"Our
trouble is that we have ignored and thus feel insecure in the enourmous
spectrum of love which lies between rather formal friendship and
genital sexuality and thus are always afraid that once we overstep the
bounds of formal friendship we just slide inevitably to the extreme of
sexual promiscuity. The unoccupied gulf between spiritual or brotherly
love and sexual love corresponds to the cleft between spirit and
matter, mind and body, so divided that our affections or our activities
are assigned either to one or the other. There is no continuum between
the two, and the lack of any connection, any intervening spectrum,
makes spiritual love insipid and sexual love brutal. To overstep the
limits of brother love cannot, therefore, be understood as anything but
an immediate swing to its opposite pole. Thus the subtle and wonderful
gradations that lie between the two are almost entirely lost. In other
words, the greater part of love is a relationship that we hardly allow,
for love experienced only in its extreme forms is like buying a loaf of
bread and being given only the two heels."
Alan Watts
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