I want to talk with you about love.
I want our conversation to be honest.
There’s too much love for sale in the spiritual market.
There are too many people who lack a solid background and have nothing real to offer, who become “experts” in offering their unconditional love and support, as long as you pay their fees.
I’m not one of them, and I won’t lie. I don’t love you. Love is the fruit of a relationship. It involves admiration and respect. And it requires people to know each other in depth in order for this to happen.
Instead of love I want to offer you my honesty, so we can build a relationship of transparency and mutual respect.
For a long time, I believed in the new age tales about love I learned and now, when I look back, I realize that I was fooled, and it caused me pain and a huge waste of time and energy.
The manipulation of the word love can lead to pain and frustration, and I want to show you how often it happens. Let’s analyze four myths about love that we hear a lot in the spiritual world to see how much truth there is there?
1) Love is the key
This is the first and most common lie about love. There’s always someone affirming that love is key for something. Love is the key to healing yourself. Love is the key for evolving and becoming your “best version”. Love is the key to unlock “infinite prosperity”, etc.
If love is the key for health, how is it possible that Saint Francis passed away at the age of 44 after being sick for months, Paramahansi Yogananda, left this world after a heart failure, at the age of 58, and Donald Trump, a clear antithesis of love and compassion, is 75 years old, and is alive and healthy? Love is a beautiful thing, but it clearly doesn’t bring health and youth.
Love can help you in your evolution, for sure. Yet, disliking yourself is a much more powerful trigger for self-development. Normally it’s when you are uncomfortable and even upset with your flaws and weaknesses that you make the most powerful decisions that can turn you into a better person.
You can also forget, for the sake of your financial safety, the idea that love will bring you prosperity. If you want to prosper, please rely on your hard work, dedication, perseverance and focus.
2) Your true self is love
New age gurus repeat it like parrots: “your true self is pure, unconditional love”. Basically what they’re saying is that your human emotions, your existential pain, your fear, anxiety and anger are not your true self. It’s a poisonous idea.
This idea creates a hierarchy and a division within you. Love must be pursued. What’s not love within yourself must be healed. You follow this path and you’ll have a holy war within. You’ll turn natural and beautiful aspects of your being into enemies and monsters, all in the name of love.
If there is a true self, it’s the being that exists behind the mask. When you take away the mask you’ve shown to society and the mask you’ve shown to yourself, what will you find? You’ll find someone who has love and anger, joy and sadness, courage and fear, anxiety and peace, and a whole set of opposite emotions. Your feelings and your life story are sacred.
You’re not love. You’re a human being, who feels love and also a whole set of emotions. Denying and neglecting the other aspects of your being to worship and try to become true love won’t work. It will only put you in a passive aggressive struggle with yourself.
3) Unconditional love
What is unconditional love? It means a kind of love that is immutable and can persist despite the circumstances. It means, for example, being a Jew whose parents were killed in the holocaust and loving Hitler.
Do you really want this kind of love in your heart? Would you want to love someone who damaged your daughter or son, or the most important person in your life? The idea of unconditional love is unnatural and sick. We all have limits, and we must respect our own boundaries. Not respecting them is an act of self-aggression.
Respect yourself, and let love flow its natural course.
The concept of unconditional love is not only unnatural. It’s also contradictory. If you say “I want to reach universal love” you’re setting exactly a condition for your love: it must be unconditional. Do you perceive the absurdity of this paradox?
4) Universal love
Universal love is a beautiful feeling. Your heart opens and your love flows to every creature in the universe. It’s achievable in controlled environments, during deep meditation or ayahuasca ceremonies. Yet, you just need to find someone with opposite values than you, and your universal love will be gone.
It’s easy to love from the distance of your spiritual practice, but let’s be honest: loving real people in real life is a much harder and sometimes an impossible task.
Love is precious and sacred. That’s exactly why it shouldn’t be put in a cage. Let your love be. Don’t pursue it, don’t try to force, and don’t get attached to it. Instead, respect your heart and trust its wisdom.
We tend to give too much importance to our feelings. Yet, our emotions are volatile. Even the most profound love you can feel will pass, giving way to another emotion. So, why should we try to stick to love and transform our anger? We only do it because we’ve learned that love is good and anger is bad. But both are just transitory emotions, and they’re not so important. There’s something much more important than your feelings: your actions.
Once you have your values clear you can set your intentions in life and commit to it. A clear intention followed by action is more powerful than all our emotions.
Your fear can’t stop you, but if you stop to “solve” your fear, you may end up stuck in your life. Your anger can’t hold you back, but if you stop to fight your anger, you may lose your focus completely. Your anxiety can’t hold you back, but if you wait until you’re calm to take action, you may miss the timing. You may feel lots of love in certain moments of your journey, but if you start chasing it, you’ll get lost in your inner labyrinth, while your life passes.
Would you like to go a little deeper with me? Let’s talk more about the myths and traps in spirituality, and find tools to set you on a path than can really empower you? I’m waiting for you in the masterclass Free Your Mind. It’s free for a limited time.
