Tag: unconditional

On Falling Out of Love

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

How can I fall out of love? Falling in love seems so simple, but after going through heartbreak, it seems so tough to move on. There is always so much pain, anger, grief, denial, you name it!

Sincerely,

Heartbreak Hotel

Dear HH,

You can only fall into something. You cannot fall out of something. The whole reason it is so easy to fall in love is because gravity does all the work. If you were skydiving, it’s easy to fall isn’t it? But you want to fly back up, you need something to work against the gravity don’t you?

In this case the gravity is just the biological need to reproduce. Nature doesn’t care whether you are in love or not, it only wants you to reproduce.

I want you to understand that if you keep getting heartbroken over and over the only thing that will happen is that you start becoming weary and protective of yourself. Every time you move into a new situation you will trust less and less to avoid the potential heartbreak. This is no way to live.

So what am I saying? I am always going on and on about being vulnerable to life, but now I am telling you that if you keep loving like this, you will just cause more nonsense for yourself. So which is it then?

Yes you must be vulnerable to life. What you are doing is not about vulnerability. Because you feel intense emotion, you think you are being vulnerable. But quite the opposite is happening.

You want to be able to do something intense and avoid the consequences of the action. Your definition of love is to totally entangle yourself with another person. Whether it is physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, socially, whatever – you want two to become one, don’t you?

This is all the hollywood and novels that have given you a very skewed definition of love.

Someone must complete you. That is most people’s definition of love. I am saying, what is so missing from you that you need completion? Anything you need is within you, why do you need to extract it from someone else?

If one day you see someone beautiful and think “This is it, the one true love for me“, and you are overcome with feelings of bliss, where is this bliss happening? Is the person sitting there shooting beams of bliss at you?

Obviously, you are manufacturing this bliss within you. You’ve just added an extra step. First someone must come to be the object of your affection, then you generate the feeling you seek. This is an inefficient and unrealistic way to approach your own happiness.

If every time in this life you need to feel something – happiness, joy, sadness, anger, any damn emotion – you rely on the external people or situation to create it within you, then you are just an accident. All that you experience is just because you accidentally stumble upon it.

First you must take your life into your own hands. Love is not happening because of someone. It is happening within you. Love is what you are, not who you are with.

Your love should not be hoarded for one person. You should exude it to all beings. Look upon the whole earth and all that is in it with the same love you would give your very own child. That is love. Whatever you are doing is just nature’s drive to reproduce with some decoration added.

I’m not trying to take all the fun and beauty out of relationships. I am not against romance. This is just a matter of how things work. If you depend on the external to dictate how you feel, you are always headed for heartbreak.

Why is this so? Well, has anyone ever done anything 100% the way you wanted them to? Yet you have all these expectations for the person you care about most, on how they should make you feel. They can never live up to all of it. It is cruel of you to treat them like this, labeling it as love.

You are not asking how to fall out of love. After totally entrapping and entangling yourself at every level with someone, and creating a thousand different expectations and conclusions about them, you ask “How can I undo this quickly?”

Do you see how silly this sounds? You made your bed, now you must lie in it.

You can not avoid cause and effect. You decided to entangle yourself. Now you must untangle. You don’t have to actively do anything. Time will take care of it if you just simply stop feeding all these entanglements. In fact, that alone is the fastest way.

All the opinions you have about how the relationship was, who they are, how they should or shouldn’t have treated you, all that analysis you must stop entertaining. It will come up from time to time in your mind. Simply let it pass.

Anyway it is all false. No one is how you see them in your mind. They are who they are, not what you think they are. They were always that way, but you dressed them up because it made you feel good.

The question isn’t about falling out of love because it was never really love in the first place. I’m not saying that there wasn’t any genuine love for the person there, of course there was always that seed. But because of all the nonsense you expected, it never blossomed into unbridled, unconditional love. That is the only way love can be.

What you must learn to do is throw yourself totally into life, intensely, but at the same time not become entangled in it. Involvement without entanglement, I have said again and again, this is the way.

How to accomplish this means that you must allow people to be free. They are not yours to label, yours to decide how they should be or treat you or to be with you or not. In order for you to love someone, it requires nothing of them. It requires no action from you either. Simply in your heart, love them.

Practice being like this. Live fully, but when a relationship doesn’t go the way you want and ends, be at peace with it. Thank them, forgive them, honour them, cry if you want even, but continue to love them as you love all.

Your time to be together is over, that is normal and natural. Now something new will happen. That is the way of life.

Don’t carry your past with you into every new situation. Experience each new relationship with vulnerability and openness, and don’t hold onto to any of it, ever.

Totally vulnerable. Never entangled. This is the answer you seek. Falling out of love is never going to happen. You are love! You cannot fall out of what you are.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Love

~ SE ~ 2 Comments

Dear True Self,

I am very lucky and have many wonderful people in my life. I love them dearly, but sometimes I still get frustrated with their actions. When things are good I feel great love. When things are challenging I almost want nothing to do with them. How do we practice love always, unconditionally?

Sincerely,

Conditional Love

Dear CL,

Love is not something you do. Love is something that you are.

What you are calling love is not love. Though you may have many pleasant feelings towards people in your life, what you have is a reward and punishment system. If expectations are met, you reward with loving acts and feelings. When your expectations are not met, no love. Tell me, does that sound like love to you?

You mentioned loving unconditionally. This often becomes some big burden or endeavour in people’s minds. It’s not some big puzzle to be solved. The only way to love is unconditionally!

First you must realize that simple truth. Then you will see what you are calling love is only a shadow or a whisper of the real thing that you employ only when it suits you. Love can only be unconditional. Anything that is conditional is not love.

Love is like a fragrance. When a jasmine flower blossoms, it gives off a sweet and beautiful aroma. It doesn’t decide,

“This person is a good person so they get my aroma, that person is nasty so they can have a nasty aroma…”

Doesn’t the whole idea of selectively exuding the perfume sound ridiculous? The flower has blossomed. It has gone through much to bloom into this beautiful piece of life. To give off the fragrance is a natural consequence of a certain unfurling, a certain transformation. Once that blossoming happens, the fragrance will come out no question.

You must make yourself in such a way that you look upon everything with love. Then you will exude love in every encounter, in every endeavour. You exuding love is not dependent on who is receiving it any more than the jasmine flower. You exude love simply because you have blossomed. Loving thoughts, loving words, and loving actions will be natural consequences of your transformation.

You are asking about how to act lovingly when you are bothered by other’s actions. Let’s be real, it’s not about love. What you need is more patience, more perspective, less attachment, etc. That is what you should be working on. That is the soil from which love can bloom. If you want the fragrance, you must work in the filth to grow.

I don’t want to make it sound as though you have never felt love in your life, or that every act you have done lovingly is somehow a lie. These acts have most likely come from a very loving place. The issue is that you have sullied them with so many expectation and rules.

Let’s say you have a child. You look at the child with such love and adoration. You have become attached to your child. Because it is your child, you feel it is some pure form of love. I am saying why can’t you have that love for other children? For other adults? For yourself? Have love for all life!

The reason exuding love is so difficult for you is because you have too many preferences. You love this thing more than that thing. You have so many rules to your love. If you want to be more loving, then you need to be all inclusive. You need to see that you are capable of loving every single atom in this existence the way you would love your own flesh and blood.

Expand your definition of what deserves your love. Look at a leaf with the love you gaze upon your child with. Look at someone who annoys you with the same love. Look at as much life as you can with that same quality. Don’t reserve love and hoard it, saving it only for a select few. Let it explode forth like the jasmine flower’s fragrance, in every direction!

You are afraid that if you aren’t selective with your love, somehow you are enabling those who wrong you, or people will take advantage of you, or that they don’t deserve it. You loving everything has nothing to do with them. You are cultivating your fragrance. If you become picky and choosy, nothing will take root.

There is a difference between how you are within and the actions you take in the world. To look upon even the most annoying person with love doesn’t require you to do anything with them. You don’t have to say a word to them even. You don’t even have to be near them. You just love them. That’s it.

You can communicate to them your frustrations, you can cut them out of your life, you can befriend them – none of that changes the fact that you are capable of loving them exactly as they are.

When love bursts forth from you in this way, including everything and everyone, it transforms into a higher form – compassion. You feel what you once only reserved for a select few for all of life. Love should always grow like this, infinitely expanding and encompassing all.

After all, what would you rather have – select moments of love, or the highest possibility of love in your life?

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.