Love is not just that fluttering feeling in your stomach when you meet someone new, or when you’re around someone you really like. That is one kind of love, and it is an important part of any romantic relationship. But, that’s not entirely what I’m talking about today. I’m talking about love in general, all forms of it, and the fact that it must be present for any relationship to work. And, I’m not just talking about love from you towards the other person, but I’m talking about you loving yourself.
Self-Love: OK, you in the back, stop snickering. I’m not talking about THAT kind of self-love. I’m talking about the cliche that “if you don’t love yourself, no one else could possibly ever love you.” This is perhaps the last thing that people consider when they are deciding what they are looking for in a relationship, but it is actually one of the most important. If you do not know who you are, and LOVE who you are, it will show in your actions, speech, and mannerisms. People pick up on that, and for the most part, people don’t want to be around people who think so poorly of themselves. Besides, why would someone else like you, if you don’t even like yourself? So, be proud of who you are, embrace it, and put your best foot forward out there looking for relationships.
Love for Others: There are actually several types of love that a person can feel toward a person (or people). The main three types of love are unconditional love, brotherly love, and romantic love.
Brotherly love: This is the love and comaraderie that you feel when you are with your friends. It signifies the good times you share together, and it signifies the bond that you feel with them in all circumstances. It’s the reason you pick up the phone to talk to them when you’re feeling troubled about something, or when you get that new promotion, or have a date with someone special. It is a must for any successful friendship.
Romantic Love: Now, we’re back to that fluttering feeling in your stomach. This is the love that you feel toward your spouse, lover, or life partner. It is what’s commonly referred to as being “in love”. It is usually strongest at the beginning of a relationship, but it is possible to keep that spark alive, which is something I will be covering in a future article. Although not a must-have for a romantic relationship to survive, it certainly makes the years go by much more enjoyably than they will without it.
Unconditional Love: This is love without requirements. The most common form of unconditional love is the love that parents feel for their children, and vice versa. It is a form of love that essentially means that you always have the other person’s best interest at heart. It is the love that spans all types of situations, and all types of relationships. Without unconditional love, NO RELATIONSHIP will last, no matter how much of the other types of love are present. And, in case you forgot, this applies to Self-Love too. Love yourself no matter what.
So, figure out who you are, and what you stand for, and embrace it. Put that best “you” out there and start forging relationships with people. Love yourself, and love others with your entire being, and your relationships will be successful, lasting, and meaningful.
Will Irvin is the author of Missing Pieces: 21 Secrets of a Successful Relationship, available in paperback, hardcover, or as a downloadable pdf. For more information on the book, visit the book website at MissingPiecesTheBook.com
Will is also the Webmaster for Premier Dating Online, a valuable source for Online Dating Tips, Relationship Advice, and Dating Service Reviews. As an active member of the Online Dating Community, as well as the Online Social Networking Community in general, Will brings that same “street-level” perspective into online relationships, online etiquette, and human relationships in general.
Love is our greatest need. Is it our highest most fulfilling state.
Do we really love or are we simply attached to, identified with or dependent upon the persons we “love”?
Is our love free and unconditional, or is it mixed with various needs, conditions and demands?
What is unconditional love? Is it possible for us to cultivate it?
What is the difference between love and attachment?
How can we determine whether what we feel is love or attachment?
How can we purify our love and move into a higher level of consciousness?
These are some of the many questions that we need to answer in order to create happiness.
Defining Love
Love is a very difficult word to define, perhaps because its reality approaches spiritual dimensions, which are beyond time and space, and thus, our comprehension.
Love is perhaps more easily described by what it is not. Love is not fear, hurt, pain, jealousy, bitterness, hate, separateness, lust, attachment, aggressiveness, ego-centeredness, indifference, possessiveness, suppression – the list goes on.
Love, like God, peace and other spiritual realities, can be perceived more easily through the effects that it creates. We cannot see the wind, but we can see its effects, such as the leaves moving, branches swaying, or the sound of air rushing. We know wind exists by its various side effects. We know there is a Creator because we perceive its effect – creation itself.
What then are the effects of love? Love creates feelings of unity. We feel toward others as we feel towards ourselves. We are as interested in their welfare, happiness, success, health and spiritual growth as much as we are about our own.
Loving others means wanting them to be happy in whatever ways they are guided to their happiness. It breeds understanding, compassion, forgiveness, happiness, excitement, peace, joy, fulfillment and a desire to be helpful in any way we can.
Love is expansion beyond our ego limitations. It is the ability to identify with the other, to let go of our self-interest and personal needs enough to really hear and understand the other’s needs and interests. It means caring enough to sacrifice, when necessary, our own pleasures and desires when the other’s needs are obviously more important.
Love is the force that brings about unity and harmony. It is the “glue” of the universe. It helps persons with different egos, desires, programmings and needs to overcome all those potentially repelling forces and unite.
Love needs not so much to be learned or cultivated, but rather released or brought from within us to the surface. We are love. Our basic nature is love. However, our ignorance, fear and attachment have buried it so deeply within us that it is sometimes difficult to summon or maintain. Loving others steadily, independently of their behavior, is not an easy achievement.
Love versus Need
The power of attraction which we call love is expressed on many levels and in countless ways. The most basic level is that of need. We often use the word love when we really mean, “need”.
We say, “I love you.” But, if we analyze ourselves deeply, we will realize learn we really mean, “I need you.” This is the basic message of most love songs. They lament with sadness, pain, agony and cry out “you left me, I cannot live without you. I need you.”
This is not the highest form of love. It is love mixed with need, attachment and addiction. If it were pure love and the other was happier by leaving us or even happier with someone else, we would be happy for him or her, not full of sadness for ourselves. Loving others means wanting them to be happy, healthy and successful in the ways that they are guided to be.
Love does not create the pain we feel when someone leaves us or rejects us. That pain is generated by our dependency upon that person for our security, pleasure or affirmation.
Needs and attachments create fear, pain and suffering.
Love creates happiness, fulfillment and the experience of our True Selves.
Be sure to look for the remaining the parts of this series:
1. What is Love ?
2. Love or Need for Security ?
3. Love, Pleasure or Affirmation?
4. Selfless Love
5. Spiritual Universal Love
Robert E. Najemy, author of 25 books and life coach with 30 years of experience, has trained over 300 life coaches and now does so over the Internet. Become a life coach.
Over 600 free article and lectures at
http://www.HolisticHarmony.com/
Part 2 – Love or Need for Security ?
Our Love is Mixed With Need. Our love is still mixed with a considerable amount of need. Love wants to give. Need wants to take. Sometimes what we are seeking to take is very subtle and requires deep inner inquiry.
Whenever we feel pain, fear or anger in our relationships, it is because we believe that our needs are in “danger” of not being satisfied. When this happens, our “love” turns to hurt, disappointment, fear, loneliness, inferiority, or bitterness, and sometimes, anger, hate, rage and desire for revenge.
How can love become all these negative emotions? It cannot. The simple truth is that our emotion never was pure love to begin with. It was an “attraction” based to some degree also on need.
This does not mean that we should reject ourselves because we have seldom really loved purely. As we are not yet enlightened spiritual beings, how could we? It would be like rejecting ourselves because we do not yet have a university diploma when we are still in the first grade or because we are a flower bud, which has not yet blossomed. It is only natural that we cannot yet love unconditionally. This is our stage of evolution.
Freeing our Love from Need
The first step towards opening our hearts to real love is to accept and love ourselves exactly as we are with all our weaknesses and faults. Only then can we proceed effectively.
The second step is to begin observing the feelings that are stimulated in our transpersonal. Through objective self-observation, we can determine in which situations we love unconditionally and in which we are feeling “loving” with specific conditions. Following are some examples that will help.
Needing Those Who Make Us Feel Secure
We look to others for security. We might seek security from our parents, spouses, siblings, children, employers, friends, ministers, spiritual teachers or others.
We do feel love toward these beings, but often that love is based on the fact that they offer us a sense of security. If they start behaving in ways that obstruct our feelings of security or if they decide to leave or ignore us, will we still love them?
If our employer fires us, will we still love him or her? If our parents throw us out onto the street, will we still love them? Or is our love tightly woven with the need for security?
If as parents we dream that our children will become economically well off and socially accepted professionals, will we love them the same if they become street artists, beggars or anarchists? Some parents will be able to; others will not.
The basic question is whether or not our feelings of love are steady and consistent regardless of the various changing behaviors of those we “love”. In each case where we perceive our heart closing, we need to discover what we fear in that situation. What might we believe is in danger? Most frequently we lose our love when we fear that our security, self-worth, freedom or pleasure are in danger.
Only when we have realized total inner security, perhaps based on an inner spiritual awakening or on our faith in the Divine, will we be able to love without security attachments.
Only when we know that we can live without others can we really love them steadily.
Society has caused us to completely confuse this matter. We believe that if we love others, then we must be totally dependent on them and should fear that our world would fall apart if something happens to them. This is insecurity.
This is a lack of awareness of our inner spiritual nature and our ability to deal with life. It has nothing to do with love.
Perhaps this is why the Apostle John wrote, “Where there is perfect love, there can be no fear”.
Be sure to look for the remaining the parts of this series:
1. What is Love ?
2. Love or Need for Security ?
3. Love, Pleasure or Affirmation?
4. Selfless Love
5. Spiritual Universal Love
Robert E. Najemy, author of 25 books and life coach with 30 years of experience, has trained over 300 life coaches and now does so over the Internet. Become a life coach.
Over 600 free article and lectures at
http://www.HolisticHarmony.com/
Spiritual Universal Love – Part 5 of 5
A later stage in our spiritual maturation process is the development of spiritual universal love where wisdom or spiritual discrimination is now added to our love. We now perceive all forms as various manifestations of one unchanging, ever blissful, divine consciousness.
In this state we experience pure love in which we cannot distinguish between the other and ourselves. Christ referred to this state saying, “I am in you and you are in me.”
Although, as in the previous stage, we continue to help and serve wherever we can, we are not so affected by the pain and suffering we encounter. We realize that the real spiritual consciousness expressing itself through that form has chosen to pass through that experience because it is exactly the next stimulus, which he or she needs for his or her spiritual growth process. We are now aware that we are all passing through the precise experiences, pleasant and unpleasant, which we need in order to wake up from our dream of this illusory material reality.
Although we are not affected by the suffering we see, we are even more wholly dedicated toward eliminating it. Thus, we love and accept all beings as they are while we direct our energies toward facilitating this process of our mutual spiritual unfoldment. Each of us moves forward in his or her own unique way.
Previously we may have tried to solve people’s problems for them. Now we realize that the most effective way we can others is to love and accept them as they are and empower them to find their own inner wisdom and strength in order to overcome their problems.
We now realize that the main solution for the world’s economic, political and social problems is education.
We experience such “wise love” or “loving wisdom” from the highest spiritual teachers. It is sometimes difficult to understand their love and caring, which at times to the beginner, may seem like indifference, especially when we pass through tests and expect sympathy and emotional reactions.
It is difficult for some to realize that it is sometimes more loving to allow someone to suffer a little more so he or she can find the solution him or herself and grow stronger and freer from ignorance. Only a realized being can know, however, when “not to help” externally because this would be the most loving act for a specific person.
Many parents would do well to learn this form of wise love. They might help their children far more if they refrain from solving their problems every time they are in trouble.
No one should, however, misconceive that this text is suggesting that we should not help those who are in need. We must help, but we must also ask ourselves what the most appropriate help would be in each situation.
The greatest and most precious help we can offer to those we love, is to help them get in touch with their inner power and wisdom. This, at times, means helping, and at others, means letting them struggle by themselves while we mentally pray for them and visualize them in light.
For an awakened spiritual being to see someone cry about some unhappy event in his or her life or fear some future possibility, might be like our watching a small child cry about a toy that has broken or express fear of the “boogie man.” We sympathize with and understand the child’s feelings. We love it and we want to help it, but we cannot really be worried.
Those who experience this level of love sometimes do not exhibit the emotional display which others may be used to interpreting as indications of love. As we grow spiritually, we begin to understand, however, that real love is a love for the soul within the other, which is seeking to free itself from ignorance and the illusion of weakness and fear.
These spiritually awakened beings offer help on other levels through their positive thought forms, prayers or sometimes, direct contact on the astral level, usually in dreams.
In this way, help is given without undermining the others’ self-confidence.
Loving the Wave or the Ocean
Part 6 of a 6 part series on the “The Stages of Love”
Robert Elias Najemy
When we limit our love to a specific person (we do not mean sexually, but rather emotionally, mentally and spiritually), it is difficult to experience love in its highest expression. We love this person and not others. We tend to focus on a specific person, “loving” them often because they offer us security, pleasure or affirmation; or because we consider them to be “ours.”
Pure love is universal. It can express itself toward any particular being, but it cannot limit itself to that being or group of beings. If it does, then it is love mixed with conditions. Each individual is one of the countless waves on an ocean of consciousness. The ocean is the One Universal Consciousness, which is temporarily taking the form of those specific waves and then disappearing into the formlessness of the ocean again before reappearing as billions of others. All waves are expressions of the one ocean.
When we single out one specific wave from the ocean of beings and limit our love to that, we are, in essence, loving an illusion. That being which we love is just a temporary manifestation of the one Universal Being, which manifests as all the other beings simultaneously.
That form on which we focus is a temporary physical, emotional, mental manifestation that will dissolve back into the ocean. When we love the water in that wave, that is, its spiritual essence, the spirit within, we begin to love all waves. The same water is in all the waves. The same spiritual essence is in all beings.
Then we love the spiritual essence in others and not only their form or the specific benefits that we receive from them. We love the spirit within.
Our love now becomes both unconditional and universal. It is unconditional because it does not depend on what others do or do not do, and universal because we start to love more and more people independent of their appearance, character and other superficial factors. We love the spirit within them. We as spirit are one with the spirit, which is within them.
So we can love the wave or we can love the ocean and thus all the waves. This is our choice.
Love is like the gold ore that is brought up from the earth; it is mixed with other metals (emotions, needs). Our job is to purify that gold through our efforts to love unconditionally in all of our relationships, no matter what the other does or does not do.
Only then will we truly be happy.
Only then will experience our true Self.
Be sure to look for the remaining the parts of this series:
1. What is Love ?
2. Love or Need for Security ?
3. Love, Pleasure or Affirmation?
4. Selfless Love
5. Spiritual Universal Love
Robert E. Najemy, author of 25 books and life coach with 30 years of experience, has trained over 300 life coaches and now does so over the Internet. Become a life coach.
Over 600 free article and lectures at
http://www.HolisticHarmony.com/
Why is it that so often when we feel we are in love, we also feel we are in bondage if anything happens to shake the feeling of “security” in the love? Why does love so often make us dependent on the other person? Shouldn’t love be a marvelous and freeing feeling rather than these other sensations of need and fear and dependence?
Songs Say it All
Songs so often say it all: “Can’t Live, if Livin’ is Without You”, “I Need Your Lovin’”, “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone”, “I Fall to Pieces”, It’s You I Need to Take the Blues Away, It Must be Love, “Without You I am Nothing”, “I’m Drowning Without Your Love”, If you Leave, I Won’t be Able to Breathe”, etc.
The message each of those songs gives is that when the person we love is no longer with us, we can’t go on. We need that person to be able to stay alive…at least figuratively speaking. Without the person we love, we are nothing, we can not bear to live.
And while we all know that this is not exactly true, most of us have certainly been in the position of feeling something akin to those words.
So what does it mean? Does it really mean that loving someone implies that we need the other person so much that we simply feel we can not go on without them? Or could all that be a fallacy?
Typical Love Scenario
Let’s examine what happens in a typical love scenario…
Boy meets girl (man meets woman), chemistry, infatuation, bliss, love, we’ve all been there and know how that part of it goes. But what is really happening? Raging hormones answer only a small part of the question, even though they can create a vast impact. An article in the weekend supplement of Spain’s daily El Mundo (8/7/06) refers to University of Pisa’s Donatella Marazziti’s work on romantic love activating parts of the brain associated with addiction. She has found that falling in love is a bit like going crazy from the point of view of brain chemicals and hormones (see also New Scientist).
Jung and the Intelligent Psyche
Carl Gustav Jung said that our psyche is so infinitely intelligent that it attracts us to certain individuals (as certain individuals’ psyche causes them to be attracted to us) in order that we experience precisely that which we need to grow. (See my April 2006 Newsletter: Committed Relationships: Use Them to Grow Towards Self-Understanding and Real Love).
So how do we typically grow? By going through an experience of some sort that may not be easy. We grow at school by learning, studying, and taking exams. We grow in life by becoming more aware, and we generally tend to become more aware when some life experience obliges us to do so.
By extrapolating, we might say that in relationships we grow most quickly through experiences that are not necessarily easy. And going back to Jung, he clearly proposes that throughout the course of our lives it is our psyche that in its infinite intelligence leads us to be attracted to precisely those individuals who most have the potential to be instruments in our individual growth. In order for that to work, evidently we first have to be fully in relationship with those people. So we fall in love, we begin to feel that our happiness depends in some measure on the other person, and so begins our need of that person.
External vs Internal Needs
An external need, in others words, when we depend on something external to ourselves for our well-being, frequently carries within it the seeds of failure. In the case of a relationship, it may often be the cause of power plays between the two people, the less needy one being the one to dominate the relationship, and the needier one to resentfully accept this dominance due to his or her need for the other partner.
Obsessiveness, Possessiveness, or the Need to Control
Power plays are not the only manifestation of relationships mired in mutual need. Another frequent expression is obsessiveness or possessiveness, or a need to control. And you can imagine – if you haven’t been there – the kind of resentment and negative feelings that this can generate on the part of both people. Akin to any substance addiction, obsessiveness or possessiveness or the need to control can take people to hellish places in their hearts and minds that few of us would wish to visit. I have created an entire workshop on this topic, because although this type of addiction is often masked by a veneer of sophistication, it occurs more frequently than most people suspect, and makes the existence of those that suffer from it a living nightmare.
Does Needing Mean You Really Love?
So why do we become needy in relationships? Of the roughly 40% men and 60% women that come to my private practice, many would initially answer that ‘needing’ your love partner is how it should be. But why should love imply a feeling that almost always develops into something negative, and at best, makes those who feel it, as said at the beginning of this article, that they could not live without the beloved, thus ‘proving’ in their minds, that this is really love? Is that really what love is all about?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to assume that love means freedom rather than independence? (See my article Are You in Love, or Do You Love?). So what does needing our partner tell us?
Falling In Love With Yourself…
Let’s start with the falling in love part. What are we actually falling in love with? Stated simply, we fall in love with those bits and pieces of ourselves that we have not yet recognized, but that we find (via projection) in the partner. Is she tender and understanding? Is he funny and the center of the party? Is she strong and enterprising? Is he confident, with a great sense of integrity? All of those qualities may well be part of your partner’s character, but the fact that you fell in love with those specific traits, tells you that they are actually part of your own character as well.
Since you do not yet manifest those qualities, because you have not yet recognized them in yourself, you need your partner to be able to ‘be in touch with’ that part of you. That is what ‘hooks’ you on your partner. Your partner’s presence in your life gives you contact to those parts of you that you have not yet developed, making you feel that your partner is absolutely indispensable to your well-being.
When Your Partner Leaves
So then, when something happens to the relationship, or your partner leaves, or threatens to leave, is when the strong feelings of need arise. This is the time when you should realize that these strong feelings of need are a vast red flag letting you know something is going on inside of you that only you can do something about. If you ignore it, or translate it into “I was deeply wounded by my partner”, or “my partner did not return my feelings when I most needed him/her, so I guess that means I always choose the wrong people”, or “next time I will choose better, so that this kind of thing never happens to me again”, then instead of resolving your inner dilemma, you will merely perpetuate it by maintaining the status quo inside of you, falling in love with yet another person that puts you in touch with bits of you that you have not yet recognized in yourself, and thus setting yourself up to be ‘needy’.
Can it be Solved?
So what is the solution? Simple to state, less simple to execute (mainly because it requires some of that inner discipline that most of us don’t want to exercise): work on those bits of yourself that you catch a glimpse of in the beloved. Examine yourself to see where they might reside in you. Work at developing them; growing them. If you do this, I guarantee you that the next time you fall in love, it will be with a smaller degree of external need, and hence, a greater degree of internal freedom. Or, if you remain with the same person, your love will grow into something infinitely more loving.
Note: look for an article in the near future about need in love relationships that is the consequence of an early dysfunctional relationship with one of the parents. This may cause the individual to grow up believing that love means hurting in some way. Then, when the individual finds someone who ‘plays’ that role for him/her, that person becomes necessary to the first person’s emotional survival – or so it is believed. The need that arises from this has more to do with a lack of self-esteem or poor boundaries, than with getting in touch with unrecognized bits of the self, and thus the work that needs to be done is on one’s self esteem in connection with the construction of healthy boundaries.
Dr. Kortsch is a psychotherapist, clinical hypnotherapist, relationship coach, author, and professional speaker. She broadcasts a live weekly radio show on the Internet and her website. She works with clients to move them towards greater personal, professional, and relationship success with her integral and human potential raising approach to life. Sign up for her free cutting edge and inspiring ezine at http://www.advancedpersonaltherapy.com
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