So much of the grief and suffering in the world seems to arise when we don’t feel loved anymore. Many of the popular songs are about unrequited love –‘You promised to stay but now you’re gone’, and so on. There are self-help groups for those who’ve been abandoned by someone they loved and also for those who have not yet recovered from the trauma of having an abusive or cold-hearted parent.

There can also be much pain and grief in those who are still in a relationship which promised so much at first, then descended into a life of darkness. Such people will feel unloved, even unlovable, doubting their own worthiness as human beings.

For all those who so yearn to be loved it’s as if the sun has gone out or, worse still, as if they’ve never felt the warmth of the rays. How can we assuage such grief?

The tender message of all the great religions is about love. In essence they say, ‘The love that you seek from others already lies within. When you cry out to be loved, this is in truth the yearning to re-discover the love that you already are.’

When we were born, we knew that we were the source of love – if a baby smiles at us we all feel blessed and loved. Then, through life’s circumstances, we forget this truth about ourselves and yearn to be loved by another, Even when we do feel loved sometimes this can reinforce the erroneous belief that the love we need can only come from outside of us.

There is an old story, which illustrates this self-deception. It tells of a man who journeyed over a long distance to fetch some water for the family. When he arrived at the stream he waded into it and realised how thirsty he was. So he held out his cup to those passing by, beseeching them to give him some water. He forgot that he was standing knee-deep in all the water he could ever need. Another version of this teaching is that of the beggar standing at the doorway of his mud-hut crying out for some money. He is not aware that buried just under the floor of his simple home is a treasure-chest of jewels beyond compare.

Both of the above stories are reminding us that, as in the words of the Lord Jesus, ‘The kingdom of heaven lies within' each one of us. We yearn to feel loved because we all want to experience our own nectar, the ocean of love lying waiting within our own heart.

But, we might ask, why does it hurt so much when we no longer feel loved by someone who once could lift our spirits with just a smile? And why do we grieve even more when they leave us for another? Perhaps because our desire to be loved has increased still further, The more we ache for their love, the less we feel loved or even lovable, particularly if they now ‘love’ someone else. Why is this so? What can we learn from this?

We’ve all had the experience of standing with our back to the sun and seeing our own shadow. Likewise, when we ‘turn our back’ on the infinite source of love within us and behave as if the love we seek can only come from someone else, we experience our own shadow, our suffering, our feeling of being unloved. But it is we who are blocking our own ‘light’, the radiant love from within. This is why we say to people in our clinic who are grieving because of rejection and feeling unloved:

Love yourself. Be kind to yourself. Do nice things for yourself. Nurture yourself as you would a lost child. You are the source of all of the love you can imagine. Bring this love alive. Love yourself and love others. Do loving things for more and more people, more of the time. Be the love that you are. Then you will no longer seek to be loved, only to love, to love all and to serve all.

These words have taken the analogy of the sun a little further: To make our shadow grow smaller, we have to raise the sun up, higher and higher. That is, the more we unselfishly love our parents, our neighbours, strangers and even those we have disliked, the more we feel this immense source of love shining forth from within us. The shadow of feeling unloved is no longer present.

I have known many people wracked by the grief of feeling unloved who have become shining lights to all around. My now-departed mother is a clear example of this. For her first sixty or so years she felt unloved, her grief was palpable. She cried out to be loved, demanded love, until she reached a point of despair. It was here that she discovered her Christian faith and began to pray for the welfare of others. Then, somehow, step by step over her remaining thirty years she began to see Lord Jesus in more and more people and learned to love everyone the same.

Mother left her body serenely at the appointed time, whispering words of love to all who came to see her. After so many years of grieving over not feeling loved by her own mother, her husband, children and others, she re-discovered the inextinguishable source of love within, a veritable sun, and was shining her light on everyone.