Love can only be known apophatically, that is, in terms of what it isn’t. Thus, love is not romance, not loyalty, not emotion, not anything we can say, point to, or believe in. Herein the humility of love. We don’t know what it is.
We hop off the rat wheel of win/work/compete/control when we realize that more success has nothing to teach us, that our weaknesses are points of access to the mystery of who we are.
The soul’s gymnasium is deep sleep. We know something about waking and a little of dreaming but nothing about “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” that inspires and invigorates.
“I can of my own self do nothing.” I am just coming to see how deep this truth goes. I was shredding my 2015 diary yesterday and came across this jotting: “Change nothing. Do nothing. All that is required of you, He performs.” It was in my hand, but I didn’t write it. Maybe Joel Goldsmith was briefly running things. Truth is, we do not know why we do what we do. An inner power acts; we think we’re doing something. “I did it!” we say. Or, expanding on the delusion, “High five!” Or shrivel up like a dried blueberry, as I did on a call-in show back in the day when no one called in. Are we actors? Plainly, no. We are the acted upon, the done-through. “Do you know how to do nothing?” asked Lao Tzu, pointing to the one thing we can be sure of: It’s all a mystery, top to bottom.
Suspended between wonderment and regret, the man asked, “Why did I do that?” Well, if we are a mystery to ourselves, we do not know ourselves. Knowledge is power. We cannot change what we do not know.
Men's Work 