All About Love: New Visions

by bell hooks

love “as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”

When we are loving we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.

Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.

Trust is the foundation of intimacy.

Indeed, if patriarchal masculinity estranges men from their selfhood, it is equally true that women who embrace patriarchal femininity, the insistence that females should act as though they are weak, incapable of rational thought, dumb, silly, are also socialized to wear a mask—to lie.

When we are positive we not only accept and affirm ourselves, we are able to affirm and accept others.

The more we accept ourselves, the better prepared we are to take responsibility in all areas of our lives.

another vital aspect of self-esteem, “self-assertiveness,” defined by Branden as “the willingness to stand up for myself, to be who I am openly, to treat myself with respect in all human encounters.”

Jobs depress the spirit.

Bringing love into the work environment can create the necessary transformation that can make any job we do, no matter how menial, a place where workers can express the best of themselves.

A blissful household is one where love can flourish.

Whenever we interact with others, the love we give and receive is always necessarily conditional. Although it is not impossible, it is very difficult and rare for us to be able to extend unconditional love to others, largely because we cannot exercise control over the behavior of someone else and we cannot predict or utterly control our responses to their actions.

While the zeal to possess intensifies, so does the sense of spiritual emptiness.

Organized religion has failed to satisfy spiritual hunger because it has accommodated secular demands, interpreting spiritual life in ways that uphold the values of a production-centered commodity culture.

When a couple can identify this dynamic, they can work on the issue of caring, listening to each other’s pain by engaging in short conversations at appropriate times (i.e., it’s useless to try and speak your pain to someone who is bone weary, irritable, preoccupied, etc.). Setting a time when both individuals come together to engage in compassionate listening enhances communication and connection.

Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.

The greater our compassion the more aware we are of ways to extend ourselves to others that make healing possible.

Judging others increases our alienation.

Estrangement from the realm of the senses is a direct product of overindulgence, of acquiring too much. This is why living simply is a crucial part of healing. As we begin to simplify, to let the clutter go, whether it is the clutter of desire or the actual material clutter and incessant busyness that fills every space, we recover our capacity to be sensual.

As long as a man remains in a state of psychological development in which his mother is the most important woman to him, he cannot mature as a man. A man’s eros, his capacity for love and relatedness, must be freed from attachment to the mother, and able to reach out to a woman who is his contemporary; otherwise he remains a demanding, dependent, childish person.”

Love does not lead to an end to difficulties, it provides us with the means to cope with our difficulties in ways that enhance our growth.

Everyone who wrestles with his spiritual and psychological experience, and, no matter how dark or frightening it is, refuses to let it go until he discovers its meaning, is having something of the Jacob experience. Such a person can come through his dark struggle to the other side reborn, but one who retreats or runs from his encounter with spiritual reality cannot be transformed.”

Addressing woundedness is not about blaming others; however, it does allow individuals who have been, and are, hurt to insist on accountability and responsibility both from themselves and from those who were the agents of their suffering as well as those who bore witness. Constructive confrontation aids our healing.

healing happens when he is able to embrace the wound as a blessing and assume responsibility for his actions.

The story of Jacob reminds us that embracing our wound is the way to heal. He accepts his vulnerability.

Alice Miller chose to call the angelic force in an individual’s life the “enlightened witness.” To her, this was, in particular, any individual who offered hope, love, and guidance to a wounded child in any dysfunctional setting.

Love helps us face betrayal without losing heart.

They tell us paradise is our home and love our true destiny.