Love and Freedom

If you have ever had a particularly close love relationship, maybe with a dear friend, you will see how this is the case. Chances are you felt an attraction, a pull, a love toward that particular person. As you get to know them more and more, you discover that the love is there for a reason. Maybe it is there to teach you something, to help you grow, to help you change. Now the fact is that love is always there, has always been there and will always be there. It is simply easier to experience in relation to other people with whom you have a heart connection.

The biggest challenge with love for most people is the desire to cling, the desire to keep this something that we call love. Yet continual change is the nature of everything. So you must learn to relax on this path of love. You must learn to relax and allow love to come and go, to ebb and flow as it may. In this way, love can lead you to greater and greater freedom. You enjoy being with your friends, your family, your lover, but you also know how to be alone. When you are together, there is love. When you are alone, there is also love. You let everyone be free to do as they may. You are free to be as you are; to do as you do. They are free to be as they are; to do as they do. When you come together, it is a beautiful sharing. When you are apart, it is also lovely. You learn to float with the tide of love, coming and going, enjoying and relaxing.

You slowly learn to love the love. You learn to follow the love. If love leads you into yourself for a while, go there. If love leads you to particular people for some time, go there. If it then leads you elsewhere, just follow the love. For ultimately, you are love itself, only most of us do not know it. As you learn to follow love, you discover that it always guides you, teaches you, and informs you.

In speaking of love in relationships, one of my beloved spiritual teachers, Sri Nisargaddatta Maharaj said the following: “You are neither the husband nor the wife. You are the love between the two.”

Allow your life to be a journey, an exploration. Inquire into this something called love; this force that permeates everything. Explore it within yourself; explore it outside of yourself. Follow it where it leads you, and you are guaranteed to learn something that you don’t already know. You are guaranteed to learn something about life, about love, about yourself, and about everyone else.