Guest guest Posted February 4, 2008 Report Share Posted February 4, 2008 It is the biggest challenge in life, I think, to learn fully about love—much less to experience it. In the end, love-real love-wants nothing. That is because real love NEEDS nothing, so what could it possibly want? The difficulty is in understanding Who We Really Are. When we fully identify with our Real Selves, we no longer have the problem you are talking about here. But until we understand, truly, Who and What We Really Are, we imagine that we are something quite a bit less. We imagine that we are less than Divine, and that there is something we need. This is an illusion. It is the First Illusion of Humans. It is a very powerful illusion-and it is not real. What makes it not real is the fact that we are One with God. If we were not One with God, the experience of Need would be very real. But we ARE One with God, and God needs nothing at all. Therefore, WE need nothing at all, and the idea that we need something or someone to be happy is an illusion. Only when we understand that there is nothing that we need to be truly happy can we begin to love another in the highest way, in the highest sense. Only then can we see that the relationship of Love was given to us as a gift, not so that we may RECEIVE something, but so that we may GIVE something. For it is in the GIVING of Who We Really Are that we experience it. And the purpose of all of Life is exactly that: to experience Who We Really Are. God has created Life so that God may experience Itself. That simple and single sentence explains it all. It makes everything really very easy to understand. Now, here is how to step out of the Illusion of Need, and to recreate Love in a way that allows you to experience it without expecting anything from your beloved: Make EVERYONE your beloved. Make every ONE and every THING your beloved. Go through Life with one objective and one purpose only: to give love to everything and everyone. If you do this, you will be so happy by the end of one week that everyone will think you are on drugs. They will wonder what has happened to you, what you are " taking " that is making you so crazy. Loving everyone and everything may not be as easy as it sounds. It will require you to let go of every one of your judgments. You will have to see everyone and everything as beautiful. I always like to say, " You will have to learn to love spinach. " I always think that if you can learn to love over-cooked spinach, you can love anything. Do you know what I mean? So practice with yourself. That is a good place to begin. In fact, that is the ONLY place you can begin. Because if you cannot love yourself,utterly and completely, you cannot love anyone or anything else. All failure to love another, fully and freely, is nothing more than a form of self-loathing. Only when we stop loathing ourselves, or any PART of ourselves, can we begin to stop loathing another. The end of self-loathing begins with self-acceptance. We must look at ourselves completely and accept ourselves absolutely. We must embrace every bit of ourselves, even our dark side, even our selfish side, even our " needy " side, even our angry and violent side. Only love can heal these wounds. Only love can make them go away. But this love will not come from another person. If you depend on another person's love to be healed then it again a NEED. This love has to come from within yourself for yourself. What you resist, persists. What you look at disappears. It ceases to have its illusory form. So begin your journey to non-expecting love by looking at your SELF in the mirror, and stop expecting things from your SELF. That is the first step. It is the biggest step. Now the only way that you will ever be able to stop expecting things from your Self is to stop imaging that there is someone ELSE, someone higher than you, someone above you (such as a parent, or God), who has a right to expect things from YOU. You see, it is our idea that God expects things from us --- things that are so huge and so big that we cannot possibly give those things to Him - that sets up the dynamic of all human relationships. This is what we call Love. We have called Expectation " love " because we have been taught that this is what Love is. Every religion on the planet tells us this. Love EXPECTS THINGS. Doesn't God? And isn't it said that God loves us? So there you have it. In order to stop expecting things from the people you love, you are going to have to stop imagining a God who expects things from you. So let us stand in front of that mirror, and say to ourselves, " I love you. I see Who You Really Are, and I love you without expectation. I accept you as a thing of Perfection and Beauty, just exactly the way you are. " This is how God accepts us. In truth, this is how God accepts all of us. And never let anyone ever tell you anything different. Now, after doing this Mirror Exercise for three or four weeks, you are ready to go out and try it with the world. What you will be doing is MAKING THE WORLD YOUR MIRROR. Simply give to the world the Love you are so wanting to give to yourself. Give your love to everyone and everything. Soon, you will feel love starting to come back to you. Expect nothing, and give everything, and watch yourself falling in love, for the first time, without expectation. It will be the wonder of your life. And you will become the Wonder in everyone else's life. You will be FULL of wonder. And everyone will say that you are WONDER- FULL. And this will be not a new thing that is true about you, but something that has been true about you from the very beginning --- yet something you forgot, until now. Spend your time not looking for love, but looking for someone who is looking for love (that means everyone). Then give them all the love for which they are looking. As you give, so shall you receive. You may not receive love back from that particular person, but you will receive it from the universe. You cannot WANT to receive love back from that particular person, or you are not truly loving them without expectation. You see? So the trick is to love without requiring anything in return from that particular person. This does not mean, by the way, that we should stay in abusive relationships, or remain in an exclusive relationship with someone that we love without getting anything back. If this is happening to you, you must then change the nature of your relationship of love, and move far enough away, in the physical sense, that it no longer demands of you any sort of exclusivity -- which means limitation. Because if you are limited to loving someone who does not know how to love you, you will never experience being loved. We all deserve that experience. This is not the same as expecting something in return. This is simply creating life in a way that allows what goes around to come around. If you have closed yourself in to a relationship that stops your own love from coming back to you, open up that relationship by creating space within it for you to receive your own love back through the world, and the other people, around you. This doesn't mean that you stop loving the person you have been with. Nor does it mean that you are loving with expectation. It merely means that, as you continue to love the person you have been with, you decide not to LIMIT your love to that person by continuing to be in a closed, exclusive relationship. It means not that you stop loving, but that you CHANGE THE NATURE OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP so that you may love others we well, and perhaps even find another through whom your own love for the world can flow back to you! Non-expectation is the key. And we all can get there. Yet the journey is challenging. But love is worth the challenge. Love is God. Live in Love. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 4, 2008 Report Share Posted February 4, 2008 Sai Ram Bro.Swamy Mahadevan Very nicely you explained.Very good explanation from your part Very well quoted " It is the biggest challenge in life, I think, to learn fully about love—much less to experience it. In the end, love-real love-wants nothing. That is because real love NEEDS nothing, so what could it possibly want? " There is nothing greater on earth than love. Anything can be accomplished through love. Therefore, make every effort to promote love. True devotion consists in offering all your thoughts and actions to God and yearning for His grace. Bhakti has been described as a state of non-separation from God. Regardless of time, space or circumstance, one should feel closeness to God – that is true devotion (Bhakti). Devotion confined to a brief spell in the puja room or temple is not true devotion. During that time, devotion seems to swell within you and you feel at peace but, once outside, the peace is lost and anger takes its place. This cannot be called devotion. True devotion transcends the limitations imposed by one's daily routines and the obligations of life. Love for the Divine should be present in any situation. Strive to cultivate such love and experience the joy of sharing it with others Sai Ram With love Dr.pooja Sai Bhatia Puttaparthi , " Swamy Mahadevan " <mahadevanvnswamy wrote: > > > It is the biggest challenge in life, I think, to learn fully about > love—much less to experience it. In the end, love-real > love-wants nothing. That is because real love NEEDS nothing, so what > could it possibly want? > > > The difficulty is in understanding Who We Really Are. When we fully > identify with our Real Selves, we no longer have the problem you are > talking about here. But until we understand, truly, Who and What We > Really Are, we imagine that we are something quite a bit less. We > imagine that we are less than Divine, and that there is something we > need. > > This is an illusion. It is the First Illusion of Humans. It is a very > powerful illusion-and it is not real. What makes it not real is > the fact that we are One with God. If we were not One with God, the > experience of Need would be very real. But we ARE One with God, and > God needs nothing at all. Therefore, WE need nothing at all, and the > idea that we need something or someone to be happy is an illusion. > > > Only when we understand that there is nothing that we need to be truly > happy can we begin to love another in the highest way, in the highest > sense. Only then can we see that the relationship of Love was given to > us as a gift, not so that we may RECEIVE something, but so that we may > GIVE something. For it is in the GIVING of Who We Really Are that we > experience it. > > And the purpose of all of Life is exactly that: to experience Who We > Really Are. > > God has created Life so that God may experience Itself. > > That simple and single sentence explains it all. It makes everything > really very easy to understand. Now, here is how to step out of the > Illusion of Need, and to recreate Love in a way that allows you to > experience it without expecting anything from your beloved: > > Make EVERYONE your beloved. Make every ONE and every THING your > beloved. > > Go through Life with one objective and one purpose only: to give love > to everything and everyone. > > If you do this, you will be so happy by the end of one week that > everyone will think you are on drugs. They will wonder what has > happened to you, what you are " taking " that is making you so crazy. > > Loving everyone and everything may not be as easy as it sounds. It > will require you to let go of every one of your judgments. You will > have to see everyone and everything as beautiful. I always like to > say, " You will have to learn to love spinach. " I always think that if > you can learn to love over-cooked spinach, you can love anything. > > Do you know what I mean? > > So practice with yourself. That is a good place to begin. In fact, > that is the ONLY place you can begin. Because if you cannot love > yourself,utterly and completely, you cannot love anyone or anything > else. All failure to love another, fully and freely, is nothing more > than a form of self-loathing. Only when we stop loathing ourselves, > or any PART of ourselves, can we begin to stop loathing another. > > The end of self-loathing begins with self-acceptance. We must look at > ourselves completely and accept ourselves absolutely. We must embrace > every bit of ourselves, even our dark side, even our selfish side, > even our " needy " side, even our angry and violent side. Only love can > heal these wounds. Only love can make them go away. But this love will > not come from another person. If you depend on another person's love > to be healed then it again a NEED. This love has to come from within > yourself for yourself. What you resist, persists. What you look at > disappears. It ceases to have its illusory form. > > So begin your journey to non-expecting love by looking at your SELF in > the mirror, and stop expecting things from your SELF. That is the > first step. It is the biggest step. > > Now the only way that you will ever be able to stop expecting things > from your Self is to stop imaging that there is someone ELSE, someone > higher than you, someone above you (such as a parent, or God), who > has a right to expect things from YOU. > > You see, it is our idea that God expects things from us --- things > that are so huge and so big that we cannot possibly give those things > to Him - that sets up the dynamic of all human relationships. This is > what we call Love. We have called Expectation " love " because we have > been taught that this is what Love is. Every religion on the planet > tells us this. Love EXPECTS THINGS. Doesn't God? And isn't it said > that God loves us? > > So there you have it. In order to stop expecting things from the > people you love, you are going to have to stop imagining a God who > expects things from you. > > So let us stand in front of that mirror, and say to ourselves, " I > love you. I see Who You Really Are, and I love you without > expectation. I accept you as a thing of Perfection and Beauty, just > exactly the way you are. " > > This is how God accepts us. In truth, this is how God accepts all of > us. And never let anyone ever tell you anything different. > > Now, after doing this Mirror Exercise for three or four weeks, you are > ready to go out and try it with the world. What you will be doing is > MAKING THE WORLD YOUR MIRROR. Simply give to the world the Love you > are so wanting to give to yourself. Give your love to everyone and > everything. Soon, you will feel love starting to come back to you. > > Expect nothing, and give everything, and watch yourself falling in > love, for the first time, without expectation. It will be the wonder > of your life. And you will become the Wonder in everyone else's life. > You will be FULL of wonder. And everyone will say that you are WONDER- > FULL. > > And this will be not a new thing that is true about you, but something > that has been true about you from the very beginning --- yet something > you forgot, until now. > > Spend your time not looking for love, but looking for someone who is > looking for love (that means everyone). Then give them all the love > for which they are looking. As you give, so shall you receive. > > You may not receive love back from that particular person, but you > will receive it from the universe. You cannot WANT to receive love > back from that particular person, or you are not truly loving them > without expectation. You see? > > > So the trick is to love without requiring anything in return from that > particular person. > > > This does not mean, by the way, that we should stay in abusive > relationships, or remain in an exclusive relationship with someone > that we love without getting anything back. If this is happening to > you, you must then change the nature of your relationship of love, > and move far enough away, in the physical sense, that it no longer > demands of you any sort of exclusivity -- which means limitation. > Because if you are limited to loving someone who does not know how to > love you, you will never experience being loved. We all deserve that > experience. This is not the same as expecting something in return. > This is simply creating life in a way that allows what goes around to > come around. If you have closed yourself in to a relationship that > stops your own love from coming back to you, open up that > relationship by creating space within it for you to receive your own > love back through the world, and the other people, around you. > > This doesn't mean that you stop loving the person you have been with. > Nor does it mean that you are loving with expectation. It merely means > that, as you continue to love the person you have been with, you > decide not to LIMIT your love to that person by continuing to be in a > closed, exclusive relationship. It means not that you stop loving, > but that you CHANGE THE NATURE OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP so that you may > love others we well, and perhaps even find another through whom your > own love for the world can flow back to you! > > Non-expectation is the key. And we all can get there. Yet the journey > is challenging. But love is worth the challenge. Love is God. Live in > Love. > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.