A Guide to Love
Loving radiantly and truthfully, healing the inner child
The author of The Alchemist, Paul Coelho, wrote that ‘Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.’
I want to start this post by acknowledging my gratitude for the people who infused that word with meaning and awakened the part of me that is able to shine that love for others. To share in love, both past and present, is one of the great blessings of life.
My friend Philip [whose name originates from the Greek ‘philos’ (love) + ‘hippos’ (horse) = ‘lover of horses’] once meditated for 10 hours in an ashram while travelling in his late thirties and awoke to the realisation, mixed with transcendental feeling, that ‘everything is love’. Yet when we quip about love we seem to share the sentiment that ‘everything in life is easy, except love’, whose complexity, nuance and potential pitfalls can confound to no end.
The Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, wrote in his famed treatise On War (1832) that “War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in fog of greater or lesser uncertainty”, and I feel we could write similarly of Love.
However, I think my views have crystallised into sufficient clarity now for me to have some useful things to say about it. Of course, I don’t speak of love in a narrow way, but view love as a deeper ‘essence’ - one of the three core virtues of the good life - that involves the authentic recognition of another Being and compels us to tend to their wellbeing and promote their growth. I have already explored ideas about love in previous writings, so I present some extracts below by way of a refresher.
Jung, Spirituality and the Pursuit of Virtue:
In some cultures like Kazakh or even the fictional Na’vi of James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), the literal phrase ‘I see you’ has a deeper meaning of ‘I love you’ or ‘I respect you’; a profound expression of connection. That is, to see deeply into a person’s self, to see them truthfully, tends to naturally bring forth love. And vice versa, to see someone truthfully you must seek understanding, which is an expression of love.
(is love fundamentally connected with truth?)
love is powerful enough to endow people with a special ‘something’ beyond the reach of mimicry, it is important enough to sacrifice oneself for, and yet it is subject to change, is sometimes unreciprocated, and it is in some cases a destructive liability. We might see the Sun itself is a metaphor for love. Its nurturing rays represent unconditional love, constant and forever, without a need for self-fulfilment and reciprocation. But can humans ever recapitulate the kind of love that Klara and the Sun exemplify?
The idea is that the sun shines forth warmth and radiance (love and truth) out of its own intrinsic nature and not for the sake of others’ (‘not for the hearts of Man alone’), though we receive its goodness. The sun does not ask for our reciprocation and its radiance is persistent, such is the nature of divine, unconditional love.
I believe that seeing things from a human perspective is ultimately limited. True healing and transformation requires the channeling through the human mind of much higher ideals.
(What is the difference between attached vs ‘radiant’ love?)
Radiant vs Possessive Love
Radiant love is a divine ideal. It comes out of the principle that everyone has a beautiful, unique and complex soul that is deserving of love in its manifold manifestations - affection, understanding, compassion, generosity and forgiveness. It acknowledges that we are all part of one spiritual family and its core essence is unconditional and all-embracing. Learning to integrate and develop this kind of love is a core aspect of a soul’s spiritual journey.
In contrast to this is possessive love. This is a form of love that can masquerade as radiant love even to the lover, being equally characterised by deep affection, but is compromised by personal attachment and emotional needs that prevents the lover from realising or aiding the wellbeing of the beloved.
I’ll share a personal story to illustrate the problem. When I was a young boy my grandmother cared for me on a daily basis. Her affection for me was palpable, and she spoke often of her love for me and her faith in the kind of person I would become. Together we discussed such varied topics as history, politics, science, philosophy, poetry that stimulated a young mind far beyond what I was taught in school at that time. She often read stories to me in bed as I fell asleep by her side. At some point I decided I was getting a bit old for it and preferred to spend time in my parents’ room instead. When she realised this she said ‘I don’t want you as a grandson anymore.’ In that moment I felt confused and numb at how someone could go from ‘I love you’ to ‘I don’t want you’ so quickly. Looking back I realised she must have felt intense hurt driven by memories of abandonment that I knew not of.
Possessive love isn’t really love because it doesn’t put the beloved’s wellbeing in first place. It becomes a lie we tell ourselves. When we love someone with strong attachment or possessiveness we can limit their growth and autonomy and give ourselves angsts by hoping they will do things for us. We may unintentionally lash out or hurt them or try to control them because we ‘need’ them.
On the other hand, radiant love is a kind of love we feel towards others where we seek to see the beauty of their being and we express the divinity within ourselves. This is akin to appreciating the beauty of a bird flying freely. If the bird is hurt and loses the ability to fly, we protect it from predation and the elements, and nurse it back to health so that one day it can fly freely again. Our labour is suffused with love, joy, perseverance and maybe sorrow at the moment of parting, but the whole process is poetically meaningful to our existence. We would not cage it for our own sake, for its happiness is our happiness, and its freedom is the liberation of our hearts. As the saying goes, ‘if you love something, set it free. If it comes back it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was.’
Possessive love says ‘I love you because I need you, because you bring me joy and meaning.’ It defines the beloved in relation to the lover.
Radiant love says ‘I love you because you are. Because I see the goodness and beauty in you and I want the best for you. Our time together is a blessing that I hope is joyful and meaningful for the both of us. I may miss you in your absence but ultimately I want you to be free, rather than tied down for me.’ It defines the beloved in their own right.
Over the years, I’ve experienced love in various forms and counselled on love (the latter much more frequently thanks to certain friends - you know who you are!), and it highlighted to me that our own egoic needs often distort our ability to perceive and express love appropriately.
It is natural to feel possessive love, especially when we’re young as we really are both physically and emotionally dependent on our caregivers. But as we grow up and learn to fulfil our own worldly needs, we must learn radiant love if we are to become the best version of ourselves, and because it serves to protect both ourselves and those we love.
Love should be truthful and clear but it should never be forced. While everyone we meet is deserving of radiant love should they seek it, it will be more important and nurturing for some over others, as some plants require lots of sun whereas others will burn and wither with too much. In this regard we will choose to be close with some people over others because our closeness is the most conducive to our shared personal and spiritual growth. If our presence is not mutually beneficial or is in fact constraining, then the true expression of love is separation.
Note also that radiant love is an ideal, so like all ideals, the striving is important even if it’s never fully realised.
“Love is the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”
– M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
The needs of our inner child
It may seem unrealistic or even impossible to disregard our own needs in order to express unconditional, divine love. But these motives are not actually as contradictory as they may first appear. I will spend this section describing what our needs are and the process of fulfilling them.
Firstly, a comment about needs - they’re both real and illusory at the same time. They’re ‘fake’ in one sense because you can only define a need in relation to a goal (e.g. you need a vehicle to drive, you need to breathe to live) but there are no true, non-relational needs. Life and death is a choice and many people have chosen the latter in order to serve a goal they’ve deemed more important than their life. Every being is at heart autonomous. Memento mori.
But they’re also ‘real’ in a different sense because they originate from real places for very real reasons and if we suppress our needs or fail to understand them, then problems compound. I’ve made many serious mistakes after chronically suppressing my need for sleep, or I’ve often prolonged the duration and severity of an illness by ignoring the need for rest and pretending to be fine.
When it comes to our psyche, Schema Therapy and related psychological models of developmental psychology, attachment theory and trauma-informed care have laid out 8 core emotional needs:
Safety and security - feeling physically and emotionally safe; trusting that caregivers or loved ones won’t abandon, harm, or neglect you; having consistency and predictability in relationships. When unmet: leads to anxiety, fear or abandonment, hyper-vigilance.
Connection and belonging - feeling loved, accepted and emotionally connected to others; having a sense of ‘I matter’ and ‘I’m not alone’; being seen, heard, and valued by others. When unmet: leads to loneliness, social anxiety, people-pleasing, or disconnection.
Autonomy, Competence and Identity - being supported to explore, make choices, and be independent; feeling capable and confident in your abilities; knowing who you are - separate from others. When unmet: leads to dependency, low self-esteem, identity confusion
Freedom to Express Valid Needs and Emotions - feeling safe to say ‘I’m angry,’ ‘I’m sad,’ or ‘I need help’ without being dismissed; not having to suppress your feelings to please others; being accepted in your full emotional range. When unmet: leads to emotional repression, shame, internalised guilt, explosive outbursts.
Spontaneity and Play - Having space for joy, creativity, silliness, and unstructured exploration; feeling alive and free, not just performing or producing. When unmet: leads to over-seriousness, numbness, perfectionism, or inner deadness
Realistic limits and self-control - having healthy boundaries and structure in early life; learning delayed gratification, accountability and empathy. When unmet: leads to impulsivity, entitlement, or self-sabotage.
Mutuality & Reciprocity - Feeling that relationships go both ways — that you’re not always giving or always receiving; being cared for, but also being able to care for others. When unmet: leads to burnout, codependency, or exploitation.
Meaning & Purpose - Feeling that your life, relationships, and efforts matter; Having a sense of direction, contribution, or inner alignment. When unmet: leads to existential anxiety, apathy, or despair.
In Schema Therapy, its believed that if a core need is unmet or violated, then people develop schemas (e.g. ‘I’m unlovable’, ‘the world isn’t safe’), protective parts (inner critics, avoiders, perfectionists), and emotional blocks (difficulty trusting, connecting, expressing).
Those who did not have these core needs met in childhood often develop a wounded inner child - a part / mode / sub-personality within themselves that yearns for the things which it needed but didn’t receive, in addition to their ‘adult’ part. Some may also have developed a parental voice drawn from people around them, which may be a harsh inner critic and perpetuates the dismissal of the inner child’s emotional needs. The hurt inner child is a part of ourselves frozen in time until the day we can complete its development.
Because our inner child is our most primal source of joy and pain, those who carry a hurt inner child within them quietly long for someone to come along that can mend those wounds and give them the medicine of love. If the adult, parental part of themselves hasn’t learnt how to love correctly, then naturally this desire is externalised. Since the adult part may not understand what true nurturing love is (given a lack of prior role models), and the child self is too inarticulate to express it, many of these early attempts at finding love in others lead to a lot of suffering, in fragile and emotionally suffocating relationships. Often, neither the adult nor the child self can precisely recognise the love that they need (being informed principally through past memories) nor provide the kind of love that their partners need.
The more wounded an inner child, the more pure, radiant and unconditional is the love that they require for healing, and the rarer the soul that is the healer who has learnt to express this kind of love. When there is such an exchange, such an encounter of healing love, the burst of joy and exaltation is palpable and significant.
But essential for the process of healing is for the adult, parental part to learn what pure love is, and to become the love that they seek, otherwise emotional dependency on the loving soul will develop. We cannot love another properly and tend to their wellbeing while being dependent on them ourselves. We cannot pour from an empty cup.
A personal account of doing parts therapy on myself
Obviously this is quite personal and in-depth (I’ve italicised my main reflections if you wish to skip it) but I wished to include in order to authentically illustrate what understanding the inner child might look like.
I discovered these parts of myself while I was at dinner with a friend. While we chatted and bantered, I realised that there were things on my mind that were giving me anxiety. While I tried to ignore these feelings, it manifested as a tension throughout my body and agitation throughout my mind. Fortunately, this was the kind of patient and understanding friend whom I trusted and could speak honestly and introspectively towards as I explained to him what I was feeling. I allowed myself to look into ‘me’, to find the source of where these feelings came from and to voice them. In contrast to the outspoken, confident and articulate voice of my adult persona, the voice that came out was soft, unsure of itself and audibly hurt and scared. I recognised this as my inner child - a remnant of my past - a part that was needy, shy and vulnerable, and didn’t know how to communicate its needs. I spent the rest of that evening and later when I returned home in conversation with that part, I closed my eyes and could see my younger self before me and held his hand in mine.
Fortunately over the last few years I have developed a very kind, understanding and mature parental (adult) part, which made me a decent counsellor to my friends and their inner child voices when they landed on rough times. Yet I had neglected to communicate with my own inner child properly, making it what Jung called the Shadow, the subconscious part of us that is dismissed and not listened to by the Ego. But repressing the inner child comes with consequences; ignoring the pain also makes us lose touch with true joy and carefree innocence. The anxious shadow child made his presence known by pulling on my heartstrings, and his angsts were coming to the fore of my psychic experience. So long as it was repressed, I could not control it or understand the reasons for these feelings.
When I tried to reassure him, part of the problem was that he didn’t believe me. People close to me had said they loved me (child-me) but ended up hurting him, often through lack of awareness. So telling my inner child things with my adult voice had little effect to soothe his worries. The language of simple affirmation alone was corrupted and insufficient.
With my eyes closed, and visualising him, a young boy of 5 or so, I spoke to him again, telling him earnestly why he was really important, that I’m sorry I hadn’t listened to him well enough before or made him feel safe; sorry that I’d been so caring and compassionate to other people’s inner children but not my own; asking him to hold my hand and walk beside me, that I would take care of him; that we would love and care for each other so he doesn’t need anybody else other than adult-me; that I would listen to and take care of his needs; that we’d make a great team. I told child-me that I’m so glad he is part of my life, because he is a seed for much kindness, curiosity, perspective, and I (adult-me) sorely need him to be onboard!
I could feel he was on the verge of tears, not sure whether to believe it or not. I felt a visceral quenching sensation in my stomach, but there was some element of renewed faith that emerged too. I embraced him in the vividness of my imagination, a long heartfelt embrace, and the vision ended with adult-me saying ‘come on, let’s do this together.’ I had become a true, healthy (single) parent of my inner child.
The cool thing about the mind is that it doesn’t distinguish that well between experiences that happen to us in objective reality, with those generated from our dreams and imagination. So an imagined experience has a real impact on our psyche and helps us to practice self-compassion in a very ‘real’ sense.
When the parental voice is dysfunctional…
What does it mean and what does it look like if there is no healthy parental voice? I got to witness this too at the same dinner because another friend of mine joined the conversation.
At the time I was already deep in thought, already voicing an intimate conversation with myself. This friend (whose confidentiality I shall respect) had confided in me before and I knew he carried a lot of emotional wounds. Naturally he (his inner child) was drawn to the potential for care and understanding from my parental voice, and began to speak up a lot about his own childhood trauma, but his harsh parental critic was being activated too by this emotional sensitivity. He was interjecting and proposing really ‘obvious’ solutions to nuanced thoughts and feelings. It didn’t sound like him authentically - it sounded like the voice of an insensitive and cold father figure. But when I got annoyed at these interjections, he started feeling really guilty, apologising, and was mentally flagellating. But this was his child voice that was bearing the brunt of the criticism when it was the parent voice that I was irritated at!
I explained later that it was not his child-self that should feel bad, it’s not his fault, since he just needs love and support, but that it was the internalised hypercritical parent that needed to be confronted and demoted.
While my inner parent had failed my inner child through lack of attention, his had cruelly suppressed and invalidated all the emotions of his inner child. This kind of internal conflict manifests as not only anxiety and depression, but rage and self-hate.
What this person needed was to recognise the existence of this inner critic, and overthrow him by replacing him with a voice that could offer genuine support, acceptance and love to all the parts of him. A voice that would not scorn a child for weakness or failure, but provide infinite forgiveness. And in turn, the child-self would need to believe that this kind of safety and love existed both in oneself and the world at large.
I think this why spirituality and faiths have on occasion been able to bring about such healing for people - because many of their central figures and conceptions of God are instantiations of the ideal parental voice.
To save one life is to save the world entire…
So to bring this section to a close, let’s revisit the question of… does expressing divine all-encompassing compassion conflict with addressing own personal emotional needs?
Not really. The key is to model and develop our inner parent to become a source of unconditional love, which like the Sun, shines upon both others and ourselves without lack. There is an inner child in all of us, and each is deserving of love. To be completely, unconditionally compassionate with ourselves, we must necessarily be completely compassionate with others. To reject parts of others, also gives us reason to reject parts of ourselves on principle.
Truth and Love
Love and truth are intertwined because to see someone deeply and authentically naturally brings forth love, and to be understood truly makes this love real. Seeking to understand another is an expression of love, and being in love is a manifestation of truth.
We all know that simple flattery and nice remarks have little power to move us. The kind of deep love that invigorates our being is the love of illumination, from one who understands us truly and clearly and embraces us with all our human imperfections. The devoted lover seeks to understand the dreams and aspirations, strengths and qualities, fears and insecurities, wounds and scars and all else of the beloved, and to see beauty in all of their being.
In Mindfulness and the locus of joy, I write about my encounters with Wabi Sabi art forms (e.g. calligraphic enso and ceramic kintsugi), which embody the philosophy that it is precisely the asymmetries, idiosyncrasies and ‘imperfections’ of something that make it interesting and beautiful.
While we all contain an element of the divine (and hence share a common thread), our lives are meaningful because of the unique stories we experience.
I’ve met beautiful, smart, funny, successful people but I can see that in their heart they just want to be understood and loved for the raw, beautiful human soul that lies beneath the surface. A lot of effort goes into the outward self because they fear their inner rawness and emotional realness, believing they may not be loveable (cf. previous section). Of course, every person is loveable, but it does take a level of growth and spiritual development to see and appreciate this kind of beauty - the beauty of the human soul. Embracing their authentic beauty and vulnerability is essential.
To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.
― Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God
On romantic love
If you’ve made it down here, I thank you for your perseverance. So far we’ve discussed possessive love compared to radiant, unconditional love; the ways we can take care of our emotional needs to liberate us to love purely; and the importance of truth in love. These principles provide an essential foundation for love in every form.
Modern culture has placed an undeserving emphasis on romantic love (or is it lust?) to the exclusion of others, focusing our attention on sexuality, instagrammable body types (with crass numerical scales), material success and *good vibes*. Predictably it’s led to soaring rates of depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia etc. consistent with a material culture that lacks moral guidance and spiritual meaning, divorced from the foundations of love. While mutual physical attraction is important in romantic love, it has to be contextualised as part of a person’s whole being. In general, our culture has made a train-wreck out of love, hence why I felt compelled to write this article after all.
True romantic love does need to be differentiated from radiant love because it involves the formation of an exclusive partnership (at least in monogamous cultures), in contrast to the generous universality of radiant love. This does not mean barring us from forming meaningful connections with others, or sequestering our kindness and generosity to one person, but rather it serves a different purpose - to become an worldly manifestation of faith and unity.
What does this mean?
Well, radiant love seeks no reciprocity. It is a channeling of higher ideals through you and unto others ‘for all who may cross your path.’ You may or may not trust the other to be able to do the same for you, hence it is a gift.
In contrast, a romantic partnership requires mutuality and has additional criteria:
There is evidence of reciprocal radiant love (you care for each other’s wellbeing in a non-transactional, unconditional way). It isn’t an arrangement of need.
There is mutual understanding - you can see and understand each person’s core/soul clearly and deeply (this may take time), which means that you know who you are loving and what you’re getting yourself into. You know what their needs are and how they will complement your needs. You understand what they want out of life.
There is ample ground for mutual personal and spiritual growth through proximity. You each have something to complement and teach the other to grow to become a better version of themselves, rather than suffocating and constraining the other.
There is practical compatibility, not limited by practical factors - you can work together as a team in life without practically restricting each others’ growth trajectories. e.g. navigating issues with long distance, life stages, availability, shared interests and tasks, communication styles, kids? etc. [arguably an extension of (3)].
and optionally if there are any children that come out of a romantic partnership, then you have to ensure that the child can be sufficiently nurtured physically and emotionally through such a partnership. Parenthood is the most challenging test of our ability to embody divine, unconditional love and other virtues in our lives, and it is no surprise we are all so imperfect at it.
When these criteria are met, we can introduce a stronger element of trust - we can rely on them to be truthful with us, to be there for us at times of need, to strive to work together and bring forth shared growth and meaning, to not abandon ship when life becomes challenging. There is faith in each other, and unity of hearts and minds towards common goals. Each is a mirror to the divine and a mirror that illuminates each other. This process is tough and fraught with challenges and misunderstandings since we are imperfect beings, but with strong foundations and a devoted attitude (with truthfulness, radiant love, perseverance), it becomes much more manageable.
When you love you should not say,
“God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am
in the heart of God.”
And think not you can direct the course
of love, for love, if it finds you worthy,
directs your course.
- Khalil Gibran, The Prophet (1923)