A brief statement regarding love.
It seems we all search and search for that defining feeling of love and companionship. Yet it remains more elusive than the attainment of perfection.
Is this because we expect to find perfection in our emotional ties to this life? Frankly, I have not found a satisfactory answer to this question.
I do know, in my view, what true love means in my personal everyday life. One does not choose to receive love. Rather, as we choose to give love we may find that love chooses us. Once we are chosen, we are obliged to follow through with our faith, loyalty and devotion to the love that graces our lives. It is in this way that I find love manifest in my life.
I do not believe that we have the ability to pull our love back once it is professed and given. Though we may prefer to think that we are able to minimize the pain of love unrequited by pulling back before we and our love are rejected or ignored.
The heart is not as fickle as most folks wish to believe and proclaim. It is a fickle state of mind that wishes to cut our losses where love is concerned. It is this weakened state of mind that has haunted humankind since its inception.
We have a great tendency to confuse intellectual sensibilites with those associated with pure emotion. Although we speak of the heart or the soul as the permanent residence of our capacity for loving or being loved. Still, it is plain that love begins as a matter of self. Without the initial realization of self-love, all other forms of human love are bound for failure.
“I love you.” these three words are used rather profusely by beings that have never really settled upon the seat and meaning of this statement. Let us take this statement one word at a time. “I”, the singular personal pronoun referring to me…myself. So if I am to profess love externally I must first have love for the lover…me. Secondly, “Love”, to care for in a way that surpasses our common daily concern for all of mankind. The word has come to be understood as a level of caring that surpasses any and all concern for all others. Though, I am not really sure how many folks professing such a feeling are giving of themselves in a profound sense that places the loved one above all others. This giving of love, is more a sharing of the love one holds for oneself. By this sharing our innermost selves in this way, our capacity for a higher sense of love grows both inwardly and outwardly. At last, “You”, a being outside of self who shares the human need for acknowledgement and affirmation. For one to love another in this manner requires respect. Respect for both the “I” and the “You”. The concentric circle of love must be understood in this way to even consider a commitment of oneself to another self.
Love does not require reciprocation to be the truest and most binding of human experience. The greatest of love is the love that is given without expectation of reward or other recompense. Love given in this spirit is born of the divine. For before we can give love we must first know what being loved feels like. In this sense it is the love we have been given without measure to each of us by the one who has no second. The one that is present within all human beings. When recognized by the self, the Hindu refers to the divinity within as Atman .
The need for love in the human being is as great as its need to breathe. It is the recognition of love of self that is required to love another without question. To love in this way, is the product of sensing a higher calling for the self to express itself without losing itself at the same time.
We must be able to truly love the self if we are to be able to share ourselves and our love with others. So seek the love within, affirm the love within, and expand what is found within that it may be shared in this specific way. This allows others to find the love within themselves and welcome the spontaneous and defining outpouring that shall result.
