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.
