On desiring infinity while experiencing finitude. Thoughts on love. Part II.
Talking and writing about unconditional love is not difficult. What is tricky is to bring that magnificent, metaphysical love into our daily lives, into our relationships. That´s another thing. In moments of crisis, we get into this place where love is not pleasant and joyful, but challenging and uncertain. We [may] love unconditionally but our personalities clash from time to time. Our insecurities arise, we don´t know where we are going, we get all sort of disappointments, satisfactions, doubts, certainties, frustrations, happiness and, yes, sorrows too. There is a bit of everything in there.
“In this eagerness to fill my emptiness. / In this eagerness to look and to see what wishfully I am missing. / In this eagerness of my mind to experience you in such a way that I can find myself. / In this eagerness, I forgot and I found in the silence the disintegration of every form: my own reflection.” Yasmín Navarrete [book “Por Descartes”]
When we practice loving-kindness meditation (also known as Metta), we expand our minds and stop thinking only for our benefit, on satisfying only our desires, and we replace, at least for few moments, our thoughts of “I want” and “give me” for “may all living beings experience happiness”, “I wish good to all”. If we really dare to look inside of us and recognize our own demons, we agree that these moments of cessation of selfishness are priceless.
It has been taught by wise people (I learned this from Catholic priests and Buddhist monks) that giving is what makes our relationship grow and prosper, healthy and satisfactory. It is not surprising then that giving is a form of loving-kindness and a way to go beyond the limits of our reactive nature or ego. The way to bring in the loving-kindness that we practice in meditation into our lives is by giving. We expand ourselves and step out of our egotistic nature when giving, even in restricted or stressful circumstances.
But let´s be careful on this: not because giving is the way of development and growth we are gonna tolerate abusive relationships or situations and continue giving at expenses of ourselves. What we can practice is to give, and find creative ways to give every time, not only when we feel good and feelings are reciprocated, but especially when we are under the influence of our own ego, when we want to react, when we want to yell at our partner or friend, when we feel victims of the situation, insecure about the relationship, when we complain, when we judge, when we blame, when we take our relationship for granted. That´s the job that love, real love, guide us to do. It will never lead us to self-destruction, but to a more and more delightful and complete existence.
“Ego has no memory of love experience. If you are really in love, for that single moment an ecstasy happens; the ego is not there. Boundaries merge, mingle, meet, disappear into each other.” Osho
The nature of love is unconditional, infinite, but we live in a conditioned reality (we experience material limits, limits of time and space, we have social/cultural conditioning, personal beliefs about how things “should be”, individual needs, our personality etc.). Considering this, writing about unconditional love seems naive, delusional or idealistic, so… what do we do? In the meantime, nothing. Our unique responsibility is to keep our ego at bay, to transform that energy, when it emerges, into something to give, and to become a bit less selfish in the process… after all not only our close relationships benefit from this, but also our occupation: what is better than a business which seeks contributing to society in a good way? Is there anything better than someone who works for the benefit of others and not only for him/herself? We just allow love to flow, to continue its journey and to stretch and restrict us so we can finally start to be open to the possibility that love is not about us or for us, but through us.
You can check the first part of this article here
Credits for the image @spikaartist