When love is in its primal form, it borders on lust and possessiveness, and then it hurts, and sometimes it leaves scars. Visit to know more about spiritual love meaning & connection.
Do you rise or fall in Love?
The word falling implies descent. It seems to say that you lose when you love. But is that true? Should we gain instead from a feeling that seems to make the world go around?
What is Love?
Love seems to be a many splendored emotion and the core of human existence. It could be passionate, emotional, addictive, or meditational. We are often told that God is love, and only when we fall in love truly, do we become one with the other, and the feeling seems divine.
Most of us have experienced some form of love at some point in our lives. Moments with our family, spouse, partner, children, friends, and pets become lingering memories that provide the warmth of comfort and connect. Love makes us value the other and makes us feel valued. When we love, we feel wholesome joy and happiness, and that spills to everything and everyone around us. Life looks more colourful and joyful when there is love. Love heals.
But can Love be painful?
When love is in its primal form, it borders on lust and possessiveness, and then it hurts, and sometimes it leaves scars. You control or become controlled because of needs, wants and desires. People tend to go crazy in love and do extreme things like eloping, sacrificing, compromising on themselves and their careers, or continuing to stay in an abusive relationship out of dependency. Love is not what is taken from the one or given to another. Like everything dark or illusional, this emotion has to transform to reveal its natural state. Each individual has to let go of control, tune in to their identity and power and learn the lessons of unconditional love. It could happen with the same partner or another or with God. Life flows with the intention of self-realisation, and it ultimately seeks to reveal our natural selves, and that is Love. True love is just spiritual; it is not just a feeling but an extension of yourself, in thoughts, words and deeds. It is the journey and the destination. Love is the mystic of the universe and the closest thing we have next to the divine.
But how do we tune to this spiritual love?
This love only flows through you when you fall. Fall out of all your judgments, ego, limitations, perceptions, definitions and expectations for self and the other. Where there is true love, there is no room for control and conditions which stem from the ego. True love is what is left when the ‘You and I’ drop.
Transformation to True Love
It requires purification of the consciousness wherein you cleanse yourself of all impurities of desire, expectations, lust, mistrust, dependency, non-acceptance, lack and selfishness that have clouded you due to experiences and references. It requires you to:
1. Understand the other and make oneself understood
2. Allow each other to be
3. Honour and value each other
4. Feel safe in each other’s presence
5. Be committed to each other
6. Encourage and nurture each other
7. Practice total acceptance and forgiveness
Let me tell you a story to illuminate this further. Rahul grew up with a strict father who always reminded him of his shortcomings and burdened him with his expectations. He was estranged from his father for nearly 20 years. Yet when the father became seriously ill, Rahul was the only person around. Rahul thought that this was the universe’s way of giving them a chance to make peace and prove himself to his father, finally. For some reason, Rahul was hoping for a happy ending that would result in an overflowing love for his father.
However, there was one problem.
Rahul had no happy memories to go to because of their past. Even though he understood that he must love his father, the disconnect was far more significant. So, Rahul did the only thing that he understood. He introspected as to how would he behave if he did love his father? And then he followed his intuition.
He tried to be the perfect son and fill all the gaps by serving his father’s needs. As a practised ritual, he took over the running of the home and performed his responsibilities, dutifully. Despite this, he felt nothing.
Two months later, his father died. Rahul participated in the religious ceremonies that come with being the heir. Even as the final prayers were said, and they walked to the cremation ground, he still felt disconnected. And he just couldn’t bring himself to feel the love for his father.
As he lit the pyre, he saw his father and their story become a memory, and felt the sadness due to the knots of grievances and hurt tying up his heart. After all the ceremonies were done, he turned back to go home, and a lone tear escaped the indomitable fortress of his heart and broke the dam. The overflow of love he felt for his father cleansed all his definitions and memories. He saw how all through, his father had indeed nurtured him in his way, and he finally understood his father deeply.
As Rumi writes, “For sixty years I have been forgetful every minute, but not for a second has this flowing toward me stopped or slowed”. It is the ocean that is flowing continually, and the wave has to lose itself to fall into it. And to trace our way home, all we have to do is Fall unto Him and then become Him.
