- Osho
Love, Freedom, Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships
Love is one of those extremely fuzzy concepts hard for the mind to grasp. Today is Valentine’s Day and we are inundated with quotes on love, pretty red hearts and chocolates (which paradoxically are a general substitute for love.) But I think we all know that love is not all about red roses and such. Neither is it all about sex (which, again, is a common substitute.) Love requires understanding. In fact, Swami Niranjan states that “Understanding is more important than love.” To be real, love has to be something more than a sentimental feeling, a momentary lapse of reason or hormonally driven desire. It demands patience, tolerance, openness, a suspension of self-striving. It is a tricky and dangerous affair fraught with perils and possibilities.
Eros, from which we have derived the word erotic, is a force which dissolves boundaries. It is ultimately a doorway through which we can enter the kingdom of non-duality. Instead, of course, we have degraded it to the status of cheap pornography. Pornography, more than anything, represents the ego-bounded self locked in its cage of self-loathing. Or is that just me? Sexual encounters without love are pretty much the same – a desperate attempt to reach beyond our loneliness and alienation. We engage in the outer performance of a deeply spiritual act without any connection to our inner being. When we have that connection Mother Kundalini awakens, otherwise she might hear some muffled sounds in her deep sleep.
What is understanding, though, and where does it begin? Can we truly love and understand another when we are unhappy with ourselves? In her book Radical Acceptance
, author Tara Brach refers to “the trance of unworthiness” that so many of us have fallen into. Instead of loving ourselves, we strive for impossible perfection based on unreasonable ideals. We have introjected the message that we are unlovable, even for ourselves – or especially for ourselves. Perhaps we even subject ourselves to an unending stream of verbal emotional abuse. The flip side of this, of course, is projecting our self-hatred out onto the world and others. We may turn to spiritual practice as a way to fix ourselves rather than to truly know ourselves. More commonly, we may use spiritual ideals to beat up on ourselves.Our egoic state of self-reference is maintained by negative self-talk as much as any other reinforcement. We get to feel comfortable in our cocoons of misery. Sex, drugs and alcohol, food, gambling, etc. become our comforts and distractions while leaving us even more alienated from ourselves and others. We build relationships based on our mutual woundedness and need for self-torture. Of course, we also recognize some positive qualities in ourselves. We may try to push these into the forefront, using them to hide our secret shame and unworthiness. We can’t escape from our private self-maintained prisons, though, until we accept every aspect of ourselves with openness and compassion. We must learn to love our egos before we can surrender them. They are, after all, aspects of our deeper Self.
A mindful yoga practice can help us connect with our bodies in a healing manner. It has been found helpful in overcoming trauma, as well as anxiety and depression. Meditation takes this healing deeper – as long as we are not using it with some idea of transcending (i.e. escaping) ourselves. True spiritual transcendence is inclusive and integrative. It is not about getting rid of the “bad” parts. Mindful awareness is at the heart of the Tantric approach.
Tantra offers an alternative to those spiritual approaches which enjoin us, require us, to live up to ideals that we are not up to. It doesn’t demand that we immediately stop having sex, using intoxicants, or eating meat, etc.* Instead it is a way of bringing awareness into our lives and behaviors. It suggests that we can awaken to our true Self-nature in the midst of ordinary behaviors. However, yoga is included as a means of harmonizing and balancing our energies and developing the capacity to be aware, witness ourselves. Self-acceptance and self-transformation go hand in hand. We can start by truly loving and accepting ourselves as we learn to love and accept others. We are all ultimately expressions of the One Divine Being. We are expressions of universal Love.
*Of course there are limits. When behaviors become life threatening, or when they threaten the welfare of children, etc. there must be intervention. Love yourself enough to call for help.
