When Joe guides the participant to feel their loneliness, they describe it as “disconnection and longing.” Joe asks them to go directly into the longing—to be intimate with it rather than escape it. What emerges is enormous: “Love is really big. It feels like if I connect to it, it might absorb me.”
The participant fears that surrendering to the longing would make them helpless, like a baby. Joe confirms: “That’s how it works.” But the instruction is not to give into it—just to be intimate with it. The longing, the loneliness, the ache of disconnection—these aren’t the absence of love. They are love, experienced from the outside.
“You don’t get to control love. That’s not how it works. You just get to be heartbroken from time to time, increasing your capacity to love.” The avoidance of longing is the avoidance of love itself.
Related Concepts
- Loneliness fully felt is love
- Dissolution of self is what love requires
- Heartbreak is expansion
- Surrender into love prevents self-betrayal
- We find love when we stop fearing annihilation
- Love requires willingness to be hurt