Desperate to be Loved

Q: Why is it so desperately want to be loved?

A: Because we are so desperately empty, lonely.

Q: But you said that loving on the whole is more important than being loved?

A: Yes, of course, obviously, which means one must understand this emptiness, this loneliness in oneself. So the question of love is really an extraordinary thing because a mind that's frightened obviously cannot love.

A mind that is self-concerned with its own ambitions, greed, fears, guilt—that type of suffering has no capacity to love.

A mind that is divided in itself, that lives in fragments, obviously cannot love.

That is a mind that lives in division………and Division implies sorrow.

That is the root cause of sorrow: “division”.

(Division—between you and me, between me and they, or we and they, the black, the white, the purple, the pink, and all the rest of it. So, wherever there is a division, a fragmentation, love cannot be because goodness is the state of non-division. The word itself means indivisible. (referring to “goodness”)

Q: But love between two human beings who say there shouldn't be division, but there is...

A: That's just it, sir. That’s just it!! When the husband says to the wife, or the boy says to the girl, I love you—what does that mean?

The sexual enjoyment, all the rest of it, is that what he calls love?

Or is it a relationship, a close, intimate companionship?

Q: That, I think, that is nearer to it. And often they have an idealized picture of each other.

A: Which means, which means what? An image (picture) of each other. Right?

The one image loves the other image. (?)

That image, the mechanism of that image is the accumulation of insults, pleasures, anxieties, and so on, you know, the nagging and the dominating. All that is built up through months or years of living together, and each image has a relationship with the other, and is that relationship?

Relationship means direct relationship NOW, not I had a relationship, or the image that brings about the idea that I've had a relationship. So, Love, surely, is not the image of the past.

Love is not cultivated by thought.

Q: You say, in fact, that love can only come into being when there is a total self-abandonment. Obviously. But how does one achieve it?

A: That's it, that's it!! The total abandonment can only happen with the understanding of oneself.

Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, and of wisdom and love go together.

Which means there is love only when I have really understood myself and therefore know in myself there is no fragmentation at all. Which means no sense of anger, ambition, greed, separative activity.    

(— J. Krishnamurti, philosopher and international speaker, whose dialogues were hosted at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford)

From me to the reader…

What this conversation ultimately points to is not a technique for loving better, but a condition that must already exist for love to appear at all. Love is not something we manufacture through effort, compromise, or endurance.

It is what remains when the inner war ends. I have said in more than 600 meetings, “It has become painfully apparent to me that your inner world is reflecting your outer world.” (referring to the challenges of divorce or the end of a romantic relationship and then entering into the “hell” of the new dating world.”)

For many people recovering from divorce, the deepest suffering is not the loss of the relationship itself, but the fragmentation left behind.

One part of them wants connection.…but the other part is armored, vigilant, angry, or afraid.

When the mind is divided in this way, it searches for love to fill an emptiness that love was never meant to fill. And no partner can succeed at that task.

The interview reminds us that love cannot coexist with division. A mind consumed by blame, identity, resentment, or opposition has no room for tenderness. Where there is inner hostility, love cannot take root.

Peace in relationship is inseparable from peace within.

This is why some people feel stuck for years, unable to move forward, even after doing “all the right things.” The outer circumstances may have changed, but the inner structure(their spirit) has not. If there is still a strong sense of “us versus them” inside, if there is ongoing hatred or moral superiority, that same fragmentation will inevitably show up in intimate relationships.

The partner becomes another image.

Another side.

Another opponent.

As many spiritual teachers have pointed out, hatred is rarely about the other person.

It is a mirror.

What we reject most fiercely outside ourselves often reflects what we have not yet understood or integrated within. Until that inner division dissolves, love remains an idea, an image, or a longing, not a lived reality.

Finding peace after divorce is not about finding the next person.

It is about becoming whole.

When the mind is no longer fractured by fear, resentment, or identity, love no longer has to be chased. It appears naturally, not as attachment, not as need, but as presence.

And that presence does not only heal relationships. It heals Life.