Overview
Praise for Conscious Love
"Whether he is talking about the heart or the duty embedded in one's deepest self, the complexities of male and female love, social justice, or love of family and kin, Richard Smoley has served up a literary banquet of the myriad ways love is made manifest in life, and in so doing he deepens our own capacity to love and be loved. Anyone seeking to follow the eternal thread of love down through the centuries needs to read this book."
—Michael A. Toms
cofounder, New Dimensions Media; author, A Time for Choices; and coauthor, True Work
"A wise, provocative, and deeply informed take on humanity's messiest emotion. Drawing from science, literature, and the esoteric Christian lore he articulates so well, Richard Smoley encourages us to put away childish things in order to clear the ground for a love both realistic and transcendent. Conscious Love is the sort of spiritual writing we need: grounded and unsentimental but evocative and spiky enough to wake us up."
—Erik Davis
author, The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape
"Richard Smoley proves once again that he is one of the liveliest, most intrepid, and most gifted explorers of the spiritual landscape writing today. Like any book worthy of the topic, Conscious Love is by turns exciting, surprising, and sometimes even shocking. But Smoley's warmth, humor, and ever-present intelligence are such that he is a joy to read even when one is disagreeing with him."
—Ptolemy Tompkins
author, Paradise Fever; senior editor, Guideposts and Angels on Earth magazines
"In Conscious Love, Richard Smoley does a masterful job of distinguishing between the real deal when it comes to love and everything else. The result is as enjoyable as it is enlightening. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is ready to take the big step to spiritual adulthood."
—Gary Renard
author, The Disappearance of the Universe and Your Immortal Reality
Synopsis
Conscious Love
"No subject in human life shows up one's limitations quite as much as love. Its universality exposes the limits of one's vision, even of one's soul. The monk grasps love from his perspective, the romantic from another; even whores and libertines have their insights. But the very fervor with which they clutch at their own little corners of this immeasurable continent suggests that they may not be able to raise their eyes and see the whole vista."
—From the Introduction
Though love is a perennial topic for writers of all kinds, much of what is written about love is simplistic and unsatisfying. In Conscious Love, Richard Smoley—an expert on the esoteric traditions of mystical Christianity—incorporates insights and wisdom about love from noted thinkers in literature, art, philosophy, sociology, cultural criticism, and even neurology. This remarkable book offers a blueprint for infusing conscious love into human relationships.
As Smoley explains, among the world's religious traditions Christianity has a distinctive focus on love at the very center of all its teachings—love of God and love of neighbor. Although love has existed as long as the human race itself, it was Christ who posited this mysterious force as being the center of experience. Yet what that love means and requires is not altogether clear—even to Christians. Richard Smoley reveals that a true understanding of love requires exploration of the deepest teachings of Christian mystery and the unconditional love at the heart of the universe. In Conscious Love he reflects on how that kind of love can transcend the bargains and negotiations that are characteristic of what he calls transactional love.
Graham Christian - Library Journal
Smoley, former editor of the journal Gnosis and author of Inner Christianity and Forbidden Faith, is adept at unknotting the paradoxes of spiritual traditions and making new connections across centuries and languages. In his newest book, he tackles the vexed question of love, which he avers has a unique place at the center of Christian spirituality yet eludes precise classification-as most know, there are at least four words translated as "love" in New Testament Greek alone. Smoley has written that rare book that should exert a strong appeal for Christian and non-Christian readers alike. Highly recommended.
Editorials
Library Journal
Smoley, former editor of the journal Gnosis and author of Inner Christianity and Forbidden Faith, is adept at unknotting the paradoxes of spiritual traditions and making new connections across centuries and languages. In his newest book, he tackles the vexed question of love, which he avers has a unique place at the center of Christian spirituality yet eludes precise classification-as most know, there are at least four words translated as "love" in New Testament Greek alone. Smoley has written that rare book that should exert a strong appeal for Christian and non-Christian readers alike. Highly recommended.
—Graham Christian