In deep love, we forget our self.
Love is a state of being. She only speaks truly if we tune into the deepest place in our heart. It is not a head thing, we cannot calculate, measure or make it square and fair.
The capacity of love is grounded in how much we love ourselves, how completely we accept who we are and how much we feel at home with what is - here and now.
We are constantly seeking approval through our relations with others. We seldom know that this is just a hole we want to fill. We control, grasp, manipulate and attach in relationships. And we confuse these things as love.
We seek the feeling of euphoria that love creates, a dopamine rush. And when that feeling dies down, we seek for a new object for that feeling.
When we are 12 months into a relationship, we realize how the other person eats with his fingers, snores while he sleeps and leaves food on kitchen counter, and we decide we don't like it. We think that love disappears, so we leave and look for another one.
Ego plays a big role in this kind of relationship cycle. The theme is: What do I want? How to find what I want? Can you give me what I want? Is it fair? Can we negotiate?
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing bad about ego-based love (conditional love). Relationship is a process of finding who we are, to see ourselves through the other’s eyes. It is a process of realizing our self. We need ego to achieve and cultivate in this life. But how far we should let our egos goe, how much we allow ego to dominate the game, that's the lesson we all need to learn.
If we constantly allow our ego to lead the way, it's inevitable that clinging, attachment, expectation, frustration and disappointment will follow us like shadows. But those aren't bad either: they are signals and alerts for us to make changes.
At one point, perhaps we can try to renounce our ego a little, slowly but surely. Start to notice how powerful our desires are, how strongly we want to grasp and to feed our ego, how irritated we become when things don't go our way, how scared we are when we aren't loved and approved.
Start to think about others a little more, start to relate to others on a much deeper level, how we all share the same genetic information, how we all want to be happy and free of sorrows, how we all long for human connection, how we all want to love and be loved, how we all belong to light ultimately. We are all the same fundamentally, and by relating to others, we develop a heart of loving-kindness and compassion.
In Sankrit, loving-kindness is maitri. Compassion is karuna. They are the root of human happiness. To realize it, we let go of ourselves.
Instead of constantly reacting to life situations from the mind of our ego, we respond, participate and offer ourselves to what need to be done based on the heart of maitri and karuna. We fill in the gaps by bringing in what nourishes, what flows. The quality of our self is no longer a fixated one. We become more fluid like water, light and air, bringing life and opportunities to everyone. We interact and communicate with all things like partner dancing. We don't dance to impress, dominant, or to get applause. We dance to cooperate, to experience joy, to express this profound love.
In profound love, we allow ourselves to be seen, we pay attention to others, we listen, we serve selflessly, we dance together, we create what is beautiful and holy.
That is when I become we.
