Do you know LOVE....??

1.  Love is mistaken for DESIRE

When you go to the movies and watch the classic love story there is usually a moment when he says to her, Darling, I love you.” But what he really ‘means’ is, “I want you. I want to be with you. I want you to be mine...tonight!”.  And of course she reciprocates with an, “I love you too.” Which often means, “I’ve got you!”  But true love doesn’t desire or possess. True love doesn’t want anything. Authentic love is already complete and its only intention is to connect and to give, not acquire.

2.  Love is mistaken for ATTACHMENT

When we say, “I love my football team or I love my new car or I love my garden.” It’s not love. What we really ‘mean’ is, “I am attached to my football team, I am attached to my new car”. And love is not attachment, if for no other reason than all attachment causes fear, and fear in this dualistic world is the opposite of love. Fear is love distorted by attachment.

3.  Love is mistaken for DEPENDENCY

When we say, “I love my cocaine. I love my morning coffee. I love the food they serve”… this is to confuse love with dependency. Love is not dependent on anything. We are really saying we believe these things make us happy. They seem to, but it’s not ‘authentic happiness’, only a temporary stimulation or relief from suffering.  

4.  Love is mistaken for IDENTIFICATION

More commonly some say, “I love my nation, I love my country.” Again, this is not love it’s identification. We are identifying with a nationality, which in itself is a mistake. The self has no nationality. Love does not identify with anything that is not itself, which is everything! As soon as we identify with something that we are not the ego takes birth, suffering arises and love is impossible.

It is these illusions that keep us searching for love. In our search for love we will look in almost every corner of the world. We seek love as acceptance and approval in our many relationships. We desire the ideal love in the fiction of the perfect romance. We expect to find love in what we do, what we acquire and even in the places we go. There are always temporary satisfactions on these roads, but disappointment is also inevitable, until we realize they are deadends.

Only by acts of selfless kindness, unconditional forgiveness and limitless compassion is love felt. Only by the intention to benefit ‘the other’ before the self, is love made real and realized. And yet, even this is only possible when it is not a deliberated act, when motive is innocent. The motivation ‘to love’ is not love, for love needs no motive.

It is the satisfaction of all need. When love is realized, there are no needs. In ‘reality’, there never was.