"While women generally
recognize the central place of love in everything, men are more often more
reluctant to acknowledge this. ‘Please don’t reduce everything to that,’ I can
hear many male readers groaning. ‘I have more important business to attend to
than feeling loved.’ But think about it: The author who writes a best-seller,
the politician who wins an election, the businessman who gains a promotion or
an important contract – all feel good about themselves because a little love
has flowed their way, in the form of recognition, praise, or appreciation. Even
the trader who reaps a stock market windfall feels that the gods are smiling on
him.
At bottom, most of the things we strive for –
security, success, wealth, status, power, recognition, validation, praise – are
ways of trying to fill a gaping hole within us, a hole formed out of our
separation from love. As ways of trying to win love indirectly, these substitute gratifications do not truly
nourish us, because they do not deliver the real thing. In that sense, they are
like junk food. Their failure to truly nourish only intensifies our inner
hunger, driving us to run all the harder
on the hamster wheel of success, desperately hoping to win some reward that
will truly satisfy.
Yet if love is so central
to who we are, why do we often feel so separated from it? All the great
spiritual traditions have addressed the question of why people treat each other
so badly and the world is such a mess. They have provided various explanations
for this, such as ignorance, bad karma, original sin, egocentricity, or the
failure to recognize love as our very nature. Yet what is the root cause of
these afflictions?"
Welwood J. Perfect love, imperfect relationships. Healing the wound of
the heart. Trumpeter, Boston, 2006.
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| Photo: Greg Burke dpreview.com |
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