The Paradox of Love:
All of us experience at one time or another a feeling of loneliness and isolation, a very painful void inside of ourselves that can become an unbearable prison. We have all felt at some time alienated from others, separated from the group, alone and lonely. By it’s very nature this loneliness, just like a toothache, centres the focus of our attention on ourselves. We seek to fill this void to satisfy this hunger... we go out to find others who will love us.
We may do things for them in an obvious attempt to gain their love. We may come to them with hands stretched out like PAN SCALES. On the one hand is our donation to them, the other hand being extended to receive their donation to us. We may even be deceived into thinking that this is loving.
We know that our loneliness can be filled only by the love of others. We know that we must feel loved. The PARADOX is this: if we seek to fill the void of our own loneliness in seeking love from others, we will inevitably find no consolation but only a deeper desolation. It is true that “You’re nobody till someone loves you.” Only the person who has experienced love is capable of growing. It is a frightening but true reality of human life that, by loving me or refusing to love me, others hold the potential of my maturity in their hands. Most of us, driven by our own aching needs and voids, address life and other people in the stance of seekers.
But the PARADOX remains uncompromised: if we seek the love which we need we will never find it. We are lost.
Love is of course the solution to the problem, but we must face the fact that to be loved, we must become lovable. When a person orients his or her life towards the satisfaction of their own needs, no matter how we justify or try to soften the truth, that person is self centred and sadly not loveable, albeit probably deserving of our compassion. Anyone who is concentrating on self and who continues to do so will inevitably find that their ability to love will always remain stunted. They will remain a perennial infant.
If, however a person seeks not to receive love, but rather to give it, they will become loveable and will most certainly be loved in turn. This is the raw reality of the truth: Concern for self, convergence upon self can only isolate self and induce a deeper and more torturous emptiness.
The only way to break this vicious and terrible cycle formed by our lustful egos is to:
STOP being concerned with self.
BEGIN being concerned with others.
This, of course is not easy. To relocate the focus of one’s mind from self to others can in fact mean a lifetime of effort and work.
Elsewhere on the web, take a look at my Squidoo posts.
