Love in the Shadows

“Understanding love from only one religious doctrine - like understanding God - usually sets us up against each other. It's only when we free ourselves from the shadows of limited thinking will love be the bridge across differing viewpoints, and not the cause of them.”
— Mickie Kent

A good friend called me the other day. She was uncharacteristically grim. "When I look at the news headlines, I just despair," she said. "It's all so dark in the world." And she is right. Our climates are in upheaval, our living costs rising, our communities feel fractured - and with stories of public disasters the mainstay of headlines, we've lost trust in our police, the politicians and even the people that print the news. Not surprising, some would say, when it seems that our society has been built to accommodate the "lucky few" of the population, while the majority carry the burden of making society work.

But the dark shadows that loom over us are long ones. It stretches back down the ages to when we began living in societies that pushed for dominance. And there are very large chapters in our history that still haven't been properly addressed. When we look at war torn places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and what the creation of borders can do to people, it sometimes feels like we haven't learnt anything from two world wars. There was a time battles were fought only by soldiers, but now everyone is a target - men, women AND children. And the traumatic impacts of each war humanity fought has lingered, helping to make us who we are.

Just recently the UN Special Rapporteur on occupied Palestine accused Israeli authorities of conducting colonialist policies that constitute forms of apartheid and ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie and British Foreign Secretary William Hague visited Bosnia to promote a campaign to end sexual violence against women in war. In a very real sense, as the spiritual descendants of war victims, we are all suffering from post-traumatic stress.

And soldiers suffer mental breakdown, too. The news is filled with recruits being charged with explosives and terrorism offences, going on mass killing sprees in their own encampments, or killing civilians during drug-fuelled sadomasochistic sex sessions. But it's the good that stand out in any conflict, and we must not forget that the majority of those who served in Afghanistan, and Iraq, will be paying the true cost of war for decades to come, the physically incapacitated and the mentally injured, along with the families of the dead.

In the nations they have fought for, many believe that these returning soldiers should be considered national heroes for the conduct and courage they have shown in wars they really should never have been in, while it's the government and politicians who argued the case for war who should bow their heads in shame. Yet, for all of us, it's a nightmare from which we just can't seem to wake up.

However we need to break from our stupor, because although it would be convenient to try and imagine such things never happen, it isn't feasible in the long run. If we truly wish to invent a better history for ourselves, we have to change our perspective - and in doing so, rather than seeing things as being wholly bad, reinterpret them as actually being another chasm to cross, or another step in life's surprising journey.

Great minds have pondered that as there can be no East without West, so there can be no good without bad. Those who want (or expect) an extant state made up entirely of good don't understand that good can only be relative and not absolute. Without an opposite to be compared to, it can't exist they say. Others, though, believe that bad is a negation of good, rather than a purpose for it - but I believe that either way the wrongs committed only negate goodness if we allow them to fall on fertile ground.

Every Palestinian who has suffered at the hands of the Israeli armed forces, every Bosnian who has suffered at the hands of the Serbs has the chance to turn death into a fighting chance to reconcile, and to live. Because in the face of its truth, especially at our end, there is little to distinguish us, Jew or gentile. We can't escape the truth that the world is only as good as the people in it, but then, so, too, is it true that the world always looks worse than it is.

And as sure as we live and die, love MUST have its chance in between. Because if the love within your mind is lost, if you continue to see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much education or knowledge you have, no matter how much material progress is made, only suffering and confusion will ensue. Furthermore, it reads like cosmic irony to say human beings wish to control everything but the violence they have inbred into themselves.

Regardless of how we have subverted our true nature, love shows us that it's not about control at all. It's just about being and allowing every other living thing to be, too. Today we are reaping the poisoned fruits from the seeds of bloodshed sown in a long history of war, but by getting back on track with love, we can come out from under the long, generational shadows cast by its dark clouds, and avert many of the very real crises of global conflict afflicting us today.

We must also keep in mind that these are times of changing definitions, and conflicts will arise because often defining something is not synonymous with understanding it - especially if we try to categorise people and beliefs. Definitions can limit as much as they explain in such cases, when what is first and foremost necessary is understanding.

Understanding the shadows of the past

Understanding will always come from within. If people are rude and inconsiderate, then often there will be a reason for it. If someone is rude without reason, we usually suspect a failing in their mental faculties. If a kitten doesn't encounter a human in a friendly context between the ages of three to eight weeks, it is more liable to go feral - and we are not much different. It's only the truly courageous that seek to be caring in the face of mistreatment time and again. This doesn't mean, however, that they are glutton for punishment. It means they have discovered that if they allow their own caring nature to be corrupted by the mistakes of others, then they will have been defined by another's actions, and not their own.

This is why when we consciously choose to pursue a career doing what we love, we often break with our own stereotypes in order to do it. For example, if a woman's passion is motivational speaking and she wants to become a public speaker, there are many definitions she needs to break in her own mind, as well as that of her audience. Historians point to ancient Greek thought and what is said to be the beginning of Western literature, where from the outset women are told they cannot speak with the voice of authority.

Pertinent to this issue, art historian Mary Beard spoke on the public voice of women, as part of the London Review of Books Winter lecture series recorded at the British Museum. In a talk titled "Oh Do Shut Up Dear!", Beard explored how, from torn-out tongues to internet trolls, women's voices have been silenced in the public sphere throughout the history of Western culture. Women risked a backlash exposing their voice in ancient Greece as they do exposing their breasts to breastfeed in public today.

Using examples ranging from Homer's Odyssey to contemporary politics, and from the writings of Henry James to threatening posts on Twitter, Beard argued that public speaking has all too often been regarded as "men's business" and that commonly held attitudes to the voice of authority need to be readdressed and reappraised. Her argument highlighted how this Homeric moment has pervaded the nature of communication between male and female, and indeed, what we consider to be male or female communication - where men hold authoritative "muthos" as opposed to the chatter or gossip of women, or "mythos", from which the word "myth" is derived.

The Rape of Philomela by Tereus, engraved by Virgil Solis (1562). In Greek myth a defiant Philomela's tongue is cut out to silence her.

Such classical thought arguably permeated into Christianity, too. The Greek corruption of the original Biblical translation from Aramaic is said to be blamed for the misogynistic and homophobic text we are struggling with today. A few commentators also emphasise that America continues to be corrupted with this Greek thinking and way of doing things - in terms of celebrating strength over weakness, and lauding competition and victory above all and of course xenophobia, their irrational hatred of the "other" - especially through collegiate and high school years, to cultivate teens who seem to be lacking in any basic humanity whatsoever.

Obviously Western culture does not owe everything (good or bad) to the Greeks or the Romans, in speech or anything else. Newly uncovered discoveries have formed the understanding that the ancient Greeks weren't great original thinkers at the best of times - most of their thinking was taken from somewhere else, such as the ancient Semitic civilization of Phoenicia, or the Assyrians and even further back to the Sumerians. It's a pity the ancient Greeks didn't adopt the Sumerian way of treating women as equals, but some historians now treat the ancient Greeks as simply passionate documenters whose historical text has had a good survival rate (thanks in large part to its assimilation into the ancient Roman Empire).

And to be honest, thank heavens our culture doesn't owe everything to that classical way of thinking. As Mary Beard said, even a classicist - or especially a classicist - would not fancy living in a Greco-Roman world. Our political system has happily overthrown many of the gendered certainties of antiquity, most obviously - if only formally - equal political rights for women. It's a reminder though that the "fairer sex" haven't had it fair at all, battling hard with the myths and stereotypes attached to their gender to break into the "boy-biased" areas of life with their own contributions, and gain equal recognition for their efforts.

A shining example is pioneering developmental psychologist Professor Uta Frith, whose lifetime study of people with autism has transformed our understanding of this mysterious condition. In a film by Horizon for the BBC, her contributions show how people with autism perceive the world and interact with their surroundings, and how, for them, another kind of reality exists, and that many of us could be just a little bit autistic, too. You could say that it was her "motherly instincts" which attracted her to this particular field, because of the autistic children she first encountered. Passionately wanting to know more about them inspired her to dedicate the rest of her career to studying the autistic mind. But her efforts have benefited man, woman and child alike.

If clarification were needed, women's voices have always been raised in cause for women's issues - even in antiquity, if not consistently - but their voice has never spoken for the whole community, as it can do so now. Today they can speak up not just for women, but for men, too, and for all living things. It is no longer niched into their own gender.

Yet, we still lie very much in the shadow of the classical world. For although the voice of women may today carry just as much authority as a man's in Western societies - America is an exception, still locked in her Greek classical cage. This is true, even though - conversely - it has been the voice of the American woman that has been heard the most throughout the wider world, especially when it comes to global issues, possibly because their country has helped cause many of them.

And although we are under the shadows of our past, Beard is not saying we're simply the victim of classical inheritance, or that the ancient world was merely misogynistic as a rule. But those classic patriarchal, violent traditions have provided us with - and continue to provide us with - a template for thinking and how to deal with things. In Britain, for example, our identities were forged by the ancient Romans when they built Hadrian's Wall, forcing a middle land of peoples into a north-south divide when they belonged to neither. The border legacy has remained, however, with the issue of Scottish independence from the United Kingdom still alive and kicking.

Along with historical borders, gender is obviously a part of that identity mix, but so, too, is how we treat the vulnerable and the meek. Should we put our weak babies out into the wild to die of starvation as the Spartans did? Thankfully the majority of us would be horrified at that, but as historians we can see classical themes being replayed and re-emerging all across the 20th Century, and we are witnessing its death throes in the second decade of the 21st Century.

What the future will bring

Death throes or not, we have yet to discard this traditional package of views that goes back two millennia. It still underlies our assumptions towards each other. We continue to trivialise people we see as weaker. Women who stand up for themselves are whiners we say, while men who stand up for themselves are winners. We are still trying to learn how to connote authority to love, and to peace, and to wisdom that speaks, rather than the obvious roar of the charging brave. That has its place too, no doubt, but so does a consoling whisper - be it from a man or woman.

These problems are not hard-wired into our brains, but hard-wired into our culture, our language, our way of talking about different opinions and people and into the millennia of our history. Lest we forget, women are not the only groups in our culture who are, or feel themselves to be voiceless. And having these minorities ape the majority to have their say may be a quick fix, but not the long term solution. It's just a transference of power, rather than a shift in understanding.

Likewise a powerful Palestine would probably act no different than Israel, and the criticisms aimed at America can also be made of Russia, China and even India. We need to start hearing differently, speaking differently, and thinking differently. We need to rethink our governing principles to encourage communication that can transcend the classical voice of violence. It won't necessarily guarantee us a better future, because there are no guarantees in life, but it will at least be a change from the old one.

All futures are ones that "might be", but often they are not new worlds - simply an extension of what began in the old one. If we continue to pattern ourselves after every dictator who has ever planted a dirty boot on the pages of history since the beginning of human acknowledgement then what else can we expect, but more of the same? Obviously such a future will have refinements, technological upgrades and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom, but like every domineering society that preceded it, our future will stick to one iron rule: that any opposing logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.

Nevertheless, such a future is also destined to fail in time. Any state or belief or ideology that fails to recognise the worth the dignity of all life renders, is itself obsolete by default. And this is the most disheartening truth of all: that it's we humans that continue to keep alive a self-destructive philosophy by transference every millennia or so. We are not only the victims, but the creators of this vicious cycle that serves no one.

As humans we are built out of flesh, but we also have a mind that can overcome the adversity of that flesh - and stop what was previously planned to happen. But that requires an extraordinary consciousness, not solely personal but global, too, for until we are all connected with our soul, a human being can be endowed with a divine mind and yet be separate from it. Our human history is a prime example of this. The culture that gave us Aristotle, also gave us many of the schisms that Western thinking finds itself battling with today.

And as those ancients did before us, we are misguided to think we need violence as the drive in our genes to take us towards the pinnacle of truth, like a car needs speed to move forward. But neither life, nor the religion that instils subservience to its violent doctrines, is akin to a car that can reliably take you anywhere. Yet, zealots will tell us to go on "blind faith" - on petrol made out of thin air - not realising that it's such idiocy that helps to subvert, and thus stall, the mind.

Faith should help make us more self-aware, not blind us to the truth out there. If holy books are indeed a sat-nav to help guide us through life, then it needs to be open to the ever changing nature of life. Rather than a guide that spews out stories about a god who keeps bouncers at Heaven's gates to keep out people irrespective of their quality of goodness - such as same-sex couples, the suicidal and whoever else doesn't fit within the confines of a narrow mind - we need a better guide to steer us out of the shadows that still hang over us today.

And merely swapping one religious doctrine for another is again just a transference of power, rather than a shift in understanding. There are some that will argue Judaism is no better than Christianity, and Islam is just an extension of the two, while Buddhism and Hinduism have their own barbarities that would translate as awkwardly into 21st Century thinking as any Islamic fatwa. Buddhists see same-sex coupling as degenerate for example, and even the Dalai Lama will not be pushed to defend the right of same-sex couples in a free-thinking society.

For even those of us that cling onto love as a saviour can be misguided, if we hold steadfast to only one definition that has at its root a dogmatic doctrine we are told not to question. When this is the case, religion becomes the eternal presence of an absence. Neither love in its truest form, or its adherents, can be said to consciously reside there. Moreover, such religious beliefs will always fail to satisfy us spiritually if we are constantly told we need to subvert our authentic selves into a moulding of medieval piety that was never much pious to begin with.

The personal "hell" of seeking heaven

It's only once we stop rejecting the idea of a truly universal love that embraces all living things simply for what they are, and not for how subservient they can be, will we be able to come out from the shadows of our past. Achieving this will not create an adversity-free utopia (like many religions promise after life has ended), rather it will bring an awareness about the real secrets to life.

For some that will mean that the negative and scary aspects of existence are every bit as needful as those we love. The Arabs have a wise saying, "Too much sunshine creates the desert." Clearly, real happiness comes in between a dialectic of sunshine AND storms. To enjoy anything, you have to be without it at times, so the sage says. The full stomach can't be filled, only the one that's not full; and the less there is in it the more pleasure there is in filling it.

For others it will be the realisation that balance comes in discovering it's not how much you have, but what you have that will bring purpose to life. If we keep wanting materials that are hollow and meaningless, they will leave us unsatisfied after time. Most men may fantasise going to bed with a glamour model, but ultimately if she doesn't love him, it will be devoid of reality. Thus getting everything you ever wanted can become an eternal punishment, if nothing you want is ever going to make you happy or give you joy.

In Bernard Shaw's 1903 four-act drama Man and Superman, he takes the same view - in his presentation of heaven and hell, hell is an eternity of parties and enjoyments and sloth, while heaven is involved in work and toil and improving reality. Similarly with women, who face the societal stereotype that there must be something wrong if they choose to stay single and focus on themselves. But why should life for a woman be all about chasing a wedding ring, instead of a healthy relationship - be that with Self or another self?

We shouldn't consciously search for more suffering, either, or decry the beauty of life, because if our existence is a lesson to greater wisdom, then we have to attend class. Being absent from life is the real crime, even if we are told that denying our existence here will reward us with heavenly afterlife. If one's eschatology features a state transcending the categories of phenomenal existence, and you conceive of an afterlife similar to that which Christians and Muslims believe, involving people in some paradise, then you're always going to be dealing with an altogether different proposition of what the purpose of life is.

But more conversely, if you presuppose an heavenly or hellish supernatural existence similar to this one (no matter how refined one's enjoyments and actions), then how can the transfigured dead be beyond good or evil? Anyone in a resurrected body will still be in the realm of interdependent opposites; and it will be as impossible for good to exist without bad in paradise as it is for up to be without down, or East without West.

Our ideas of "heaven" and "hell" are really a certain reference of the human condition that seeks a perfect "utopia society", which neither exists, and even if it did, in reality would be a terrifying nightmare. Imagine an eternal paradise with no challenges, no problems to solve, and nothing to strive for. Being in a blissful state forever would be boring to us after a time, and we would feel stuck, and want out. Of course there are those that disagree and use the analogy of the lives of royalty - their lives seem blissful from a distance, and they don't want out, so why would we if we were blessed with such eternal sunshine in our lives?

The notion of the idle rich is an old fashioned one, but under closer scrutiny, being born into a world of burden and obligation, disconnected from your species and put on a pedestal is far from being a happy state. And their lives will, in turn, be just as bad or as good as those who seemingly have access to far less materialistically than a king or queen. The happiest people, however, will be those that understand the bad will be requisite to enjoying the good. Because if without an opposite to be compared to goodness can't exist, then those who want a state made up entirely of goodness must understand that it can only be relative and not absolute.

Bringing love from out of the shadows

With complete certainty I can write that a lot of things will happen to us in this life. As season succeeds season, some will be cruel and some nice, but the funny thing is that it's always the cruel things that make us who we are today; the wise help us out, but it's the cruel that carve us out. We learn the lessons, raise our game in deference to the pain, and strive ever harder for something better. It's a spiritual balancing act between our mental, emotional and physical well-being.

And the end of March (or any time of any month) is ripe with opportunity for finding balance in our juggle to be better. The first days of January might be long gone (along with all our best resolutions), but if you were to ask astrologers they would say that now is the time to take another look, and consider new alternatives to maximise our efficiency. For those that follow astrology, the 21st of March marks the start of the spring equinox and the astrological New Year, when the sun enters the sign of Aries. For many of us, however, it's just a time to enjoy the sunshine out from under the shadow of the previous season. It's a time to banish the winter blues, as the weather warms us inside and out, and to keep striving for improvement.

At least, that's what we should do, but it's amazing how many of us still can't see so clear a truth as the preciousness of balance in the scheme of things. And true love is the great balancer in life. With that in mind, we need to get a new way of thinking about love, and a new way of looking at things in general. More than ever we need to strive to bring love from out of the shadows of dogma and limited thinking. Rather than looking at it through the current human level of understanding, we need to keep searching for wisdom with an open mind.

We have to stop imposing our human frailties, with their severe limitations and restrictions, on our aspirations, and rather accept them as the materials with which we learn about our world. If we are to advance as a species, and work towards any sort of utopia without these "flaws", then we are going to have to first embrace - rather than deny - their existence anyway. Once we do that, we are free to escape from their shadow, because they are no longer a threat to some blissful existence, rather the stepping stone towards improving our lot in life.

And the progress towards enlightenment will always be a rocky one, as the scales constantly realign to keep equilibrium. We will always have stories of the good and the bad, and of those holding sway in between. Because every swing of the scales in truth is a fresh start, a second look at a dark episode that may not be so dark after all. And wanting to maintain that balance is always the perfect opportunity to begin anew.

For as long as we exist, there is always a chance for change, which we should embrace. It should always be the speciality of our day. After all, life doesn't stand still; it's like a city that's constantly regenerating, renewing and re-inventing itself, and we should do the same. Because whatever you believe, the point is that the shift of the scales can give everyone a chance to start over - an opportunity not to be missed, if only to finally bring love shining out from beneath our own shadow.

Yours in love,

The Cultivation of Love-1

“My grandmother used to liken happiness in life to a field we need to cultivate. You need to sow for the long term, she used to say, to reap a better future. It's about cultivating what you need, not coveting what others tell you to want.”
— Mickie Kent

We have shared the wisdom of many sages. We have read up on many secrets. But which ones really work? Are they all just a load of pseudo-inspirational guff that ultimately amounts to nothing? Or is the truth that nothing IS really everything? If that's true, and less is more, instead of constant accumulation should we be more concerned with peeling off the layers that suffocate the authentic self?

Or are we fooling ourselves into thinking that we can stop the tide of time, or ever gracefully follow its flow to greater heights of enlightenment? Can we overcome the square one of humanity, and ever progress to a higher stage of understanding? Or do we have it all wrong? And when did our appetite for ascendancy begin? This mini-series looks at how best we can better ourselves, taking us on a journey that stretches right back to the Renaissance of old through to the very renaissance of ourselves.

The hobby horse of self-improvement

It seems that just about everyone is into well-being. We love to talk about it at great length. We all scour articles for tips on how to live a better life, whether that be to look for some stress-busting tips, or how to get a good night's sleep, to the foods to feed our kids.

But it feels like we've all spent years of literally throwing money away on fake promises. Still, if someone were to offer us the "secrets" to power up the mind, and transform our lives, many of us would grab at the chance to boost our brains. If someone were to offer us a simple pill that could detox our bodies from all the toxins said to invade our every waking moment, we would swallow it in a heartbeat.

Nowhere is this more clearly evidenced than in a series of documentaries about Los Angeles by Louis Theroux. Relocating his family to the city, Theroux found himself gradually embracing the Angeleno way of life and their constant fad of self-reinvention. In an article published by the BBC, Theroux writes about what he describes as this shallow side of LA:

I reasoned it could only be a good thing for my work if I lived in the midst of the strange tribe I was studying, in classical anthropological style. The alleged negatives of Los Angeles are well known. The people are shallow and obsessed with appearances. It's "faddy" - there is always a new ludicrous self-help regimen which involves drinking "kale smoothies" while "soul cycling", then spending the afternoon in your dojo studying the Kabbalah and getting a butt-wax.

Theroux is quick to qualify this shallow, trendy side of LA is part of its appeal, however. That's what LA is for after all, he claims - to celebrate the shiny surfaces of life, for the sense of un-selfconsciousness and the chance of self-reinvention. But his incursion into life in La La Land shines a stark light on its take on reinvention and its limitations.

People in LA like to offer solutions and look on the bright side, even when reality has other plans for our physical image. Thus the story of LA is not exactly a feel-good one, because it highlights that the onus today on how to change ourselves has been misinterpreted - or more correctly lost in translation - by Western societies across the globe. It seems that change has become synonymous with how we look, rather than who we are. Proof that change must not be confused with progress, or necessarily with decay, either.

Today reinvention seems to mean we all need to aspire to the "same" ideal of beauty - straight, dazzling white teeth, perfect alabaster skin, a great physique and the strength to match, while managing to effortlessly look 25 at the age of forty. But this isn't change; it's a type of freaky conformation so well exposed in a "must-see" episode of the Twilight Zone aired in 1964, "Number 12 Looks Just Like You". Charles Beaumont's story involves a young woman who desperately wants to hold onto her own identity, in a future society where everyone must undergo an operation at age 19 to become beautiful and conform to its general notion of beauty.

Beaumont's futuristic fantasy about a world in which plastic surgery and looking like everybody else is the true measure of "happiness" is thought provoking and absolutely chilling. Even though we know that our problems won't necessarily melt away if we change our looks or starve ourselves skinny, this fantastical tug-of-war between beauty and reality is one that people find themselves in today.

For instance, elective foot surgery known as Cinderella surgery is just the latest in a long line of gross things women do to fit into clothes. Apparently women get surgery to correct "high heel foot" (when your foot is stuck in the shape of a high heel) or "hitch-hikers toe", (when your big toe sticks out.) This surgery-for-shoes phenomenon, as much as this might sound like a plot point in some horror-themed instalment of Sex and the City, is actually a thing that more than a few women are choosing to do. Likewise vagina steaming, fatburn injections, ab coaxing and a myriad more.

But in truth, the greatest accomplishment is being yourself in a society that is constantly trying to make you into something "acceptable", and it's a dilemma that has existed for longer than its Americanisation of "beauty worship" in the previous century. Providing a clear illustration of this is the documentary series A Very British Renaissance, which tells the story of the painters, sculptors, poets, playwrights, composers, inventors, explorers, craftsmen and scientists who revolutionised the way we saw the world. The BBC series' first episode, "The Renaissance Arrives", traces the tale of how the arrival of a few foreign artists in the 16th Century sparked a cultural revolution in Britain - and how in art, at least, the battle between beauty and reality, and the way we viewed ourselves, can said to have began. This changing of consciousness would in turn change the way we viewed the world itself.

Of importance in this context, was Swiss-German painter Hans Holbein, who marked a turning point in British art when he arrived in England in the autumn of 1526 at 29 years old. As a reputable portrait painter, he was the first artist to bring the ideas and techniques of the Renaissance portrait to Britain - a place where portrait painting was almost non-existent at the time. His genius looked closer and harder at British faces than anyone had done before him, and captured their idiosyncrasies and imperfections - and in doing so made us think differently about each other and ourselves. His technique captured the fragile, the fleeting, the transient quality of life itself.

As such, his drawings are the first really lifelike faces in the whole of British history and mark the beginning of a major British tradition - "a warts and all" preference for reality over beauty that has persisted ever since. But even more importantly, Holbein's portraits contained the seeds of a new idea. They arguably marked a moment when people stopped thinking about themselves simply as types - as kings, as knights, as courtiers - and started thinking about themselves as individuals, with their own unique characteristics, hopes and fears. And this birth of the individual is a defining feature of the Renaissance.

Although the Renaissance era signposts the transition of Western civilisation from medieval to modern times (tapping into the desire to be realistic), the word itself signifies a new birth - a rebirth or revival of learning - a transformation of sorts through the acquirement of knowledge. It's through such change we discover who we uniquely are, rather than trying to fit into an "LA-type" mould of what others believe we should look like - as Theroux highlights. Yet, we've become so fame obsessed, and so selfishly snap-happy it's thought that 10% of all the photographs in the world were taken in the last 12 months. And hasn't such a culture made us a crueller, more voyeuristic, more self-obsessed society?

Our airbrushed, photo-shopped, eerily similar looking selfies - and our back-breaking vain efforts to turn these into physical reality - are a world away from Holbein's realistic portraits produced in an era as transforming as the one we live in today. But the wind of change today, as surely as it did then, blows ever strongly. The successful learn to bend with it, or fly with it; ultimately, however, the certainty of change shouldn't be about giving up your individuality - it's about finding it, and cultivating it.

Change is imperative, because life is a progression. Even a new born baby is an apprentice of old age. It's a part of life. Acclimatizing to change is not only one of the keys to living life well, but is an aid in helping us find balance, and harmonise our micro and macro lives. But what we're increasingly doing, however, is replacing real restoration, rejuvenation and the realisation of our true selves for the "quick fix", a superficial change namely to do with the body alone, whilst ignoring our mental and emotional well-being. It's easier to correct crooked teeth than a crooked attitude granted, but to cultivate real change we need to go deeper.

For as Theroux and his documentaries show, once you get past the superficial layer of the city of LA, the connections that people forge through the darkest times are the real inspirations for change in our own lives. When change forces us to strip back our layers, and we are at our most vulnerable, then we become the most human we can be. Existence becomes precious beyond a monetary tag. We begin to learn the value of things, and not their price. In fact, such change is the only way to progress to a wisdom that drives us to better ourselves.

To seek internal improvement truly is wisdom, and its external results - our technological and scientific advances - should be of great pride to us. Change in this way might even be limitless according to our current understanding, but can we go too far in wanting to change ourselves - even in our attempts at emotional or mental "perfection"? Because the right focus really isn't in changing ourselves to perfection, but changing those bad habits that block us from our true selves.

— "Can Love Truly Fix Us?", Mickie Kent

Unless we define transformative change in this way, it feels an easy and slippery route to see any "weakness" as "bad" and something to shun, and "failure" as shame. But such sabotaging fear and shame are toxic. Individuality disappears, as it does in our superficial pursuit of a perfect norm of beauty. In our highly competitive world, we prize success and hate it when things go wrong, but is there actually a value in "failing"?

For example, lots of discoveries happen by mistake. Every breakthrough we enjoy today is as a direct result of a myriad of failures. The internet search company Google has a secret laboratory where inventors and engineers are encouraged to collaborate on audacious ideas - and it rewards its staff for failure. The thinking behind Google [x] is that you must reward people for failing, otherwise they won't take risks and make breakthroughs. If you don't reward failure, people will hang on to a doomed idea for fear of the consequences, wasting time and sapping an organisation's spirit.

Similarly, an exhibition entitled "Fail Better" at the Science Gallery at Trinity College, Dublin has sought to encourage debate about the informative aspects of failure and how it can encourage greater creativity in all aspects of life. Thus it's only by accepting and embracing our imperfections that we balance our dreams and the harsh reality of overreaching - and provide the foundation of courage that pushes us to try nevertheless. Moreover, only when we embrace the uncut gravel within us do we allow ourselves the opportunity to polish them into diamonds.

Improvement in the form of the betterment of mind, body and soul, therefore, comes not only from the end results, but from the actual process itself. Every perceived "failure" or "mistake" along the way is actually an aid to learn, or a diversion onto the right path for you. Every time we learn to use a difficulty, the challenge becomes a help rather than a hindrance. In this way, the real focus of transformative change is not on a "change" away from who we are, but a road to improvement that leads us rather to discover (and thus return to) our authentic selves.

Thus pursuing the beauty of the self or the soul - rather than any obvious physicality first - means that we are partnering our goals up with real love, because love is the beauty of the soul. Then your task becomes one of not seeking love, but merely seeking to find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. Simply put, even if we seek to "change" who we are now, it's so we can be who we are truly meant to be.

But what does that mean exactly? The term "authentic self" is one I use frequently for it, but that's an elusive term, too, isn't it? What do we exactly mean by that? Is it just some other esoteric mumbo-jumbo to ascribe our "faults" and "mistakes" to, and so excuse?

Or does this increasing elusiveness mean spiritual soul-searching and mindful self-improvement really HAS lost its way, and merely become the latest tired fad - as the BBC documentaries on LA prepared by Theroux claim? Part two of this mini-series tries to tackle those questions, as we take a look at the many journeys people have taken on the route to a better life.

End of Part One | Read more in this series: -2 -3

Yours in love,

The Dream of Love

“With all the war, strife and bloodshed taking hold all around us it would be easy to dismiss love as merely a dream, or the pulp fiction we read to sweeten the harsh realities of life. But although we frequently dream of love, does this mean, too, that love is nothing but a dream?”
— Mickie Kent

A quote I like to use often is one that Shakespeare wrote, where he said that we are sometime masters of our fate, and our faults lie not in our stars, but in ourselves. When we look at that thesis, it seems that what spoke to Shakespeare in his day, shouts back at us today.

At the publication of this post in the year 2014, the modern world is on the brink of yet more bloodshed. While vast swathes of the Middle East are embroiled in conflict, and Ukraine teeters on the brink, many others believe the real flashpoint for war is between China and Japan. It seems we live in a world where we prefer to speak softly and carry a big stick.

But hasn't it always been thus? We are a species that loves to aggrandise themselves. Insignificant things arouse the greatest passions, and the passion of a zealot is the hardest to tame. Even though it brings misconduct and misdemeanour, power and status matter. Of course they don't really in the grander scheme of things, but we make them matter. And so we ignore our truly greatest power. The ability to make power and status NOT matter.

Differences in belief, the colour of our skin, and who we love should NOT matter, either. Yet, all too frequently, it does. And lest justice be mistaken for fairness, injustice is not nature's invention, but ours. This was clearly highlighted at the 86th Academy Awards this year.

When Jared Leto won the first Oscar of the night, for best supporting actor as a transgender woman in Dallas Buyers Club, he thanked his mother for "teaching him to dream" - even though not everyone was thrilled at his win as he was. He dedicated his award to those who have ever felt injustice because of who they are, or who they love, as a nod to the character he played.

Possibly the strongest message about injustice on Oscar night, however, came from Steve McQueen, the British director of 12 Years a Slave, who dedicated the best picture Oscar to the overriding legacy of slavery in America. "Everyone deserves not just to survive, but to live," McQueen said. A poignant remark that hits home ever more deeply, as across the world those with power still continue to quash self-determination.

While I am the first to take what celebrities say with a pinch of salt - and Hollywood rarely practices what it preaches - the night turned into an example of how artists can be engineers of the soul. The creative amongst us try to find a route through the chaos of existence, while the destructive ones add to it. It's a balancing act; and it was Shakespeare who warned us that the weight of the scales lies in ourselves. Was he right?

And even if that philosophy is true, are there some problems we have caused that we no longer have to the power to put right? Have we been a little too reckless, for too long? For example, an ancient virus has "come back to life" after lying dormant for at least 30,000 years, scientists say, when thawed in a deep layer of the Siberian permafrost. Meanwhile largely ascribed to global warming, average temperatures are increasing in places like Australia leading to a rise in bush fires.

Pockets of fires rage across our world threatening to engulf us all in the flames, and do we even care? Global media coverage has become so much the norm, that even though it may feel like Australia is on our own Twitter doorstep - we don't quite notice until the crisis lands physically on our front lawn.

But there is so much cyber-vom now, many of us shy from even noticing world events. We just don't want to invite that negativity into our homes. I know many people who are restricting their news feeds to personal stories of inspiration or the mind-numbing sexy and salacious gossip threads. We've had our fill of disaster, and yet we allow disaster to dictate how we see our world.

Often it's disasters that tend to remind us how small a place our world really is. In 1883, the gigantic volcanic explosion of Krakatoa was one of the loudest sounds that ever has ever existed according to human reckoning (it was 13 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb) which was heard 3,000 miles away. The ripples of this massive destruction reverberated around the world seven times, and was acknowledged to be the first global media event reported around the world. One of the first Cinerama type of disaster-flick movies was the 1969 effort Krakatoa: East of Java (though it's really west of Java), coming somewhat earlier than the cinematic disaster craze which hit the seventies of the last century.

When I peruse the news reports today, I sometimes feel as though we are in some surreal disaster movie. Sensationalism having taken over, life has begun to imitate our art. It feels kitsch and tacky, so we look away, or ignore it. Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning - a champion for the oppressed who vigorously campaigned for child labour reforms and the abolition of slavery - said that Earth was "crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees takes off his shoes, the rest sit down and pluck blackberries".

And what do we see? The world stands on the brink of major military confrontations, Amnesty International issues yet another report accusing Israel of indictable crimes against humanity, but many of us still prefer to read headlines that begin with "sex" or "celebrity". Rather than "take off our shoes" or "roll up our sleeves", we choose to "pluck blackberries" or push our heads into the sand. When looked at from this perspective, it seems that Shakespeare was indeed right. This destiny was prepared not by the stars, but by ourselves.

Nevertheless, is it naive of me to say that as we navigate the highs and lows of life, all we need is a little more faith, a little more hope, a little more love to push us through the challenges that face us today? One columnist who would seem to think me naive is Martin LeFevre of the Costa Rican Times. Indeed, he goes the opposite way to say we have love to blame for this global disillusionment.

LeFevre differentiates between love and romantic love, however, to single out the latter as the film villain of his piece. He says:

Romantic love is the illusory sensation of wholeness through the union with another person. Evolution apparently appropriated the existential alienation generated by the emergence of symbolic thought, and used it as a driving force to match couples of roughly equal capacities. Being in love gave the individual the vital feeling of wholeness through union with another, and gave evolution a driving force in propagating the species.

This "illusory sensation" LeFevre believes has degenerated into something destructive. Without romanticising a bygone era of romantic love, he writes that romantic love is probably the single greatest cause of spiritual erosion in North America in past two decades. So, what as to his claim? Does he have a point?

When we talk of karmic relationships - ones that are seemingly destructive - we often say these can be an opportunity for us to figure out exactly what it is we don't want in a partner. Many believe that you can't appreciate real love until you've been burned. However, a lot of young men and women who have been terribly hurt, consciously or subconsciously go out and hurt someone else as a perverse kind of payback, LeFevre believes.

With people changing partners a few times a year on average, a lot of broken hearts lay in the wake. It's true that there is no better way to kill the spirit than to break the heart, but if we don't have a strong inner spiritual love of self to react at such times from a divine perspective, how will we heal? And because most people don't heal, learn and become stronger, romantic love - LeFevre writes - has come to serve the spreading darkness in human consciousness very well.

I have argued before that I believe this is not the cause of love itself, but in actuality the very absence of it. Moreover, more people are seeing that, first and last, a person has to be whole within their self first before they can commit to a healthy relationship. But, LeFevre asks, being whole in oneself, does one feel a need to "fall in love"? I would say, yes. Not only will we still feel the need to fall in love, we are ONLY able to carry out healthy relationships as "whole" people. It's imperative we first find the love in ourselves, before we can share it with that special someone. And when we are filled with a deep sense of spiritual love, we will want to share it with another.

LeFevre concludes in summation that given the present crisis in the East and West, only two things are clear: Neither America nor Russia will lead humanity out of its morass, and romantic love will play little or no part in the transmutation of the human species, whenever it occurs. He adds that although radical upheaval is imperative if we are going to survive and flourish as a species, romantic love, being partial and personal, will not be a catalyst for it. Falling in love may be an inevitable part of being human, he says, but "it has little or no importance in a serious life."

Whether romantic love will play a part in the current upheavals of "serious life" is yet to be seen, but, I ask myself, what drive can be greater than love to push us to progress? To push us to examine ourselves? Should our soul searching offer profound ruminations on the meaning of life, the value of faith and our concept of reality, or should our efforts be a soulless, derivative knock off of others? This is the question I ask when I think of the meaning of love - in all its forms.

It's said that to live completely, we need to love completely, and dream passionately. I believe that love is a major drive for us to dream, too, and dreaming is no bad thing. Academy award winner Leto thanked his mother for teaching him to dream as he picked up his Oscar, and I think that teaching our children to dream is a worthwhile cause.

Without dreaming, without imagination, can we create? And what has been the greatest driving force of poets and writers and artists but romantic love? LeFevre rightly takes pains to differentiate between romantic love and love in general, but he also forgets that for many of us romantic love is the route in to love as a whole. And for many who have found true love in their relationships - rather than the absence of it - know that it offers the greatest immunity from the negativity of global events. It also gives us a reason to go on despite it all.

Romantic love as a subject has driven many creative souls to asks the greater questions of life. Why do we feel what we feel? Why do we do the things we do? Shakespeare asked these questions too, knowing that there was no answer. Maybe sometimes there is no reason for why we do the things we do, or it's so deep as to elude human understanding.

For example, in archaeology we find things from ancient times that we simply don't know what they're for, or how they were made. On the plains of Laos there are giant human-made jar-shapes made out of granite. There are 90 sites each containing up to 400 of these jars. No one knows how they were made, or for what purpose.

But I believe you always have to allow for the soul of even very early people. There is often a functional fallacy, the assumption that things are done for a very specific, practical reason, which isn't always true. The granite jars of Laos may have had no functional purpose as we know it, but simply the creation of some individual's desire to build it for a spiritual reason lost to us. I think we must always allow for the dream element.

The same is true for modern human beings, don't you think? Even with all the strife and conflict, we need to allow for the dream element. We need to allow ourselves to put our faith in love. Else why go on? We live longer when we have a purpose in life. Else why progress? How bright can enlightenment shine without the spark of love? Without the dream of love, what other alternative will we have against the diktats of disaster that skew our perception of this beautiful planet we live on?

So, is it just a useless dream for me to pin my hopes on love - romantic or otherwise? For when we love, doesn't the world seem smaller, and larger, at the same time? Aren't the fires we burn for love worth the effort? I would rather I lost in love than lost to war. I would rather I felt the burning of my soul, than the burning of the planet.

That's what my heart says to me. Listen to your heart, as the world rages around you. What does yours say? In its every beat it says "live". And arguably in life, if we listened more to what we loved, then we would have less a propensity to destroy.

And if this dream is a wish the heart makes, then shouldn't we at least try to make it come true? For isn't it the attempt that matters? We might discover that dreaming of love doesn't mean love has to be a dream, after all.

Yours in love,