We can speak about two kinds of love – love with an object and love without an object. Object-based love involves another person, a physical object, or any experience that is a source of affection, care, kindness, and pleasure. This can be a person, place, or thing. We say I love this or I love that, referring to the object of love. There is he subject “I” and the object.
Love with an object is exclusively a product of our personal day-to-day self. Our personal self instinctively seeks pleasure, security, affirmation, and comfort, and affords a positive attitude and actions towards the beloved person or object. Love objects and the pleasure they provide are desired and cherished. Unfortunately, that desire can easily graduate to dependency, clinging, attachment, and even addiction. When we fear losing the pleasure generated by the person, circumstance, or material object, we often react with manipulation, control, and other psychological devices to avoid the threatening loss.
In this way object-based love is invariably susceptible to loss, distress, and suffering. Why, because all objects are subject to change. That is the law of impermanence. As the object of desire or love shifts, changes, or disappears, we experience the built-in fragility of object love. We all know that experience. Too often the response is to seek relief through engaging another object. In this manner, the cycle begins again. We have all experienced object-based love. You can observe it in your own life. Invariably, it has its delights and disturbances
In contrast, love without an object is an experience that is unrelated to any object. It is an inclusive embrace rather than an exclusive one. There is neither subject, the lover, or object, the beloved. Love just is. Love without an object is innate to our fundamental being. It’s somewhat like the perfume that emanates from the flower. However, in this case the flower is our natural self. This love is built-in to our innermost self. It is self-arising, spontaneous, ever-present, abundant, and unbiased when we are aligned with our true self.
Love without an object transcends the personal self and its relationship with objects. It has none of the qualities of possessiveness, self-centeredness, attachment, or dependency. As a result, it is also free of loss, distress, and suffering. It is inseparable from an inner contentment, delight, and serenity. It is the source of selfless compassion and service. It is a sweet fruit of meditation and the inner life.
Traditionally meditation has two aims. The first is the cultivation of a healthy human life and the second is transcending that personal self to experience the foundational awareness, unity, and presence that is at the center of our being. We call this the inner self, transcendent self, natural self, and many other names. Although these are different names, the experience is one and the same, our natural state-of-being.
When meditating, we let go of our personal self – its various and ever-changing identities, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, habits of perception and reaction. What remains when our mind is emptied of our personal self and its mind-talk, is the essence of who and what we are at our source. There we discover the qualities of human flourishing – a peace that surpasses understanding, happiness without a cause, wisdom without knowledge, selfless love and compassion, and boundless freedom.
It's from this center of our being that love without an object naturally arises. It does not have to be found, created, imagined, evoked, or developed. It is already and always there, complete and whole. Even when its moment of full appearance is obscured by a restless mind, its residual light and beauty beckon our smaller self to reach above and beyond to this larger love and life. Selfless love may be difficult to describe in words, but we know it with certainty when we experience it.
As humans we will experience love with an object time and time again. That’s OK. What is essential is that we know and are grounded in the deeper love that has no object. Then we can enjoy a worldly love with understanding and care, not attributing to it or expecting from it what it cannot deliver. We are able to appreciate both kinds of love, assured that the experience of a deeper love, that dwells within, can never be lost and will never leave. It is the final and ultimate remedy to the challenges and difficulties of human existence.