Yes. You read it right. True love has nothing to do with the other person, only yourself. I know I have jarred you to the edge of the seat in shocked disbelief with a statement that every cell of your body knows is as incorrect as ‘The sun rises from the west.’
Let us start with our conventional idea of love. People fancy true love as that exalted feeling of happiness when you are with that special someone and that sadness in the absence of that someone, not to mention a constant worry for their safety and wellbeing. This concept of love is only about the other. Where are you in this whole thing? The proponents of this belief may argue that love is only about the other person. After all, so many romantic best-sellers and movies cannot be wrong. If it is about you then it is not love, it is selfishness they would say.
Let us take a leaf out of nature. A leaf of a tree is a grand and complete expression of itself. It just is. It is not there for somebody else. The fact that somebody else may use the leaf as food is another matter. A blade of grass is magnificently itself in every moment. It is under no pressure from nature to be someone else. A cow that eats grass is only projecting its nature abundantly. A cow’s existence is not about the grass but herself. It only follows its nature, the instincts it has been endowed with.
We know now that everything in nature expresses itself fully and is not bothered about others. Nothing in nature controls others' behavior. Nature only takes care of itself and its expressions. In the process, every blade of grass fills the landscape with green, every leaf rustles in the wind, every flower enriches the wind with its fragrance and every cow grazes in this abundance. The mosaic of life completes itself through these individual life forms expressing themselves and only themselves. This fullest expression of your ‘self’ is true love.
Why then did we come up with the other idea of love? It is because we have alienated ourselves from our true nature. We have allowed our minds rather than our hearts to take over us. A human mind, obsessed with size and importance, may question the wisdom of a leaf’s peace with being just a leaf and not wanting to be a tree. If a blade of grass had a human mind, it would dream of becoming the cow and turning the cow into grass. And then it would be sad when it realizes that this is not possible. Mind always wants to be somebody else and wants others to constantly be somebody else. It always wants us to be in the future or the past instead of being at peace with the now.
Nature does not know time. It only knows the moment, the now. The more you stay with nature, the more you will learn to live in the moment. By being aware of the moment, you give space for the real you, which is the fountainhead of true love and bliss, to express itself more freely. In that space, you experience the joy and love which is unconditional, eternal and free. From that space, you ooze love and happiness irrespective of your partner’s proximity just as the sun emits light for all. Love has nothing to do with the object but everything to do with the subject.
A flower will shower its fragrance on you irrespective of whether you pluck it, crush it under your feet, squeeze it or just let it be in its grand expression at the edge of a stem.
True love has the vastness of the sky, the spirit of the sun, the omnipresence of air, the fragrance of flower and the nurturing of nature.
True love does not filter itself. It just flows from you - eternally, unconditionally and freely.
