Being “in love” from a Progressive Love standpoint feels the same as being in love in any other context. You are deeply and intensely drawn and attracted to a person to the point the mere thought of them consumes you and whips up a storm of emotions. The difference in the progressive love paradigm is that you maintain an awareness that you are not your emotions and that the source of the attraction is within you as opposed to outside of you.
In other words, you’re in it, but not of it. What you feel for this person has more to do with you seeing a part of yourself that you love, in them. That’s what people are seeing and experiencing when they are “in love” with someone, the reflection of themselves, whether past, present, or potential, in that person. That’s why the pull is so strong; it’s YOU.
That’s why “in love” can be so painful as well because in the end who do we hate the most? Ourselves. So the unbalanced, egotistical view of ourselves that we see in this person, that we are so “in love” with, is also what makes us sick about ourselves. That’s why you see the heights of hate come out in these same relationships, usually on the back end, with extreme behavior (i.e. drama).
That said, I wouldn’t avoid an being “in love” per se, but I would definitely understand there is a major lesson in understanding yourself better which is the purpose of this attraction and relationship. If you can keep that at the fore, then there’s hope in all your relationships.
WHY AM I “IN LOVE” WITH “YOU”?
We know that being “in love” is the super strong draw to someone, really intense. You have to ask yourself, why am I drawn so strongly to THIS person as opposed to these others? When you analyze it and think about (for those who’ve been there), it’s not a physical based draw that we’re talking about. You’re not “in love” with their ass, legs, hands, feet, etc even though those features may be great. If it’s not physical, then it must be mental (personality, character, the way they are, how they love you, their energy or vibration, etc.) which is fairly intangible, but recognizable by how it makes YOU feel. This is the link back to YOU. These personality traits and ways they act are what you’re connecting too. It will be these same intangibles that YOU will eventually despise; thus, the almost inevitable, eventual breakup.
Being “in love” is an experience to be enjoyed. It’s like any other strong feeling; it’s just a feeling based on your relation to an object. Like how YOU feel when you see a cute little puppy or your favorite chocolate cake in the window. Your love for chocolate cake is more based on YOU than the cake per se. It’s YOUR love of chocolate that brings up that feeling, not the cake. How do you know? You’ll get the same feeling when you see another piece and another. And when YOU start to love chocolate less over time (if that were to happen because our food desires do change over time), is it because chocolate changed? No. It’s because YOU changed. Just like you won’t fall “in love” with only one person even if those instances differ slightly for whatever reason. Is the next person you fall “in love” with the exact same as the others? No. But, what is the same? YOU.
Is your “in love” feeling for chocolate cake a problem? No. As long as you don’t indulge in it every day because if you do your relationship to it will change. You’ll find things you no longer like about it, like how it makes you sick sometimes or whatever. You’ll see how you suddenly need some space from it or are suddenly drawn to apple pie from some strange reason – YOU CHEATER YOU.
“How long have you been eating apple pie? Is she better than me? I know she flaunted that flakey crust in your face when the waitress brought out the desert tray. I should have slapped that crust off her face right there, but I have class. She’s a bitch and you’re no better! Have you been doing threesomes with her and that slippery vanilla ice cream? Why? Is it me? Have I changed? Am I no longer as thick and rich or brown as I once was? Maybe I’m to dark for you now that you’re making more money. I don’t care, just pack your shit and get out.” – Chocolate Cake
But, why would you need space from it if you’re so “in love” with it? Because you’re not in love with IT, but that one part of it that reflects what YOU love about YOURSELF. When the whole cake is in your face everyday you’ll find plenty not to love about it. Hello apple pie!
So when you understand what within you craves and desires chocolate cake so much or what quality it has that makes you drop your diet when you see a slice then you can master that part of you that you currently have no control over. Then you can start to actually choose when and how you will eat the cake as opposed to letting that emotion and desire drive your decision-making.
IT’S ABOUT LOVE AND HATE
Why is this important? It’s important because we use the same logic to hate people as well, right. Being “in love” is the inverse of being “in hate”. This is the whole basis for racism, sexism, homophobia, and all human biases. It’s your relation to the object as driven by your inner conditionings and beliefs, not the object itself that drives your hate. I know, I know; it’s just something about them that you can’t stand. Or maybe they rubbed you the wrong way and you can’t stand that can you? The thing is, when you really look at their behavior and what pissed you off so bad and made you hate them, you’ll find it’s not too different than what you’ve done in the past or would do in a certain situation or have considered doing yourself. As a matter of fact, there’s probably someone out there who looks at you in the same way you look at this person you hate so much. Just something to meditate on…
INSECURITY
Does insecurity play into the feeling of being “in love”? Insecurity is rooted in fear of personal loss based on a vision of a “bad” outcome (i.e. like being alone, not getting married, looking bad in front of family and parents, etc.). So insecure behavior can sometimes mask as being “in love” or even truly loving someone because it causes you to do a number of things, many of which are extreme to keep this person in your life. But insecurity is not related to being “in love” or true “love”.
“In love” is more tied to enchantment. True “love” is more tied to doing what is right for the person you are with because you believe in your heart it’s the right thing to do whether you agree with it or not, whether it’s comfortable or not. Insecurity means you’ll do whatever it takes to not loose the person you’re with or not have them grow beyond what you’re comfortable with out of fear for yourself only. So insecurity and “in love” aren’t related in my opinion.
That’s something to ponder. Enjoy!
RAKHEM SEKU
Bravo! Bravo! Round of Applause.
At first, upon reading this piece, I disagreed most vehemently. It made me sad. It hurt. I couldn’t help but feel it on a very personal level. All the mystery, depth, and radiance of being in love, reduced to ego worship, reduced further in comparison to inanimate objects, then ending in contempt and scorn and separation. Then I calmed myself and realized that there was nothing for me to disagree with. This is your truth. How can anyone disagree with another’s personal truth?
But if we’re all One…if we’re all the same…if separateness is indeed an illusion as I believe it is…then if you’re loving someone else or me for that which you see in them that you love about yourself…then you’re still loving that person, you’re still loving me. Since loving yourself would be to love me…and loving me would be to love yourself. After further consideration…I’ve come to feel that this is in fact how it is. Because this is how I love you. There is no separation of YOU and I.The only difference, it seems, is that you loved in me surface level traits that you loved about yourself. While I saw/see…felt/feel the deep of you. I identified with the Divine in you that is you that is me…and I loved/love it fiercely. I always will. If you can’t see and recognize this…it can only be because deep down you don’t see and feel and recognize your own Divinity…that is the only way you could ever hate yourself…and that is the only way you could ever despise me or any of the other women with you whom you’ve been in love, and later despised, closing yourself off emotionally or physically or both, and then repeating the cycle. For some… in-love, deep love, unconditional love…they are all happening at once…they are all the same. You can’t differentiate between them. For some there is no separation, no graduation…no beginning, no end. For some, love is seen, felt, uncovered, and rediscovered…deeply, completely, instantaneously…forever.
I believe being in love, regardless of the level of awareness and consciousness, is more than something to merely be enjoyed…I believe it is a great blessing and gift…because just as love-making, the joining of bodies and hearts, is often times an introduction to the feeling of unity to Source for those who desire and crave it on a subconscious level, but know no other way to tap into it, so can being in love serve as an introduction. Contrary to popular belief, I really feel that the uncovering of love of self and the realization of self as love begins in reverse…meaning we fall in love with others before we fall in love with ourselves, seeing in them things we mistakenly feel are absent or lacking in ourselves and the world at large. I feel that only after many experiences does that feeling of love begin to move inward as we begin to re-identify with it…as we progress.
Love, just like everything else, meets us where we are. We can only stay open and strive to for a deeper understanding, a deeper allowance, and a deeper capacity. I honor where I am. I honor where you are.
Love and Passion in Tantric Buddhist Art:
Notwithstanding the fact that the Buddha essence is non-polar, Buddhist iconographers use sexual polarity to symbolize the twin concepts of insight and compassion. All goddesses are symbols of insight and the gods represent compassion. The union of compassion and insight symbolizes the non-polarized state of bodhicitta, or the mind of enlightenment, which is represented visually by showing two deities engaged in sexual union. Tibetans characterize such images as yab-yum, which literally means father-mother; in Sanskrit the expression is yuganaddha (pair united). This sexual metaphor is also used to denote the highest stage of yoga in which there is no polarity, no discrimination, and the truth is indivisible as the vajra itself. It may be added parenthetically that while such images, whether statues or paintings, are today much sought after by collectors and boldly displayed in museums, in Tibet they were always meant to be seen only by the initiated. The rites associated with these images were also arcane and not for public consumption.
The word Tantra itself is derived from the verbal root tan, meaning to “weave”. Many things are interwoven on the Tantric path, including the lives of men and women. The Buddha couples of Tantric iconography celebrate this deep harmony of the sexes. The purpose of this dynamic was the creation of partnerships devoted to the realization of the ultimate truth. For instance, the man cultivates pure vision by seeing the woman as a deity, her sexual organ as the throne of enlightenment, and her sexual fluid as divine nectar. Thus according to the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, sexual union also constitutes a fire sacrifice, as performed by the creator god Prajapati upon creating woman:
Having created her, he worshipped her sexual organ;
Therefore a woman’s sexuality should be worshipped.
He stretched forth from himself a stone for pressing nectar
[i.e., causing a woman's sexual fluid to flow]
And impregnated her with that.
Her lap is the sacrificial altar;
Her hair, the sacrificial grass;
Her skin the soma press;
The depths of her sexual organ, the fire in the middle
. . . . . . . . . . Many mortals…go forth from this world…without merit,
Namely, those who practice sexual union without knowing this.
Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 6.4.1-4
Often the mother is shown in a posture with both legs around the father’s waist. In this remarkable and richly symbolic manifestation, both the male and the female are emanations of the Buddha. They appear simultaneously united and independent, like the complex relationship of sameness and difference between wisdom (female) and compassion (male) in the enlightened state. Ponderous, energetic forms confront the viewer in this stunning portrayal. Shamvara (supreme bliss) embraces the massive sky blue body of his consort Vajravarahi, holding in his hands various implements symbolic of his triumph over ignorance and evil. She gazes rapturously and intently at her consort with her head thrown back, heightening their electrifying aura. Two of her arms tightly clutch Shamvara’s neck. His first two arms embrace his consort, and holding a Vajra and a bell make the diamond HUM – sound gesture with the crossed wrists, behind her back. This gesture celebrates the inseparable union of method and wisdom.
The father-mother union image is not an example of erotic art, but is a manifestation of the Buddha’s highest spiritual essence. More than metaphorical, to the devout Tibetan this image is concrete evidence of the existence of great spiritual attainment. The female (mother) represents transcendent wisdom: the direct awareness of reality as the Buddha experienced it and taught it. The male (father), represents compassion for all beings, which is the natural expression of such wisdom. Their union, although exquisitely blissful, is ultimately undertaken out of compassion for the world. This sacred communion of the male and female Buddha generates waves of bliss and harmony that turn the world into a Mandala (container of essence) and showers forth a rain of nectar that satisfies the spiritual hunger in the hearts of living beings everywhere. Modern depth psychology has recognized such images to represent the deepest archetypes of the unconscious, integrating the powerful instinctual energies of life into a consciously sublimated and exalted state.
The texts often refer to the union of a lotus and vajra, or diamond scepter. Clearly, “lotus” and vajra are metaphors, not literal terms. One is not meant to bring together a flower and a scepter, but something denoted by these terms. Depending upon the level of interpretation, uniting the lotus and the vajra can mean uniting wisdom and compassion, or bliss and emptiness, within the practitioner’s psyche, or bringing together the female and male organs in physical union, or a number of other things that must be combined on the path to enlightenment.
Along with Gopa, he experienced bliss.
By uniting the diamond scepter and lotus,
He attained the fruit of bliss.
Buddhahood is obtained from bliss, and
Apart from women there will not be bliss
And at another place:
The man [sees] the woman as a goddess
The woman [sees] the man as a god.
By joining the diamond scepter and lotus,
They should make offerings to each other.
There is no worship apart from this.
… Candamaharosana-tantra
The forms expressing this union are based upon the germinal mantra ‘Om mani padme Hum’. This mantra contains both mani, meaning jewel, synonym for vajra, the word which means diamond, thunderbolt and the male organ, and padme meaning ‘in the lotus’ (locative case of padma), a symbol for the female sexual organ, the outer opening of which resembles the petals of a lotus. This formal similarity, as well as the fact that the lotus is a Buddhist symbol of purity and enlightenment, makes this magnificent flower a natural symbol for feminine sexuality. The supportive texts envision a resplendent world of vivid color, choreographed movement, exquisite texture, and intimate gesture:
Constantly take refuge at my feet, my dear…
Be gracious, beloved, and
Give me pleasure with your diamond scepter.
Look at my three-petaled lotus,
Its center adorned with a stamen.
It is a Buddha paradise, adorned with a red Buddha,
A cosmic mother who bestows
Bliss and tranquility on the passionate.
Abandon all conceptual thought and
Unite with my reclining form;
Place my feet upon your shoulders and look me up and down.
Make the fully awakened scepter
Enter the opening in the center of the lotus.
Move a hundred,thousand,hundred thousand times
In my three-petaled lotus Of swollen flesh.
Placing one’s scepter there, offer pleasure to her mind.
Wind, inner wind-my lotus is the unexcelled!
Aroused by the tip of the diamond scepter,
It is red like a bandhuka flower.
….Candamaharosana-tantra
Another common Tantric metaphor for sexual union is the image of the “Churner and the Churned”. Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), drawing on a range of Indian sources, explains that churning the female partner with the diamond scepter is the efficient cause of the nectar of Buddhahood, and argues that just as fire is kindled by rubbing two sticks together, bliss is generated by churning. The image of churning also refers to the Hindu myth wherein gods and demons churn the cosmic ocean of milk to extract its nectar. The goddess Sakti is produced from this process, and her sexual fluids become the immortality-bestowing nectar the gods are seeking. Thus, churning the yogic partner, which stimulates the flow of her nectar, mirrors the stirring of the cosmic ocean for its potent, liberating nectar. Churning also connotes the circulation of the yogic energy as it surges within the psychic channels and then rises in the central channel. Thus, the metaphor of churning, which appears to be a simple physical analogy, resonates richly with various nuances of Tantric union.
Tantric Buddhism is unique among Buddhist sub-traditions in its acceptance of the body and sense experience as sources of knowledge and power. Tantric Buddhists eulogized the body as an “abode of bliss” and boldly affirmed that desire, sexuality, and pleasure can be embraced on the path to enlightenment. In keeping with this life-affirming orientation, the movement upheld the possibility of liberating relationships between men and women and envisioned cooperative yogic methods that men and women can perform together in order to transform the ardor of their intimacy and passion into blissful, enlightened states of awareness. This mood of exuberant delight, graceful sensuousness, and reciprocity that often characterizes the sculpted and painted couples also suffuses the literary descriptions in the Tantric texts, which exult in an open and unshamed affirmation of sensuality in a religious context:
Therefore, one who desires Buddhahood
Should practice what is to be practiced.
To renounce the sense objects
Is to torture oneself by asceticism-don’t do it!
When you see form, look!
Similarly, listen to sounds,
Inhale scents,
Taste delicious flavors,
Feel textures.
Use the objects of the five senses -
You will quickly attain supreme Buddhahood.
… Candamaharosana-tantra
Tantra asserts that, instead of suppressing, vision and ecstasy, they should be cultivated and used. Because sensation and emotion are the most powerful human motive forces, they should not be crushed out, but harnessed to the ultimate goal. Properly channeled they can provide an unparalleled source of energy, bringing benefits to society as well as continually increasing ecstasy for the individual. Tantra deals in love, and love needs objects. One cannot love nothing. Love means care; and care carried to the limit is perhaps the ultimate social virtue.
word. I learn from you each and every time I listen…I am grateful and honored to be connected to such wisdom. It truly is life changing….I am enlightened.
I was on an emotional roller coaster as I read your piece; thinking of all the men I’ve loved, all the men I love (including you) and all the men I wish to love, all the men I attracted (the ones that brought joy and pain). To some extent, I was feeling your wisdom and to other extents I felt like it was absolutely, positively a lie and then I took deep breathes to bring peace and centering into my spirit. Then there was acceptance beyond my initial denial. Thank you for your insight, it is most welcome even if it takes a period of adjustment (-; Peace to th God!
All the LOVE to ReeSee
Love Yourself To Love Others: Peple feel lonely; they need somebody to fill their loneliness. They call it love. They show love because that is the only way to hook the other. The other also calls it love because that is the only way to hook you. But who knows whether there is love or not? Love is just a game. Real love is possible, but that happens only when you don’t need anybody!
If you go to a bank and you need money, they will not give you any. If you don’t need money, you have enough, they will come to you and they will always be ready to give you.
When you don’t need a person at all, when you are totally sufficient unto yourself, when you can be alone and tremendously happy and ecstatic, then love is possible. But then too you can be certain about only one thing: whether your love is real. How can you be certain about the other? But then there is no need.
This continuous anxiety whether the other’s love is real or not – simply shows one thing: that your love is not real. Why be worried about it? Enjoy it while it lasts! Be together while you can be together! It is a fiction, but you need fiction.
Behind declaration of love there is nothing but need. You want your lover to be with you to fill your emptiness and so too is the case with her. You are both trying to use each other as a means.
That’s why lovers, so-called lovers, are always in conflict – because when you use a person the person becomes a thing, you have reduced him to a commodity.
One day when you really awake you will be able to love – but then you will be certain about your love only. But that’s enough!
Do you love yourself? You have not even asked the question. When you are really blissful on your own, you don’t want to use anybody. You simply want to share it. And you will feel thankful that somebody was ready to receive. That is the full point.
There is no way to be certain about the other – first be certain about you. And a person who is certain about himself is certain about the whole world. Settled, centred, grounded in yourself, you never worry about such things. You accept.
If somebody loves you, you accept it because you love yourself. You are happy with yourself; somebody else is happy – good! It does not get in your head; it does not make you madly egoistic. You simply enjoy yourself; somebody else also finds you enjoyable – good! While it lasts, live the fiction as beautifully as possible – it will not last forever:
Whe a love is finished, you start thinking it was false – that’s why it has come to an end. No, not necessarily. It may have had some glimmer of truth in it, but you were both unable to keep and hold that truth…You needed love, but you were not capable of it.
When you are aware, a totally different kind of love will arise in your heart – which is absolutely true, which is part of eternity. But that is not a need – it is a luxury. And you have so much of it that you hanker for somebody to share it with.
Path Of Love:
The blossom of love will make the air fragrant; the river of love will murmur along the valleys; and every bird, beast and child will sing the song of love. ~ Atharva Veda ~
Lovers, the flowers of the path of love, Bauls, make love their undercurrent. They eat, but they eat with love. They walk, but they walk with love – because the earth is holy ground. They sit under a tree; they sit with love – because the tree is divine. They look at somebody; they look with love – because there also is divinity. ~ Osho ~
My heart has become capable of every from. It is a pasture for gazelles, a convent for Christian monks, and a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s K’aaba and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Quaran. I follow the religion of love. Whatever way love’s camels take, that is my religion and my faith. ~ Ibn Arabi ~
Love and Attachment – A Difference:
Attachment is a mental state. It is a relationship we have with someone in our own minds. When we become attached to someone we use their image to fill our mind. We find our thoughts are constantly filled with their image and the memories of their behaviour. It is not that we should never think about others, it is more about thinking about others only when it is necessary, and as we do so, to make sure we don’t lose our self in their image. This will finally free us of dependency. Symptoms of attachment, can be found when there is any personal desire or expectation of the other person. Desire causes the change of the energy of our love into fear. We forget we are already a source of what we have been taught to need and desire. Attachment desires, love never desires and it has no expectations. It doesn’t need to! As soon as we have any desire from others, or expectations of others, and our happiness becomes dependent on the desire or expectation being met, we are already giving birth to fear and anger, otherwise known as negative emotions, otherwise known as stress, otherwise known as suffering. Love never causes pain, attachment does.
The biography of every human being who exhausts their life in empty purposes and meaningless attachments. Only a human being has the potential to realize the infinite Self. That is the purpose of human existence. But intoxicated with lust and passion, he falls to the depths of degradation. Realizing the plight of man feels the pain and laments, Alas!
The obsession of human mind to the world at different stages of his growth in life and as a result he completely misses the higher aspect of life.
As a child one helplessly runs after playthings. During childhood your interest and attention is only upon the toys and play. We spend our childhood with our attachments to toys.
When the child grows up to be a youth, his vitality is dissipated in lust and passion for his beloved as well as unrealistic ambitions and an obsession for success, power, position, name and fame.
As old age creeps in, his head is laden with worries and anxieties, fears and insecurities arising from his own past selfish activities. We become a prisoner of past worries. He constantly worries about his children’s future, grandchildren’s safety and so on. Every activity is associated with anxiety, tension and fear and in the process, most of us forget to live ourselves.
Thus, our entire life is consumed by attachment to something or the other. We do not have any time or inclination to find out what is the essence of life, to surrender to something beyond the terrestrial attachment!