#{the self}

The thought here is that to love is to negate. Love is a process of stripping away, cutting away, tearing away, that opens us up to what exceeds the self and the realm of knowledge. As Marguerite Porete dramatically puts it, “One must crush oneself, hacking and hewing away at oneself to widen the place in which Love will want to be.” Only when one has hacked away at the self will love be able to enter.