Exchanging flowers, smiles and hugs is gratifying and can be a way of expressing your affection and infatuation towards someone. But to love someone is not only hard to understand but also very rare to experience. I love talking about advaitism because I don't know much about it or rather I find it difficult to clearly define, what it is ! Same applies to love also. It is often said that love is a very passionate 'thing' but what is this 'thing' ? And is it really passionate? there are a lot of questions but these, I believe are worth addressing in the first place. Advait or the 'non-dualistic' way of acknowledgment and self-realization, is in itself very challenging to understnd through words, let alone the advaitic understanding of love ! But I will try my best to write, whatever I have heard till date. Love in itself is a whole 'world of experiences' but whatever words you use to describe it, it unanimously is 'intrinsic' to the human soul ! (this article talks only about humans). It is not about caring for someone but it is more about feeling for someone. Now, what do I mean, when I say 'feeling'. The day when you will start experiencing that you feel for someone in a way that you want him/her to be 'free' in life, will be the day when this mystery for you will get solved. Now, stressing on this, you might ask that 'freedom' and 'commitment' are two somewhat contradictory words. Does it mean that forming committed relationships is not 'love'.Well, here I am trying to say something much more than this.The relationship shared by Radha-Krishna is an epitome of love. But to be less complicated, let's take a real world example, parents and children. I will be taking my case here. Once I asked mumma (mother), "What do you want of me ?", she smiled and said nothing. I pressed her further and she replied, "I want to see you become successful in life." I further asked her, "what does she mean by successful?" and the reply was, "a good dignified human being who no more regrets in life." Well this was a little perplexing for me, so I then asked her my final question "But WHY? " and she replied back that she loved me and this would make her happy. I am still dumbstruck, how is it even possible to see someone else's libration as your own achievement. But as we all know, love is not easy to understand ! She is a serene lady and loves me in all her calmness. But isn't love passionate ? I believe, not because it's something, soothing for the two souls and pacifying for those two minds ! It's not about clutching someone and captivating him/her for an entire lifetime. I am not instructing you to break your relationships ! am just telling you, what love is. Thinking of someone is not love but doing something or everything for their liberation, is. Librating someone from fear, darkness, ignominy, ignorance and...all that which is a hindrance for the human soul,is loving them. Love is about helping him/her to be free but at the same time don't forget that you also need liberation ! Master your fears first and then think about someone else because if you cannot love yourself, how can you even think about loving somenone else. I am not at all instructing you to go and improve others but just love them but to again reiterate on the question, how to love? Well, that actually demands realization and it's hard to describe....So, keep trying to manifest the divinity within yourself and 'maybe' that's the key to it !
© Somanshi