We
use the word "love" but we have no more
understanding of love than we do of anger or fear or
jealousy or even joy, because we have seldom
investigated what that state of mind is. What
are the feelings we so quickly label as love?
For many what is called love is not lovely at all
but is a tangle of needs and desires, of momentary
ecstasies and bewilderment. Moments of unity,
of intense feelings of closeness, occur in a mind so
fragile that the least squint or sideways glance
shatters its oneness into a dozen ghostly paranoias.
When we say love we usually mean some emotion, some
deep feeling for an object or person, that
momentarily allows us to open to another. But
in such emotional love, self-protection is never
very far away. Still there is
"business" to the relationship:
clouds of jealousy, possessiveness, guilt,
intentional and unintentional manipulation,
separateness, and the shadow of all previous
"loves" darkens the light of oneness.
But what I mean by love is not an emotion, it is a
state of being. True love has no object.
Many speak of their unconditional love for
another. Unconditional love is the experience
of being; there is no "I" and
"other," and anyone or anything it touches
is experienced in love. You cannot
unconditionally love someone. You can only be
unconditional love. It is not a dualistic
emotion. It is a sense of oneness with all
that is. The experience of love arises when we
surrender our separateness into the universal.
It is a feeling of unity. You don't love
another, you are another. There is no
fear because there is no separation.
Stephen Levine
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