On Our Bookshelf: Love Stories

Darnell Lamont Walker leading Rituals Writing Workshop

This month, we are pondering the myriad forms of love in different ways — philosophically, spiritually, bodily, and psychologically. However you live with love, whichever type of love you’re nourishing — be it romantic, sexual, or love as a force for liberation — it is undeniably an energy and a feeling we all require. It’s a dynamic that can be sometimes revelatory, sometimes transformative, and very much healing. Here are a few titles to deepen your understanding for the love you might like to bring into your life. 


​​The Course of Love

by Alain de Botton

The philosopher who dazzled the literary world at the tender age of 23 with On Love followed up with this meditation on relationships at a different stage of life. The union of Rabih and Kirsten is considered from every angle alongside de Botton’s extraordinary musings and witty asides. The omniscient narrator contemplates history, commitment, and love as the pair’s affections, loyalties, and resentments shift and twist as they can during a marriage. While On Love considered life through a passionate and doomed youthful affair, this love story is one concerned with everything that happens after courtship, across the span of an adult relationship. The grown-up world contains work, stress, chores, and children.  Responsibilities overlap with intimacies and wonders through a crush of dinners, fights, therapy sessions, and a memorable trip to Ikea. This is a story for adults where “love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm." It’s also a display case for De Botton, who mines the beautiful and ordinary lives of an endearing couple for extraordinary gems — insights you’ll find worthy of repeating aloud.

Salvation: Black People and Love

by bell hooks

Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by the pen name bell hooks she borrowed from her great-grandmother, died just over a year ago. The extraordinarily prolific author and activist left a legacy of some thirty-plus books, many dealing with race, gender, media, class, intersectionality,  and, often, love. From All About Love: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action.” From Communion: The Search for Female Love: “The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.” From Feminism Is for Everybody: “In actuality, we should have been spreading the word that feminism would make it possible for women and men to know love.” In Salvation, she argues for a “love ethic” to fight the effects of the hate, neglect, and poverty inflicted on the African-American community. The choice to love, she writes, recalling both James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, is “a necessary dimension of liberation.” 

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment

by Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller

Do you know your attachment style? Are you “secure,” “anxious,” or “avoidant”? According to adult attachment theory, your attachment style will influence the way you approach intimacy, togetherness, and conflict, as well as how you communicate your needs, expectations, and more. In an easy-yet-prescriptive fashion, the authors explain how to” diagnose” your style and understand your patterns. Technically, none of those three styles is “right” or “wrong." Give it a read — you’ll almost certainly recognize yourself immediately. Yes, there’s a slight chance, 3 to 5 percent, that you’re in a “disorganized” category, but the majority of us slot cleanly into one of the three. (“Revelatory” is the word most used to describe it.) If you feel you don’t truly understand your (or your partner’s) behavior, this might be the eye-opener you need. 

Milk and Honey

by Rupi Kaur ​​

A pop and global sensation, Kaur’s debut collection somehow sold millions of copies while the Instagram poet was still in her early twenties — a feat almost beyond imagining in today’s bleak book industry landscape. This originally self-published work launched the “Queen of the Instapoets” into superstardom, onto best-seller lists and talk show couches. One can only understand the phenomenon after experiencing the concise language, the poignant accompanying line drawings, its authenticity and honesty, and Kaur’s signature form — all lowercase, only periods. One brief example: “you might not have been my first love/but you were the love that made/all other loves seem/irrelevant” (Kaur’s first language, Punjabi, contains no uppercase letters and no punctuation other than periods in the Gurmukhi script.) The book is composed of four different chapters titled “The Hurting,” “The Loving,” “The Breaking,” and “The Healing,” covering themes like domestic violence, sexual abuse, loss, survival, womanhood, and self-love. If this all sounds intense, it is! That is why these passionate cries from the heart helped create an entire new generation of young poetry readers. 

Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

by Esther Perel

The go-to sexual psychotherapist’s first book set forth a premise so simple and undeniable it was almost counterintuitively shocking: Many of the foundations for a solid long-term commitment (stability, dependability, predictability) tend to extinguish desire. Without an element of uncertainty, Perel writes, “there is no longing, no anticipation, no frisson." We depend on our partners for all sorts of things (“a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity”). Some of those burdens used to be at least partly carried elsewhere (religious groups, extended families, close communities). Many of us are now surviving the vicissitudes of life with just a single person in our corner: our partner. It sounds romantic, but it’s also an unmanageable weight that crushes the libido as part of the cost of doing business. If you worry eros has been lost somewhere in the daily struggles, don’t fret; Perel also has equally straightforward answers: prioritizing sex, roleplay, sexual “ruthlessness,” and embracing a little uncertainty (e.g., the titillating threat of infidelity). It’s a radical acceptance of the nature of desire that is still somehow surprising.   

Rumi: The Big Red Book

by Coleman Barks

No list like this would be complete without Rumi. The work of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, born in 1207 near the city of Balkh in what we now call Afghanistan, still resonates with modern-day and Western audiences (partly due to Barks’s brilliantly approachable English translations). This collection is the result of Rumi’s deep “soul friendship” with the wandering mystic dervish Shams-i-Tabriz, his spiritual mentor, literary muse, and beloved companion. After his disappearance ( a heartbroken Rumi wrote thousands of lyric poems for Shams — more than 40,000 verses inspired by this love — and Divani Shamsi Tabriz ("The Works of Shams of Tabriz") were traditionally bound in a red cover, hence the title of this edition with Barks’s selections. Some of these melodious lines of longing will stay with you forever. Just a few passages to stir your heart: “Lovers find secret places inside this violent world/where they make transactions with beauty.” “When you feel your lips becoming infinite and sweet, like the moon in a sky, when you feel that spaciousness inside, Shams of Tabriz will be there too.” “This is how I would die/into the love I have for you: As pieces of cloud/dissolve in sunlight.”

“Remembering to be as self compassionate as I can and praying to the divine that we're all a part of.” 
–Aaron

“Prayer, reading, meditation, walking.”
–Karen
“Erratically — which is an ongoing stream of practice to find peace.”
–Charles
“Try on a daily basis to be kind to myself and to realize that making mistakes is a part of the human condition. Learning from our mistakes is a journey. But it starts with compassion and caring. First for oneself.”
–Steve

“Physically: aerobic exercise, volleyball, ice hockey, cycling, sailing. Emotionally: unfortunately I have to work to ‘not care’ about people or situations which may end painfully. Along the lines of ‘attachment is the source of suffering’, so best to avoid it or limit its scope. Sad though because it could also be the source of great joy. Is it worth the risk?“
–Rainer

“It's time for my heart to be nurtured on one level yet contained on another. To go easy on me and to allow my feelings to be validated, not judged harshly. On the other hand, to let the heart rule with equanimity and not lead the mind and body around like a master.”
–Suzanne

“I spend time thinking of everything I am grateful for, and I try to develop my ability to express compassion for myself and others without reservation. I take time to do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy and happy. This includes taking experiential workshops, fostering relationships, and participating within groups which have a similar interest to become a more compassionate and fulfilled being.“
–Peter

“Self-forgiveness for my own judgments. And oh yeah, coming to Esalen.”
–David B.

“Hmm, this is a tough one! I guess I take care of my heart through fostering relationships with people I feel connected to. Spending quality time with them (whether we're on the phone, through messages/letters, on Zoom, or in-person). Being there for them, listening to them, sharing what's going on with me, my struggles and my successes... like we do in the Esalen weekly Friends of Esalen Zoom sessions!”
–Lori

“I remind myself in many ways of the fact that " Love is all there is!" LOVE is the prize and this one precious life is the stage we get to learn our lessons. I get out into nature, hike, camp, river kayak, fly fish, garden, I create, I dance (not enough!), and I remain grateful for each day, each breath, each moment. Being in the moment, awake, and remembering the gift of life and my feeling of gratitude for all of creation.”
–Steven
“My physical heart by limiting stress and eating a heart-healthy diet. My emotional heart by staying in love with the world and by knowing that all disappointment and loss will pass.“
–David Z.


Today, September 29, is World Heart Day. Strike up a conversation with your own heart and as you feel comfortable, encourage others to do the same. As part of our own transformations and self-care, we sometimes ask for others to illuminate and enliven our hearts or speak our love language.

What if we could do this for ourselves too, even if just for today… or to start a heart practice, forever?



About

Steven Gutierrez

Steven Gutierrez is an editor, writer, and ghostwriter. He has worked in book publishing and at several major (and some minor) magazines.

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Darnell Lamont Walker leading Rituals Writing Workshop
On Our Bookshelf: Love Stories

This month, we are pondering the myriad forms of love in different ways — philosophically, spiritually, bodily, and psychologically. However you live with love, whichever type of love you’re nourishing — be it romantic, sexual, or love as a force for liberation — it is undeniably an energy and a feeling we all require. It’s a dynamic that can be sometimes revelatory, sometimes transformative, and very much healing. Here are a few titles to deepen your understanding for the love you might like to bring into your life. 


​​The Course of Love

by Alain de Botton

The philosopher who dazzled the literary world at the tender age of 23 with On Love followed up with this meditation on relationships at a different stage of life. The union of Rabih and Kirsten is considered from every angle alongside de Botton’s extraordinary musings and witty asides. The omniscient narrator contemplates history, commitment, and love as the pair’s affections, loyalties, and resentments shift and twist as they can during a marriage. While On Love considered life through a passionate and doomed youthful affair, this love story is one concerned with everything that happens after courtship, across the span of an adult relationship. The grown-up world contains work, stress, chores, and children.  Responsibilities overlap with intimacies and wonders through a crush of dinners, fights, therapy sessions, and a memorable trip to Ikea. This is a story for adults where “love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm." It’s also a display case for De Botton, who mines the beautiful and ordinary lives of an endearing couple for extraordinary gems — insights you’ll find worthy of repeating aloud.

Salvation: Black People and Love

by bell hooks

Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by the pen name bell hooks she borrowed from her great-grandmother, died just over a year ago. The extraordinarily prolific author and activist left a legacy of some thirty-plus books, many dealing with race, gender, media, class, intersectionality,  and, often, love. From All About Love: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action.” From Communion: The Search for Female Love: “The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.” From Feminism Is for Everybody: “In actuality, we should have been spreading the word that feminism would make it possible for women and men to know love.” In Salvation, she argues for a “love ethic” to fight the effects of the hate, neglect, and poverty inflicted on the African-American community. The choice to love, she writes, recalling both James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, is “a necessary dimension of liberation.” 

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment

by Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller

Do you know your attachment style? Are you “secure,” “anxious,” or “avoidant”? According to adult attachment theory, your attachment style will influence the way you approach intimacy, togetherness, and conflict, as well as how you communicate your needs, expectations, and more. In an easy-yet-prescriptive fashion, the authors explain how to” diagnose” your style and understand your patterns. Technically, none of those three styles is “right” or “wrong." Give it a read — you’ll almost certainly recognize yourself immediately. Yes, there’s a slight chance, 3 to 5 percent, that you’re in a “disorganized” category, but the majority of us slot cleanly into one of the three. (“Revelatory” is the word most used to describe it.) If you feel you don’t truly understand your (or your partner’s) behavior, this might be the eye-opener you need. 

Milk and Honey

by Rupi Kaur ​​

A pop and global sensation, Kaur’s debut collection somehow sold millions of copies while the Instagram poet was still in her early twenties — a feat almost beyond imagining in today’s bleak book industry landscape. This originally self-published work launched the “Queen of the Instapoets” into superstardom, onto best-seller lists and talk show couches. One can only understand the phenomenon after experiencing the concise language, the poignant accompanying line drawings, its authenticity and honesty, and Kaur’s signature form — all lowercase, only periods. One brief example: “you might not have been my first love/but you were the love that made/all other loves seem/irrelevant” (Kaur’s first language, Punjabi, contains no uppercase letters and no punctuation other than periods in the Gurmukhi script.) The book is composed of four different chapters titled “The Hurting,” “The Loving,” “The Breaking,” and “The Healing,” covering themes like domestic violence, sexual abuse, loss, survival, womanhood, and self-love. If this all sounds intense, it is! That is why these passionate cries from the heart helped create an entire new generation of young poetry readers. 

Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

by Esther Perel

The go-to sexual psychotherapist’s first book set forth a premise so simple and undeniable it was almost counterintuitively shocking: Many of the foundations for a solid long-term commitment (stability, dependability, predictability) tend to extinguish desire. Without an element of uncertainty, Perel writes, “there is no longing, no anticipation, no frisson." We depend on our partners for all sorts of things (“a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity”). Some of those burdens used to be at least partly carried elsewhere (religious groups, extended families, close communities). Many of us are now surviving the vicissitudes of life with just a single person in our corner: our partner. It sounds romantic, but it’s also an unmanageable weight that crushes the libido as part of the cost of doing business. If you worry eros has been lost somewhere in the daily struggles, don’t fret; Perel also has equally straightforward answers: prioritizing sex, roleplay, sexual “ruthlessness,” and embracing a little uncertainty (e.g., the titillating threat of infidelity). It’s a radical acceptance of the nature of desire that is still somehow surprising.   

Rumi: The Big Red Book

by Coleman Barks

No list like this would be complete without Rumi. The work of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, born in 1207 near the city of Balkh in what we now call Afghanistan, still resonates with modern-day and Western audiences (partly due to Barks’s brilliantly approachable English translations). This collection is the result of Rumi’s deep “soul friendship” with the wandering mystic dervish Shams-i-Tabriz, his spiritual mentor, literary muse, and beloved companion. After his disappearance ( a heartbroken Rumi wrote thousands of lyric poems for Shams — more than 40,000 verses inspired by this love — and Divani Shamsi Tabriz ("The Works of Shams of Tabriz") were traditionally bound in a red cover, hence the title of this edition with Barks’s selections. Some of these melodious lines of longing will stay with you forever. Just a few passages to stir your heart: “Lovers find secret places inside this violent world/where they make transactions with beauty.” “When you feel your lips becoming infinite and sweet, like the moon in a sky, when you feel that spaciousness inside, Shams of Tabriz will be there too.” “This is how I would die/into the love I have for you: As pieces of cloud/dissolve in sunlight.”

“Remembering to be as self compassionate as I can and praying to the divine that we're all a part of.” 
–Aaron

“Prayer, reading, meditation, walking.”
–Karen
“Erratically — which is an ongoing stream of practice to find peace.”
–Charles
“Try on a daily basis to be kind to myself and to realize that making mistakes is a part of the human condition. Learning from our mistakes is a journey. But it starts with compassion and caring. First for oneself.”
–Steve

“Physically: aerobic exercise, volleyball, ice hockey, cycling, sailing. Emotionally: unfortunately I have to work to ‘not care’ about people or situations which may end painfully. Along the lines of ‘attachment is the source of suffering’, so best to avoid it or limit its scope. Sad though because it could also be the source of great joy. Is it worth the risk?“
–Rainer

“It's time for my heart to be nurtured on one level yet contained on another. To go easy on me and to allow my feelings to be validated, not judged harshly. On the other hand, to let the heart rule with equanimity and not lead the mind and body around like a master.”
–Suzanne

“I spend time thinking of everything I am grateful for, and I try to develop my ability to express compassion for myself and others without reservation. I take time to do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy and happy. This includes taking experiential workshops, fostering relationships, and participating within groups which have a similar interest to become a more compassionate and fulfilled being.“
–Peter

“Self-forgiveness for my own judgments. And oh yeah, coming to Esalen.”
–David B.

“Hmm, this is a tough one! I guess I take care of my heart through fostering relationships with people I feel connected to. Spending quality time with them (whether we're on the phone, through messages/letters, on Zoom, or in-person). Being there for them, listening to them, sharing what's going on with me, my struggles and my successes... like we do in the Esalen weekly Friends of Esalen Zoom sessions!”
–Lori

“I remind myself in many ways of the fact that " Love is all there is!" LOVE is the prize and this one precious life is the stage we get to learn our lessons. I get out into nature, hike, camp, river kayak, fly fish, garden, I create, I dance (not enough!), and I remain grateful for each day, each breath, each moment. Being in the moment, awake, and remembering the gift of life and my feeling of gratitude for all of creation.”
–Steven
“My physical heart by limiting stress and eating a heart-healthy diet. My emotional heart by staying in love with the world and by knowing that all disappointment and loss will pass.“
–David Z.


Today, September 29, is World Heart Day. Strike up a conversation with your own heart and as you feel comfortable, encourage others to do the same. As part of our own transformations and self-care, we sometimes ask for others to illuminate and enliven our hearts or speak our love language.

What if we could do this for ourselves too, even if just for today… or to start a heart practice, forever?



About

Steven Gutierrez

Steven Gutierrez is an editor, writer, and ghostwriter. He has worked in book publishing and at several major (and some minor) magazines.

On Our Bookshelf: Love Stories

About

Steven Gutierrez

Steven Gutierrez is an editor, writer, and ghostwriter. He has worked in book publishing and at several major (and some minor) magazines.

< Back to all articles

Darnell Lamont Walker leading Rituals Writing Workshop

This month, we are pondering the myriad forms of love in different ways — philosophically, spiritually, bodily, and psychologically. However you live with love, whichever type of love you’re nourishing — be it romantic, sexual, or love as a force for liberation — it is undeniably an energy and a feeling we all require. It’s a dynamic that can be sometimes revelatory, sometimes transformative, and very much healing. Here are a few titles to deepen your understanding for the love you might like to bring into your life. 


​​The Course of Love

by Alain de Botton

The philosopher who dazzled the literary world at the tender age of 23 with On Love followed up with this meditation on relationships at a different stage of life. The union of Rabih and Kirsten is considered from every angle alongside de Botton’s extraordinary musings and witty asides. The omniscient narrator contemplates history, commitment, and love as the pair’s affections, loyalties, and resentments shift and twist as they can during a marriage. While On Love considered life through a passionate and doomed youthful affair, this love story is one concerned with everything that happens after courtship, across the span of an adult relationship. The grown-up world contains work, stress, chores, and children.  Responsibilities overlap with intimacies and wonders through a crush of dinners, fights, therapy sessions, and a memorable trip to Ikea. This is a story for adults where “love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm." It’s also a display case for De Botton, who mines the beautiful and ordinary lives of an endearing couple for extraordinary gems — insights you’ll find worthy of repeating aloud.

Salvation: Black People and Love

by bell hooks

Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by the pen name bell hooks she borrowed from her great-grandmother, died just over a year ago. The extraordinarily prolific author and activist left a legacy of some thirty-plus books, many dealing with race, gender, media, class, intersectionality,  and, often, love. From All About Love: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action.” From Communion: The Search for Female Love: “The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.” From Feminism Is for Everybody: “In actuality, we should have been spreading the word that feminism would make it possible for women and men to know love.” In Salvation, she argues for a “love ethic” to fight the effects of the hate, neglect, and poverty inflicted on the African-American community. The choice to love, she writes, recalling both James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, is “a necessary dimension of liberation.” 

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment

by Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller

Do you know your attachment style? Are you “secure,” “anxious,” or “avoidant”? According to adult attachment theory, your attachment style will influence the way you approach intimacy, togetherness, and conflict, as well as how you communicate your needs, expectations, and more. In an easy-yet-prescriptive fashion, the authors explain how to” diagnose” your style and understand your patterns. Technically, none of those three styles is “right” or “wrong." Give it a read — you’ll almost certainly recognize yourself immediately. Yes, there’s a slight chance, 3 to 5 percent, that you’re in a “disorganized” category, but the majority of us slot cleanly into one of the three. (“Revelatory” is the word most used to describe it.) If you feel you don’t truly understand your (or your partner’s) behavior, this might be the eye-opener you need. 

Milk and Honey

by Rupi Kaur ​​

A pop and global sensation, Kaur’s debut collection somehow sold millions of copies while the Instagram poet was still in her early twenties — a feat almost beyond imagining in today’s bleak book industry landscape. This originally self-published work launched the “Queen of the Instapoets” into superstardom, onto best-seller lists and talk show couches. One can only understand the phenomenon after experiencing the concise language, the poignant accompanying line drawings, its authenticity and honesty, and Kaur’s signature form — all lowercase, only periods. One brief example: “you might not have been my first love/but you were the love that made/all other loves seem/irrelevant” (Kaur’s first language, Punjabi, contains no uppercase letters and no punctuation other than periods in the Gurmukhi script.) The book is composed of four different chapters titled “The Hurting,” “The Loving,” “The Breaking,” and “The Healing,” covering themes like domestic violence, sexual abuse, loss, survival, womanhood, and self-love. If this all sounds intense, it is! That is why these passionate cries from the heart helped create an entire new generation of young poetry readers. 

Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

by Esther Perel

The go-to sexual psychotherapist’s first book set forth a premise so simple and undeniable it was almost counterintuitively shocking: Many of the foundations for a solid long-term commitment (stability, dependability, predictability) tend to extinguish desire. Without an element of uncertainty, Perel writes, “there is no longing, no anticipation, no frisson." We depend on our partners for all sorts of things (“a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity”). Some of those burdens used to be at least partly carried elsewhere (religious groups, extended families, close communities). Many of us are now surviving the vicissitudes of life with just a single person in our corner: our partner. It sounds romantic, but it’s also an unmanageable weight that crushes the libido as part of the cost of doing business. If you worry eros has been lost somewhere in the daily struggles, don’t fret; Perel also has equally straightforward answers: prioritizing sex, roleplay, sexual “ruthlessness,” and embracing a little uncertainty (e.g., the titillating threat of infidelity). It’s a radical acceptance of the nature of desire that is still somehow surprising.   

Rumi: The Big Red Book

by Coleman Barks

No list like this would be complete without Rumi. The work of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, born in 1207 near the city of Balkh in what we now call Afghanistan, still resonates with modern-day and Western audiences (partly due to Barks’s brilliantly approachable English translations). This collection is the result of Rumi’s deep “soul friendship” with the wandering mystic dervish Shams-i-Tabriz, his spiritual mentor, literary muse, and beloved companion. After his disappearance ( a heartbroken Rumi wrote thousands of lyric poems for Shams — more than 40,000 verses inspired by this love — and Divani Shamsi Tabriz ("The Works of Shams of Tabriz") were traditionally bound in a red cover, hence the title of this edition with Barks’s selections. Some of these melodious lines of longing will stay with you forever. Just a few passages to stir your heart: “Lovers find secret places inside this violent world/where they make transactions with beauty.” “When you feel your lips becoming infinite and sweet, like the moon in a sky, when you feel that spaciousness inside, Shams of Tabriz will be there too.” “This is how I would die/into the love I have for you: As pieces of cloud/dissolve in sunlight.”

“Remembering to be as self compassionate as I can and praying to the divine that we're all a part of.” 
–Aaron

“Prayer, reading, meditation, walking.”
–Karen
“Erratically — which is an ongoing stream of practice to find peace.”
–Charles
“Try on a daily basis to be kind to myself and to realize that making mistakes is a part of the human condition. Learning from our mistakes is a journey. But it starts with compassion and caring. First for oneself.”
–Steve

“Physically: aerobic exercise, volleyball, ice hockey, cycling, sailing. Emotionally: unfortunately I have to work to ‘not care’ about people or situations which may end painfully. Along the lines of ‘attachment is the source of suffering’, so best to avoid it or limit its scope. Sad though because it could also be the source of great joy. Is it worth the risk?“
–Rainer

“It's time for my heart to be nurtured on one level yet contained on another. To go easy on me and to allow my feelings to be validated, not judged harshly. On the other hand, to let the heart rule with equanimity and not lead the mind and body around like a master.”
–Suzanne

“I spend time thinking of everything I am grateful for, and I try to develop my ability to express compassion for myself and others without reservation. I take time to do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy and happy. This includes taking experiential workshops, fostering relationships, and participating within groups which have a similar interest to become a more compassionate and fulfilled being.“
–Peter

“Self-forgiveness for my own judgments. And oh yeah, coming to Esalen.”
–David B.

“Hmm, this is a tough one! I guess I take care of my heart through fostering relationships with people I feel connected to. Spending quality time with them (whether we're on the phone, through messages/letters, on Zoom, or in-person). Being there for them, listening to them, sharing what's going on with me, my struggles and my successes... like we do in the Esalen weekly Friends of Esalen Zoom sessions!”
–Lori

“I remind myself in many ways of the fact that " Love is all there is!" LOVE is the prize and this one precious life is the stage we get to learn our lessons. I get out into nature, hike, camp, river kayak, fly fish, garden, I create, I dance (not enough!), and I remain grateful for each day, each breath, each moment. Being in the moment, awake, and remembering the gift of life and my feeling of gratitude for all of creation.”
–Steven
“My physical heart by limiting stress and eating a heart-healthy diet. My emotional heart by staying in love with the world and by knowing that all disappointment and loss will pass.“
–David Z.


Today, September 29, is World Heart Day. Strike up a conversation with your own heart and as you feel comfortable, encourage others to do the same. As part of our own transformations and self-care, we sometimes ask for others to illuminate and enliven our hearts or speak our love language.

What if we could do this for ourselves too, even if just for today… or to start a heart practice, forever?



About

Steven Gutierrez

Steven Gutierrez is an editor, writer, and ghostwriter. He has worked in book publishing and at several major (and some minor) magazines.

< Back to all Journal posts

Darnell Lamont Walker leading Rituals Writing Workshop
On Our Bookshelf: Love Stories

This month, we are pondering the myriad forms of love in different ways — philosophically, spiritually, bodily, and psychologically. However you live with love, whichever type of love you’re nourishing — be it romantic, sexual, or love as a force for liberation — it is undeniably an energy and a feeling we all require. It’s a dynamic that can be sometimes revelatory, sometimes transformative, and very much healing. Here are a few titles to deepen your understanding for the love you might like to bring into your life. 


​​The Course of Love

by Alain de Botton

The philosopher who dazzled the literary world at the tender age of 23 with On Love followed up with this meditation on relationships at a different stage of life. The union of Rabih and Kirsten is considered from every angle alongside de Botton’s extraordinary musings and witty asides. The omniscient narrator contemplates history, commitment, and love as the pair’s affections, loyalties, and resentments shift and twist as they can during a marriage. While On Love considered life through a passionate and doomed youthful affair, this love story is one concerned with everything that happens after courtship, across the span of an adult relationship. The grown-up world contains work, stress, chores, and children.  Responsibilities overlap with intimacies and wonders through a crush of dinners, fights, therapy sessions, and a memorable trip to Ikea. This is a story for adults where “love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm." It’s also a display case for De Botton, who mines the beautiful and ordinary lives of an endearing couple for extraordinary gems — insights you’ll find worthy of repeating aloud.

Salvation: Black People and Love

by bell hooks

Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by the pen name bell hooks she borrowed from her great-grandmother, died just over a year ago. The extraordinarily prolific author and activist left a legacy of some thirty-plus books, many dealing with race, gender, media, class, intersectionality,  and, often, love. From All About Love: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action.” From Communion: The Search for Female Love: “The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.” From Feminism Is for Everybody: “In actuality, we should have been spreading the word that feminism would make it possible for women and men to know love.” In Salvation, she argues for a “love ethic” to fight the effects of the hate, neglect, and poverty inflicted on the African-American community. The choice to love, she writes, recalling both James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, is “a necessary dimension of liberation.” 

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment

by Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller

Do you know your attachment style? Are you “secure,” “anxious,” or “avoidant”? According to adult attachment theory, your attachment style will influence the way you approach intimacy, togetherness, and conflict, as well as how you communicate your needs, expectations, and more. In an easy-yet-prescriptive fashion, the authors explain how to” diagnose” your style and understand your patterns. Technically, none of those three styles is “right” or “wrong." Give it a read — you’ll almost certainly recognize yourself immediately. Yes, there’s a slight chance, 3 to 5 percent, that you’re in a “disorganized” category, but the majority of us slot cleanly into one of the three. (“Revelatory” is the word most used to describe it.) If you feel you don’t truly understand your (or your partner’s) behavior, this might be the eye-opener you need. 

Milk and Honey

by Rupi Kaur ​​

A pop and global sensation, Kaur’s debut collection somehow sold millions of copies while the Instagram poet was still in her early twenties — a feat almost beyond imagining in today’s bleak book industry landscape. This originally self-published work launched the “Queen of the Instapoets” into superstardom, onto best-seller lists and talk show couches. One can only understand the phenomenon after experiencing the concise language, the poignant accompanying line drawings, its authenticity and honesty, and Kaur’s signature form — all lowercase, only periods. One brief example: “you might not have been my first love/but you were the love that made/all other loves seem/irrelevant” (Kaur’s first language, Punjabi, contains no uppercase letters and no punctuation other than periods in the Gurmukhi script.) The book is composed of four different chapters titled “The Hurting,” “The Loving,” “The Breaking,” and “The Healing,” covering themes like domestic violence, sexual abuse, loss, survival, womanhood, and self-love. If this all sounds intense, it is! That is why these passionate cries from the heart helped create an entire new generation of young poetry readers. 

Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

by Esther Perel

The go-to sexual psychotherapist’s first book set forth a premise so simple and undeniable it was almost counterintuitively shocking: Many of the foundations for a solid long-term commitment (stability, dependability, predictability) tend to extinguish desire. Without an element of uncertainty, Perel writes, “there is no longing, no anticipation, no frisson." We depend on our partners for all sorts of things (“a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity”). Some of those burdens used to be at least partly carried elsewhere (religious groups, extended families, close communities). Many of us are now surviving the vicissitudes of life with just a single person in our corner: our partner. It sounds romantic, but it’s also an unmanageable weight that crushes the libido as part of the cost of doing business. If you worry eros has been lost somewhere in the daily struggles, don’t fret; Perel also has equally straightforward answers: prioritizing sex, roleplay, sexual “ruthlessness,” and embracing a little uncertainty (e.g., the titillating threat of infidelity). It’s a radical acceptance of the nature of desire that is still somehow surprising.   

Rumi: The Big Red Book

by Coleman Barks

No list like this would be complete without Rumi. The work of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, born in 1207 near the city of Balkh in what we now call Afghanistan, still resonates with modern-day and Western audiences (partly due to Barks’s brilliantly approachable English translations). This collection is the result of Rumi’s deep “soul friendship” with the wandering mystic dervish Shams-i-Tabriz, his spiritual mentor, literary muse, and beloved companion. After his disappearance ( a heartbroken Rumi wrote thousands of lyric poems for Shams — more than 40,000 verses inspired by this love — and Divani Shamsi Tabriz ("The Works of Shams of Tabriz") were traditionally bound in a red cover, hence the title of this edition with Barks’s selections. Some of these melodious lines of longing will stay with you forever. Just a few passages to stir your heart: “Lovers find secret places inside this violent world/where they make transactions with beauty.” “When you feel your lips becoming infinite and sweet, like the moon in a sky, when you feel that spaciousness inside, Shams of Tabriz will be there too.” “This is how I would die/into the love I have for you: As pieces of cloud/dissolve in sunlight.”

“Remembering to be as self compassionate as I can and praying to the divine that we're all a part of.” 
–Aaron

“Prayer, reading, meditation, walking.”
–Karen
“Erratically — which is an ongoing stream of practice to find peace.”
–Charles
“Try on a daily basis to be kind to myself and to realize that making mistakes is a part of the human condition. Learning from our mistakes is a journey. But it starts with compassion and caring. First for oneself.”
–Steve

“Physically: aerobic exercise, volleyball, ice hockey, cycling, sailing. Emotionally: unfortunately I have to work to ‘not care’ about people or situations which may end painfully. Along the lines of ‘attachment is the source of suffering’, so best to avoid it or limit its scope. Sad though because it could also be the source of great joy. Is it worth the risk?“
–Rainer

“It's time for my heart to be nurtured on one level yet contained on another. To go easy on me and to allow my feelings to be validated, not judged harshly. On the other hand, to let the heart rule with equanimity and not lead the mind and body around like a master.”
–Suzanne

“I spend time thinking of everything I am grateful for, and I try to develop my ability to express compassion for myself and others without reservation. I take time to do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy and happy. This includes taking experiential workshops, fostering relationships, and participating within groups which have a similar interest to become a more compassionate and fulfilled being.“
–Peter

“Self-forgiveness for my own judgments. And oh yeah, coming to Esalen.”
–David B.

“Hmm, this is a tough one! I guess I take care of my heart through fostering relationships with people I feel connected to. Spending quality time with them (whether we're on the phone, through messages/letters, on Zoom, or in-person). Being there for them, listening to them, sharing what's going on with me, my struggles and my successes... like we do in the Esalen weekly Friends of Esalen Zoom sessions!”
–Lori

“I remind myself in many ways of the fact that " Love is all there is!" LOVE is the prize and this one precious life is the stage we get to learn our lessons. I get out into nature, hike, camp, river kayak, fly fish, garden, I create, I dance (not enough!), and I remain grateful for each day, each breath, each moment. Being in the moment, awake, and remembering the gift of life and my feeling of gratitude for all of creation.”
–Steven
“My physical heart by limiting stress and eating a heart-healthy diet. My emotional heart by staying in love with the world and by knowing that all disappointment and loss will pass.“
–David Z.


Today, September 29, is World Heart Day. Strike up a conversation with your own heart and as you feel comfortable, encourage others to do the same. As part of our own transformations and self-care, we sometimes ask for others to illuminate and enliven our hearts or speak our love language.

What if we could do this for ourselves too, even if just for today… or to start a heart practice, forever?



About

Steven Gutierrez

Steven Gutierrez is an editor, writer, and ghostwriter. He has worked in book publishing and at several major (and some minor) magazines.

On Our Bookshelf: Love Stories

About

Steven Gutierrez

Steven Gutierrez is an editor, writer, and ghostwriter. He has worked in book publishing and at several major (and some minor) magazines.

< Back to all articles

Darnell Lamont Walker leading Rituals Writing Workshop

This month, we are pondering the myriad forms of love in different ways — philosophically, spiritually, bodily, and psychologically. However you live with love, whichever type of love you’re nourishing — be it romantic, sexual, or love as a force for liberation — it is undeniably an energy and a feeling we all require. It’s a dynamic that can be sometimes revelatory, sometimes transformative, and very much healing. Here are a few titles to deepen your understanding for the love you might like to bring into your life. 


​​The Course of Love

by Alain de Botton

The philosopher who dazzled the literary world at the tender age of 23 with On Love followed up with this meditation on relationships at a different stage of life. The union of Rabih and Kirsten is considered from every angle alongside de Botton’s extraordinary musings and witty asides. The omniscient narrator contemplates history, commitment, and love as the pair’s affections, loyalties, and resentments shift and twist as they can during a marriage. While On Love considered life through a passionate and doomed youthful affair, this love story is one concerned with everything that happens after courtship, across the span of an adult relationship. The grown-up world contains work, stress, chores, and children.  Responsibilities overlap with intimacies and wonders through a crush of dinners, fights, therapy sessions, and a memorable trip to Ikea. This is a story for adults where “love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm." It’s also a display case for De Botton, who mines the beautiful and ordinary lives of an endearing couple for extraordinary gems — insights you’ll find worthy of repeating aloud.

Salvation: Black People and Love

by bell hooks

Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by the pen name bell hooks she borrowed from her great-grandmother, died just over a year ago. The extraordinarily prolific author and activist left a legacy of some thirty-plus books, many dealing with race, gender, media, class, intersectionality,  and, often, love. From All About Love: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action.” From Communion: The Search for Female Love: “The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.” From Feminism Is for Everybody: “In actuality, we should have been spreading the word that feminism would make it possible for women and men to know love.” In Salvation, she argues for a “love ethic” to fight the effects of the hate, neglect, and poverty inflicted on the African-American community. The choice to love, she writes, recalling both James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, is “a necessary dimension of liberation.” 

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment

by Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller

Do you know your attachment style? Are you “secure,” “anxious,” or “avoidant”? According to adult attachment theory, your attachment style will influence the way you approach intimacy, togetherness, and conflict, as well as how you communicate your needs, expectations, and more. In an easy-yet-prescriptive fashion, the authors explain how to” diagnose” your style and understand your patterns. Technically, none of those three styles is “right” or “wrong." Give it a read — you’ll almost certainly recognize yourself immediately. Yes, there’s a slight chance, 3 to 5 percent, that you’re in a “disorganized” category, but the majority of us slot cleanly into one of the three. (“Revelatory” is the word most used to describe it.) If you feel you don’t truly understand your (or your partner’s) behavior, this might be the eye-opener you need. 

Milk and Honey

by Rupi Kaur ​​

A pop and global sensation, Kaur’s debut collection somehow sold millions of copies while the Instagram poet was still in her early twenties — a feat almost beyond imagining in today’s bleak book industry landscape. This originally self-published work launched the “Queen of the Instapoets” into superstardom, onto best-seller lists and talk show couches. One can only understand the phenomenon after experiencing the concise language, the poignant accompanying line drawings, its authenticity and honesty, and Kaur’s signature form — all lowercase, only periods. One brief example: “you might not have been my first love/but you were the love that made/all other loves seem/irrelevant” (Kaur’s first language, Punjabi, contains no uppercase letters and no punctuation other than periods in the Gurmukhi script.) The book is composed of four different chapters titled “The Hurting,” “The Loving,” “The Breaking,” and “The Healing,” covering themes like domestic violence, sexual abuse, loss, survival, womanhood, and self-love. If this all sounds intense, it is! That is why these passionate cries from the heart helped create an entire new generation of young poetry readers. 

Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

by Esther Perel

The go-to sexual psychotherapist’s first book set forth a premise so simple and undeniable it was almost counterintuitively shocking: Many of the foundations for a solid long-term commitment (stability, dependability, predictability) tend to extinguish desire. Without an element of uncertainty, Perel writes, “there is no longing, no anticipation, no frisson." We depend on our partners for all sorts of things (“a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity”). Some of those burdens used to be at least partly carried elsewhere (religious groups, extended families, close communities). Many of us are now surviving the vicissitudes of life with just a single person in our corner: our partner. It sounds romantic, but it’s also an unmanageable weight that crushes the libido as part of the cost of doing business. If you worry eros has been lost somewhere in the daily struggles, don’t fret; Perel also has equally straightforward answers: prioritizing sex, roleplay, sexual “ruthlessness,” and embracing a little uncertainty (e.g., the titillating threat of infidelity). It’s a radical acceptance of the nature of desire that is still somehow surprising.   

Rumi: The Big Red Book

by Coleman Barks

No list like this would be complete without Rumi. The work of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, born in 1207 near the city of Balkh in what we now call Afghanistan, still resonates with modern-day and Western audiences (partly due to Barks’s brilliantly approachable English translations). This collection is the result of Rumi’s deep “soul friendship” with the wandering mystic dervish Shams-i-Tabriz, his spiritual mentor, literary muse, and beloved companion. After his disappearance ( a heartbroken Rumi wrote thousands of lyric poems for Shams — more than 40,000 verses inspired by this love — and Divani Shamsi Tabriz ("The Works of Shams of Tabriz") were traditionally bound in a red cover, hence the title of this edition with Barks’s selections. Some of these melodious lines of longing will stay with you forever. Just a few passages to stir your heart: “Lovers find secret places inside this violent world/where they make transactions with beauty.” “When you feel your lips becoming infinite and sweet, like the moon in a sky, when you feel that spaciousness inside, Shams of Tabriz will be there too.” “This is how I would die/into the love I have for you: As pieces of cloud/dissolve in sunlight.”

“Remembering to be as self compassionate as I can and praying to the divine that we're all a part of.” 
–Aaron

“Prayer, reading, meditation, walking.”
–Karen
“Erratically — which is an ongoing stream of practice to find peace.”
–Charles
“Try on a daily basis to be kind to myself and to realize that making mistakes is a part of the human condition. Learning from our mistakes is a journey. But it starts with compassion and caring. First for oneself.”
–Steve

“Physically: aerobic exercise, volleyball, ice hockey, cycling, sailing. Emotionally: unfortunately I have to work to ‘not care’ about people or situations which may end painfully. Along the lines of ‘attachment is the source of suffering’, so best to avoid it or limit its scope. Sad though because it could also be the source of great joy. Is it worth the risk?“
–Rainer

“It's time for my heart to be nurtured on one level yet contained on another. To go easy on me and to allow my feelings to be validated, not judged harshly. On the other hand, to let the heart rule with equanimity and not lead the mind and body around like a master.”
–Suzanne

“I spend time thinking of everything I am grateful for, and I try to develop my ability to express compassion for myself and others without reservation. I take time to do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy and happy. This includes taking experiential workshops, fostering relationships, and participating within groups which have a similar interest to become a more compassionate and fulfilled being.“
–Peter

“Self-forgiveness for my own judgments. And oh yeah, coming to Esalen.”
–David B.

“Hmm, this is a tough one! I guess I take care of my heart through fostering relationships with people I feel connected to. Spending quality time with them (whether we're on the phone, through messages/letters, on Zoom, or in-person). Being there for them, listening to them, sharing what's going on with me, my struggles and my successes... like we do in the Esalen weekly Friends of Esalen Zoom sessions!”
–Lori

“I remind myself in many ways of the fact that " Love is all there is!" LOVE is the prize and this one precious life is the stage we get to learn our lessons. I get out into nature, hike, camp, river kayak, fly fish, garden, I create, I dance (not enough!), and I remain grateful for each day, each breath, each moment. Being in the moment, awake, and remembering the gift of life and my feeling of gratitude for all of creation.”
–Steven
“My physical heart by limiting stress and eating a heart-healthy diet. My emotional heart by staying in love with the world and by knowing that all disappointment and loss will pass.“
–David Z.


Today, September 29, is World Heart Day. Strike up a conversation with your own heart and as you feel comfortable, encourage others to do the same. As part of our own transformations and self-care, we sometimes ask for others to illuminate and enliven our hearts or speak our love language.

What if we could do this for ourselves too, even if just for today… or to start a heart practice, forever?



About

Steven Gutierrez

Steven Gutierrez is an editor, writer, and ghostwriter. He has worked in book publishing and at several major (and some minor) magazines.