Looking For Love in the Wrong Places

 

Between individuals, true unadulterated love or fondness is impossible. Where love or affection has grown perfect this question cannot arise, for in such a case, who is the beloved? God and God alone.  – Sri Anandamayi Ma

 

       Romantic love necessarily implies a tension between egos.  Even the love a parent has for her children is generally contaminated by ego-aspirations.  One’s partner and children can easily be mistaken for extensions of one’s ego.  Then when they inevitably violate one’s expectations there is trouble.  When we try to control another; when we criticize, judge and manipulate we have stepped out of love and into ego.  Ego is based in fear and hatred.  It is always about “me.”  Of course we need to find balance in our relationships.  We need to stand up for ourselves and not let others walk all over us.  However these are all strategies of ego which is based in ignorance.

      Opening to and rising in love requires an inner aspiration and willingness to let go of our petty ego-centric concerns.  Not an easy task for any of us because we have been conditioned to believe that we have to defend ourselves.  When we surrender to love we become utterly defenseless.  Our ego boundaries dissolve and we become open to authentic being.  We can’t say “I love only these people (i.e. partners, family and friends) and I don’t give a damn about the rest.”  Once we drop our ego-defensive boundaries we realize that everyone and everything is part of us.  There is nothing to fear and no room for hatred.  Remember as Krishna tells us in the Bhagavad Gita, “The realized being sees the same Self in all beings.”

      Of course, most of us struggle with our less enlightened states of emotion and attachment.  Often the best we can do is to remember to accept and to be mindful of ourselves in relationships.  In this way we can bring higher awareness to all levels of our being, loving and forgiving ourselves and each other.  Intense personal relationships certainly gives us a challenge which can lead to potential growth and awakening.  The key is to be able to detach ourselves from our investment in our ego-generated illusions, to see ourselves objectively and to laugh at our follies.  The regular daily practice of yoga including meditation supports us in this.

      We are conditioned to believe that love depends upon some object.  We think that we will find it somewhere in the world of form, i.e. the right person or relationship (or maybe the right car or shoes).  The problem is that we are looking for love in the wrong places.  Love is a unifying field of awareness which begins with self-love and expands infinitely.  It is the deepest reality into which all our cognitions of separateness dissolve.  We are afraid of love because we believe it will destroy us.  The truth is that it will restore us. 

      Real love means moving beyond attachment, sensual experience and even intellectual experience.  Attachment and clinging originate from our unenlightened root chakra, from avidya.  We can become very sophisticated and refined in our attachment but we are still rooted in ignorance.  Avidya locks us into our ego-identities which are based in fear.  The ego is afraid of waking up because it knows it will discover that it doesn’t exist – at least not in any fundamental way. 

       Real love requires a level of austerity and commitment, refraining from overindulgence in intoxicants, taking care of ourselves and others.  Austerity or tapasya in yogic terms means refraining from those things that seem pleasant but bring misery.  It also means engaging in those things that might seem difficult but which bring happiness.  Get up early enough to practice yoga before you start the rest of the day.  Spend time with someone who needs you even though you’d rather do something else.  Clean up after others without griping from time to time.  Offer a silent blessing for everyone you meet and a sincere smile.

       The concept of separate self and other is avidya, ignorance.  We are all individual expressions of a unitary field; a field of Love-Awareness-Bliss.  Because of the infinite creative potential of this field each of us is truly unique but never separate.  Ego arises out of over identification with our unique individuality to the point of forgetting our universality.  Love is the consciousness of both aspects. 

      One of the biggest traps that we can fall into is the belief in our unworthiness.  When we hold this belief we not only seek for love and approval outside of ourselves but also refuse to accept it if offered.  Someone compliments us and we are sure they are either manipulating or delusional.  We can never be successful enough to overcome it.  We identify with our limited self-definitions and then find ourselves sadly lacking.  It is only when we encounter the unconditional love at the core of our being that we can dissipate this illusion and the suffering that goes with it.  It evaporates when we awaken to our true Self-nature and realize our inherent perfect wholeness.

      It seems paradoxical from the ego-perspective that we can only truly love one another when we truly love ourselves.  From the soul perspective there is no paradox because we are just one Self.  To truly love yourself is to love the entire universe.