There was a time when I thought true love meant to give one’s all to another person—to sacrifice oneself in a relationship, living for the other rather than for oneself.
It didn’t work! In today’s world, most of us have limitations that make us hungry for support. If one person tries to give endlessly to another, they will end up drained. We are physical as well as spiritual beings, and we need to set boundaries in our give and take.
And yet… true love does work according to different laws from those that govern the physical world. Divide it, and in fact, it multiplies. A mother still loves her first child when a second is born. A singer’s love for a song is not diminished when that song is shared with the world. True love is creative, boundless, a resource that enriches us all.
Why, then, does there seem to be such a shortage of it? No supermarket can buy up supplies of it. No government can nationalise it. No multinational has a monopoly on it. Yet in our consumerist society, we do seem troubled by an inability to give and receive as much of it as we want and need. Is there a way to correct that?
I am realising that the consciousness with which I habitually live holds the key. I have to take care of my physical being, but I do not have to identify with it. I have family members with whom I have a relationship of responsibility, but that does not mean they are mine, such that I must boss them around; nor that they own me. I have learned that dependency, and attachment, kill love.
A lighter approach developed as I became more aware of myself as a spirit. As the great religious traditions have understood—and as modern science is beginning to rediscover—the material world is secondary to and dynamically put in place by an informational matrix that is at root non-physical. When I understand myself as a soul—an individual, conscious unit within this mind-like quality in the universe—love blossoms freely, and shows me how to live appropriately and sustainably with others. Fear and neediness disappear.
It’s true that to make such a shift, I have to “die” internally too much that was previously dear to me. Be it relationships of dependency, ego-boosting roles and activities, and even to my physical being. I would not have been able to begin on such a journey without the guidance and support of the Supreme Father, to whom I was introduced through Rajyoga.
But the wonder is, as the soul flourishes, the power of true love re-emerges, and this truth starts to put right all that went wrong previously. It turns out that what was lost was worth nothing, compared with that which is gained.
The poet Shelley put it beautifully:
“True love in this differs from gold and clay
That to divide is not to take away.”
Neville Hodgkinson is a UK-based author and journalist, and a long-time student of Rajyoga.