I began to heal from my addiction, not when I left the addiction but when I began to grow my garden and recommit to my art. They both have saved my life.
My garden and my art are also the places where I go when I need saving. There's something about the act of making something else(whether in the garden or on paper) that changes something in the inner worlds. I don't really have words to explain it yet, but I can feel it. It's just hitting spring now where I am and I can feel the pull to work the soil. I'm glad to feel it.
Yup...you definitely cannot think yourself into becoming a new person with your conscious mind, while your subconscious is practically running the show. No amount of anything will help, if you don't get to the root.
So loved reading this article! Something I believe strongly is that longing is a good thing— it points to the things soul is really here to experience. Whenever my heart begins to ache too much from the unfulfilled longings I try to delight in that feeling instead. Despair or delight— One awakens the heart, the other makes a stone of it.
One of my favorite lines from a movie:
“You are what you love, not what loves you.” —Adaptation
I think the courage to love is the courage to be ourselves. It’s the fear that maybe that love won’t be reciprocated or returned that keeps us from becoming all that we are made to be.
Thank you for articulating these points on ways that help me see desire and becoming in new ways too.
Jenny Lewis’s song is knocking around my brain now: 🎶 But you are what you love, Tim, and not what loves you back, and I’m in love with illusions, so saw me in half, I’m in love with tricks, so pull another rabbit out of your hat 🎶
I had to read this essay twice. After the first read, I was left feeling a bit confused. Part of me wanted further elaboration and practical examples, while another part of me deeply resonated with the concept of being a lover and letting the heart lead.
About seven years ago, I began exploring the idea of love from a religious and spiritual standpoint. That journey eventually led me to Sufism. I was captivated by the way the sufis' relationship with God was framed as that of a lover and a beloved. Around that time, The Forty Rules of Love became one of my favorite books.
Unfortunately, I was mostly alone in that exploration, and the influences I encountered ended up distorting that search rather than guiding it. Eventually, I abandoned that pursuit.
Now, years later, I find myself trying to separate the misguidance from what might be the true essence of love and God. And that is no easy task.
In recent chapters of my life, I've been trying to understand and orient myself around three things: God, beauty, and love. Yet I must admit I feel utterly lost. They feel like axioms I keep gravitating toward but never quite reaching. I sometimes think that perhaps I need to encounter people who truly embody these things in order to understand them... but I'm not sure.
A few lines from the essay really stayed with me:
"Change doesn't begin in your thinking, but in the orientation of your loving."
That line immediately made me reflect on how love has rarely been the fuel behind the changes in my own life. Over the past few years, I came to believe that pain is the most powerful catalyst for transformation. I'm curious what others think about this. Is it possible for love to be the catalyst instead of pain? And if so, how? Another line that struck me was:
"Love is the condition for knowledge. When your heart is postured toward the right thing, more of that thing is revealed to you."
This resonated with a realization I had, recently... I don't think I truly love God because, frankly, I don't think I know Him.I've only known the versions of Him that people present. My perception of Him has become tangled with too many other voices. If you come from a religious background, you probably know how complicated that can be.
So my logical next step seemed to be learning about God. But I've been stuck at that step for an entire month. This essay made me wonder if perhaps I'm approaching things in the wrong order. But then another question arises: how can someone love what they do not know?
This is my first comment on Substack. I rarely comment on social media at all. But I suppose this time I'm hoping to hear an echo back, or perhaps find someone a few steps further along the path.
Hi Shahd. Your comment “I've been trying to understand and orient myself around three things: God, beauty, and love.”, made me think you might appreciate learning about the overarching beliefs of Kashmir Shaivism. Is that doesn’t resonate with you, perhaps Advaita Vedanta.
Ultimately, I have found in my 20 years of working to understand myself and the nature of all things, that beauty and love are expressions of God. That there is no separation, and that to embody divinity is a process of uncovering what is already there. Not more thought, less thought. Not detachment, but more sensitive feeling. Not disconnection, but more precise orientation.
A practice of meditation can help you in your pursuit, especially a practice that is suited to your temperament. Whether it be more active like yoga, or more present moment focused like breath work, or more focused on achieving alternate states, such as transcendental meditation. Any path you choose, you will continue your process of excavation, to find your truth within yourself.
you're right, pain is the strongest and most efficient catalyst for change but we only experience pain because we love. you love so much that it becomes part of you, you attach yourself, you love it and that's what makes it painful to lose so in the end love still is the catalyst for transformation.
I view religion as a way to express the love we have for each other, and to encapsulate the absurdity of how we are all connected through the human experience. It's containing that agape love in the Greek types of love and giving it a form. So when you love thy neighbor or do charitable deeds, it can feel like becoming closer to God.
I dont necessarily agree that change doesnt being with your thinking. I think you can think yourself into a new person. Your thoughts influence your beliefs, and if you don't believe you need to change you never will. Addiction is the perfect counter example. You don't need to replace one addiction with another, you need to believe that you don't need addiction at all. Just because you think something is bad for you, doesnt mean you believe it.
This article is so amazing but as humans we end up loving something and turning that thing into a god in our lives but I have come to understand that if we would have a love that is worth it it would be loving God.
Because God is the ultimate good and every kind of goodness flows from Him and we can only love things rightly if we love God first with all our heart.
God alone is good essentially
Jesus is the only One that can truly shape you from the inside out to make you into a new person. Nothing else can make you into a new person
This!! I find Him to be the only One deserving of the wholehearted devotion unpacked in this piece--and He in turn gives us a new heart! Softer, renewable.
What an incredible and life-affirming article. It’s not enough to know that something is harming us (that is, our attention to something). We need to focus the art on loving, on doing loving things. We can’t think ourselves out of sorrow, desperation, loneliness. The heart must be put to action.
"We are human becomings as much as we are human beings." YES.
such a powerful explanation and reason to choose to love yourself. love yourself, accept yourself, know and become yourself.
nooooo Lindesay. I can not love myself - this rotten guy. just kidding. u r right thats the message!
Love this so much--especially the idea of living a "heart-led" life and that lasting change often comes from the heart rather than the mind.
🫀🫀
I began to heal from my addiction, not when I left the addiction but when I began to grow my garden and recommit to my art. They both have saved my life.
My garden and my art are also the places where I go when I need saving. There's something about the act of making something else(whether in the garden or on paper) that changes something in the inner worlds. I don't really have words to explain it yet, but I can feel it. It's just hitting spring now where I am and I can feel the pull to work the soil. I'm glad to feel it.
Yup...you definitely cannot think yourself into becoming a new person with your conscious mind, while your subconscious is practically running the show. No amount of anything will help, if you don't get to the root.
James K.A. Smith has a book titled "You Are What you Love" – similar idea and very good read
I just discovered this author recently - currently reading “desiring the kingdom” :0
So loved reading this article! Something I believe strongly is that longing is a good thing— it points to the things soul is really here to experience. Whenever my heart begins to ache too much from the unfulfilled longings I try to delight in that feeling instead. Despair or delight— One awakens the heart, the other makes a stone of it.
One of my favorite lines from a movie:
“You are what you love, not what loves you.” —Adaptation
I think the courage to love is the courage to be ourselves. It’s the fear that maybe that love won’t be reciprocated or returned that keeps us from becoming all that we are made to be.
Thank you for articulating these points on ways that help me see desire and becoming in new ways too.
LOVE !
Jenny Lewis’s song is knocking around my brain now: 🎶 But you are what you love, Tim, and not what loves you back, and I’m in love with illusions, so saw me in half, I’m in love with tricks, so pull another rabbit out of your hat 🎶
Great piece and lots to think about! Small typo: "When you're heart is postured..."
Thank you! Good catch!
I had to read this essay twice. After the first read, I was left feeling a bit confused. Part of me wanted further elaboration and practical examples, while another part of me deeply resonated with the concept of being a lover and letting the heart lead.
About seven years ago, I began exploring the idea of love from a religious and spiritual standpoint. That journey eventually led me to Sufism. I was captivated by the way the sufis' relationship with God was framed as that of a lover and a beloved. Around that time, The Forty Rules of Love became one of my favorite books.
Unfortunately, I was mostly alone in that exploration, and the influences I encountered ended up distorting that search rather than guiding it. Eventually, I abandoned that pursuit.
Now, years later, I find myself trying to separate the misguidance from what might be the true essence of love and God. And that is no easy task.
In recent chapters of my life, I've been trying to understand and orient myself around three things: God, beauty, and love. Yet I must admit I feel utterly lost. They feel like axioms I keep gravitating toward but never quite reaching. I sometimes think that perhaps I need to encounter people who truly embody these things in order to understand them... but I'm not sure.
A few lines from the essay really stayed with me:
"Change doesn't begin in your thinking, but in the orientation of your loving."
That line immediately made me reflect on how love has rarely been the fuel behind the changes in my own life. Over the past few years, I came to believe that pain is the most powerful catalyst for transformation. I'm curious what others think about this. Is it possible for love to be the catalyst instead of pain? And if so, how? Another line that struck me was:
"Love is the condition for knowledge. When your heart is postured toward the right thing, more of that thing is revealed to you."
This resonated with a realization I had, recently... I don't think I truly love God because, frankly, I don't think I know Him.I've only known the versions of Him that people present. My perception of Him has become tangled with too many other voices. If you come from a religious background, you probably know how complicated that can be.
So my logical next step seemed to be learning about God. But I've been stuck at that step for an entire month. This essay made me wonder if perhaps I'm approaching things in the wrong order. But then another question arises: how can someone love what they do not know?
This is my first comment on Substack. I rarely comment on social media at all. But I suppose this time I'm hoping to hear an echo back, or perhaps find someone a few steps further along the path.
I also loved the book 40 Rules of Love. Had an impact on me when I read it
Hi Shahd. Your comment “I've been trying to understand and orient myself around three things: God, beauty, and love.”, made me think you might appreciate learning about the overarching beliefs of Kashmir Shaivism. Is that doesn’t resonate with you, perhaps Advaita Vedanta.
Ultimately, I have found in my 20 years of working to understand myself and the nature of all things, that beauty and love are expressions of God. That there is no separation, and that to embody divinity is a process of uncovering what is already there. Not more thought, less thought. Not detachment, but more sensitive feeling. Not disconnection, but more precise orientation.
A practice of meditation can help you in your pursuit, especially a practice that is suited to your temperament. Whether it be more active like yoga, or more present moment focused like breath work, or more focused on achieving alternate states, such as transcendental meditation. Any path you choose, you will continue your process of excavation, to find your truth within yourself.
you're right, pain is the strongest and most efficient catalyst for change but we only experience pain because we love. you love so much that it becomes part of you, you attach yourself, you love it and that's what makes it painful to lose so in the end love still is the catalyst for transformation.
I view religion as a way to express the love we have for each other, and to encapsulate the absurdity of how we are all connected through the human experience. It's containing that agape love in the Greek types of love and giving it a form. So when you love thy neighbor or do charitable deeds, it can feel like becoming closer to God.
I dont necessarily agree that change doesnt being with your thinking. I think you can think yourself into a new person. Your thoughts influence your beliefs, and if you don't believe you need to change you never will. Addiction is the perfect counter example. You don't need to replace one addiction with another, you need to believe that you don't need addiction at all. Just because you think something is bad for you, doesnt mean you believe it.
I love this, thank you!!
I think the Munch painting’s date must be incorrect because he died in 1944.
UGH good catch
This article is so amazing but as humans we end up loving something and turning that thing into a god in our lives but I have come to understand that if we would have a love that is worth it it would be loving God.
Because God is the ultimate good and every kind of goodness flows from Him and we can only love things rightly if we love God first with all our heart.
God alone is good essentially
Jesus is the only One that can truly shape you from the inside out to make you into a new person. Nothing else can make you into a new person
This!! I find Him to be the only One deserving of the wholehearted devotion unpacked in this piece--and He in turn gives us a new heart! Softer, renewable.
I just become too stressed at the idea that "following my heart" will leave me with no job or a low income. Or feeling misunderstood by others.
What an incredible and life-affirming article. It’s not enough to know that something is harming us (that is, our attention to something). We need to focus the art on loving, on doing loving things. We can’t think ourselves out of sorrow, desperation, loneliness. The heart must be put to action.