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The next chapter of “All about love: new visions”(2001), by bell hooks, is on community.

Communities, says hooks, sustain life. Not the life of the individual, but life in its nature: as a shared experience. “There is no better place to learn the art of loving than community” (p.129).

And community is everywhere, even if we don’t see it like that.

It not only refers to our most intimate circle of friends that we meet regularly, but it stretches out to the supermarket cashier, to the bus driver, to the person working in the gym, to the neighbours, to the doctor of your children, to cousins and uncles and people from the delivery app that bring you pizza.

Community is a field of connections, says hooks, a field into which we are all born. It encapsulates the nuclear family, the small unit we tend to focus on when talking about connection. But it is way larger than that.

hooks mentions that it was her extended family – loving people who nurtured her, who gave her hope and perspective – who helped her thrive. Their role, she says, was to show “that our family’s interactions did not constitute a norm, that there were other ways to think and behave, different from the accepted patterns in our household” (p.131).

I am part of many different extended families as well. The children of my friends are a strong part of my life, and even though I have no idea how my presence will affect them in the long run, I know it will have an effect. Friends of my parents who cared for me in my early years still do accompany me now through the memories of love and kindness I carry.

That families are just a small part of larger communities, and not the main part of it, seems to be an old concept. hooks reminds us that this parents—children expectation of family is a pretty modern way of structuring society.
Besides, “most world citizens do not have, and will never have, the material resources to live in small units segregated from larger family communities.” (p.132). Extended families and community offer a way of living that is not only more affordable — it also offers more possibilities for people to experience love.

In Germany, where I have been living for the last 12 years now, a very common way of living is in community, either by creating your own or joining an existing one. These are called WGs, or Wohnungsgemeinschaft – translated as a house community. I find it interesting that a lot of people, when searching for a WG, look for people with whom to not only share a space but also thoughts, emotions, ideas, projects, and pain.

I have collected a lot of WG experience in the last years, which means basically how to navigate life with other humans. They all touched me, and definitely enriched my collection of funny stories, and also deep ones.

My last experience of sharing a house was with 6 other people, in a big house on the outskirts of Berlin. It was an experiment for all of us, who did not know each other before the day we moved in. It showed me how much we are ready to care for and love each other and how ridiculously easy and powerful this can be when people see themselves as an active part of the world. Not only as a guest, surfing the ways that better fits ones interest. But as a creative being.

A community is way bigger than us as individuals. But it can also be an expression of our hearts, of our creativity, of our intimate desires.

This experience made me realize that living with other people is something I aspire to do in the long term. Not as a provisory solution while I don’t earn enough money to buy a villa or something. But as a dream with roots in reality.

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hooks shares a few elements central to life in community. I want to look into a few of them:

Honest communication

Sharing thoughts, feelings, and needs is an essential component of living in a community, even when these might make us look into the eyes of conflict or rejection. It is hard. And at the same time, so much can grow from there. Honesty cleans the soil for relationships to thrive. Hiding and avoiding communication is a path into bitterness and solitude.

This applies also to friends, who are part of our larger network, and this makes me come to the second point

Friendships

Friendships have an essential place in the larger communities we are part of. They “provide us with a space to experience the joy of community in a relationship where we learn to process all our issues, to cope with differences and conflict while staying connected” (p.134).

Besides, it offers most of us “our first glimpse of redemptive love and caring community” (p.134). Yet, we tend to place friendships in a secondary place, behind romantic bonds.

Here is an insight that touched me: “The more genuine our romantic love the more we do not feel called upon to weaken or sever ties with friends to strengthen ties with romantic partners. Trust is the heartbeat of genuine love. And we trust that the attention our partners give friends, or vice versa, does not take anything away from us – we are not diminished” (p.135).

Thinking we should focus more on our romantic relationship than on our friendship is based on the thought these are different kinds of love. But, as hooks says, “when we see love as the will to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same” (p.136).

The behaviour might be different, and the level of commitment might change but “the values that inform our behaviour, when rooted in a love ethic, are always the same for any interaction” (p.136).

Forgiving

Another aspect of living in a community is forgiving. The ability to forgive is directly related to our experience of love and being loved. “It requires that we place releasing someone else from the prison of their guilt or anguish over our feelings of outrage or anger. By forgiving we clear a path on the way to love” (p.139).

Let’s be honest though: forgiving is challenging. Accepting that we were hurt by someone else is challenging. Returning to love is challenging. Forgiving is an essential practice though because it gives us the power to create our reality and leave the position of being paralysed by our circumstances. What happens to my heart if I forgive? is a question that I like to pose myself when facing such situations.

Being alone

The fear of being alone is part of our human experience. And, as hooks puts it, the ability to be alone is essential to be in community.

Embracing our solitude is a spiritual practice.

Here is a quote shared by hooks of the theologian Henry Nouwen: “The difficult road is the road of conversion, the conversion from loneliness into solitude. Instead of running away from our loneliness and trying to forget or deny it, we have to protect it and turn it into fruitful solitude… Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community.” (p.141).

There is a lot of beauty in aloneness. We can be a source of joy for ourselves. Inviting silence and quietness into our lives can be a door to discovering the value of our solitude.

Sacrifice

hooks puts it with clarity: “The willingness to sacrifice is a necessary dimension of loving practice and living in a community. None of us can have things our way all the time” (p.142).

Sharing with others, giving up on something for the good of others, and giving to those in need are part of the spiritual dimension of a loving practice, which is also a part of life in community. To give, to be in service is an act of strength.

Make the whole world your friend

hooks speaks of how much living in a community can encourage us to “meet strangers without fear and extend to them the gift of openness and recognition” (p.143). Strangers are also part of our extended community – the way we interact with them and respond to them in our daily life determines also our life.

This also reminds me of a teaching by the meditation teacher Tara Brach. It goes along these lines: “When you make the world your friend, fear cannot find a home”. Stretching our arms to embrace not only parents and close friends into our communities but also people with whom we cross our gaze on the street is a statement to the world.

We can create the life we want to live in by acting accordingly.

“We can begin by sharing a smile, a warm greeting, a bit of conversation; by doing a kind deed or by acknowledging kindness offered us” (p.144).

Belonging

Living in a community means also facing the fear of not feeling accepted. But at the same time, it offers a possibility for us to heal wounds, not only our own but the wounds of society. We can learn to belong again, to deeply feel accepted by who we are.

We can belong. Just like we are. And also like this, we can build communities with others. As hooks says, “the love we make in community stays with us wherever we go. With this knowledge as our guide, we make any place we go a place where we return to love” (p.144).

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hooks thoughts on community make me contemplate how community looks like in my life and what are my wishes for it. This is definitely one essential one component of my life that became stronger in the last years. Thank YOU for being part of my community!
And: Maybe you can also invite a few minutes of quietude to contemplate how community is present in your life and how you wish it to be.

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We continue with the next chapter on “Mutuality: the heart of love”. Maybe tomorrow, maybe not. My routine is changing a bit, and I am finding a way to adapt and keep on creating posts regularly BUT without hectic or hurry.

Read the previous post here.

Hello dear reader,

before we start this chapter I want to acknowledge your reading presence here and thank you for your interest! It truly means a lot to me.

So now let’s talk about greed. This is the topic of hooks’ 7th chapter.

I went to have a look in the dictionary to see how is this word defined. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, greed is “a very strong wish to get more of something, especially food or money”, says the Cambridge Dictionary.”.

This very strong wish, so hooks, shows up when things start to matter more than people. Consumerism plays a huge role here, and just like we saw in the previous chapter, this need to consume can go back to a deep spiritual and emotional lack. This is “the perfect breeding ground for material greed and overconsumption” (p.105).

Instead of seeking connection, many people seem more interested in possessing. After all, it is easier to fulfill material desires. But this comes with clear consequences.

“Fixating on wants and needs, which consumerism encourages us to do, promotes a psychological state of endless craving. This leads to an anguish of spirit and torment so intense that intoxicating substances provide release and relief while bringing the problem of addiction in their wake. Millions of our nation’s citizens are addicted to alcohol and legal and illegal drugs.” (p.111).

Isolation, loneliness, depression, despair, and of course, addiction. The “me” culture, where what I want can be purchased, creates a terrible condition for love and life to flourish, not only in the USA, where hooks writes from.

“Relationships of intimacy and closeness are destroyed as the addicted individual participates in a greedy search for satisfaction. Greed characterizes the nature of this pursuit because it is unending; the desire is ongoing and can never be fully satisfied” (p.111)

The social problem with greed is that it is normalized in our western culture, says hooks. If always wanting more is accepted, even honorable, then it justifies actions like lying and cheating and taking advantage of others. This is also when “dehumanization becomes acceptable” (p.115).

The unfulfilling need for more doesn’t allow our spirit to rest in connectedness with others. We are so busy trying to satisfy these desires that we forget what really matters. Love really matters. And in its various forms, like generosity and charity, it is what helps us in creating a loving culture.

We have to be awake. Aware. For we are all vulnerable to it, reminds hooks. We live immersed in a culture that worships money and is little interested in emotional growth. We might all, at some time in our lives, be “tempted by greedy desires” (p.124) and believe “ that the pursuit and attainment of wealth will compensate for all emotional lack” (p.119). But it will not.

“The worship of money leads to hardening of the heart. And it can lead any of us to condone, either actively or passively, the exploitation and dehumanization of ourselves and others.” (p.119).

For hooks, the way out of greed is making love a better choice. A simple one.

“When we value the delaying of gratification and take responsibility for our actions, we simplify our emotional universe. Living simply makes loving simple. The choice to live simply necessarily enhances our capacity to love. It is the way we learn to practice compassion, daily affirming our connection to a world community.” (p.125).

Living simply means needing less.

Truly contemplating what is important.

Making choices for love not because one told you to do. But because it feels right.

PS: There are many layers to this topic, and it is impossible to talk about greed without talking about privilege. hooks also brings a few thoughts on how a greedy culture sustains the eternal cycle of poverty, and do have a look into this chapter if you want to dive more into it.

Read the next post here.

Read the previous post here.

Spirituality is the topic of chapter 5 of bell hooks’ work “All about love”(2001). Short note: Please consider reading the previous posts if you just landed here.

Let’s start looking at this sentence, that is in the very beginning of the chapter:

“A culture that is dead to love can only be resurrected by spiritual awakening” (p.71).

What do love and spiritual awakening have to do with one another? What is spiritual? How does that translate into life? In a way, I think these are the question hooks tries, with a notable humbleness, to answer along these pages. So let’s see what we find.

She starts by stating that we, as humans, have a spiritual hunger, which she finds is intimately related to “a keen awareness of the emotional lack in our lives” (p.72).

The spiritual about what she speaks is, in her eyes, an acknowledgment of that which is beyond us. That which connects us all, that which even makes us human.

“When I speak of the spiritual, I refer to recognition within everyone that there is a place of mystery in our lives where forces that are beyond human desire or will alter circumstances and/or guide and direct us. I call these forces ‘divine spirit’.(…) Some people call this presence soul, God, the Beloved, higher consciousness, or higher power. Still others say that this force is what it is because it cannot be named. To them, it is simply the spirit moving in us and through us” (p.77).

No matter how it is named, there seems to be a common desire for us to understand the spiritual. To understand this place of mystery. What happens often is that by trying to understand it, by trying to fulfil this hunger, we, consciously or not, land in consumerism. We shop, we buy, we acquire new things that, however, only enlarge the range of our spiritual emptiness.

To serve various gods at the same time, especially when they differ so much in their nature, it is hard, if not to say impossible. Money and power, the worshiping gods of our time, oppose the construction of a spiritual life. A spiritual interest is opposed by the “powerful forces of materialism and hedonistic consumerism” (p.71).

How to develop spirituality in a society focused on material goods?

One could say that the various religions of this world offer a response to our spiritual hunger. For hooks though, “organised religion has failed to satisfy spiritual hunger because it has accommodated secular demands, interpreting spiritual life in ways that uphold the values of a production-centred commodity culture.” (p.72)

She continues:

“For example, consider New Age logic, which suggests that the poor have chosen to be poor, have chosen their suffering. Such thinking removes from all of us who are privileged the burden of accountability. Rather than calling us to embrace love and the greater community, it requires an investment in the logic of alienation and estrangement” (p.73)

In the lines above, I find the core of hooks’ thoughts on how to live the spiritual side of love: through taking responsibility in community.

Religions can operate as a reminder of the unifying message of love, but in so many cases throughout History, they end up becoming the opposite of this; the end up becoming agents of separation. The Christian church, she notes, delivers in certain cases an example of such ambivalence. Can you imagine “how different our lives would be if all the individuals who claim to be Christians or who claim to be religious, were setting an example for everyone by being loving”? (p. 74).

This question triggers in me some memories. I grew up in a catholic family, and frequently on Sundays we would go to church. What I would hear from the priests and readings of the Bible, I would also recognise in the teachings of my parents. There was a need to uphold the values of Christianity in our lives, and a special concern about living that spiritual love through fostering honest, respectful, and giving relationships with others.

I appreciate that teaching, and see in it a foundation for way of being in the world now as an adult.

But I also remember feeling big anger towards the catholic church when, for instance, learning about Inquisition in high school and the acts of evilness done by people in name of the same God we worshiped every Sunday. I see this anger as part of an unveiling process, a first moment of looking through the fabric of the innocent world I lived in as a child. I understood that the values I would hear about in church were not always translated into action, also not by the church itself.

Action seems to be a central notion of spirituality in the way hooks sees it.

“A commitment to a spiritual life requires us to do more than read a good book or go on a restful retreat. It requires conscious practice, a willingness to unite the way we think with the way we act” (p.77).

On that she also quotes the author Parker Palmes, when saying following words:

“To be fully alive is to act (…) Action, like a sacrament, is the visible form of an invisible spirit, an outward manifestation of an inward power” (p.77).

I find this beautiful.

Through action, we live our spirituality. We make it visible. Love is action in the world.

hooks also brings a beautiful quote from the meditation and spiritual teacher Jack Kornfiel:

“All other spiritual teachings are in vain if we cannot love. Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if, with our hearts, we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given. What matters is how we live” (p.79)

The way Kornfield talks about love and spirituality makes it so clear to me that it is way, way simpler than we tend to think. It is about the day to day life. The way we relate to each other. The appreciation for people, the wind, the birds, and each breath.

Also, spiritual life is not to be identified with one religion. There are plenty of people who live spiritual lives and do not associate themselves with any organised religion. hooks reminds us that it is possible to find the sacredness of spiritual practice through the natural world, through affirmative spiritual practices, as well as through praying and meditating and visiting a church or mosque, for instance.

Love and spirituality go hand in hand as practices that celebrate life. As practices that are virtually in everything we do. Not only in moments of joy, but also in suffering.

hooks writes that, throughout her life, she often turned to the First Corinthians, or “love chapter”, to seek for help on understanding love and its role in a spiritual practice — and if you are not familiar with this excerpt, check page 79 or her book or click here.

“The wisdom they (the verses) convey kept me from hardening my heart. (…) When the environment you live in and know most intimately does not place value on loving, a spiritual life provides a place of solace and renewal” (p.80).

I relate to what she says. Also for me, spiritual practice and spiritual teachings keep me “from hardening my heart”. They help me maintain the focus on what matters. Love matters.

This chapter on spirituality is the one that touched me the most so far. Just like a love practice, a spiritual one does not allow for training plans and linear growth. It is an on-going experience that requires one to lean in and learn to trust. But what is the role of such a practice in our world?

hooks pointed out, back in 2001, when the book got published, that the “mainstream cultural taboos that silence or erase our passion for spiritual practice” (p.82) are breaking. She tells that for a long time while working in academia, it would be more “acceptable to express atheistic sentiments than to declare passionate devotion to divine spirit”. She would, therefore, avoid talking about her beliefs. She did not want others to think that she was trying to impose them in any way.

Something changed when she saw herself facing young students coming to her with despair and a sense of hopelessness and loneliness.

“I felt it was irresponsible to just listen and commiserate with their woes without daring to share how I had confronted similar issues in my life. Often they would urge me to tell them how I sustained my joy in living. To tell the truth, I had to be willing to talk openly about my spiritual life. And I had to find a way to talk about my choices that did not imply that they would be the correct or right choices for someone else” (p.83).

This is a very profound revelation of her spirituality. A desire of living a spiritual practice does not mean other people have to do the same. hooks did believe that love is everything, but, not even in her book, she requires the same from anyone.

At the same time, these individual beliefs of her are the base of her life in communion with the world. As she quotes from the author Sharon Salzberg, a spiritual practice “helps us overcome the feeling of isolation, which ‘uncovers the radiant, joyful heart within each of us and manifests this radiance to the world’” (p.83).

To live in spirituality, either through meditation or prayer or worshiping or silencing beyond waves crashing on the beach or the sound of the wind in the night, is to live in love.

“All awakening to love is spiritual awakening” (p.83).

We continue on Monday.

Read the next post here.

Read the previous post here.

In the previous post I talked briefly about self-love as being the base of our love practice. Still the question remains: how to learn self-love? How can we practice it? hooks draws inspiration from the book “Six Pillars of Self-Esteem”, by psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden, and introduces the 6 dimensions of self-love. This is what we will look at below:

#1 Living consciously

Asking questions and training a critical posture towards ourselves and the world. Not only the world around us, but the one we live in, meaning also our thoughts. That is the principle of a conscious life.

#2 Self-acceptance

Noticing the voice that is on-going judging us and the people around us is the base of self-acceptance. However, “because we have learned to believe negativity is more realistic, it appears more real than any positive voice” (p.57).

The main problem of negative thoughts, the ones that create rejection and devaluation, is that they do not serve us. They are “absolutely disabling”, as she says.

She suggests positive thinking as a counterpart to it, without mentioning that this is not the same as toxic positivity (which was probably not a term back then, but I find important to state this here). Being positive here has to do with affirming oneself, and appreciating oneself without needing to change things. You are allowed to love yourself despite getting things done, finding a job, making money, doing your training, cooking dinner and blablabla.

hooks speaks of the value of affirmations to support us on developing this rather positive approach to ourselves. “When we are positive we not only accept and affirm ourselves, we are able to affirm and accept others”, she says (p.57).

She admitted finding affirmations a bit corny though, which, I must admit, made me chuckle a bit. I am also generally sceptical when it comes to apparently easy solutions like affirming one sentence 100 times and expecting to have your life changed.

BUT (and a big but here!):

1) this is actually not what affirmations promise and
2) after 1,5 year of working with the wonderful coach Maisie Hill and learning on how my thoughts influence directly how I feel, my actions and my results in life, I must say, also from my experience, that affirmations can be very helpful when they
A) are not being used against oneself (I am powerful, I can achieve everything in life does NOT serve you when what you are trying to do is push through exhaustion or some difficult emotion) or
B) as a way of hiding away from reality (in the case of the previous example, reality might be that you need to rest or to look for a job that supports you in cresting purpose).

hooks tells us how invigorating affirmations were for her, specially in moments of stress:

“At the top of my list was the declaration: ‘I’m breaking with old patterns and moving forward with my life’. (…) Affirmations helped restore my emotional equilibrium”.(p.56).

#3 Self-responsibility

Self-responsibility means, in the definition of Branden, taking “responsibility for my actions and the attainment of my goals… for my life and well-being” (p.57). All good here, but if we take time to contemplate this a bit, you might notice this alone does not work in a world where reality is based on “institutionalised injustice”.

The following quote is super important, so read it slowly:

“Racism, sexism, and homophobia all create barriers and concrete incidents of discrimination. Simply taking responsibility does not mean that we can prevent discriminatory acts from happening. But we can choose how we respond to acts of injustice. Taking responsibility means that in the face of barriers we still have the capacity to invent our lives, to shape our destinies in ways that maximise our well-being.” (p.57).

hooks is basically saying: do what you can, fully and radically, but be aware that you too might, at the same time, have to fight against a powerful machinery of institutionalised injustice. If it is hard, it might also NOT BE because you are not trying hard enough. Still, the question remains: how can we respond to injustices, how can we still have the capacity to invent our lives?

#4 Self-assertiveness

I like Branden’s definition: “Self-assertiveness is the willingness to stand up for myself, to be who I am openly, to treat myself with respect in all human encounters” (p.58).

One layer of self-assertiveness is that it requires one to navigate conflict. And since many of us will do everything to avoid it, we end up learning passivity and non-reactivity as the to-go patterns of behaviours.

hooks notes that for a lot of female born people, self-assertiveness might be a specially hard challenge.

The first time I consciously realised that self-assertiveness was challenging for me was when I took a personality test a few years ago and realised that my agreeableness levels were rather high compared to other men and, if I recall well, quite normal compared to other women my age.

Agreeableness relates to putting other people’s need ahead, being adaptive, avoiding conflicts, and also being cooperative and compassionated towards others. Not necessarily bad things in itself but they can really hinder one when it comes to openly speaking up, louder and back at others. It is a personality trait that seems to be higher in females and one key factor that influences levels of assertiveness. I find this is reflected in hooks statement:

“Sexist socialisation teaches females that self-assertiveness is a threat to femininity” (p.59), specially for those “who have been trained to be good girls or dutiful daughters” (p.59).

But “having a voice and being self-assertive (is) necessary for building self-esteem”. (p.59), for all of us. The feminist movement, she states, really made many females understand the importance of self-assertiveness in order to create a life they want.

Along the lines of self-assertiveness, hooks also reminds the readers of the “danger of achieving success without doing the necessary groundwork for self-love and self-esteem” (p.61) This is just SO present nowadays in our culture of social media stars, so here some food for thought: “If we success without confronting and changing shaky foundations of low self-esteem rooted in contempt and hatred, we will falter along the way” (p.61)

Boom!

#6 Living purposefully

hooks skips the “personal integrity” dimension straight into the last pillar, living purposefully. But I guess they both merge pretty well here.

This dimension “entails taking responsibility for consciously creating goals, identifying the actions necessary to achieve them, making sure our behaviour is in alignment with our goals, and paying attention to the outcome of our actions so that we see whether they are leading us where we want to go”. (p.62).

Let’s slow down a bit so it becomes easier to digest.

Living purposefully is about acting in alignment with what you would like to create in your life and evaluating this process constantly. That’s where personal integrity relates to purpose: it is about upholding your values.

Creating goals, taking action, and paying attention is the what. But not less important is the how to do it, or how not to do it. No, you don’t have to do these things in a bossy-general way where you become mad at yourself if you end up not doing things you want or planned to. Let’s PLEASE rewrite this narrative of penalty, friends: our life is not a soccer game and we are not a referee peeping every now and then. This is such a crucial part of the self-love practice!

Back to the topic: It is clear that our work/what we do in life, plays a major role here. There is a possibility of working with love — not necessarily doing what I love, but loving what I do. Do you see the difference?

By the way, hooks points out to one correlation between purposeful work and private life. “Much of the violence in domestic life, both physical and verbal abuse, is linked to job misery” (p.64). Somehow this is not surprising. So many people are immersed in working environments that “depress the spirits” and “rather than enhancing self-esteem, (…) is perceived as a drag, a negative necessity” (p.65).

I must say I find it touching to read hooks wish of “bringing love into the work environment” so that the job becomes a place “where workers can express the best of themselves”, “where we renew the spirit” and practice and nurture self-love towards ourselves (p.65).

At the same time, I am not sure how realistic that is. The working world is in so many cases — and cases of contemporary slavery are one tragic aspect of it — not fair and not interested in elevating people’s spirits. But also in the bubble I live in, where most people all chose to do what they do, love is not a reality. It is tricky. Meanwhile, it seems that sustaining hope through spreading the words of this book is a good thing to do.

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Okay, these are the 6 dimensions of a practice of self-love as presented by hooks through the work of Branden, now in my own interpretation!

I want to finish this post by highlighting one last idea for this 4th chapter:

“One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others”. (p.67).

This is pragmatic advice, and pretty golden. Easy is not how I would describe it though, hehehe. But, as in all of the above, it is about the horizon, the practice, and the journey. As a teacher of mine says: let’s continue.

Read the next post here.