All good things come with sacrifice. Love in its purest human form requests the greatest sacrifice of all. Love asks that you give up judgment, fear, resentment, shame, hurt, and expectation of love returned. Love asks that you forgive all harm done. This does not mean that you forget harm done or continue to place yourself in harm’s way. Setting healthy boundaries is good. It means that you must claim full responsibility for your experience. You must give up seeing yourself as a victim and see yourself as a divine being worthy of great love. Love commands of us that we simply give of our hearts freely and unconditionally. This means that love will also wound us. Not only must the ego die to love, but once we are opened, we must suffer the consequences of disappointment and betrayal. Love, therefore, is both sought after and rejected by all of us.
Because the sacrifice of love is so great, human nature has invented another definition of love that allows us to believe we are loved and loving without having to suffer. “Love is something I can feel if I feel safe and loved by another. If my safety and lovability are threatened in some way, I withdraw my love. This withdrawal is justified and is also a part of love.” This definition is illusive and causes suffering in itself. It cuts you off from the true experience of love.
Human love is conditional. Until you have found safety and love within yourself through realizing your divine nature, you are incapable of experiencing the true meaning of love. If you open yourself to love, expect joy and expect to suffer. Expect your suffering to teach you much. Expect your suffering to lead you to the grandest experience of all–freedom. Expect to have the feeling of being home in the most profound sense of all. The experience of love is complete peace and excruciating, almost unbearable joy at the same time. The experience of love is what we are destined to experience. Without realizing it, each of us is striving daily for this kind of love. Whether we know it or not, it is our reason for living. Everything we do, think, and feel is a subconscious seeking of love–even our violent acts, thoughts, and feelings.
The experience of love will propel you into another dimension, another reality. It makes you realize that those things you strive for on a daily basis do not satisfy and are only weak substitutes for what you really want–unconditional love. For most this realization is too much a responsibility to keep conscious. Love requires too great a sacrifice so most of us deny what we know deep in our hearts, believing that the world and the things we do in it is what we want. We humans are in a terrible dilemma that will cause us suffering until we are willing to admit to what we know by the teachings of love.
M uch human suffering is caused by the belief that another human being can provide the love we need. Loving each other is a natural result of the experience of love. However, we do not give each other the experience of love. The true experience of love comes from within the self. This loving within the self has no object. It is the willingness to feel love–for no reason or motivation other than to experience love. It is a willingness to open the heart, let go, and feel love.
Would you like to try something that has the potential of altering all your relationships for the better? Start loving for no rational reason. Ignore all your reasons not to love. Just love. Keep loving for as long as you want. See if you can maintain this love feeling while encountering the limitations of other human beings. Set a boundary, and love. Say, “No,” and love. Disagree with someone and love. Problem solve with someone you have difficulty with and love. You will learn that you are capable of loving in spite of the limitations around you. You will learn that loving can bring about positive changes that otherwise would never occur. And you will learn the peace and joy that comes with loving.