[ad_1]
Love is the feeling of being complete, of oneness, of wholeness. We feel love when we are united with our deepest Self. Without that, can we feel truly united with another?
Only when I am united with my Self am I truly whole and complete. Then, and only then, am I free to truly love another. If this person loves me in return, it’s a great joy; if not, my heart still feels complete. I feel the quality of love whether others spurn and rebuff me, or shower me with undying affection.
When we do not feel whole, we feel the opposite of love: fear. Fear results from the absence of love. Negative emotions – anger, jealousy, greed, ego, attachment, aversion – are the many disguises of fear. Even pain is caused by the absence of love. When the fakir cuts himself with a knife, there is neither bleeding nor a scar. He realizes that the knife and he are one. He does not feel pain. He is not hurt. This, the mind cannot understand because it lives in fear. The heart, living in love, feels it to be true.
When we have forgotten that we are Divine beings in a physical body, a bottomless void haunts us. We desperately attempt to fill the void with another’s “love.” But that is not ever going to be love. Love comes only from the union with one’s Self, from a nondependent place, a place of power, a place of honesty, a place that is pure.
Sri Aurobindo writes in Savitri, “The great are strongest when they stand alone.” Only when we feel complete “standing alone” – the word “alone” originally meant “all one” – can we transcend neediness and attain true love, the love of one Spirit for another.
Though we may need others to grow our food and build our cars, we do not need others to complete us emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. When we are united with our Self, we have love without neediness, ultimate love, the Big Yoga. Of course, this is an ideal we are striving toward, with countless stages along the way, cycles of attachment and detachment, madness and realization
Aadil Palkhivala Copyright 2008
[ad_2]
Source by Aadil Palkhivala
