Love: Sharing Without Selfishness

In life there’s perhaps no greater achievement than mastering the divine art of loving unconditionally. We are quite casual with the use of the word love. We love all kinds of things: I love that movie! I love that artist! I love when there’s no traffic!

Obviously, that is not the kind of love that we truly seek.

Undeniably, we all want to experience love.  We yearn for connection, someone to share our lives with. It is human nature to desire it and seek it out. Yet the meaning that we’ve come to attribute to this word is not really love at all.  

You are connected to every other soul on this planet. Withholding your love in any way diminishes the Light in the world.  It has deep repercussions for the whole of humanity.  Love thy neighbor as thyself, is an ancient wisdom that has found its way into vernacular use.  It remains a tenet to strive for, because a world in which we love openly is a world full of Light and harmony.  It is giving generously and listening to the needs of others without allowing our own needs to interfere. Without love in our lives, we experience pain, chaos, and a lack of fulfillment.  If you withhold love, your loved ones will do the same.  Love is an investment with a high return.  Yet when we are desperate to receive love, we over saturate those around us with what we perceive as love.  True love is a balance of give and take that begins with two people and extends to the entire world. 

Finding real love is not all rainbows and roses, it takes effort. The Desire to Receive for the Self Alone plays a big role in our ability or inability to find unconditional love.  It tries to convince us to withhold love as a result of fear or pain.  Or it might motivate you to take more than you give. Instead of feeling fulfilled, we end up feeling empty and unworthy of love.

The degree to which we are able to give and receive love positively is directly proportional to the love we are blessed with from the Creator. It is really quite simple: Give love unselfishly and you will be given more love to share.  Be stingy with your love and your capacity to love will dwindle. 

Real love is sharing, rising above selfishness.  It can never exist when there is only giving or only sharing in a relationship.  Both must exist for it to be true love.  

We learn how to love unconditionally by overcoming selfish desires. But this is not meant to be easy. It will feel uncomfortable and difficult. The secret is that we feel more pleasure from giving than from receiving.  We earn this invaluable piece of knowledge by resisting the ego and transforming our desire to receive into the desire to share.  It can take a lifetime to learn this lesson and unlearn our selfish ways of loving.  But it doesn’t have to.

The truth is unexpected: when we master the ability to love another person, unconditionally, without concern for what we might receive in return, we receive in abundance! It feels like a complete paradox, but it’s really very simple: When you give unconditionally, you receive unconditionally.  But if you give in order to receive, you will never be fulfilled.

We have an infinite capacity to receive and an infinite capacity to love.  We must first realize that this is our divine right. When you are committed to love those around you unselfishly, you will never feel a lack of love.  You will experience a constant flow of giving and receiving that increases your capacity for love and creates more love in the world.