On the Wounds of Love: Part One – Marc Gafni

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On the Wounds of Love: Part One

It is five in the afternoon in Salt Lake City. It has been a hard day. I sent a letter of apology to someone I really loved. It was sent as an attachment with a short note. He read the note but forgot to look at the attachment.

He sent me back a deeply cruel letter―at least that was my experience of the letter. That was its impact on me even if that was not his intention. In the letter he said, “Why did you not write me a letter of apology?” It was then I realized he had not read the attachment.

I was angry and insulted as he was insulted. I wrote him back and said, “Open the fucking attachment.” I had waited two years to write him this letter and now that I wrote it he does not open it. I did not hear back from him. Perhaps I never will.

It is to this man that I dedicate this essay, written with one of my closest friends.

On The Wounds of Love

(The article offered here is still incomplete and under construction.)

Practicing the Wounds of Love
The Pain of Eros
Notes from a Lover

I have written before of the beauty of Eros and how the sexual models the greater movment of Eros in our lives. We have written of the opening that sex can be in teaching us to understand Eros, to live from her full and passionate source. But there is another side of Eros. In this aspect, Eros shows itself to be a more ferocious ally. While the sexual does model the erotic in all kinds of pleasurable ways, it also models the pain of Eros that inevitably comes from our loving.

Sexuality leaves so many mortally wounded in her wake. So much pain from that which is supposed to be the source of so much pleasure. We are confused about sexuality. And that confusion is the source of much of our pain.

Sufi poet Hafiz writes:

“Love is grabbing hold of the Great Lion’s mane
And wrestling and rolling deep into Existence
While the Beloved gets rough
And begins to maul you alive.”

There was a time when I believed that there was a way out of the pain of Eros. Some people may believe that I didn’t try hard enough; others are correct in ascertaining that I didn’t succeed. But I can tell you that I believed in a version of love that is fullfilled through commitment, through loving gestures, and clearly stated intentions. I believed in love that was passionate and wild even as it was broad, inclusive, and forgiving.

I thought that the dilemmas that Love presented to me would be solvable if I were earnest enough, authentic enough, and learned how to honestly communicate the truth of who I was and what I could offer. But this ethic of sincerity could not hold. There was a quiet untruth in this approach―not only because I lied to others, but because I lied to myself that if I got it right, I would not have to feel the pain in loving. My approach didn’t take into account the ruthless side of Eros―the aspect of Eros that does not let us cut this kind of a deal. The face of Eros is wildly uncompromising and insists that we live a fully embodied life. One that includes pain, loss, confusion and bewilderment. Eros is fierce and unrelenting. It won’t be captured, cajoled, or lulled to the realm of the comfortable, particularly when it is the ego trying to settle into an untrue version of Love.

The Sufi poet Hafiz writes,

“True Love, my dear,
Is putting an ironclad grip upon
The sore, swollen balls
of a Divine Rogue Elephant
And not having the good fortune to Die!”

(Translation by Daniel Ladinsky)
…When we feel the squeeze of that grip.

In the Zen school, there is a famous koan about a master whose teaching it is to give a student a thorough beating, and no matter what the student’s question is, the beating comes just the same. When the student attempts to answer the question, he receives a beating. When the student remains silent, she gets a beating. When the student attempts to escape or withdraw, a beating comes anyway. Eros often gives us a beating; a complete knock-down, foot-to-groin, nose-smashed-against-asphalt, pummeling. It demands that we experience pain, injury, and the collapse of self, and it presents suffering itself as one of its many (hard to believe) loving touches.

The sexual models the erotic. This is true in all kinds of positive and pleasurable ways, but it is also true in terms of suffering and pain. The sexual life is filled with an array of agonies that are not easily borne by the ego, by the body, or by the identity of a small or limited self.

There is the pain of not being seen or desired, and the pain of being seen starkly, in the clear light of our most obvious flaws and imperfections. There is the pain of not having the attention we seek, or the pain of having it for a time, and then losing it. There is the startling pain of realizing that we are not special.

Or worse, recognizing that when we thought our love was exclusive, that we are not the only one. There is the pain of others wanting more from us than we are able to give, and the pain of trying to give and not being wanted.

There is the pain of love that turns to hate, of affection that turns to contempt, and of physical exchange, which once desired becomes repellent.

Then there is the overlarge, unbearable pain of betrayal. Betrayal is uniquely excruciating because only someone whom you really love―someone who “would never betray you”―can deliver this particularly heart rending and devastating blow.

Sex models life in that it hurts like hell. Is it any wonder that in a vigorous world, sex and pain regularly become coupled in eroticism? And even if you are with most of us, who have no desire to inflict or to receive genuine pain in the sexual, heart pain is forever present. Domination and submission are the two poles around which this practice and this pain revolve. We are bound―bound to inflict injury, and bound to receive it. We’re sure to be hurt in love, and we’re sure to hurt. We are subjected to injury against our will, and no matter how hard we fight against it, we injure others all the time.

I don’t say this to be released of responsibility to others; ignorance, hubris, and grasping demand reckoning, and all trangressions against others must be known for what they are. But genuine sensitivity, radical responsibility taking, even the vow to end suffering, does not take away pain.

The beautiful rock mystic Bono and the transcendent Mary J. Bilge sing from the deepest pain of Irish and Black American depth experience of this situation.

“Well, did I ask too much, more than a lot?
You gave me nothing, now it’s all I got.
We’re one,
but we’re not the same,
You see, we hurt each other,
then we do it again!”

Shared by Marc Gafni.