In this way, our unconditional passion, which is a genuine longing to connect with the vastness of life, gets converted into an addictive obsession. Yet the belief that our wealth of feeling comes from the object of our passion, whom we must therefore possess, is not just a personal delusion. It is also widely promoted by our culture at large and is a common theme in countless plays, movies, books, and love songs. How many songs on the radio do we hear that are variations on the theme of "You are everything, I am nothing"? ("You're the better part of me," "You are my only sunshine," "I can't live, if living is without you," "I've got to have you, baby," etc.) Yet if this were just a Hollywood fabrication, it would not have such a deep hold at every level of our society. what makes it such a powerful cultural theme is that it represents a convergence of psychological, spiritual, and historical factors which together create a web of illusion from which it is hard to extricate ourselves.  

The fantasy that our beloved can save us is the distorted form of a powerful idea from the courtly love tradition, from which all our notions of romantic love derive. The troubadour poetry of twelfth-century France taught that the romantic feeling between man and woman was a vehicle for connecting with the divine. The deep human urge to connect with something greater than ourselves which had been the exclusive province of religion now took a secular form. The troubadour songs were influenced by the poetry of Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, which expressed intense devotional longing for the divine or the spiritual master, addressed as "the Beloved." The troubadour imported this fervent devotional sentiment into his poetry, directing it toward his Lady, rather than to God.  

Yet although courtly love took place between man and woman, rather than between humanity and God, it still retained a spiritual orientation. In its purest form, a knight would fall in love with a woman who was already married, but would forego sexual consummation with her. This was an ingenious device that allowed a lover to use the power of his passion for his own transformation. With sexual conquest ruled out, the trials he had to undergo in the service of his lady became a path of character development and spiritual purification. The refining quality of such a love helped him develop new sensitivities and realise that era's new ideal-to become a "gentle man."  By falling in love with someone he could not expect to attain, the courtly lover could experience the two sides of passion simultaneously. While focusing his desire on the finite form of his Lady (conditional passion), he also had to let go of possessing her, which threw him back into the pure intensity of his feeling, to the source of unconditional passion inside himself. This combination of intensely focusing his passion, while having to let go of grasping, put him on the razor's edge, and this allowed him to open up in new ways.  

When we sit on the razor's edge, consciously directing our love toward an object we know we can never possess, passion can ripen into something deeper-devotion. Wholehearted devotion, whether it be to a loved one, a spiritual master, or ultimate truth, is a powerful, transformative energy that can work magic on the human soul. Recognising this, many religious traditions have developed devotional practices that harness this energy for spiritual purposes. Since the devotee cannot possess the object of devotion God or the spiritual master-devotional practice requires him to relinquish fixation, so that he may discover the fullness of his love as the treasure of his own heart.

This awakens him from the poverty of depending on others to the richness of his deeper being, which he can then begin to share more fully with others.  The romantic devotional practice of courtly love was so powerful that it still shapes how we fall in love eight hundred years later. Yet we have lost touch with the original transformative purpose of this practice. Although our romantic ideas still echo the sentiments of the troubadours, we differ from them in expecting a real-Life relationship to fill what is essentially a spiritual longing. Lacking any sense of how passion could be a devotional path for tapping greater powers inside us, we imagine that we can find some kind of salvation through taking possession of an ideal "golden princess" or "knight in shining armour." So instead of being purified by love, we often wind up reduced to a state of addiction or dependency, feeling bitter when we fail to find our hoped-for salvation. Passion becomes a torment, and our devotional feelings become enslaving rather than liberating. In the words of the Sufi master, Hazrat Inayat Khan:  The sorrow of the lover is continual, in the presence and absence of the beloved: in the presence for fear of the absence, and in absence in longing for the presence. The pain of love becomes in time the life of the lover.