Amaeru: A Reflection on Modern Day Love & Loving

Ek pal mei bhi umr bitai jaati Hai
Radha aaj bhi Shyam ki kehlaai jaati Hai

The ideal of love, Radha & Krishna decorated with ideas of divinity, beauty, loyalty, dedication, devotion, surrender & sacrifice is a sole search of all lovers & mystics alike. To love & to be loved is the gift of our existence. The creator fell in love with it’s creation & that’s how it all began, took form into civilizations, communities & families that rejoice in the feeling of belongingness offering some relief amidst many challenges of the human form. Connections nourish & bring out aspects within us that support our need for nurturing & also the desire to be nurtured, amongst many others.

Time to time, souls come along to offer you a safe harbour for heart opening, feeling, learning, making mistakes & growing from them. Love comes to light at the sight of the beloved. One is incomplete without another, the lover & the loved blooms into it’s most beautiful form as the entanglement deepens, bringing out parts of you, one never imagined to exist. When someone loves you, choses you, accepts you for who you are & nurtures you, the heart delights in joy. We love to be loved. Don’t we ? That’s why defending the people we love comes naturally to us even when they happen to act against us, afterall kindness flows naturally in love.

How do you know you love someone ?

Is it the body that provides testimony to your love through multifold chemical reactions that arise at the sight of your beloved or is it the bliss & peace you feel around them ? As life grows on you, loving your partner & chosing them despite everything else becomes a conscious choice, a commitment you stand by. If you’re lucky, it only grows deeper from here on & in its purest form you see god in your beloved, offering them your faith, devotion, dedication & committment.

The shared dynamic enriched with positive emotions & mutual support is a beautiful transaction that allows two individuals to fulfill each other’s desires, needs & facilitate each other in the separate journies of their souls. But is that all love comes down to, A transaction ? Have you ever wondered what is love when it’s not a exchanged btw two people ? What is the real meaning of unconditional love ?

Let’s take a moment to reflect on these ideas.

What is a romantic relationship without expectations, reciprocity, respect or the desire to nurture your beloved. One comes to acknowledge affinity as love only when they recognize it in forms that feel familiar & comfortable, when it matches your percieved ideal of love.

Its essential to love in a language that’s understandable to your beloved or you could spend a lifetime attempting to figure out an understanding & still fail. Relationships, Love or the lack of it bring out a lot within us, often adding upto our most authentic version through the critical lessons that our soul choses to learn & karma that comes to be neutralized btw two people. Its only the power in love that empowers one to find bliss even in suffering & grow resillient through it. It makes healing possible, offering a safe space for us to caress our wounds of attachment, our inner childs & what not. But what happens to all the love when a relationship ends & two people decide to part ways?

Many many questions around love & loving have inspired philosophers from the very beginning of time. Does love come to dissipate with challenging times btw lovers, vanishing in layers bit by bit with every argument, unfulfilled expectation or conflicts. Or does it end, consciously with the decision of parting ways & chosing the love for self over love for another person. As my understanding goes, Love is a naturally occuring spiritual energy, unrelated to what you do out of love or in a relationship. Regardless of the course of the relationship, it’s longetivity or workability of a situation btw two individuals. The expression of this complex entity can manifest very uniquely given the circumstances but it doesn’t come to end, sometimes even across lifetimes. Relationships can be created & destroyed both by what we think/feel/say or do but love cannot. The idea of the loved person certainly doesn’t stop provoking joy or one doesn’t stop wishing anything but the best for their beloved. Only that the mind gradually makes peace with the ending of a cycle & things not working out. Sometimes in order to do that, one tries to starve out the love, stops feeding the happy memories & hold onto the bitterness of the experience. Master Choa clarifies, the virtue of loving kindness is the basis behind all other laws that govern the universe. All the beautiful & unique expressions of love come from one common foundation of kindness & affection towards all you love in speech, thoughts & actions. It’s the reason why love is not only alive given the presence of your beloved but also fully alive in the act of fighting to/for your beloved or even letting go the one you love for better. It’s strongly evident in what it does to you beyond the relationship. It influences your relationship with yourself & teaches you how to extend love to yourself because unfortunately we come to learn that only by building up on the love that’s served to us. Energetically speaking, what you give out freely, you also recieve abundantly, it’s the law. So I would like to believe that love or loving doesn’t ever go to waste. It comes back to serve you from multifold avenues & forms when you keep the heart open to it.

It can often come to be seen as a strong, very loaded word often romanticizing suffering, self sacrifice & pain. But one thing love cannot & should not be is suffering, indiscriminately of love being old or new, mutual or unrequited. Like all other beautiful things in life, the shadows of love too can be as impassioned, truly capable of leaving one perplexed & astray. So, Maybe the conundrum can be clarified simply by understanding that unconditional love is not unconditional tolerance to pain & disgrace. It’s completely divorced from obsession, control & deciet, a combination capable of completely arresting one’s ability to love. Infact, love in all it’s glory inspires one to love more, give more, opening one’s mind to the truth & immense possibilities of joyfully living the life you deserve.