I don't mean to get in the habit of recycling old posts, but as I rescue bits and pieces of my old blog, I find writing that is so relevant to my current condition that it's really centering to know I've been here before, and will likely return again. So here's a post from July 22nd of last year. Keep in mind I was going through an astrology phase. Still, I think the main lesson in Astrology is that it reminds us to slow down, look around, look inside, and see how the outer reality ("the stars" being only a convinient shorthand) corresponds to the inner reality.
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So after my sadness and freak out last night about how tenuous and fragile human relationships are, thinking of the dozens of people I've cared about that I may never see again, I sat down to meditate, and learned a lot about myself. My horoscope today is true in the long-term, not just for these 24 hours.
Tonight you may display great sensitivity and feeling in front of or when dealing with others. Or you may allow your thinking to be entirely overcome by personal and subjective considerations so that no one can communicate with you or understand you. This influence can go either way. On the positive side, it enables you to feel out the mood of a group of people so that you can appeal to their deepest emotional concerns. But on the negative side, this influence may make you shy away from groups or from people in general. The same energy that enables you to feel out moods also makes you feel vulnerable and exposed with others. Thinking and decision- making are not favored by this quality of time, because your mind is dominated by petty personal motives that cannot go beyond your immediate psychological necessities.
It's very true. This is a fundamental aspect of my personality in general. As I was meditating last night, the old St. Francis Prayer floated up.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
I've always been able to pray the first part with no reservations. I want so badly to be all of those things. But last night, my mind faltered on the second bit. Why do I want to be all these things? And the answer came - because I want to be loved. I think my heart is far from pure in this respect, and always has been - my "mind is dominated by petty personal motives that cannot go beyond your immediate psychological necessities." My need to be loved is over-arching. I was reading No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton again a few weeks ago, and as I meditated, the first chaper on love came back to me. He says:
A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy. . . .
There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity we best fulfill our own capacities to act and to be...Selfish love often appears to be unselfish, because it is willing to make any concession to the beloved in order to keep him prisoner...
A love, therefore, that is selfless, that honestly seeks the truth, does not make unlimited concession to the beloved. Yet there can never be happiness in compulsion. It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be shared freely. That is to say it must be given, not merely taken. Unselfish love that is poured out upon a selfish object does not bring perfect happiness: not because love requires a return or a reward for loving, but because it rests in the happiness of the beloved. And if the one loved receives love selfishly, the lover is not satisfied. He sees that his love has failed to make the beloved happy. It has not awakened his capacity for unselfish love. . . ."
The gift of love is the gift of the power and the capacity to love, and, therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So, love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received. This feels like a Koan. I try to ask myself honestly, in meditation, and in many situations in my day-to-day life "Am I seeking to love, or seeking to be loved?" The Koan is that the two are not really separable, but it's a hard thing to get your mind around. It is in giving that we recieve, but we must not give with the intention of recieving, or our love is not pure, and we're not really giving, at all, and so we won't recieve.
Sometimes I wonder if I should bother to question my motives or just not worry about whether my intentions are pure, and live moment to moment, doing what seems best and noblest in the moment. But without self-awareness in this respect, I may not know my level of detachment.
I can feel that I am growing in this area, being stretched a lot. I don't want to be slack with myself, because it is so easy to fall back into an unaware dream state when it comes to love. When it's going right, you stop thinking about it and checking yourself...but all things are impermanent. People die, move away, lose interest, lose their health...everything passes away. If you don't cultivate a pure love, devoid of self-interest, and instead, try to cling (even only internally) the experience will bring pain.
It's hard to imagine not needing to be loved. Isn't that biologically programmed into primates? We're social creatures, after all. And claiming to have no needs at all is prideful and dishonest. Can you make yourself not need anything? When I was more religious this question made me miserable. If I really believed in God, why would I need anything else? It made me doubt myself that I still needed so much human affirmation in my life, that I still got lonely, that I still wanted so badly to be loved by my fellow fallen creatures, when I had the perfected God in front of me. Now that I no longer believe in this God, I wonder, what's supposed to fill these holes we have inside ourselves?
The answer is probably that we need to heal these holes, not fill them. This is what Aristotle means when he says "Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient." If we have healed ourselves and are not looking for other people to fill up the empty, broken spaces inside us, our love will be pure and true and unselfish. And if and when it is returned, it will be the glorious side effect, meant to complete our love, not meant to complete us.
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