We Often Confuse Love For A Warm Glow We Sense In Our Bellies And As Something We Can Offer And Withdraw,

“We often confuse love for a warm glow we sense in our bellies and as something we can offer and withdraw, like a cat who comes and goes at its pleasure. It’s easy for us to extend love toward those who are lovable, but loving people and situations that are not to our liking isn’t so easy. We give our love “unconditionally,” but when we don’t receive what we feel we deserve, we withdraw it. We then reinvest our love in a new person or situation that we think will give us a better return, but we find it difficult to maintain when we don’t feel recognized or acknowledged. If things don’t work out the way we want them to, we too readily exchange our loving feelings for hatred and resentment. Our initial excitement over a new job, for instance, may sour and become disappointment and bitterness. When we’ve been jilted by a lover, the intense, starry-eyed passion of infatuation can turn into loathing so great that it consumes us. To an Earthkeeper, love is not a feeling or something you barter with. Love is the essence of who you are, and it radiates from you as a brilliant aura: You become love, practice fearlessness, and attain enlightenment.”

— Alberto Villoldo, The Four Insights     (via spirituallyminded)

“I will never understand how people decide to get up and just leave. How do you go from telling someone their importance and meaning to you one week and avoiding them the next? Did you actually mean what you said, or were you just lying like everyone else?”

You’d think that nothing can break your heart more than what they did to you, but then you make the mistake of reading your old conversations with them? And you can pinpoint the exact moment where the tone of their messages changed. The exact moment after which it was only you who initiated conversation. The exact moment they stopped putting in effort. The exact moment they decided they didn’t want you anymore. And there is nothing worse than that.

Boundless, Cynthia Hand

“Do you regret it?” “Being the one who cared more? No. Not in the way you might think. I mean, sure I got hurt. Sure, he moved on with his heart intact and I’ve been picking up the pieces ever since. But I get to sleep easy at night knowing that I will love again. That I can love that much. And that he can’t. Not now, not until he lets go of the high that comes with being the one who leaves, who only loves when it is convenient. I don’t want a love of convenience. And if you have to be the one who always leaves, well, that’s the only kind you get.”

— L.A.L. 

“letting go of you was painful. I will never forget the way you made me laugh or the way you set my body on fire with the slightest touch. but I also have to remember how you stabbed me and kept pushing the dagger in deeper with no regrets.”

— you loved me once but not again (the art of letting go)