LOVE

ORDINARILY we think of love as a necessity we can’t live without – a commodity to acquire and own, to keep and not lose. Everybody seeks love and we have many ideas about what love means. We are told to love our country, to die for it if necessary. Religion tells us to love God and if we do, we will be rewarded, if we don’t, we are threatened with damnation.

We fall in love with someone, if they do the same, well and good, if they don’t and dare to love another, we become jealous. Love can then turn to hate. What we think of as love demands a payment. ‘If you will love me, I will give you my company, I will give you sex, I will compromise myself for you. If you don’t, I will withhold my love until you come to your senses.’ That’s how we usually understand love.

When we say we unconditionally love someone, it’s actually conditional, for we do expect something in return – their love – but what if they don’t love us back – what if they spurn our advances? What then? Does our unconditional love for them continue on regardless?… as it unconditionally should?

Love can never make any demands whatsoever and still be called love. When we say I love you, what we are really interested in is our pleasure, our experience, our gratification, ourselves. We are fearful of losing that love at any moment, for then we would suffer the opposites such as heartache and loss. Love has no opposite. To want to hold onto someone and expect a return is not love at all, but pleasure masquerading as love.

The closest we come to unconditional love as human beings, is our love for our offspring, especially when they are young. Eventually though, as they grow up and into adulthood, we tend to place certain conditions on that love. ‘Behave the way I think you should and I will continue to love you unconditionally. Do something I don’t think is good and I won’t love you unconditionally quite as much!’

True Love is unconditional and timeless. It can only exist in the now moment – not in time. To be consciously aware that what we call love is really only our pleasure is an important step in our lessons in life…

Dan’s Quote: “Intense love does not measure, it just gives.”- Mother Teresa

Ideas for this chapter came from ‘A Passionate Mind’ by Joel Kramer.

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