Excerpted from: "Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationship"
If I want to rely on others for happiness, I am defeated.
——John Wellwood
If the pure essence of love is like the sun hanging high in a cloudless sky, this clear and bright light shines at the beginning and end of the relationship between people and me. Two moments shine particularly brightly. When a baby is born, such a lovely little life is a gift. You respond to it wholeheartedly without reservation, without demands, without judgment. When you first fall in love, the sheer beauty of the other person opens the door to your heart. , you are both surprised and delighted, and for a moment, all the love pours down like bright sunshine, and you can simply melt into joy; similarly, when a friend or loved one faces death, all the quarrels between you or all the fallacies have disappeared without a trace, and you are left with only gratitude to him (her), thanking him (her) for the short period of time that he (she) was with you in this world. As long as people put aside their egos - their own demands and calculations - and are completely open to each other, pure, unconditional love will spread throughout the earth.
Absolute love is not something we have to—or even can—make up or fabricate. When we are completely open—to others, to ourselves, to life—it will naturally appear. Now on us. In the relationship with another person, it appears as selfless care; in the relationship with ourselves, it appears as inner confidence and self-acceptance, which warms us from the inside out; in the relationship with life, it It manifests itself as peace, gratitude, and the joy of life.
Absolute Love
When we feel this openness and warmth from another person, we receive important nutrients: it helps us experience our own warmth and openness, allowing us Recognize the goodness in your nature. The light of unconditional love awakens the hibernating spiritual seeds, helping them to mature and bear fruit, allowing us to realize the unique value of this life. We receive the greatest blessing when we receive pure love, care, and appreciation from others: pure love accepts us for who we are and allows us to affirm ourselves.
When two people understand and appreciate each other for who they are, they share a moment of what Martin Buber calls "I-Thou recognition." Buber believed that such affirmations provide important confirmation: helping us to know and feel our own existence.
The most certain feeling is actually not feeling loved, but feeling loved as we truly are. Authenticity means our true being, and absolute love is the love of that true being.
What lies deeper beneath our personalities, pains, and confusions is the true face of our dynamic openness, which emerges when we feel settled, secure, and in tune with ourselves. When love is rooted here, it flows through us without hindrance, making us more open to others. When two people meet in an unreserved state, what they enjoy is the perfect moment of absolute love.
However, a very important point is: human personality is not the source of this absolute love. On the contrary, absolute love transcends our limitations and irradiates us from its ultimate source. We are the channels through which this light and heat flows, and as it flows through us it finds a home within us as our heart-essence.
We have a kinship with this perfect nourishment, our deepest essence, our life-blood. That's why every little baby instinctively and eagerly seeks it from birth, we can't help but want it in our nature.
Once we understand the value and beauty of life, we can relax, let go, and dwell within ourselves. Relaxation brings openness; openness allows us to be transparent to the life flowing through us. Like a newly opened window, the fresh breeze immediately blows into the room, bringing a sense of tranquility and real power. D. H. Lawrence regarded this as " Life rushes into us”.
Martin Buber viewed the moment of “our relationship” as shedding an old, protective skin, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.
Once we taste pure, unconditional love, we feel good about being ourselves, good about being alive, and we want to spread our wings and fly high. When these rivers of vitality flow into us, they will give rise to supreme joy.
In this way, unconditional love allows us to abide in ourselves and in the flow of life’s joy, as Brother David Steindl-Rast said about A description that deeply fits the situation: "For a moment, we just know that everything belongs to us, because we belong to everything."
This is the greatest value of human love, which leads us into something more than human Relativity's broader realm reveals its beauty and power as it helps us tap into the radiant life force within, where, because we are completely honest with life, we become one with life itself. If life belongs to you and you belong to life, you will no longer be hungry, thirsty and afraid. You will feel that life has its basic dignity and sanctity, and you do not need to look to others for approval or recognition. In this profound harmony of life , you learn that you are not hurt, have never been hurt, and cannot be hurt.
This is the true meaning of human life: absolute love helps us get into who we really are, so we cannot live without it.
Relativistic Love
Although the human heart is the channel through which great love flows into the world, this channel in the heart is often blocked - resulting in nervousness and defensive behavior due to not knowing that we are loved. model. As a result, although we occasionally experience brief, joyful moments of connection, the sincere openness of our gift of love never fully penetrates our relationships. Indeed, the more two people open up, the easier it is for barriers—their deepest and darkest wounds, their despair and distrust, their most immediate emotional flashpoints—to surface, just as the warmth of the sun stimulates the earth to release moisture to create clouds , pure open love activates the cumulus clouds of our emotional trauma, where we close in, live in fear, and resist love.
This is not surprising: before we can become unimpeded channels through which love can flow, trauma must be exposed. The thing being treated must be present immediately for love to be effective; if it is hidden, it will only fester.
This is relative love: the sunshine of absolute love that is tempered by our limiting personalities and their defense patterns—fear, distrust, reactivity, dishonesty, aggression, distorted perspective— filtered. Like a cloudy sky, relative love is not complete, constant, or perfect. It is an alternating play of light and shadow. The light and heat radiated by absolute love only shine for a moment.
If you observe yourself closely in relationships, you will notice that you move in and out, between open and closed, clear skies and dark clouds. If the other party is responsive, listens carefully, and says what you like to hear, your heart will naturally open up; on the other hand, if the other party is unresponsive, cannot hear you, and says unpleasant things, you will immediately tighten up and start to retreat.
We will fluctuate with the situation, and it is difficult to fully affirm another person. It often depends on how much each of us can give and accept, the tacit understanding between each other, our limitations and conditioned response patterns, and personal It depends on the level of growth, how much awareness and flexibility you have, the level of communication, the environment you are in, and even how much sleep you got the night before. Relative means everything depends on time and situation.
In general, human love is relative and never absolute. Like the weather, relative love is a continuous, dynamic change, constantly arising and receding, filling and lacking, changing appearance and intensity with the times.
At this point, many of the theories could not be more clear, but often this obstacle arises: I imagine that someone else (someone other than me, of course) should love us constantly, not much Quite a few, just right, they are the source of perfect love. Since our first experiences of love usually come from other people, we naturally assume that relationships are the main source of love. Once this relationship fails to create the ideal relationship we dream of, we think something is wrong, and this disappointment starts again and again. The trauma of the heart will produce resentment towards others.
Therefore, understanding the important distinction between absolute love and relative love is the first step to heal wounds and relieve resentment.
At the deepest level of our lives - the unique inner sanctity of all living beings - there is no separation between you and me. At any moment, we can be with any life - lover, child, friend, Strangers passing by on the road, even puppies - the connection creates warmth and openness. Once we can appreciate the beauty of another life, the heart chakra opens and the spark of absolute love flows through us. In this moment of unity, we are no longer separated or isolated, but happily share the loveliest and tenderest parts of all living beings' hearts.
But at the same time, on a relative level, we have always been separated and separated. We occupy different bodies, have different pasts, backgrounds, families, personalities, values, preferences, opinions, and ultimately Different destinies, each of us sees and reacts to things differently, and we also treat life in our own unique way.
Yes, of course we experience the feeling of oneness with oneself, but this can only happen when life is in harmony with life, because at the level of pure life and pure openness, we are one. Your openness and my openness are no different, because openness has no solid form, so there is no line that separates you from me. So when we meet in a moment of absolute love, life to life, like water poured into water.
In contrast, relative love is communication on a tangible level: person to person. Every person, like every snowflake, every tree, every place, and every environment in the world, is different from each other and has a unique personality and way of expression that is different from other people. In the purely open realm, two people can know that they are one, but in the tangible realm, they must be two anyway.
Maybe the night before, you were deeply in tune with a person, opened your heart to him, fell in love with him, and fell in love with him. The feeling of opening your heart one night is shrouded in dark clouds, and you start to think: Is it appropriate to open your heart to this person? Can I accept that this person is someone else entirely? How well can he or she understand me? Are we a perfect match?
The feeling of becoming one is the moment of blissful union with absolute love. This is the beginning of a great love myth, a pure discovery and encounter that often occurs in unusual time and space. But the challenge of relative love brings lovers back to the ground, forcing them to constantly face and deal with their duality. If they do not respect each other's differences and do not explore how to transcend differences to discover each other, the lovers' union will eventually be A dangerous relationship that loses enthusiasm and energy and interacts with each other with unhealthy emotions or develops codependency.
Two people usually first look for a common ground, but as their differences pull them in different directions, the ground becomes loose from under their feet, and the relationship continues to grow between the two. swing. I want to meet each other at this moment, but I am overwhelmed by the ebb and flow of memories, expectations, and past traumas. In various tense states such as oneness and duality, togetherness and separation, new discoveries and old associations, it is difficult for relative love to be stable and stable.
In fact, problems arise because our expectations are inconsistent with reality. We always think that love should be stable. This expectation prevents us from appreciating the "intimacy between people and myself" that relative love provides. Intimacy—the sharing of who we are in our differences—can only happen when my partner and I meet in a dualistic state, where I see the other person as simply another person and yet not quite another person at the same time.
While the alternation of duality and monism can ignite sparks of curiosity and enthusiasm, it also makes clear that intimacy is intermittent at best. In intimate moments, we cross the walls of our differences to meet, but only for a moment, not forever. At its best, relative love is beautiful in itself, with two people appreciating and enjoying each other in their differences and changes; at its worst, it turns into a soap opera or tragedy.
If you expect others to always be in step with you, you will trap yourself in frustration, disappointment, and pain, because you are asking for a fish in a tree.
If we understand that we are living on two levels at once, we can alleviate the confusion of "I love you, but I can't stand you at this moment." It's hard not to like things about others that suit our tastes and preferences, but we also don't like things about them that get in the way of us. Only at a high level of spiritual development can human beings transcend the pull of likes and dislikes. This means that relative love inevitably contains the indescribable emotions of love and hate.
It is never possible to maintain stable and harmonious communication between husband and wife, parents and children, and friends. This is the inevitable law: after every moment of gathering, there is separation. This is not a flaw or mistake in the design of love, humanity, or the universe. It does not mean that you are bad, others are bad, or life is unfair. The pulse of life is always in cycles, up and down, back and forth, expansion and contraction, synergy and entropy, and so on.
Energy moves in waves, and the waves include peaks and troughs. If not the troughs, where would the crests come from? There is separation before there is aggregation; only after the lack of understanding can there be understanding.
Indeed, if interpersonal relationships did not have such ups and downs, it would be stasis and imprisonment, rather than a dynamic dance. Human relative love is neither perfect nor constant, like everything else on earth; life experience is often raw, rough, and chaotic. Nothing lasts forever, nothing stays the same, nothing is settled once the flowers are full and the moon is full, everything changes.
The highs of joy in new love are followed by lows of conflict and suffering that we often feel are disasters that should never have happened. If we can recognize that the lows are the inevitable troughs of relative love, then misunderstandings and isolation can be springboards to renewed understanding and rapport.
If we look at life honestly, we will see that it is impossible to have a person who is completely reliable and always good to us, although we may imagine that there is someone, somewhere - maybe a movie star or someone who is always good to us. Spiritual people - ideal relationships exist, but they are still mostly fantasy. If we look more closely, we see that each person has his or her own fears, blind spots, secrecy, insecurities, tendencies to aggression and manipulation, emotional flashpoints - which block the channels that allow love to flow unimpeded. Although we all want to love with a pure heart, our limitations inevitably cause our love to fluctuate up and down.
Our desire for perfect love and perfect union has its own importance and beauty. This desire arises from our intuitive knowledge that there is a perfection hidden deep in our hearts, and it points to the transcendent realm. Our longing to heal our isolation—our isolation from life, from God, from our own hearts—can transcend ourselves if we understand this desire correctly. By giving ourselves wholeheartedly and living with this spirituality, we will see that it is the key to the entry of absolute love into us.
But if we transfer this longing to another person, we will be in trouble. This is the reason to distinguish absolute love from relative love - so that we don't look for perfect love in imperfect situations. Although intimate union can shine with the radiance of absolute oneness, we cannot count on it. Perfect love can only be found in perfection—the open, awakened heart at the core of life. Only in this way will we know what perfect union is, that is, the state of mind that "we belong to everything because everything belongs to us."