Experiencing a broken heart brings a choice. We can shut down, out of pain and resentment about not getting what we want. Or if we pay attention to what our heart truly desires, we find it wanting to break open, despite the pain we feel. When we let our heart break open, a sweetness starts to flow in like nectar. As the Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Kahn put it, ‘The warmth of a lover’s atmosphere, the piercing of his voice, the appeal of his words, all come from the pain of his heart.’ This is one of the great secrets of love. Instead of trying to ward off the pain that finds us anyway, the lover can use it to transform himself, to develop tenderness and compassion and as the troubadors discovered, to become a heroic warrior in the service of love.
This broken hearted quality of pure devotion, has a particular poignancy, like the sadness that is often present in the most moving love poems and songs…. ‘the genuine heart of sadness.’ It is a fullness of feeling that arises in response to loving someone we can never fully possess. The one we love is going to die, we ourselves are going to die, its all going to pass away… Nothing can save us from our aloneness. The more we love our life, our sweetheart, our spiritual teacher, the more broken hearted we will feel sooner or later…genuine sadness is a fullness of heart that wants to overflow…. (it is) ….unconditional. It occurs because your heart is completely exposed.. from this rises the desire to melt all of the barriers between oneself and others, the life in here and the life out there.
John Welwood
Emerging From The Dark Night 