Rise to the Level of Pure Love
Children, what people yearn for most in this world is love. People make friends, get married and start families only for love. Yet, the greatest poverty in the world today is the lack of love.
Everyone wants to receive love but no one wants to give it. If we love, we do so with many strings attached in the form of expectations and conditions. Such relationships can fall apart at any moment. Such love can become hatred and enmity. This is the nature of the world.
If we understand this, we will not suffer. The nature of fire is heat and light. Expecting fire to have only light and not heat is unrealistic. Likewise, if we can accept that worldly love inevitably brings sorrow, we will be able to face each and every situation with equanimity.
There is pure love in everyone. All of us have the capacity to love others without expectation. As love is our very nature, we can never lose it. A diamond left lying inside a bottle of oil may seem lustreless. But if we wipe away the thick coating of oil, we can restore brilliance to the diamond. Similarly, if we eliminate the impurities of the mind, we can regain the most pristine form of love.
The ladder of love has many rungs. At present, many of us are at the lowest rung. We must not spend the rest of our life there. We must slowly climb up the ladder. We can thus reach the highest rung of love and fulfil our lives.
People usually say, “I love you.” But the truth is that “I am love. Love is my very nature.” When we say “I love you,” there are two entities: ‘I’ and ‘you.’ There is a gap between the two. Love is crushed in this gap.
From this perspective of ‘I’ and ‘you,’ loving another with expectation is like a tiny rat snake attempting to swallow a huge frog, a tortuous ordeal for both. Conversely, if we love without any expectation, we will never feel sorrow.
Our selfless love will awaken selfless love in others. Life then becomes filled with love and joy. We realise that “love is my very nature”. Thereafter, we become free of desire and expectation. Our love will be like a river, a free flow that touches and purifies one and all. Everything we do will be of benefit to the world.
There is no greater power than the power of love. There is no greater happiness than the happiness experienced through love. We experience love when the individual ego ends and hearts unite as one. Love is the ultimate realisation of seeing others as ourselves. It is time for us to build bridges of love and friendship. In this way, may we be able to realise a world family of unbounded love.
The feeling closest to our True Self is love. Our lives are meant to be born in love, to live in love, and to eventually end in love. In truth, love has no end; it is eternal and connects every aspect of creation — human beings with each other, with Nature, and with God. Thus, its effulgence is forever within us as our very essence. May all of us be able to rise to the level of such pure love.
Mata Amritanandamayi
The writer is a world-renowned spiritual leader and humanitarian