Claudian's Corner

we equate love with pleasure: “I love these ridiculously awesome matching t-shirts.” “I love it when you give me a foot massage.” I have effusive tendencies and so I use the word love in this way from morning until night. There is no harm in this unless we think this is the whole of love. If we see this as the all of love then it makes sense when someone does something that doesn’t bring us pleasure we fall out of love with them. It also makes sense if we see love as being only the act of receiving pleasure that we could imagine love is something people give us or deny us. But is this true?

But when we think receiving these things is the fulfillment of love and not receiving these things is the absence of love we are liable to be living in hell. I know, hell is a strong word—but having spent a good deal of my time trying to get the world to love me the way I imagined love to be—I think hell is a pretty good word for the job. But feel free to substitute it for misery, suffering, separation, utter bewilderment, or complete confusion.

What is love? What is reality? Don’t answer these questions with your small thinking mind, live with them in your heart. What is separating us from love?