Have you ever felt unworthy of love?

Have you ever harbored these thoughts…

“My heart is dark. I see the bad in people. Try as I might, wish as I might to be spiritual, I can’t help seeing love as neediness, kindness as a desperate attempt by lonely people to buy affection, and people’s day-face as nothing but a mask. How could anyone love me, me with a heart so dark? How could I possibly love anyone, with eyes so clouded by doubt, suspicion and a grip on the truth that no one else is brave enough to talk about? That love is a sham.”

Have you had days when you just didn’t believe love was anything but a sham?

And it only gets worse when you see lovers kissing? You think they’re just making a show of it? And even parents - you think to yourself, they don’t really love the kid — they’re just glorying in a reflection of their own ability to clone themselves. To confirm they are needed. That they EXIST!”

Sound familiar? Even a little?

The good news is — you are right. All those things are the truth.

But they are not the whole truth.

Lovers do make a show of their affection — but it doesn’t mean they don’t really love each other. They might just partly afraid that it isn’t real, or that it will fade without florid upkeep.

Parents do see themselves reflected in their children — but they also come to love the child’s quirks and independence.

The whole truth is that you can be needy AND also love.

You can be lonely and do kindness for affection and also still genuinely love the person you are serving.

One doesn’t obviate the other.

Love doesn’t need to be pure to be love.

To borrow a trope from Rabbi David Cooper and his title about the Kabbalistic understanding of God “God is a Verb” — LOVE is a verb.

It’s an organic, messy, growing, pulsing, shrinking, undulating activity in our hearts and bodies.

Sometimes it moves out through our lips or our fingertips.

Sometimes it flows out in our tears of grief.

Sometimes it knots itself in our throats and refuses to come out, terrified of being flicked away like a gnat.

Nobody is a pure anything.

But love itself is pure in the same way water from a spring is pure - but only at its source.

Which is how it bubbles out of the source in us — pure — if only but for a moment.

Our loving - the verb of what we actually live - tends to gets muddied right at the source’s mouth. Gets muddied by need and jealousy, fear and sadness, distraction, aversion and desire.

But it still flows.

It flows in complex muddy swirls, but it flows.

Look around you.

Wild, paisley, spiraling, confused, chaotic muddy swirls of loving.

Look within you.

Wild, paisley, spiraling, confused, chaotic muddy swirls of loving.

Dive in.

Swim around.

Splash with abandon.

I guarantee you will find, among the currents, at least one flume as clear as air.

And when you do…. drink deeply.

Roll that water in your mouth.

And you will remember what it tasted like when your loving emerged deep within you, pure as a spring.

And you will be inspired to practice: to let go of neediness and jealousy. To set down your fear and sadness like stale loaves of bread that can no longer nourish you. To gently refuse to accept distraction. To end your comfortable old friendship with those co-dependent hangers on, aversion and desire.

This is how you unmuddy the water.

Unmuddy the water.

And roll that water in your mouth.

And never forget its sweet flavor…

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When have you found yourself in that pure current? Write me. What did it feel like? What did you learn?