The Beauty of Finding Real Love by Albert Foong (Urban Monk)
The word Love is nowadays a corruption, a defilement. It is abused, overused, and now misused – describing a mere game, or another feeling in disguise - passion, lust, attachment. This is the most painful thing to say – how many have ever known the real thing? Reviewing your sense of love can enable you to heal from within.
Selfishness in love’s clothing.
“I love this song.” “I love my car.” “I love you, my darling!”
These are plastic counterfeits, describing a game straitjacketed by rules and structures and conditions. Romantic love is just about selfishness. It is just a biological urge, made into a ritual. Familial love is purer – it comes close, so tantalisingly close, but is so often just as flawed.
Even worse, love can become a duty, a knife held at their throat. “I love you!” you say to the other, and it really means – "Son, now make me proud with your grades," "Father, you have to provide for me," or, "Mary, you must sleep with me."
At the core of it all is the self. What some of us call love is just pure selfishness. If we are alert, honest – it is all about how another makes us feel, which one of our needs they fulfill, how much of our reputation they have enhanced. Me, me, me.
Love – Love, with a capital L – it is just the opposite. There is no clinging, no attachment. It thinks nothing of getting, merely of giving. A lover thinks only of himself, herself, but a Lover thinks only of the other.
The doing of love
In between Love and false love would be cultivated love. It is one that is practiced, trained. Perhaps it would be better called compassion. That word is not so polluted. This love is beautiful, commendable, but it is still not the real thing. But practice it, and one day you’ll find that the real thing will begin to shine through.
Give and share unconditionally. It will be hard, for we have been selfish, full of ego, for so much of our lives. But continue to strive for it, and let it slowly reduce the delusion of separation. Smile, simply to brighten his day, not because you want something from her. Caress him, not out of duty, simply because you want to ease his pain. And in that brief moment the ego isn't there.
As the ego completely falls away, only Love remains. It is no longer cultivated; no longer something you have to remind yourself to do. The lover disappears, the act of loving disappears, the loved disappears, and it all melts into one.
Our self-hatred and self-dislike
What is the biggest reason we give out counterfeit love, plastic compassion? What is the reason we don’t know Love? Simply because we have not loved ourselves. How can we give what we don’t have? If we are filled with sadness and anxiety and anger, what will be in our hands as we reach them out to others?
Everyone is always talking about the grandeur of loving others. Love your country! Love your parents! Love your friends, even love your enemies! Who has ever said to you – find Love within, for your own being?
The result of this grievous omission: almost all of us have been filled with a subtle sense of dislike for ourselves. What is depression, what is low self esteem? How common is it? The numbers speak for themselves.
The pathological critic
Self-hatred can come in so many forms: people-pleasing, self-destructive behaviour, addictions, and your everyday unhappiness. But it all begins with the little voice in our head. Some spiritual teachers call it the ego; psychologists call it the inner critic, the pathological critic.
Where does it come from? The condemnation that has been heaped on us from the day we were born. Again and again - our parents, society, peers, bosses, religion, teachers – on and on it goes. Sometimes they meant well, often times, they didn’t.
But it doesn’t matter – for they have already left their marks on us. Even when they stopped, we carried on their abuse internally. Their voices lived on inside our heads. Sometimes the inner critic sounds like our own voice, sometimes it sounds like an authority figure, or a parent. Very often it comes as feelings, thoughts, and images.
This critic constantly judges, criticises and compares. Every negative thought, feeling, anxiety, should and should-not, even the reliving of abuse and insults – all of it is the critic, which has lingered for so long, many of us don't even know its there. We don’t know that we can choose not to believe it; we don’t know there is a way out. How common is this? Psychologists believe that everyone – everyone! – has an internal critic. For some a minor annoyance; for others, a lifetime of tyranny.
Fighting the critic
It is very likely that much of our actions, our seeking for material goods or lovers or fame and success, and even our drive for self-improvement, are driven by this subtle sense of self-hatred.
Trying to control our thoughts is self-violence. Forcing ourselves to be like this, to stop doing that – yet more self violence. Fighting your emotions, forcing yourself to be happy, all that silliness, it is just the same thing.
I fell into this trap, when I decided to fight my way out of my deep unhappiness. What was there to fight? Unhappiness and depression and low self-esteem came from fighting myself, and now I was fighting my tendency to fight myself – how absurd. I was merely cutting myself deeper. Happiness, peace, everything that we seek within – they simply come when we find acceptance and love for ourselves.
Radical, unconditional love
And so the antidote to the poison and the condemnation is radical, unconditional love. Loving everything – even the critic itself! Accepting everything so deeply, that all the silliness begins to melt away.
You can never be anything other than what you are, right now, in this very moment. This very moment is all that exists – for when the future comes, it will be now. Accept yourself as you are – that is perfection. Stop all that seeking and searching, for something outside of you, for that is the perfection of the neurotics.
Relax into yourself, accept your internal conditions and your external surroundings. Accept your perceived flaws, your fake imperfections, your humanity exactly as they are. And what if you have been hurtful and hateful? Perhaps you don’t dare to love yourself for having done and said all those things. Doesn’t that mean you’ll go out and do more of those?
But pain is what you cause because that’s all you have inside you. When you fill your cup with love, what is going to overflow? Don’t you want to find out?
How do we do it?
Love yourself, on all levels of being: Emotional, mental, physical, and on the level of energy. Love your negative thoughts. Love your self condemnation, the mental movies and images. Don’t fight them. Let them be. Don’t cling to them, nor try to push them away. Talk kindly to yourself, counteract the critic, talk back to it.
Love your sorrows, the gaping wounds in your heart, your anger and loneliness, and anxieties and fears, all of that. Accept them, say yes to them, cuddle and love them. Let that be the healing force. Emotions are there to be felt and accepted. Instead of running away from them – simply turn around and face them.
Love your body the same way. Strip naked, and go in front of a full length mirror. Face and look at every part of your body. Don’t avert your gaze. Don’t judge, grimace, any of that. Just look at your body, every part, and smile at them. Send loving thoughts and energy to each section. Love it completely – the imperfections, the scars, the injuries, the diseases, let them all be there, and be loved.
Play with energy. Create a loving energy in yourself; fill up every pore and every cell of your body with love. Sometimes you find it hard. Sometimes you try to fill up your insides with love but all you feel is discomfort. That’s almost inevitable – almost everyone carries sorrow and pain inside them, that they’ve stored up over the years. Love and accept that discomfort until it heals and dissolves.
Simply undo all the poison you’ve had piled on you. All day, every day. Be alert that you have not fallen back into old habits, that the critic hasn’t crept back in. One day, you will find your entire being has begun to glow with joy, a quiet bliss – and that day is when you begin to see Love.
I’m honoured to be able to guest post here at the Dreambuilders Australia. This post covers some of the most important lessons I’ve ever learnt – it might sound simplistic, but it has made a huge difference in my life. I’m grateful to Liara for giving me a chance to share it with her audience.
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About Albert Foong:
Albert runs UrbanMonk.Net, a practical personal development blog that has enhanced the lives of many readers, moving them out of suffering and into a life of joy, love and success. It draws upon ancient spirituality, modern psychology, real life experiences, and everything in between.
Sunday, January 27, 2008 at 9:24AM 