Love is the most desired and cherished human experience. It frees the mind, opens the heart, connects one to another, and uplifts the soul. It brings depth, richness, and meaning to life. Although we expect it to spontaneously arise in adult life with the purity, grace, and naturalness of a mother’s love for her child, this is not the case. Adult life is filled with complexity and obstacles that obscure and hinder the full measure of this joyous and liberating experience.
You would not expect yourself to undertake building a bridge or any other complex project without the requisite knowledge and training. That would be foolish, useless, and often dangerous as well. Yet we routinely attempt to undertake this most difficult of human endeavors, the effort to love another human being, with little understanding about the nature of love or the process of loving. Is there any question why our efforts so often go astray? And when they do, after a period of frustration and disillusionment, don’t we just try the same thing but with a bit more intensity? Can the result be any different? Have you ever wondered why we are never taught about the nature of authentic love and the means of attaining and sustaining it?
To learn about love by trial and error is a long process that may take longer than the years of one lifetime. And there is no need to do so. Wise men and woman across cultures and time have left us the knowledge and means by which to attain and sustain authentic love free from suffering. They have also shown us the obstacles that must be cleared away before this is possible and inspired us with the possibility of an all-encompassing love that embraces all of humanity.
Love and Need-Based Attachment are not the Same
This is where we begin our lessons on love. For most of us there is no distinction between love and the emotions that arise with attachment. In fact, we don’t even give this issue consideration. Genuine love and needs-based “love” are most often tangled together and both are usually referred to as love as if they were the same, and they are not. When we feel a dependent attachment to another we confuse that with love. We can usually get away with this lack of understanding in the first few weeks of “romantic” love, but we will eventually pay a price for our confusion with heartache, disillusionment, and suffering. So we begin here.
Attachment is the desire, craving, grasping, and even addiction to another person with the aim of satisfying ones personal need for security, comfort, pleasure, companionship, and touch. Love is the desire that another person attains happiness that is free from any suffering. It’s that simple and that difficult. The emotions we label “love,” when based on the gratification of our needs, are quite fickle and can easily turn in the other direction, as they often do. Such “love” for another is in actuality love for our self. The surface feelings of authentic love and needs-based “love” appear the same. However, on close examination they are quite different.
Let’s now take a closer look at these two very differences that are rarely distinguished from each other. But without seeing their clear differences we are bound to confusion and disturbed love.
It would seem obvious that love should be about cherishing and caring for another. We would all attest to that. But most often, if we have the courage to look closely, we will discover that the reality is far different than our professed goal. Because of the confused entanglement of authentic love and needs-based “love” what we call love is always a mixture of both until we have achieved a high level of understanding and capacity.
In its most primitive form needs-based love is seen in the dependent newborn that instinctively “uses” mother to relieve discomfort, hunger, and thirst. For most of us this infantile instinctive pattern of looking outwards for satiation of our needs extends in part or in entirety into our adult relationships. When we are dependent on another to meet our needs we are simply repeating the childhood pattern, attaching to them as the source of pleasure and satisfaction. To some extent this is a part of all of our relationships. Our relationships bring us psychological and physical pleasure so we cling to them.
Be willing to examine your intimate relationships. To what extend are your feelings of care and love related to your needs being met by the other? What happens to your “love” when your lover is not meeting your needs, is acting in an unsatisfying manner, or his/her attention goes elsewhere? Do you subtly demand or expect certain behavior in return for your love? Is your love fickle, changing moment-to-moment, related to the external circumstance? Can your love easily turn into anger or even hatred.
As mentioned, authentic love – other-cherishing – is always mixed with attachment – self-cherishing. So take a careful look at your relationships. With total honesty look to see how much of your “love” is actually needs-based and how much is other-cherishing – love that exists regardless of the benefit or gain to you? Is it half and half? Is it more one than the other? Is it different from one relationship to another? An easy way to examine this is to ask yourself what would happen to your feelings for another if they undertook an action that offered them happiness but left your needs unsatisfied. Even if this action was dysfunctional and hurtful would your love still be there, or would it leave when your needs go unmet or even violated?
This is not to say that we continue to be in relationship with dysfunctional individuals whose actions cause suffering. That’s a different issue. The question is what happens to our love. Is it possible to love someone who is dysfunctional and hurtful the same as when this person was pleasing and pleasant? Is love about my needs or is it about the wisdom and openness of my heart regardless of my needs?
It will take along time for us to grow into a full authentic love that exists independent of our own needs. What we’re concerned with here is merely knowing the difference between self-cherishing attachment and other-cherishing love. Once we know this we can begin to take the necessary actions to shift from a child-like demanding and dependent love to an open and liberating other-cherishing love. It is not so important that we reach the mountaintop. It’s important we know the truth of how we love, and with this knowledge choose to love in a more fully human and satisfying manner.
To the extent that our love for another is contaminated with our need for pleasure, comfort or security we are very easily wounded and our attachment/love can quite quickly turn into anger, resentment, and even hatred. Why? When, in the name of love, we turn to others to meet our own needs we become dependent on them. The more attached and dependent we are the more vulnerable we are to hurt. Every individual has their own needs and their own psychological circumstance. Others do not exist merely to meet our needs. Although this may appear to occur for moments and perhaps even years circumstances will change, needs change. This neat conspiracy or business-like relationship is a fragile balance of reciprocation that is either certain to break down over time or solidify into a life-depriving prison. To the degree our relationships are contaminated by attachment, the need or unstated demand for the other to meet our needs, we are highly vulnerable to hurt and suffering.
In contrast, to the extent we love another from our heart, desiring nothing more than their happiness, we shall be invulnerable to the shifts and changes in people, relationships, and circumstances. Why, because we are not looking to others to meet our needs. We meet them our self through the development of an inner life where a secure sense of self, peace, joy, and wholeness naturally reside. We demand nothing of others. We merely hope for their best. The absence of attached dependence results in the absence of vulnerability. To the extent that we actually love another rather than our own needs we shall find our love to be invulnerable to the ever-changing human experience.
When we look to another to meet our needs and call this love we are destined for suffering. That is the reality of looking outside for what can only be attained in a permanent and secure way from a matured inner life. Grasping onto to others for what we cannot give to our self is a demand that cannot be met with any consistency and assurance. Attachment and dependency disguised as love is untrustworthy, unreliable, inconsistent, and never good enough. We need more and more and react with anger and resentment the moment our needs are not met. We point the finger at the other. We ask, “Why did you change?” At such moments it’s better to look at the character and quality of our own love. We will discover we love our own needs rather than the other. This is a recipe for suffering.
To the extent that our love is other-cherishing it is not at all dependent on the other’s behavior or the presence or absence of a particular form of relationship. We love from an open heart that wishes happiness for others. We may or may not choose to be in active relationship with a particular person, but our love exists and continues even when it does so in silence. Authentic love generated from an open and healthy heart begets more and more love. It is open, free, bountiful, and spacious. It is given without a hidden agenda.
Attachment to another is a connection based on need. It’s a connection to our self far more than it is to the other. We are aware of and concerned with our needs, and experience the world and others though its filters. When our needs are met or the other is pleasing to us we respond with positive emotions. We our needs are unmet or the other is displeasing our emotions shift in the other direction. We feel connected when our needs are satiated and distant, denied, and disconnected when they are unmet. The connection that arises with attachment is personal to our own needs, utilitarian in that its central purpose is to serve our needs, and extremely fragile as regards the steadiness of emotions. We are actually connected to our dysfunctional self rather than the other.
Authentic love is an open, undemanding, giving to another without concern for benefit or gain to one self. What we give is the heartfelt desire that the other find happiness free of suffering. Because we’re not blinded by our overriding needs, we can actually see the other separate from our self. We can know the other for who he or she is. It is this knowing and reaching out with true care and love that results in an intimate connection that transcends needs and wants. We love because we love. And such a love is deeply connecting. The connection is heart-to-heart and is unrelated to the movements of the other’s personality and life.
It’s easy to get a bit confused here. We ask, “How can I love someone who is unkind to me, or a stranger, or even an enemy? Why not? To love is a condition of the heart. What we love in another is their basic goodness however dysfunctional they may be. We see through and in. Nothing needs to be done about one’s love. Day-to-day relationship or intimacy is not the goal of love. It may occur with some and not with others. Love is simply the compassionate opening of our heart to all others. This may seem strange at first, but give it some thought.
A conversation related to attached love would go something like the following. Let’ start with the emotions and feelings related to attachment. “Hi honey, I love how your look. It’s great that you like the same activities as me. You’re so sweet to be around. I love the way you care for me and the way you make me feel about myself. I love the way you make me laugh. You’re wonderful. I feel wonderful around you. I love you. I really love you.” But wait a second! What goes unsaid here is what happens to these seemingly string emotions if the object of my love begins to act or behave in ways that don’t please me, if the other individual, in the healthy pursuit of their own life, ceases to comfort, please me, or meet our needs. Or perhaps the intensity of their attention diminishes over time as it naturally may as attention turns towards their personal development. Then the conversation shifts. We then ask ,“Why did you change?” I loved you just the way you were. I don’t think I have the same feelings as before. I’m falling out-of-love with you.
In comparison, what is the sound of authentic love? Consider the following. “How are you today sweetheart? Is there anything I can do for you? If you need to talk let’s sit for awhile so I can completely hear you. I want you to know that if you need to change your life in this or that way I’ll always support you regardless of how it feels to me in the moment. I love you and your life. I wish happiness for you.
Needs-based love is emotional and fickle. It gets blown around like a leaf in the fall depending on whether my needs are met or not. Authentic love is stable like a mountain or the ocean depths. It’s not moved by moment-to-moment changes on the surface. It’s a deep empathic caring rather than an unstable emotion. It cares for the essence of the other rather than one specific quality or attribute. Its focus is the happiness of the other regardless of benefit or gain to our self. It’s not dependent on the actions of the other nor is such love dependent on the type of relationship we share with the other. Authentic love is stable, enduring, and other-centered. It leads to an entirely different conversation and interaction.
A Universal Embrace
We’ve spoken about the difference between a self-cherishing needs-based “love” and an authentic other-cherishing live. I’ve made this distinction so we can each assess the quality of our love and seek to mature and grow how we love another. The shift from a self-centered to other-centered love is an important but only first sense. The next leap in the maturation of our love is the ability to extend its reach. The perfection of human love occurs as we reach outward with our love expanding our embrace. The movement is from an exclusive focus on “I” to a concern for the other, “You,” to a concern for humanity, “Us” to “All of Us” to “One.”
As noted above we begin infancy with an exclusive focus on our self. If we do not linger in child hood dependencies we mature and deepen our love and consciousness by desiring for others what we want for our self – happiness free from suffering. We then further extend the range of our love to include our loved ones, day-to-day acquaintances, and then all beings including strangers and enemies. Can you imagine this progressive opening of your heart? Can you feel the movement from an exclusive love to a universal embrace?
Each of these steps is related to a simultaneous growth in consciousness – the development of our inner life. As we approach the peak of this development we arrive at the knowledge that we are all inter-dependent and inter-related. We experience a profound sense of oneness in which the distinction between “I” and “other” have disappeared into the luminosity of a shared humanity. This is the pinnacle of the development of authentic and profound love. It’s transcendent love. It’s the perfection of love. By opening our heart to all, all is cared for. There is no separation between our self and other. When we love another we love our self. When we help another we help our self.
The Path
How do we shift from attachment to authentic love? Let’s briefly review what we discussed above. We begin by recognizing that what we now call “love” is a combination of needs-based attachment and authentic caring. Dependent attachment is a tenacious hold over from childhood. It uses others to meet our basic needs. It is self-cherishing. Authentic love is a development of adulthood. It’s other-cherishing. It’s the maturation of human love and compassion. It seeks the happiness of others irrespective of gain or benefit to one self. We must know this critical distinction if we are to grow the quality of our love. With this knowledge in hand we can begin the path that will take us toward the perfection of authentic love.
When the sages from the East first came to the West they were surprised to discover a certain level of unease and agitation that appeared to be pervasive among westerners. It was as if we each live with an inner engine that never goes into neutral. We’re always in gear. This unease and agitation expresses itself as unending mental chatter, endless busyness and striving, and a continuously activated physiology. We call this normal.
It was their understanding, much in agreement with western psychology, that this ceaseless inner agitation resulted from childhood wounds of intimacy carried into adulthood. A dysfunctional restlessness in adulthood results from the failure to experience a basic peace, ease, satiation, and self-efficacy in childhood. Unlike the circumstance in traditional eastern cultures where a very large extended family is available to meet the needs of the infant and growing child our culture places this entire responsibility on one or two parents. This does not allow for proper nurturing. The result is an absence of inner satiation, the absence of a basic well being.
An authentic love for others cannot come from the absence of a basic well being. So it’s important at the start to develop a personal sense of well being – a basic sense of inner ease, security, rest, and lovability. Until we have achieved this it’s impossible to resolve our inner agitation, busyness, and striving and less so to reach out with love and care to others. Until this is accomplished we will always look toward and become dependent upon others to meet what’s lacking within. The ability to experience a basic well being is our beginning.
To attain within our self what we search for outside requires that we first develop our inner life. There are two basic approaches to inner development – psychology and meditation. There’s a time for each. The first seeks to identify and understand the emotional disturbances that block basic well being. This psychological approach diminishes the power of these disturbances allowing more of our inner light to shine through.
Meditation or spiritual development is far different. It seeks to understand the basic workings of the mind, undermine the mental process that leads to emotional disturbance, and take us directly to the inner sources of well being. Early on in meditation practice we experience moments of stillness, peace, and calm. When these moments occur everything seems well and whole. For these brief moments we re-experience in adulthood the sense of well being that under the best circumstances we would have experienced in childhood. We discover that irrespective of our childhood situation we can develop an inner peace and calm.
However briefly, these early mediation experiences resolve the agitation, busyness, and unsettledness that’s been so much a part of our lives. The mental chatter slows and ceases, peace replaces anxiety and agitation, our engine of busyness stops, striving disappears, and for a glorious moment all things are well. If we can experience this for a moment we can cultivate this as our ongoing experience. The issue is no longer whether it is possible to achieve a basic sense of well being – an inner peace, ease, and rest – but whether we choose to stabilize it with regular meditation practice.
When we have attained an inner calm – a basic well being – we no longer look outside to people, objects, and experiences for what we have found within. In fact, we begin to see that others are in the circumstance that we were in. They also suffer from an absence of inner well being. We know that others just as our self want happiness free of suffering. Realizing our self how this can be permanently achieved we wish that others can experience the same happiness and peace that is slowly becoming a part of our own life. Why not? Is their happiness and peace less valuable than ours? Do they deserve happiness and peace less than we do? The less we need from others the more we wish them what we wish for our self.
This is called equalizing. We recognize that others, in their desire for happiness and well being, are equal to our self. At first glance this may seem obvious, but it’s not. In the beginning we cherish personal happiness and well being as if it was of greater importance to us than others. But in time we realize that this is not so. We realizr all of us are equally deserving of these gifts of human life. We work on developing this attitude both by both cultivating our own basic wellness and recognizing that we all deserve happiness free of suffering.
When we have matured this attitude in our heart and mind we then work at exchanging. Exchanging is the intention and heartfelt desire to give to others what we wish for our self. We affirm this intention during our meditative practice by repeating with heartfelt feeling the following phrases at the conclusion of our meditation.
May all beings be free of suffering.
May all beings find happiness.
May all beings never be separated from happiness.
May all beings live in peace.
In this manner we slowly develop the mental attitude that truly wishes this for others. We complement this in day-to-day life by cultivating the qualities of generosity, kindness, patience and empathic listening. Slowly we find that we act towards others in a way we previously wanted merely for our self.
Over time these efforts give rise to a natural compassion and authentic love for others, all others. Even our enemies want happiness. Even our enemies desire to be free of suffering. Even our enemies want love. As a result of our own efforts we can now see their dilemma more clearly than ever before. We can see how they are trapped in their childhood and unconsciously act in a manner that causes suffering for themselves and others. Their confusion is no different than the confusion and blindness that once characterized our own life. We know they would choose love and happiness if they only understood the harm they cause themselves though dysfunctional speech and action. What was once anger towards another is slowly transformed into compassion. We wish for them, as for our self, that they attain happiness free from suffering.
With insight, practice, and self-development the authentic love that emanates from an open heart extends to everyone whether we know them personally or not, whether we approve of their behavior or not, whether they harm us or not
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This is a very high state of development and not where we begin. We first gain an intellectual grasp of the distinction between needs-based “love” and authentic love. This requires the courage to examine the truth of the way we currently “love.” We then engage in meditative practices that progressively open our heart. We increase the quality of love we give to our loved ones, and then extend this to others.
With these ongoing steps we find that the love we sought outside arrives when we love rather than seek love. We meet our needs by giving love rather than trying to squeeze it out of others. We discover that love is abundant rather than scarce. And finally we discover the wisdom of the ages that genuine love is the great elixir that heals all.