The Natural Capacity for Love

"Psychic illnesses are the result of a disturbance of the natural capacity for love."

-- Wilhelm Reich

What Wilhelm calls "psychic illnesses" are what we, today, call psychological problems, emotional disturbances or neuroses. You know, craziness.

And we all have it to varying degrees. We all get upset, literally, over nothing. Nothing other than the drama that is playing out between our ears. 

And what produces our way, way off Broadway dysfunctional theater? Our inability to accept, actualize, and embrace our "natural capacity for love." We temporarily lose our ability to both give and receive the most essential of all human nutrients -- love.

What I notice, personally, is that everytime I am upset, I have fallen out of touch with love. I'm either not loving the moment, not loving others, or not loving myself. And many times I'm caught up in the Not Loving Triple Whammy -- I don't love any of the three! Not loving drives us crazy!

The Crazy Cure is simple -- start loving again. Begin with the things you have a natural affinity for and work from there. Let them be the doorways into a deeper love. If you love a particular type of music, listen to some of it, sing along with it, or, better yet, get up and dance! If you can;'t immediately love the person, love the color of their sweater. 

Be the Love Detective, the Miss Marple of Amore, The Sherlock Holmes of Agape.  In every situation, find at least one thing you can love about it. With every person, find at least one thing you love about them. And with yourself, realize that you are in your heart of hearts a lean, mean loving machine!

Like all the really important things in life, it's simple really. Restoring our natural capacity for love begins with acceptance. And acceptance requires the relinquishing of judgments. Here you are. This is your life. It may not be the life the you imagined, the life you envisioned. You may not be your ideal you. The people all around you may fall far short of your high falutin' standards of perfection.

No matter. Here you are. On first blush, the here and now may look so tawdry, so lacking compared to your fantasies. In reality, the only thing lacking is love. Love redeems, and you, my friend are the redeemer. No messiah, no savior, no one else. The waiting is over. Love.

The Golden Radiance of Close Attention

"Stein writes about ordinary objects in unremarkable lives -- lawn mowers and Dodge pickups, TV sets and baseball caps -- but upon that humble stuff, he sheds the golden radiance of close attention."

-- Julia Keller. Writing about Illinois State Poet, Kevin Stein, in the Chicago Tribune 1/24/09.

I love that phrase "the golden radiance of close attention." I've read it now at least a dozen times, and it still gives me goose bumps on each re-reading.

Our lives are filled with humble objects and ordinary stuff, and yet each and every item is redeemed by "the golden radiance of close attention." (I can't stop saying it! I think I'll ask Julia Keller if she minds if I use it for the title of a book I've yet to write. It may be a book on how to fix your Honda Accord; it may be a book of poetry. Who cares? Either way the title would apply).

Let's face it: Most of us live pretty ordinary, unremarkable lives. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that at times we get a bad case of the discontents and dream and long for glamor and beauty and money and power. We think that if we just had ____ (fill in the blank), life would be perfect and oh so grand.

It ain't going to happen. Not likely, at least. What is going to happen is that we're going to shovel snow and watch the Super Bowl and make dinner and try and balance our checkbooks, and a million and one other little things, that strung together make up our lives. But each of these trite, little, mundane acts is a semi-precious jewel waiting to be discovered. Waiting to be unearthed by the redeeming light of attention. Waiting to be seen for what it is -- a shining holographic slice of life that both contains, and is a doorway to, the All and Everything.

Who knew, that the slice of bacon before you is a portal to the Divine? Who'd have guessed that the old Rolling Stones T-shirt that you refuse to throw out is as sacred as the Shroud of Turin?

You see, the Spirit abides in the details of even the most ordinary life. No icey trek in the Himalayas required. No zapping on the road to Damascus. No years beneath a bodhi tree. Right here, right now, the most mundane objects and actions come alive and shine through "the golden radiance of close attention."

And so, if you bestow attention on the little things on even a semi-regular basis, you soon realize that what you have here is a golden, radiant life. Golden attention, golden moments, golden life -- who could ask for anything more?