Цитаты из книги Мы. Глубинные аспекты романтической любви
Therefore, when I say that “I love,” it is not I who love, but, in reality, Love who acts through me. Love is not so much something I do as something that I am. Love is not a doing but a state of being—a relatedness, a connectedness to another mortal, an identification with her or him that simply flows within me and through me, independent of my intentions or my efforts.
It simply never enters our romantic heads that there is something strange about seeking a so-called “love” for the sake of my fulfillment, my thrills, my dreams coming true, my fantasy, my “need to be loved,” my ideal of the perfect love, my security, my entertainment.
What we seek constantly in romantic love is not human love or human relationship alone; we also seek a religious experience, a vision of wholeness.
One day we realize that we are completely possessed and dominated by a set of beliefs that we, as individuals, never chose. It is as though we breathed them in from novels and movies, from the psychological air around us, and they became part of us, as though fused with the cells of our bodies.
No aspect of the human psyche can live in a healthy state unless it is balanced by its complementary opposite ... Power without love becomes brutality. Feeling without masculine strength becomes woolly sentimentality.
Western people are children of inner poverty ... Most of us cry out for meaning in life, for values we can live by, for love and relationship. Our sadness results from the loss of those feminine values that we havedenigrated and driven out of our culture.
It is the feminine qualities that bring meaning into life: relatedness to other human beings, the ability to soften power with love, awareness of our inner feelings and values, respect for our earthly environment, a delight in earth’s beauty, and the introspective quest for inner wisdom. With these qualities shortchanged, we don’t find much meaning.
The strongest man is the one who can genuinely show love to his children, as well as fight his battles in the business world during the work day. His masculine strength is augmented and balanced by his feminine capacity to be related, to express his affection and his feelings.
