Lyric discussion by atruepath 

Cover art for Inside Of Love lyrics by Nada Surf

I think this song has a very deep dimension of spirituality and it makes sense that so many people have connected to it and get this feeling. It really captures something deeper that we all sense but can't exactly put our finger on. I think this song encompasses the process of spiritual awakening (hear me out)

terrible tv killing thought / escapism making out with people I hardly know or like, can't believe what i do / lack of self respect and shame

The spirit of these verses are not limited to the things mentioned: it simply means that we are all struggling with habits or patterns due to the pain or trauma of our past, or just living in a world where we are separated from love. We may even have love.. but there is a deeper dimension of love we are missing... something always leaves us feeling unsatisifed at the soul level. If we could only connect directly to the inner dimension of love itself.. althought that seems a bit esoteric.. That's where spiritual awakening comes in. (we will come back to this)

I wanna know what its like on the inside of love, etc / it's the desire to become love itself. To move beyond human love, which is based on conditions.. and into unconditional love.. pure love that exists for the sake of love itself.

only when we get to see, the aerial view, will the patterns show, we'll know what to do / this has to do with 3rd dimensional vs 4th dimensional reality. It's the difference between seeing your life from a linear point of view (past/present/future) and seeing it from a vertical/aerial view (all points in your life as one moment). This may be hard to comprehend, another way of saying it is seeing the true soul purpose of our life beyond just what has happened in our life. It's like taking all the puzzle pieces of everything that has happened, and finally seeing the total picture once they are all put together in their "correct" order.

This explains the "will the patterns show, we'll know what to do", this also begins to explain the next part of this verse: "I know the last page so well, I can't read the first, so I just don't start, it's getting worse" Again with the life as a puzzle analogy, lets see you got a glimpse of the cover of the puzzle box.. you know what the puzzle looks like all put together ("I know the last page so well") but despite knowing what the puzzle looks like put together, you can't bring yourself to pick up the first piece and start putting it together - "I can't read the first" - could also be interpreted as "I don't know where to start". "So I just don't start, it's getting worse" - this makes perfect sense now with that being understood.

However once again, even with the puzzle analogy we have to go a bit deeper - Spiritual awakening. Spiritual awakening has to do with realizing there is a higher reality far beyond what we imagine as possible. Our understanding of ourselves, of the world, of other people, of how everything is .. it all goes out the window as we wake up to this higher reality. It's like suddenly our perspective of everything shifts so drastically, that we lose everything that we thought we knew. This provides the clue to what we being discussed previously. This awakening is everyone's destiny... so it's only a matter of time. However it can be very frightening from the view of the ego... we don't want everything taken from us.. this goes back to "I know the last page so well, I can't read the first, so I just don't start..." This will gain more traction further on as well.

The same chorus... repeating the desire to know love itself, standing at the gates, seeing the beauty above.. "I can't find my way in, I try again and again" - this is us, looking for love in the human experience, but there isn't a way to enter fully into that divine dimension of love until we go through the process, which again, can be difficult if we don't let go (The name of the album is "LET GO".. coincidence?)

Once again the chorus repeats, highlighting that the narrator is on the "outside of love" and "always under or above". He's trying to approach love from every angle, just not directly inside of it's being, on it's inside dimension.

Here's a very critical part of the song - "Must be a different view, to be a ME without a YOU" This drives the point home.. in spiritual awakening, the sense of seperation with all of existence is gone. Again... hard to imagine, however its a huge shift in perception that causes one to see everything no longer as "OUTSIDE" of one's self but rather as "INSIDE" of one's self. This again connects to the inside/outside language we see repeated in the song. With spiritual awakening, there is no longer a ME seperate from YOU. It's all ME. It's all WE. So bringing this all back, as the narrator hints at the observation that it "Must be a different view, to be a ME without a YOU" - shows he either intuitively knows this already, has had a glimpse of it... he is aware at some level, and he's trying to approach this, but knows and feels that he will have to lose everything to gain everything.

The last hint is in "Of course I'll be alright, I just had a bad night" This ending is somewhat ambiguous in that it could go either way... either going back to the beginning of the song (continuing to be stuck in the loop of the limitation of human existence) by reducing all of this deep understanding to being "just a bad night" meaning he will forget all of this and just go back to his escapist ways. The other possibility is the bad night was a dark night of the soul .. meaning he finally finished the process of spiritual awakening and arrived on the other side. I believe this was left ambiguous as it's subconsciously posing the question to every listener... what will YOU do with this information. For deeper understanding on this subject (if you are interested) I highly recommend the book "The End of Your World" By Adyashanti. It details what I'm trying to describe much better. Thanks if you read this far. Good luck to you on your journey.

Positive
Subjective
Inspired
Spirituality
Awakening
Love
Transformation
Perspective Shift