“Not knowing we are loved and lovable makes the heart grow cold. And all the tragedy of human life follows from there." John Welwood. "Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. Healing the Wound of the Heart." Trumpeter, 2006.
Early childhood experiences are beyond our control, yet powerfully shape our emotional life. And our emotional life is remarkably resistant to even adult logic & reasoning. “By far the most important predictor of how well (adults) coped with life’s inevitable disappointments was the level of security established with their primary caregiver during the first two years of life.” If from an early age we're conditioned to feel chronically frightened & unwanted, then our brain becomes specialized to manage feelings of fear & abandonment, so life can be a constant struggle to survive. Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015.
Logic tells us that we, like all living beings, deserve unconditional love. Yet our lived experience may well leave us with a very different, far deeper visceral imprint. Logic is like a temporary stick-on tattoo; lived experience, like a deep scar from a hot branding iron. Receiving consistent, unconditional love throughout childhood is an extremely unlikely probability. Welwood writes that many therefore "come to regard love as something outside of themselves, which they have to earn by living up to certain standards." Especially in Western cultures, most of us are conditioned to feel unworthy of unconditional love and thus feel unlovable, unworthy & broken – the “wound of the heart.” "When the presence of love is absent, something often feels sad, not quite right; something seems to be missing, and it’s hard to find much joy, even in the midst of favorable circumstances. We easily fall prey to meaninglessness, anxiety, or despair." John Welwood. "Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. Healing the Wound of the Heart." Trumpeter, 2006.
On top of that, most people say they are less nurturing toward and more harsh with themselves than they are with other people. "Individuals have been shown to use a wide variety of strategies for recovering from blows to their self-esteem, at times even stooping to ... actively sabotage" others. Molden DC, Dweck CS. "Finding 'meaning' in psychology: a lay theories approach to self-regulation, social perception, and social development." Am Psychol 2006; 61(3): 192-203.
"So how can we get off this treadmill, this constant need to be better than others so we can feel good about ourselves? That's where self-compassion comes in. Self-compassion is not a way of judging ourselves positively. Self-compassion is a way of relating to ourselves kindly, embracing ourselves as we are, flaws and all." Kristin Neff PhD TedX talk: "The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvtZBUSplr4 But this can only actually take place by undergoing a fundamental identity shift, from the conditioned small needy lonely self, longing for, & 'looking for love in all the wrong places' (“the story of me”) to who we really, fundamentally are, which is unconditioned & transpersonal (Buddha-nature, “Christ within”, etc) - the very source of unconditional love. This is a massive unburdening.
"According to the saints and mystics, love is the very fabric of what we are; we are fashioned out of its warmth and openness. ... love is the central force that holds our whole life together and allows it to function." John Welwood. "Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. Healing the Wound of the Heart." Trumpeter, 2006. “Self-compassionate individuals say they are equally kind to themselves and others. Self-compassion can be thought of as a type of openheartedness in which the boundaries between self and other are softened -- all human beings are worthy of compassion, the self included." Neff KD. "Self-compassion: Moving Beyond the Pitfalls of a Separate Self-concept." In: Wayment HA, Bauer JJ. "Transcending Self-interest: Psychological Explorations of the Quiet Ego." American Psychological Association, 2008.
"Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important. The reason it’s important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn’t just ourselves that we’re discovering. We’re discovering the universe. When we discover the Buddha that we are, we discover that everything and everyone is Buddha. We discover that everything is awake and everyone is awake. Everything is equally precious and whole and good. When we regard thoughts and emotions with humor and openness, that’s how we perceive the universe. We’re not just talking about our individual liberation, but how to help the community we live in, how to help our families, our country, and the whole continent, not to mention the world and the galaxy and as far as we want to go.” Pema Chödrön “I honor the place in you where the entire Universe resides. I honor the place of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us” Ram Dass, on the meaning of Namaste
“Beneath the fragile sense of personal identity, the individual is actually an innumerable swarm of disconnected impulses, thoughts, reactions, opinions, and sensations, which are triggered into activity by causes of which he is totally unaware.” Jacob Needleman
"Self-knowledge ... is solely a matter of digesting deep impressions of myself as I actually am from moment to moment: a disconnected, helpless collection of impulses and reactions, a being of disharmonized mind, feeling, and instinct." John Welwood ed. “Awakening the Heart. East / West Approaches to Psychotherapy and the Healing Relationship.” Shambhala, 1983.
“We have little choice about anything, moving around as we do in a sleepy, anxious cloud of habit and conditioned response. … The only choice we have anyway is to wake up.” Stephen Butterfield John Welwood ed. “Ordinary Magic. Everyday Life as Spiritual Path.” Shambhala, 1992.
“The essential purpose of practice is to liberate us from attachment to a narrow, conditioned self-structure (our 'conditioned nature' or 'small self' as described above), so that we realize we are something much larger (ie discover our 'true nature' or 'unconditioned nature').
Becoming fully human involves working with the totality of what we are – both our conditioned nature (earth) and our unconditioned nature (heaven). On one hand, we have developed a number of habitual personality patterns that cloud our awareness, distort our feelings, and restrict our capacity to open to life and to love. We originally fashioned our personality patterns to shield us from pain, but now they have become a dead weight keeping us from living as fully as we could. Still, underneath all our conditioned behavior, the basic nature of the human heart is an unconditioned awake presence, a caring, inquisitive intelligence, an openness to reality. Each of us has these two forces at work inside us: an embryonic wisdom that wants to blossom from the depths of our being, and the imprisoning weight of our karmic patterns. From birth to death, these two forces are always at work, and our lives hang in the balance. Since human nature always contains these two sides, our journey involves working with both.
... practice involves exploring who and what we ultimately are – our true, essential nature, shared alike by all human beings. The direct, experiential realization of true nature has been a particular specialty of the Eastern contemplative traditions. Eastern teachings emphasize living from our deepest nature, turning the mind around so that it can see into its very essence, rather than constantly facing outward, focusing on tasks and objects to grasp and manipulate. Recognizing the essential nature of our awareness as an open, wakeful, luminous, and compassionate presence allows us to relate to our life in a much richer and more powerful way. This realization is what allows us to liberate ourselves from the chains of past conditioning …
As humans we have two kinds of awareness available to us at any given moment: we are focused on personal problems, needs, and feelings, while also having access to a larger awareness that allows us, if only briefly, to step out of those problems, take a larger perspective on them, and experience some freedom from their entanglement. Real change and growth happen in therapy when both these levels of awareness are addressed, namely: (1) when we first of all respect our needs and feelings, face them directly, and see what they are telling us, rather than belittling or avoiding them; and (2) when we can bring our larger awareness to bear on these personal issues, so that we can begin to see how what we are is always wider and deeper than all the problems we carry around. It is in being called on to span and connect these two halves of our nature – the personal and the more-than-personal – that the heart begins to stir and awaken.
... meditation provides a very direct, practical way to discover the larger awareness and aliveness in us and to learn to trust its natural direction toward well-being. ... It helps to cultivate a friendly attitude toward all the phenomena of the mind – so that the inner struggle and conflict of trying to get rid of neurotic patterns can be replaced by ... unconditional friendliness toward oneself. At the same time, it allows a person to tap into a larger awareness in which ordinary emotional entanglements are seen in a different perspective – as clouds in the sky, rather than as the whole sky itself. Meditation, then, provides a basic practice for awakening the heart – which includes both developing warmth and compassion toward all our fears, insecurities, and emotional entanglements, as well as discovering our basic oneness and goodness underneath them.
"If man fails to recognize his true nature, the true object of his love, the confusion is vast and irremediable. Bent on assuaging a passion for the All on an object too small to satisfy it, his efforts will be fruitless, a terrible waste."Teilhard de Chardin
John Welwood. “Toward a Psychology of Awakening. Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual transformation.” Shambhala, 2002.
“relationships cannot in and of themselves fill the hole of love created in childhood. In (his excellent book) 'Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships,' John Welwood teaches that we need to learn how to be there for ourselves and recognize that our lives are held in an absolute love. To tap into this love, he offers this six-step exercise: (1) Settle into your body. Sitting or lying down, take a few deep breaths. (2) Turn your attention toward some way in which you feel cut off from love in your life right now and see how that lack feels in your body.
(3) Without trying to get anything from anybody in particular, open to the pure energy of your longing to feel more connected. Deeply feel the energy in this longing.
(4) See if you can feel the longing in your heart center and soften your crown center, which is at the top and back of your head.
(5) Notice if there is any presence of love available now. Don’t think about it too hard or fabricate what isn’t there. But if there is some love or warmth at hand, let it enter you. Give yourself ample time to be with whatever you’re experiencing and keep in mind that the presence of absolute love may be very subtle, like being held in a gentle embrace.
(6) Instead of holding yourself up, let love be your ground. Allow yourself to melt.” Shambhala Sun, March 2013
“I was meditating with my cat the other day and all of a sudden she shouted, ‘What happened?!’ I knew exactly what she meant, but encouraged her to say more – feeling that if she got it all out on the table she would sleep better that night. So I responded, ‘Tell me more, dear,’ and she soulfully meowed: ‘Well, I was mingled with the sky. I was comets whizzing here and there. I was suns in heat, hell – I was galaxies. But now look – I am landlocked in fur.’ To this I said, ‘I know exactly what you mean.’ What to say about conversation between mystics?” Tukaram “Landlocked in Fur” in: “Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West” Ladinksy, 2002.
Don't we all feel 'landlocked in fur' - trapped in our imperfect body & imperfect life? Perhaps we all have a vague memory of being not just stardust, but the Source itself. But for this very brief life ...
“Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are And listen to the wind singing in your veins. Feel the love, the longing, and the fear in your bones. Open your heart to who you are, right now, Not who you would like to be. Not the saint you’re striving to become. But the being right here before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy. You’re already more and less Than whatever you can know. Breathe out, touch in, let go.” John Welwood
Then, we're able to greet ourselves & others with 'Namaste': “A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond
to the essential beauty of each other's individual natures, behind their
facades, and who connect on this deeper level. This kind of mutual
recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred
alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize
their deepest potentials. While a heart connection lets us appreciate
those we love just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further
dimension -- seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who
we could become under their influence. This means recognizing that we
both have an important part to play in helping each other become more
fully who we are.... A soul connection not only inspires us to expand,
but also forces us to confront whatever stands in the way of that
expansion.”John Welwood
To an old friend, who firmly considers himself a physicalist / materialist, I sent the following email:
These quotes reveal some aspects of meaningful spirituality.
“Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too intense.” W.H. Auden
“At the bottom of my grievance against a world gone mad, I discovered the vulnerable child who still didn’t know that love was fully available or truly reliable.”John Welwood. "Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. Healing the Wound of the Heart." Trumpeter, 2006.
“… what we resist makes us frightened, hard, inflexible, and what we embrace becomes transformed.” Jack Kornfield
"I was born when all I once feared I could love.” Rābiʿah al-Baṣrī
“I would define love very simply: as a potent blend of openness & warmth, which allows us to make real contact, to take delight in & appreciate, and to be at one with – ourselves, others, & life itself. ... love is the central force that holds our whole life together & allows it to function." John Welwood. "Perfect love, imperfect relationships. Healing the wound of the heart." Trumpeter, 2006.
“No matter how sharp your intellect is, don’t forget to filter it through the heart of compassion before you manifest it in the suffering world.” Dzogchen Ponlop
"Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough." George Washington Carver
"You learn about a thing ... by opening yourself wholeheartedly to it. You learn about a thing by loving it." Barbara McClintock - Nobel prize-winning geneticist
"The truth is, what one really needs is not Nobel prizes but love. How do you think one gets to be a Nobel laureate? Wanting love, that's how. Wanting it so bad one works all the time and ends up a Nobel laureate. It's a consolation prize. What matters is love." George Wald - Nobel prize-winning biologist from Harvard
My friend responded to my email saying the quotes were "interesting," however "Love is an emotion to me, and not the secret of the universe."I suggested that he consider holding his present stance lightly - as an open question or koan.
William James, a leading thinker of the late 19th century, one of the most influential
American philosophers, and the 'Father of American
psychology' wrote: "I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness... much like a man who out of his whole bodily organism should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger... We all have reservoirs of life to draw upon, of which we do not dream."
I've learned that love actually IS the secret of the universe, and much wiser folks than I, like Rabindranath Tagore, seem to agree:
“Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.”
“Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.”
“Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.”
And Mahatma Gandhi wrote: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth & love have always won. There have been tyrants & murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it – always.”
“Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over our own hidden qualities and those of others & the world. It means remaining on the surface, taking the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated & exploited, and not going beyond the world of calculation & exploitation. Living without mystery means not seeing the crucial processes of life at all and even denying them.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"The beautiful thing about compassion is that when it spontaneously arises in you, an inner door opens into an experience of love, which is our part of our fundamental reality.... When the inner door opens, it becomes effortless to reach out and connect with others. This is why the greatest antidote to insecurity and sense of fear is compassion. It brings one back to the basis of one's inner strength. A truly compassionate person embodies a carefree spirit of fearlessness, born of the freedom from egoistic self concern." The Dalai Lama
I'm sure I'm not alone wanting a wise, big-picture overview of life, so I canlive my best life. Mystics of all wisdom traditions, passed & living, are connected to & sharethis wisdom.
One of the wisest quotes I've come across: "The most important question to ask ourselves, according to Einstein: 'Is the universea friendly placeor not?' ... If we believe that the universe is unfriendly ... peace will be elusive at best." Joan Borysenko. “Fire in the Soul. A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism.” Warner Books, 1993.
Even intelligent, educated people seem overwhelmed bymysticism for many reasons. First and foremost, our culture is by and large ignorant about mystics&mysticism. Our "consumer society" trains us to buy as much as possible as fast as possible, "greed is good," even after 9/11 George W. told Americans to show the world what they're made of, "Go shopping!" We're starving on a restricted diet of junk food (shallow materialistic concerns), and don't even know the vocabulary of nutrition (metaphysics, spirituality). We fear what we don't know, and procrastinate & otherwise avoid learning about it.
"Nothing in life is to be feared,
it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that
we may fearless." Marie Curie, Nobel Prizes in Physics, & Chemistry
"... relax, allow life to be as it is, &open yourheart to yourself. It’s
easier than you might think, and it could change your life.” KristinNeff. “Self-Compassion. The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.” HarperCollins, 2011.
"I was born when all I once feared I could love.”Rabia Basri
"Once we are willing
to be directly intimate with our life as it arises, joy emerges out of
the simplest of life experiences."Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara
During meditation “you are not escaping the world; you are getting ready to fully embrace it.” Christine Skarda
"To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things."Zen Master Dogen
SO, what CAN we do?Not should, not must - although our time as individual mortal beings, as well as a species is running out - but absolutely CAN do, because wisdom that is IN ALL of US, the wisdom that is in fact who/what we actually are, is amazingly what we mostly, and in some almost entirely, have forgotten. Here's some of what I've understood from the many imho wise elders I've been reading about, listening to on the web, occasionally meeting, and more recently, blogging about:
Don't Judge. Every day we see outrageous, disgusting behavior on the news. It's disorienting to see how almost half of the US population fervently supports behavior, that in a few years (as Germans did after WWII) they will categorically deny having even known anything about it. So it's hard not tojudge terrible behavior. Butfrom a much higher, non-dual perspective,what if we're each born to play a certain role, with a certain set of talents, a certain set of limitations & no matter how wonderful or horrible it appeared, we all did our best. And what if most of our ridiculous behavior was because most (but mercifully not all) of us completely forgot that we took on our role freely, including the fact that we are actually producers & executive directors of the entire play - almost identical to the Jesus being fully human andfully Divine story, except the he had almost complete recall of who he actually was, where he came from, and where he would return to. Bewildered? This blog & its video might help: http://www.johnlovas.com/2023/01/the-nearly-unforgivables.html
Be Discerning. Many of us spend a great deal of time watching / listening to the news & comments about the news. While it's important to perhaps watch / listen to the CBC or BBC news for 30 minutes a day, much more than that is probably masochistic or even an addiction. Doing more & more of what makes you feel sick is not a recipe for optimal healthy. Instead of a steady diet of psychopathic politicians, billionaires, "influencers", and other nightmare visions, for the sake of sanity - how about reading about and listening to wise elders? My blogs are all about inspiring, mature, healthy, wise role models, like:
and MANY MORE wise elders to learn from & be inspired by.
It'sOUR CHOICE - our free will - whether we immerse ourselves inwisdom - OR - indarkness. "Too busy", yet doomscrolling for hours each day?; is this wisdom stuff "too deep" or "too confusing", and again, "just too busy" to get into it and learn? You can procrastinate and aim at bestfor feeling superficially OK, "ordinary unhappiness" - OR - discover what life isreallyabout.
Learn & Do Spiritual Practices. Theory is important BUT not enough. We need to intentionally PRACTICE shiftingfrom beingfearful consumer robotstobecoming wise elder human beings. Our culture is not big on "practices." Some of us might admire the dedication it takes to become world class athletes, dancers, surgeons etc, but most of us just don't have the dedication to put in the time & effort. The ONE area where ALL of us would massively benefit is putting in dedicated time & effort into spiritual practice: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=spiritual+practice
Be a Nurturing Presence. Only by waking up to who/what we truly are, can we help instead of hinder others to wake up and help others. “… we have to allow our higher nature to show before we can do anything real, before we can be truly responsible people.” Jiyu-Kennett. “The Wild, White Goose. The Diary of a Female Zen Priest.” ed 2. Shasta Abbey Press. 2002.
Be Humble. The ego is a tricky, sticky, persistent trickster. We must regularly check our own BS-meter. A common problem is assuming a massive group ego - thinking one can do even horrible things because "I'm doing God's work." But such "crazy wisdom" is just crazy. To paraphrase Forest Gump, "Crazy is as crazy does." Humility, gentleness, empathy, wisdom & kindness are rarely promoted or even recognized in our consumer culture & partisan religions.
Learn Self-compassion. The tough, aggressively self-reliant, workaholic individual is venerated these days, while a decent, nurturing, humble person would be branded "a loser" by today's dictators & billionaire CEOs. So decent human beings need to intentionally practice self-compassion, in order to survive & be effective in today's crass, superficial, heartless environment.
Practice Self-awareness. With self-awareness practice, your talk & your walk are kept aligned. Again, humility is crucial. "Self-inquiry" is a specialized, key, self-awareness practice: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Self-inquiry
Become More Discerning, More Self-compassionate. The more neuroses & "story of me" burdens we shed, the more clearly we see ourselves & what's going on around us. The more clearly we see, the more magnified our remaining (though diminishing) neuroses & other burdens appear to us, so it can seem like we're regressing instead of "getting ahead." So we need more self-compassion & patience with ourself. “Felt reality is invariably wept reality, and wept reality is soon compassion and kindness. Decisive and harsh judgmentsslip away in the tracks of tears. And when we cry, we are revealing our truest, most loving self.” Richard Rohr. “The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage” Convergent Books, 2025.
Live in Joy. Gradually, you will be progressively more peaceful & joyful, regardless of the many challenges & sorrows in your own & loved ones' life, as well as that of the human race. The major, even crippling burdenthat you will shed is your identification with & constant rehashing of your own 'story of me' AS WELL AS its twin, the constant anxiety of 'what will happen to me?' and of course, vividly imagining the worst possibilities. As this HEAVY PSYCHOLOGIC BURDENstarts to lift, you start to experience 'the peace that surpasses all understanding' ie it must be experienced to be understood. Even this has, if you will, a 'dark side': while you'll see as your own past, no matter how miserable, as just a story, your empathy towards others (even actors playing a sad role in a movie) becomes progressively more powerful. Your job now is embodyingpeace & joymodelingequanimityeven in the midst of chaos, when it's the most essential.
"This is actually instruction from the Buddha, where he says, ‘Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate. Live in joy, in health,even among the afflicted. Live in joy and peace, even among the troubled. Look within. Be still, freefrom fears and attachments. Know the sweet joy of living in the way things are in the Way, the Dharma.' And so this is also a challenge. He doesn’t say, let’s get rid of disease and all these problems, butto find a joyfulway to be aliveamidst it all.” Jack Kornfield - Finding Your Self on the Spiritual Path - Point of Relation with Thomas Hüblhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fjz7WaTyX4WONDERFUL MATURE WISDOM - Jack Kornfield at his best
And some 500 years later, in another incarnation of the Divine, Jesus said, "the poor will always be with us." Fixating on quickly eliminating age-old problems is in itselfproblematic, akin to "seeing a splinter in another's eye," again from Jesus, advising that we should first address our own significant flaws (‘the beam’ in our own eye) before attempting tocorrect / "save"others.
“The teachings on Buddha Nature do not mean that there is some nucleus of Buddhhood enclosed in sentient beings behind the temporary obscuring stains. Rather, our whole existence as sentient beings is in itself the sum of temporary stains that float like cloudsin the infinite, bright sky of Buddha Nature, the luminous, open expanse of our mind that has no limits or boundaries. Once theseclouds dissolve from the warm rays of the sun of wisdom shining in this space, nothing within sentient beings has been freed or developed, but there is just thisradiant expanse without any reference points of cloud-like sentient beings or cloud-free Buddhas." Sthiramati, 6th century Indian Buddhist scholar-monk
Watching David Ditchfield's 40-minute BBC interview about his Near-Death Experience (NDE) is imho wise use of your precious time: https://www.shineonthestory.com/
