
from those who misuse it - at which point they can become human too.
~ Bayard Rustin, black social activist
Love, like Truth and Beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a ‘sweet feeling’ –
not, at heart, a matter of ‘sentiment’, ‘attachment’, or being ‘drawn toward’. In contrast,
‘Love’ is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation
with one's friends and enemies. Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth.
To make love is to ‘make justice’. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving
involves struggle, resistance, risk. People working today on behalf of women, blacks,
lesbians and gay men, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that
‘Making Justice’ is not a warm, fuzzy experience. I think also that sexual lovers and
good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience,
and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.
For this reason Loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others,
world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the
strings of a deity called "Love." Love is a choice - not necessarily a rational choice,
but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a
‘conversion’ to humanity - a willingness to participate with others in the healing of
a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member
of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world
or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh.
~ Carter Heyward - ‘Passion for Justice’
___________________________________________________
For there is one thing I can safely say –
that those bound by love must obey
each other if they are to keep company long.
Love will not be constrained by mastery –
for when ‘mastery’ comes, the God of Love
at once beats its wings, and farewell – it is gone.
Love is a thing as free as any Spirit –
women & men naturally desire liberty,
and not to be constrained like slaves,
if I shall tell the truth.
~ Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400 ) English author, poet, philosopher and diplomat –
best remembered for The Canterbury Tales. Sometimes called the father of English
literature, being the first author to demonstrate the artistic legitimacy of the vernacular
English language, rather than French or Latin.
THE HEART REVEALED
Choose this day.
Now which ‘master’
You will honor?
You cannot serve both.
What is your heart's desire?
To love things and use people
Or love people and use things.
Will you find joy in love of power
Or perfection through the power of love?
~ Doris Lakey

_______________________________________________
The unfolding of the human heart is artful and mysterious.
We might wish the path to enlightenment were orderly and
predictable, but the ways of the heart are a landscape
discoverable only in the journey. We cannot capture freedom
and place it in time.
For the mature spirit – freedom is the journey itself.
It is like a labyrinth, a circle, a flower's petal-by-petal opening,
or a deepening spiral, a dance around the still point, the center
of all things. There are always changing cycles: ups and downs,
openings and closings, awakenings to love and freedom, often
followed by new and subtle entanglements. In the course of this
Great Spiral, we return to where we started again and again,
but each time with a fuller, more open heart.
We become the love we have sought.
And in this love we are also returned to ourselves.
~ Jack Kornfield
Her love and tenderness …
gave me the faith in love that enabled me
to face ‘my dead’ at last and write this play –
write it with deep pity and understanding
and forgiveness for all the haunted.
~ Eugene O’Neill
The real voyage of discovery
consists not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes.
~ Marcel Proust
Infantile love follows the principle:
"I love because I am loved."
Mature love follows the principle:
"I am loved because I love."
Immature love says:
"I love you because I need you."
Mature love says:
"I need you because I love you."
~ Erich Fromm
When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning,
who must open a wedge into neutral nature. ‘Love’ is the problem of an animal
who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being.
~ Ernest Becker
Free Love? As if Love is anything but free!
Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy Love.
Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue Love.
Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer Love.
Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before Love.
High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command –
Man is yet poor and desolate, if Love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel
is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus Love has the magic power
to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free - it can dwell in no other atmosphere.
~ Emma Goldman
Reclaimed

Many years since a Lover, and now you
bring me ribboned boxes of sand-washed silk.
Come, cover me with your great slow-beating wings.
Silken lingerie slides to dishabille.

Bring me ribboned boxes of sand-washed silk.
Light as air, soft as the dust of moth-wing,
silken lingerie slides to dishabille,
palest rose, cream, black. I shake out the folds.

Light as air, soft as the dust of moth-wing,
cool to the touch, smooth as the inside of your mouth.
Palest rose, cream, black, I shake out the folds,
imagine my skin this fluttering silk,

Many years since a Lover and now you
imagine my skin this fluttering silk.
Come, cover me with your great slow-beating wings
~ Cathie Sandstrom Smith
If we discovered that we had only five minutes left
to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone
would be occupied by people calling other people
to stammer that they loved them.
~ Christopher Morley
The world is too dangerous
for anything but truth – and
too small for anything but love.
We can never really love anybody
with whom we never laugh.
Love is in the ‘giver’ – not the gift.
~ William Sloan Coffin
If you love something, set it free.
If it comes back, it was, and always will be yours.
If it never returns, it was never yours to begin with.
~ Richard Bach - 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull'

“If you love something, set it free”. With homing pigeons,
that is absolutely the seminal step you take. One day,
you watch them take off and disappear. Almost all of
the time they all come back. Sometimes some don’t.
For a child, that is a pretty magical thing or a tragedy.
It makes you a stronger, better person.
cynically ~
If It Just Sits In Your Living Room,
Messes Up Your Stuff,
Eats Your Food,
Uses Your Telephone,
Takes Your Money,
And It Never Appears That
You Actually Set It Free
In The First Place
You Either Married It
Or Gave It Birth!
Regenerating: As you continue to send out Love,
the energy returns to you in a regenerating spiral.
As Love accumulates ~
Love keeps your system in balance and harmony.
Love is the tool, and more Love is the end product.
Love is not automatic ~
It takes conscious practice and awareness,
just like playing the piano or golf – However,
you have many ample opportunities to practice.
Everyone you meet can be your ‘practice session’.
You'll discover that real Love is millions of miles past
falling in love with anyone or anything. When you make
that one great effort to feel compassion instead of blame
or self-blame, the heart opens again and continues opening.
Our true identity is to love without fear and insecurity.
Our higher potential finds us when we set our course in that direction.
The power of love and compassion transforms insecurity.
~ Doc Childre & Sara Paddison
The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage
or a desire for marriage - may be a life long experience of the greatest value
to themselves - and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity – but for
this type of friendship, both a rare man and a rare woman are needed. Perhaps
it should be added, that either the man or the woman thus deeply bound in life-
long friendship who does seek marriage - must find a still rarer man or woman
to wed, to make such a three cornered comradeship a permanent success.
~ Anna Garlin Spencer
Each time that one loves
is the only time one has ever loved.
Difference of ‘object’ does not
alter singleness of passion –
It merely intensifies it.
We can have but one
great experience at best –
and the Secret of Life is to
reproduce that experience
as often as possible.
~ Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable.
It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can
get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses.
You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you,
then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person,
wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you.
They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you,
or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.
Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out
and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase
like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive"
turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts.
Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt,
a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
~ Rose Walker
You know quite well, deep within you,
that there is only a single magic,
a single power, a single salvation...
and that is called loving.
Well, then, love your ‘suffering’ too.
Do not resist it, do not flee from it.
It is your ‘aversion’ that hurts, nothing else.
~ Hermann Hesse
Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch.
None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed.
But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need,
the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond
the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your
body home and moving toward integration and unity.
~ Henri Nouwen
There is only unconditional love – all else is approval.
I believe that the purest love happens between those
who least try to change each other. Think of people
and their pets, grandparents or handicapped people
and their caregivers. It is there that each finds
total acceptance and unconditional love.
~ Peggy S. Grose
It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness
with which I can truly love my brothers.
The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them…
Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers
for what they are, not for what they say.
~ Thomas Merton
The bottom line is that ~
(a) people are never perfect, but Love can be,
(b) that is the one and only way that the
mediocre and vile can be transformed,
(c) and doing that makes it that.
We waste time looking for the perfect lover,
instead of creating the perfect Love.

~ Tom Robbins - Still Life With Woodpecker
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