Love

What is Love?

Love is a range of the strongest emotional and mental states you can feel with the greatest of affection. Poets and writers of yore and Lionel Richie would have us believe love is above all, extremely physical. However, I think otherwise.

I don’t think love is purely physical. Neither is it emotional nor always spiritual. To me, love is an eternal expression of togetherness that connects one soul with another. This is why I think there exists love in every facet of life. In all our relationships

• Relationship with Nature
• Relationship with Self
• Relationship with People

Relationship with Nature

Our relationship with nature is a rather odd one. Nature is extremely compassionate in sharing its bountiful abundance. And I think, we as a species are not truly appreciative of that. We feel nature is inherently peaceful and blissful. So maybe in our arrogance, we feel we are owed that bliss and peace without the need to reciprocate in any manner. But we only consider nature to be peaceful and full of bliss until it stops giving.

The moment nature stops giving and shows another part of its’ identity in the form of rainstorms or hurricanes, severe heat, or any other natural calamity; we start looking at nature very differently. How dare it ruin my day? How can nature just cause me to be late for work, couldn’t it have snowed a little less? Cursing it for just being what it is. Therefore, bringing our very love for nature into question.

As long as somebody is giving, we are happy. But the moment we stop receiving the apparent goodness we stop caring. When you truly love nature, you do not wish for it to change. After all, nature doesn’t change. It is cyclical in the way it exists. That is its nature.

It is us that bemoan these changes. When nature is this compassionate and kind, we still end up cursing it. But nature is unconditional in its love for us. It is us that change our emotions when situations change. We are the ones with the mighty expectation of nature to be blissful all the time. That is not in our hands. We do not have the right to expect anything from someone we love. Even when that someone is nature itself.

When you love unconditionally, there is no expectation

Relationship with Self

Love is an inherent consciousness. Unlike most other emotions, it does not come from a reactionary place. It is not triggered by external stimuli. We love for ourselves. Our love is our own. Our partners or loved ones might behave with us in a certain manner but that is their love. Ours is inherent within us.

Self-love is to value your existence with gratitude, respect, forgiveness, and compassion.

You cannot truly love another or appreciate everything around you unless you learn to love yourself. If you can’t love yourself how can you ever love another? And you cannot love yourself unless you respect yourself. You cannot love yourself if you don’t feel valued or worthy. And if you can’t love yourself you can’t forgive yourself.
So in order for you to love yourself, you need to live with a sense of respect, forgiveness, and worthiness in yourself. Only then are you able to start appreciating and loving yourself for who you are.
If your heart is empty, you only want it filled with love. If your heart is filled to the brim with love, it eventually overflows, and then all you have left is to give. Only to give and never to take.For your heart to be full of love, you need to live with gratitude and compassion.

Relationship with People

The love you have in your relationships with other people follows principles similar to the one you have with yourself. It is triggered through our emotions and feelings for an external being. Love cannot just be transferred. You have to be mindful of the people in your life to truly love them.

You cannot love another person when you cannot respect them. You cannot love another person when you can’t be grateful for them. You cannot love another person when you can’t be compassionate towards them or can’t forgive them without conditions.

As I mentioned before, love is togetherness. It is a conscious sense of being that connects us. When we begin to treat others with gratitude, respect, forgiveness, and compassion, we form meaningful relationships and foster the feeling of love.

People who love can’t hate and people who hate can’t love.

Depending on the kind of relationship you share with an individual it can start with either an emotional or a physical component. With enough time, it then moves on to the other and if you are patient, you might just end up connecting on a spiritual level.

Let me give you an example. It is a completely different relationship that you share with your parents or siblings than the one you share with your partner. A romantic relationship may very well begin on a physical level; evolve to take feelings into consideration, and grow into an emotional one. Similarly, relationships with a parent might start at an emotional level but it also has the capacity to grow on a physical level. After all, who doesn’t want a pat on the head or a tight reassuring hug from their parents?

But a real relationship starts on a spiritual level. You are connected through the essence of your being. And that spills over to the other facets- emotional and physical.

Most relationships tend to focus on the physical and emotional components. How do you feel when you are with someone? Sometimes that is all you have before you jump into a relationship. And when these relationships invariably end, there is nothing tangible to look back for. After all, there was never any connection beyond the superficial. It is the ability to connect to another individual spiritually that truly allows us to feel love.

I can tell you from my own experience. When there is a spiritual connection between you and the ones you love, distances and time apart, truly do not matter as much. After all, you are not putting any conditions on your relationship in this manner. Thus, forming the basis for unconditional love.

What is Unconditional Love?

Love is always unconditional. It is an experience that only comes from a place of giving. It cannot exist with any conditions. If there are conditions, then it’s an understanding and not love. And understandings are usually made to satisfy the ego. Bereft of ego, love is a pure, uninterrupted sense of being.

I think in my journey of realization, I have come to think of ego as a reflection of your false self, an “I”. In a weird way, it protects you but also stops you from realizing your own fallacies and improving on them. The “I” does not let love exist without conditions. And if it isn’t unconditional, it isn’t love.

Unconditional love is pure. I see Sevā in this light. We should try to live with a sense of gratitude. By being thankful for things. If tomorrow I tried to serve my philanthropic endeavors with the caveat of,” What am I getting out of this?” or “I will do this only if this benefits me in such manner.”, I will fail in my Sevā. I would be putting conditions on my Sevā and where there are conditions, there is a sense of ‘I’. For conditions come out of fear, not love.
The Dichotomy of Life emerging out of Love and that out of Fear
There are certain haves and have-nots in life. We have the choice to focus on where our perception of things comes from. Whether it emerges from a place of love or fear.

You see fear is limited to the “I”. It stops you from seeing things as they are in reality. It clouds your judgments and pushes you to make decisions from a place of weakness and negativity.

Love goes above and beyond the “I”. It enables you to focus on the positives of any given situation. If we truly had the wisdom to look at life through the lens of love, then every pain would turn into bliss. Every action would feel like giving. Every emotion would feel like compassion.

The Path to Unconditional Love

The moment you start to dilute the “I”, you realize your potential to love without conditions. You have to focus on living in the present. If you spend your life trapped in the regrets of the past or the hopes of the future, you can’t achieve unconditional love.

Love is unlimited (or an unlimited sense of being). It exists in every connection we make and the memories they end up becoming. If we truly want to live our lives coming from a place of love, we have to start living with a sense of gratitude and thankfulness. We might just start to weed out the ignorance stopping us from achieving love as well as peace and happiness. And that is one of my soulful epiphanies.