When we love, we change, we become a different person, we become a different form of the same person. Because of that, and because there is death involved in that loss of our fear, and of our desire, of our complex defence mechanisms, we often evade what we desire. We long for love and we run away from it. We set up the circumstances for it to flourish, and then we destroy those circumstances. We enter into relationships and then turn on those relationships. We give and then we take back. We open up and then we contract. So the human being discovers, through love, just how complex we are and how self-contradictory we can be. We discover through meditation how many inner conflicts and inner tensions we have.
(Aspects of Love 1 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
