Un-learning the Ways of Un-love

When you are absolutely happy in your aloneness, when the other is not a need, it is then that you are capable of love. If the other is your need, you can only exploit, manipulate, dominate but cannot love.

Because you depend on the other, possessiveness arises -- out of fear. "Who knows? The other is with me today; tomorrow he/she may not be with me. Who knows about the next moment?" [...] Out of that fear of the future, you become very possessive. You create bondage around the person you think you love.

But love cannot create a prison. If love creates a prison, then what is left for hatred to do? Love brings freedom -- love gives freedom. It is non-possessiveness. But that is possible only if you have known a totally different quality of love, one not of need but of sharing.

Love is sharing of overflowing joy. You are too full of joy, you cannot contain it, you have to share it. Then there is poetry, then there is something tremendously beautiful which is not of this world, something that comes from the beyond.

Often I say, learn the art of love. What I really mean is: learn the art of removing all that hinders love. It is a negative process. It is like digging a well -- you go on removing layers of earth, stones, rocks and then suddenly there is water. The water was always there as an undercurrent. When you remove all barriers, the water is available. So with love. Love is the undercurrent of your being. It is flowing, but there are many rocks, much earth to be removed. That's what I mean when I say: learn the art of love. It is really not learning love but un-learning the ways of un-love.

--Swami Chaitanaya Keerti