Since when is Love not an emotion??
Yes, I can hear your outcry here. Love…the all sought-after, oftentimes so elusive, sweet, bitter emotion that we all so crave…is not an emotion? Well, if it’s not an an emotion, what is?? After all, love has been sung about over thousands of years, wars have been fought over it, kingdoms rose and fell and fools became wise men and wise men turned into fools, all in the name of love. It’s the one thing we all need from others to provide us with.
But if love supposedly is such a source of joy and happiness, why does it seem to be generally accepted that heartbreak, jealousy, sadness and depression are inevitable parts of it?
Intimate relationships – We’re in love with our idea of Love
Human beings do nothing without a reason. Whether we like it or not, we are master manipulators to get our needs met. This is not always necessarily immoral. At the most basic level, it ensures our survival. On a metaphysical level, it is our attempt to counteract the effects of all our conditioned beliefs and attitudes that are causing us pain. Remember, one of the prime directives of the Mind is to avoid pain – at all costs. We will even sacrifice the possible gain of pleasure if that ensures that we can avoid pain. A lot of our beliefs about ourselves revolve around feelings of inadequacy, of not being worthy of love, of not being seen, of not measuring up to whatever standard our Mind has conjured up as the benchmark.
And who better to possibly fix these things for us than another human being, the person we love? Isn’t that what love is supposed to do? Heal us? Understand us? Comfort us? Nourish us? Make us complete? In most western cultures we have come to grow up with a fairly clearly defined understanding of what “love” is. We feel all warm and fuzzy when we hear phrases like “unconditional”, but we do not have a real understanding of what this actually means. As with all things regarding our reality, we live in our own idea of it – and sometimes that very idea makes us entirely miss the point and creates unnecessary pain.
Love is not a crutch
The way a lot of people perceive, give and receive love is a little like giving first aid to each other on a transactional basis. I want something from you – typically all the things I myself believe are not available to me – and if you provide me with that, I will in return make sure that your needs are met too. Of course this process is completely unconscious, and pretty much everyone would heavily dispute acting like that. But if they are right, how come we get so easily thrown off track when all of a sudden our significant other – for whatever reason – stops providing all the things we expect from love? Why do pleasure and pain live in such close proximity for us when it comes to love? And why do we tend to end up with always the same kind of people as intimate partners?
It is because in our understanding of love, it is something that is awakened only if there is someone else out there who is willing to give us what we crave. In the process, we unconsciously identify people whose emotional conditioned patterns complement ours so that the chances of us getting our needs met are maximized. Outside of these situations, love as a concept plays almost no role in our lives. It’s this special feeling, reserved for special people and occasions.
Wanting our needs met vs. needing someone to complete us
We are human beings. One aspect of craving intimate relationships is the desire to be appreciated, cared for, and this will never completely go away regardless of the level of conditioning we have. And that is ok.
It becomes a problem when we enter such a relationship on the “I need…” side. Appreciating what another human being can give us is very different from needing it.
Love, as a state, is like an energy field. A capacity that sits deep down in our core, but we only open the door to that core when we feel someone is “worth” it in terms of what they can give us. If we unlock that gate permanently and allow love to seep out and permeate everything we do, the game changes profoundly. Intimate relationships are being experienced at a completely different level where angst, anxiety and neediness give way to a lasting sense of joy, excitement and appreciation of every aspect of our relationship with someone. It will impact all other areas of our lives too, as we allow this part, this state of us, to just be and not suppress it.
The process can be a little intimidating, as it demands that we really put ourselves “out there”, and with that comes showing our vulnerability. But as always, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Vulnerability is not weakness. On the contrary…it is a source of superhuman strength – as long as we let love permeate everything we do. And that’s when it stops being just an “emotion”…and starts becoming something much bigger, much more powerful – an integral part of who we actually are.
If you want to know more about the concepts of love, vulnerability and how they can amplify your personal strength a hundredfold, feel free to reach out to me anytime. I also invite you to leave any thoughts or comments you have below the post.
May love guide you, always. And a bit of common sense too 😉
