How Can I Love Better?
And becoming love as the "holy grail"
I’m reading a book right now, Love, Freedom, Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships, by Osho, who I later found out was a controversial figure in the world of spiritual teachers. Regardless, I was drawn to the title because I’m drawn to this subject right now.
Funny how love seems like a topic to read about rather than the whole purpose of our being here. (Which it is, by the way.)
I’m reading this book along with two others (Vex King’s, Things No One Taught Us About Love and Pema Chodron’s Start Where You Are) which are all about love and compassion so clearly it’s a focus of mine right now.
I need to feel grounded right now because the world feels like quicksand and my morning reading, meditation, and journaling are giving me that.
I’ve been questioning my own place in the world with how I’ve been showing up in my life.
Have I been loving enough to not only the people in my life but to humanity, in general?
When have I let ego take the reins rather than love?
When have I allowed past hurts and triggers direct my actions rather than love?
So much of where I’ve failed has been because because love wasn’t present.
Osho shares that love is not measured in quantity, but it’s a quality that can’t be measured.
Here are some quotes from the book I’ve already highlighted:
Love is a by-product of a rising consciousness.
Become more and more alert and aware, and love will come on its own accord, in its own time.
A person who loves himself respects themself. And a person who loves and respects themself respects others, too, because they know: Just as I am, so are others. Just as I enjoy love, respect, dignity, so do others…The person who loves themself enjoys love so much, becomes so blissful, that the love starts overflowing, it starts reaching others. If you live love, you have to share it.
If a person is not allowed to love themself, their spirit, their soul, becomes weaker and weaker every day. Their body may grow but they have no inner growth because they have no nourishment.
Create loving energy around yourself. Love your body, love your mind. Love your whole mechanism, your whole organism. By “love'“ is meant, accept it as it is.
It’s this looking inward and loving ourselves first that allows us to love better. To be love in action because once we understand what true love is (self-love and self-acceptance), we can then love others without comparison, without ego, without looking for a reflection.
These two big chunk of text resonated with me about this:
Out of a hundred loves, ninety-nine are narcisstic. People don’t love the woman that is there. They love the appreciation that the woman is giving to them, the attention the woman is giving to them, the flattery that the woman is showering on the man. The woman flatters the man, the man flatters the woman—it is mutual flattery…This is not love; this mutual ego-satisfaction.
Love yourself, love immensely, and in that very love your pride, your ego and all that nonsense, will disappear. And when it has disappeared your love will start reaching other people.
So in order to love others better, I need to love myself first.
This view of myself, this paying attention of where I am in the grand scheme of thngs, is where this rising consciousness begins to happen.
What I’m learning is that if I see that there is no “me” (ego), all that’s left is love.
So I guess that’s what I’m truly seeking—how to let go of me and let love step in.
Osho says,
Then comes an even greater surprise: When you start giving your love to anybody, even to strangers, the question is not to whom you are giving it—the very joy of giving is so much that who cares who is on the receiving end? When this space comes into your being, you go on giving to each and everybody—not only to human beings but to animals, to the trees, to the faraway stars, because love is something that can be transferred even to the farthest star just by your loving look.
First be full of love, then the sharing happens. And then the great surprise…that as you give, you start receiving from unknown sources, from unknown corners, from unknown people, from trees, from rivers, from mountains. From all nooks and corners of existence, love starts showering on you. The more you give, the more you get.
Life becomes a sheer dance of love.
That’s it. That’s the formula.
Let go of ego.
Become aware of consciousness.
Love blossoms.
Be love and love answers back.
Life is love and love is life.
I wish it was that easy.
At every turn, I battle old stories, limiting beliefs, bad habits…myself.
To boil it down, letting go of myself and all that I’ve believed I am is life’s journey.
I found an online excerpt from a book called What’s in the Way is the Way by Mary O’Malley is about the six levels of consciousness.
Rising through the levels is basically going from trying to control life to letting go and trusting what’s meant for you will come.
It’s about merging with the flow of life.
So how does one go about doing that? That’s a great question which I don’t have an answer for…yet.
But I know that being love (a verb, not a noun) is the path I want to take to get there.
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