All of us, in one way or another, are in search of love; we want to love and to be loved.
We devote our lives to the search for love, but in a misguided and mistaken way. We chase fame in order to affirm and validate ourselves through the applause and approval of others. We want the love of a partner so that, through that person, we can feel loved, desired and accepted; we want the love of family, relatives or children in order to make them responsible even for our happiness, going so far as to selfishly try to control their lives so that they fulfil our desires and emotional needs, and sometimes even our professional ones (a father who seeks the achievements of his children to overcome his own frustrations). There are those who intend to have children so that, when the day comes, they will have someone to care for them in old age. That is not love, that is a business.
We try, through other people, to complete ourselves, to feel that we are wanted, that we are valued, that we are appreciated, that we are respected.
The great paradox is that everything we seek in others can only be found within ourselves. And only by finding that love within ourselves can we give it and share it with others.
Otherwise, everything we do with others is an attempt to avoid feeling the emptiness of loneliness, the fear of abandonment, the dread of lack. What we feel is not love; it is need, it is selfishness and fear.
Know this well: love, true love, sets free; true love releases; true love is presence, kindness and service.
What we experience with others is often a cheap caricature of what love really is.
We commit all kinds of incoherent or misguided actions to try to control the lives of others and to seek that they make us happy. We rarely become aware of how many disguises and masks we use to avoid looking directly at our emptiness and pain.
The real spiritual path is a return to our own responsibility for our happiness and for the discovery of our most intimate and own love.
When you love, you are free, and someone who loves you sets you free.
As Saint Augustine of Hippo said: “Love, and do what you will”.
May your meditations be prosperous.
With love,
Arjuna
