Ask The Master: 8 Dec 2007

Q. Why do love and pain always go together?

All these questions point in the same direction. As long as there is a calculation, love is bound to result in pain. What we don’t realize is that we usually turn to another person to make up for some lack, some incompleteness that we perceive in ourselves. As long as that person ‘completes’ us by bolstering our ego, the relationship is one of ‘love’. But a time comes when the other person can no longer nurture and sustain our ego. When the ego is deprived of the other person’s support, the suppressed feelings of inadequacy, insecurity and fear are unleashed again.

Be clear: relationships do not cause pain; they only bring out the repressed pain that is already in you. And as long as you look to an external source to complete and fulfill you, this will continue to happen.

Try to be self-sufficient, centered in your own being. Try to focus on what you can give in a relationship, rather than what you can get out of it. The first lesson of love is, not to ask for love. In one way or the other, we are all begging for attention, begging for love. When you are yourself a beggar for love, how can you give love to the other? Don’t worry about whether your love is returned or not. Love is not a bargain; it is a gift. When love is an outpouring of one’s being, it does not wait for the right person or the right place or time. It does not even care about whether the love is reciprocated or not. You are so full of love that you feel compelled to share the experience, like a rain cloud needs to share its rain, or a flower its fragrance. This kind of love blesses both, the one who gives and the one who takes. It is only when both partners move from the ‘asking’ polarity to the ‘giving’ polarity of love that you can move beyond pain.

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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Uncommon Answers to Common Questions