True Love

A few weeks ago I addressed sex, this week I discuss love. If love is such a great healer, why does it make people sick? In virtually any study of the relationship between stress and disease, the loss of a spouse/lover through divorce or death is always at the top of the list of the most severe stresses a human being can experience. The bread and butter of nearly all psychotherapists’ practices similarly involve attempting to heal the emotional abrasions, contusions, and lacerations sustained in love relationships, or alternatively, to perform psychic surgery on the psychic/emotional adhesions wrought by the love-related traumas of long ago.

Conventional physicians of the past perceived cancer as a disease of emotional origin, usually related to loss of love, while their homeopathic counterparts considered "disappointed love" and "lovesickness" the sources of an army of physical ailments. The doctors and therapists of two centuries agree: Loving another human being may be hazardous to your health.

So, as health-minded persons, what can we do to protect ourselves and those we love from the ravages of this very dangerous activity? Can we simply ban loving in public places? Well, the rules against lewd and lascivious behaviors were probably a crude attempt, but everyone knows this never works, because love is not really something you can always see.

And besides, what about a person’s right to love, even though it may be dangerous to his or her health? I doubt that "non-loving sections" in airplanes or Chattanooga restaurants would be any kind of really effective solution. People would keep on loving anyway.

Perhaps the best we can do is simply try to understand loving just a little bit better. Perhaps we would do better to compare loving less to smoking and more to driving or skiing. To do it safely involves learning the rules of true, effective love, developing love skills, and finally, learning to "love with awareness."

True love is always selfless. One can never love another for the sake of oneself. This is extremely dangerous and will always lead to disaster. True love is something which spontaneously issues forward out of the deep reservoir of the self. trying to "do it" for a particular personal motive is doomed to failure.

True love is always letting go. If you really love someone, you constantly are setting them free. As long as you can really do this, you can never get into trouble. Then, if the person leaves, he or she is always leaving with your full blessing. By constantly letting go in love, we not only offer the other person a continual source of freedom, but we also convey to that person a continual feeling of love and acceptance at the very deepest level. We are also practicing the ultimate form of "loving consciously," because we are constantly preparing ourselves for that person’s ultimate departure.

True love is always giving, never taking. There is a common misconception among many people that a "giving" person is more prone to getting burned in love than a person who is always "taking." This may be true in the sense that if a person is not giving, s/he is not loving, and if s/he is not loving, s/he cannot get burned in love. However, if the person is really honest with him or herself, s/he will realize that s/he got burned only when s/he stopped loving and tried to recoup his/her losses by taking whatever was left.

This is always the fatal move. One might say "Oh, I’ve been so giving all along, now what’s in it for me? Do I have security? Do I have love? Am I getting enough appreciation?" Once these questions are asked, one is no longer skiing under the protection of Love. One is out of control and this is very dangerous. To love safely, one needs to continue to give even if this means skiing off the trail. It is a subtle art, to be sure, but it is essential in love to always remember that there is nothing to get. In skiing, you do not try to keep the snow that you just traversed. Real loving is very much the same story.

True love is always opening, never closing. This is really the same as saying that true love is letting go and never trying to hold on. Holding on, or holding back, is the sure way to get hurt. All of this also applies not only to the emotional landscape of love, but also to its physiology, and to sex, its frequent physical expression. The pursuit of the grand finale, whether sexual conquest, marriage, orgasm, or "real security" will mark the end of love as soon as the goal is achieved. The ability of Tantric adepts to maintain practically indefinite erections without ejaculation involves constantly relaxing, without ever "going for it," without ever exercising the contraction, the culmination. True love is pure process, a journey without end.

True love is always healing. Ultimately, love never makes anyone sick. Real love always melts tension and conflict, it never causes stress. Problems come not from love, but from fear of loving more, from fear of getting hurt. It is not loving that is dangerous. What is dangerous is not loving.

Tantra http://www.newfrontier.com/tantra  

Chattanooga Spirit
http://www.newfrontier.com/chattanooga

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