The jealous person doesn’t have to find it in himself to love without possessing. The spiritual person has found a way to be good and virtuous. The inferior one doesn’t have to be somebody and enter the fray of life with strength.

Clearly, love is not about making you happy. It is a form of initiation that may radically transform you, making you more of who you are but less of who you have been. If you don’t realize that you are walking on coals and running the gauntlet and surviving the wilderness in quest of a vision—all within the confines of a simple human relationship—you could be undone by it. Love gives you a sense of meaning, but it asks a price. It will make you into the person you are called to be, but only if you endure its pains and allow it to empty you as much as it fills you.

Love’s impossibility forces you to become a different person. You are forced to think and consider what love is all about. You believe you have to make hard choices, but, more important, in your deliberations you are educating yourself.

Part of the pain of love is that no person, however suitable and satisfying, completes the desire for love. There is always a remainder, because love takes us beyond the human sphere. It puts you in touch with the ultimate object of desire. It invites you to transcend yourself, to be more than you ever have been.

People still don’t know how to do several things at once or understand the importance of imagination in relationship. They suffer their unions because they think of them as unconscious, surface acts instead of deep developments of the soul. Many people aim for surface compatibility instead of deep, nonrational connection.