In Process

 Here is a great challenge from Sam Keen's book, To Love and Be Loved,

"Imagine your life is a love story in process."

(page 240)

Think on that for a while...imagine it - if you will - and plan for it, provide for it, and enliven it!

The Answer to the Problem of Meaning

 "Love is the solution to the problem of meaning."

Sam Keen

To Love and Be Loved

Page 237

Meet -or - Apart?

 "Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.  They're in each other all along."

Poet Rumi

page 231

Sam Keen

To Love and Be Loved

The Complexity + Expansiveness of Love

 "The philosophy of love creates complexity...

It is the nature of love to rejoice in complexity.

Page 230

Love is by nature expansive.

Love may give our lives an increasing richness of meaning, an expanded identity."

Page 231

Sam Keen

To Love and Be Loved

No Scarcity with Love

 "Love dispels (the illusion of) scarcity.

The more you give, the more you have."

Sam Keen

To Love and Be Loved

Page 229

Path + Destination + Reality

 "Love is both a path and a destination,

a way of knowing and the 'object' that is known."

Sam Keen

To Love and Be Loved

Page 223

or - stated differently...

"Love is both the pathway to and the revelation of what is most real."

Page 222

Are you in living in reality?

 "Love reveals the ultimate truth about reality."

Sam Keen

To Love and Be Loved

Page 223

Are you in a state of wonder?

 "Love is the state of wonder at the mere existence of another."

Sam Keen

To Love and Be Loved

Page 200

Solitary Communion

"Love is solitary communion, being alone together."

Sam Keen

To Love and Be Loved

page 158 

Your Reason for Living

 "To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence for God is love."  

~Thomas Merton

What's left with you?

 "Love is what's left in a relationship after all the selfishness has been removed."

~Cullen Hightower

Separated Reunited -or - Separate Fused?

 Have you ever heard of Paul Tillich's definition of love?

"LOVE IS THE ONTOLOGICAL DRIVE TOWARD THE REUNION OF THE SEPARATED."

page 30

To Love and Be Loved

Sam Keen

I had not.  What do you think?  Is it a bringing together of separated souls, or two souls coming together to forge a bond?

Interesting to ponder...

Giving + Receiving Love

 "When we say, "love is a gift," we are reminded that sometimes it is simply bestowed on us."

page 29

To Love and Be Loved

Sam Keen

Love is a gift to give and receive.  Make sure you do both!

Defining and Measuring Love - Poverty or Richness of Love

 "In the final analysis, we do not define or measure love but are defined and measured by it."

"It is the poverty or richness of our love that defines our sense of what is real."

page 28

To Love and Be Loved

Sam Keen

Unarmed truth + Unconditional love

 Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

"Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality."

Let it be so.  Let it be.  

The Ideal is LOVE - for all of us!

 "Love is the ideal of all of us"

~Robert Solomon, The Passions

Challenge: Be the more loving one

 W.H. Auden's poem

"If equal affection cannot be

     Let the more loving one be me."

Let this challenge us, to be the more loving one.

Let's have a competition to see who can be!

In Love - Paradox Rules - Mystery

 "In quantum physics

as in love,

in searching out

matter and meaning

paradox rules.

Protons, being particle and wave,

persons, being singe and connected,

arrive at their destination

before they embark on the journey.

The arrow of longing

hits the target

before we take aim.

The answer sleeps

in the question.

The lost treasure

is our found/ation.

Start with the conclusion,

the end encoded in the beginning.

The problem of the meaning of life

is solved in the mystery of love.

[poem in front of  "To Love and Be Loved" by Sam Keen

Perfectly Imperfect

 "We come to love - not by finding a perfect person, 

    but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly."

 ~Sam Keen, To Love and Be Loved

Prescription: Never Grow Old

 "Those who love deeply never grow old;

they may die of old age, but they die young."

~Benjamin Franklin

Dying of old age - yet dying with youthfulness, O Lord... let me love deeply that renews me daily.