We come to love not by finding a perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly – Sam Keen.

To Love and be Loved – Sam Keen.

“If you’re looking for a kind book to refresh your spirits, then this is it.”

“The tone of the book is warmth, patience, and gentle guidance. The first part of the book covers the art of being a great lover. Part II, which I found most useful, identifies the elements of love. These are best explored one chapter at a time, with plenty of time to reflect on his writings.”

“Sam has a wonderful way of opening himself up and sharing both his loves and his losses with the reader. This man has clearly done his work and he admits he is still learning.”

“The simplicity of his approach and power of his writing make it work.”

“A good starting place for improving my capacity as a loving person.”

“Should be read in bits. It took me several months (and it is a small book). The richness and the depth of this book required that I frequently stop and reflect. Highly recommended.”

“A book to rejuvenate your soul”

“Keen uses stories from his own life and the lives of others to demonstrate his thesis that there are different types of love: the love one feels for their mate, their children, their friend, and their supreme being.”

“I normally won't read any book that gives me a numbered list of things I’m supposed to remember or incorporate into my life. Sam has a list of 16 qualities of love (if I recall correctly) and I stayed with him through them all.”

“Life’s lessons on love in plain English.”

reviews from Amazon.com

 

“Sam Keen is one of our liveliest minds. It's a joy to go with him as a guide to the byways of the soul in the search for greater meaning in life.”

Daniel Goleman, author of The Meditative Mind

“Sam Keen breathes pure life into the spiritual void we all may feel at times ... his hymns and philosophical groundnotes contain the power to help heal the split – that nameless separation – that divides us from our world and from ourselves.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, bestselling author of Women Who Run With the Wolves

To Love and Be Loved is a spirited challenge to a culture obsessed with romance and intimacy but dangerously ignorant of the full range and richness of human love. Love is not something we ‘fall’ into, claims Keen, but a complex art combining many skills and talents that take a lifetime to learn.

Sam Keen believes that the most important question we can ask ourselves in life is: “How can I become a more loving human being?”

In this book he explores this human faculty as an art that needs to be developed and practised over the course of a lifetime. Keen opens up our imaginations to consider love as “both a pathway to and a revelation of what is most real. In the depths of our being, in body, mind and spirit, we know we are created to love and be loved ... Fulfilling this imperative is the central meaning of our life”.

There are many kinds of love. All of them express our earliest needs to be held, and each of them can be a way to forge a meaningful link with the universal.

Keen puts the focus on learning how to love. He urges readers to avoid both being cynical about love and hanging all their hopes on the response of a particular lover. He sets out to explore why we obstinately hide from the knowledge that love (of one’s family, one’s labors, and of some one significant other) “is the way, the truth, and the life”, and to suggest how we may deal with those fears and find the kind of love that makes us feel ‘rooted’ and secure in our lives.

To Love and Be Loved is written in three main parts:

  • Becoming a Lover : Like a fresh wind, Sam Keen sweeps away tired self-help nostrums and reams of ‘bad advice from Dr. Lonelyhearts’ to reveal a stunningly new map of love in all its forms.
  • The Elements of Love: Here Keen focuses on the sixteen key ‘elements of love’ that combine to form the full spectrum of human affection. Romance, for example, is equal parts attention, erotic longing, sexual desire, and adoration created by an idealizing imagination. He finds the love of parents for a young child closer to a full expression of love, combining attention, empathy, compassion, commitment, unconditional acceptance.
  • Meditation on Faith, Hope, and Love: The author concludes with a soaring meditation on and exploration of eros and creativity at the center of the universe.

Offering an insightful and even moving approach to an ancient subject, Keen mixes some frank autobiographical recollections with explorations of love’s nature and rewards, and mingling lists of questions for readers intent on analyzing their behavior with specific examples of those haplessly in pursuit of love in all the wrong places.

Readers of To Love and Be Loved will find stories, poems, and quotes with insights from modern psychology and spiritual tradition to provide an exploration of the elements of memory and solitude in love, the importance of enjoyment and commitment, and the essential qualities of empathy and compassion.

About the Author

Sam Keen was, in his words, 'overeducated at Harvard and Princeton' and was a professor of philosophy and religion and a contributing editor of Psychology Today for 20 years before becoming a free-lance thinker, lecturer, seminar leader and consultant.
       He is the author of over a dozen books, and a co-producer of an award winning PBS documentary. His work was the subject of a 60 minute PBS special entitled Your Mythic Journey with Sam Keen.