Guest guest Posted February 14, 2009 Report Share Posted February 14, 2009 Those were the days when I looked for love elsewhere – everywhere, but in God. When I was a baby, in my mother; when I was a girl, in my friends; when I was a young woman, in young men; when I was a woman, in my husband. Of course I loved God, but not exclusively. He probably came second to all my other loves. It was in my misguided search for love that I was looking for something physical, tangible and responsive. I was looking for human love, which I didn’t know was full of expectations, vanity, reciprocation and power. I think people are born to seek love – it’s one of the greatest gifts of God. But in ignorance, I’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places. Love for beauty, for power, for vanity, for reciprocation is based on desire. It is a natural human desire to not just love, but be loved. But only when this love is pure, is it divine, Godly love. Divine love is not limited to God at all. It is when I can truly love every person I see unconditionally without fear of expectations, fear of attraction, fear of control, then I see not myself as one, and all others as separate from me, but myself as only a part of a whole. To see God not just in myself but in everyone. Not just knowing that as an intellectual belief, but to see and feel God in everyone. Until then, I fall into love traps everyday – of expectations, power, control, secrets – the deeper I get trapped, the harder it is to extricate myself. I must have been blind and ignorant to fall into these traps of human love, and even though I recognize them as traps now, it’s not until I’m enlightened to love’s true nature, will I be able to break the chains free. I attract people to myself that essentially reflect me – the possessiveness, the clinginess, the expectations that I recognize and dislike in the people around me, I don’t recognize in myself. But I know, in my heart, that I must possess all these qualities myself, or I wouldn’t attract or recognize them in others. The solution is in detachment. Detachment without attachment. Love without attachment. But how do I get to that point, when it seems like a two-way street? How can I not be affected by the other person’s attachment, despite my detachment? How can I break these mental chains free of human bondage? Swami, show me the way! I wrote the above lines last night, and here’s what Swami sent my today – in his Thought for the Day – “Attachment to the world can be destroyed only by attachment to the Lord. The attachment to the Lord will transmute the attachment to the world into a pure offering.†What a revelation! A perfect answer to my question. Thank you Swami! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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