When did you consciously experience Love?
Being in Love is a great emotional state. In fact, it is the most beautiful emotion that a human being ever experiences in his or her lifetime.
Still, many societies, communities, and families suppress it as if it were a dangerous emotion.
The way I see it, this social behavior is a “design” issue. Any group, may it be a society, community or a family, is based on certain “rules” and … Love has everything but rules as its chief characteristic.
“If you are required to play by the rules, the name of the game is anything but Love.” ~ 🙂 [Tweet This]
As a spiritual being on a human journey, our chief duty is to keep our souls happy or else our life becomes meaningless.
We feel delighted when we ‘give’ and being in Love is the highest possibility of giving.
However, our societies, communities, and families, knowingly or unknowingly, teach us to ‘take’ more than ‘giving,’ why?
By design, we become a part of a family. By choice, we remain a part of the society or a community.
When we become a part of such a society, community or a family, the rules followed by them apply to us.
It goes like this: if you don’t follow X rule of the said society, community or a family, you will receive Y consequence where Y may be some punishment.
And no human gets ever excited with the idea of punishment!
It breeds fear, anxiety, and stress.
As a result, to remain a part of a family, community, or a society, we let fears fill our minds, develop a planet of prejudices against other humans and take (or not take) actions that keep us away from our spontaneous and natural self.
When we suppress our spontaneous and natural left, we become resistant to Love.
Love happens to the one who is at his or her natural and spontaneous best.
Because of the negative emotions of fear and prejudices, we look at the situations selfishly and start dividing the world into yours and mine, good and evil, and right and wrong. In short, we start being judgmental about other humans and life situations.
Not only that, we start believing in the material-world definition of Love, which is nothing but another name of Lust.
So, what is the distinction between Lust and Love?
- In Lust, ‘I’ becomes essential when in love, ‘you’ become important.
- Lust takes, Love gives.
- Lust imposes rules. Love inspires to experience life wildly.
- Lust is based on fear…fear of losing, Love is based on possibility…possibility of giving.
- Lust wants bodily pleasures; Love raises human consciousness and offers spiritual joy.
- Lust demands attention from the other, while love gives respect to the other.
- Lust is conditional; Love can never be conditional.
While it might be okay to have Lust, it is limited to the bodily pleasures. On the other hand, Love connects humans with the higher consciousness and causes the creation of spiritual joy.
And know that pleasure is something you receive, while joy is something you create. Receiving pleasure makes you a follower, Creating joy makes you a leader.
Pleasures don’t last long, and once you have experienced it, you like to receive them again — and since you are not the creator of the pleasure, you depend on someone else, and it guides you towards living in the past because you don’t control the present state of other humans or life situations.
On the other hand, Loving is a continuous creation process, and it enables you to live in the present. When you ‘create,’ you experience life at your peak potential and produce a tremendous amount of positive energy in the present moment.
Imagine when you Love someone, you set the other human free. You create situations where the other human can be part of your joy. Or any Joy, which you may or may not have created but involves the other human.
“When you really Love a human, you want him or her to flourish.” ~ 🙂 [Tweet This]
On the contrary, when you are caught in the material world definition of Love, you put different kinds of restrictions on the other human. You think that the other human should be happy ONLY with you and no one else. More to that, if the other human behaves differently from what you think is right, then you feel unhappy and cause situations where neither you nor the other human can remain happy.
Lust is limiting; Love is liberating. ~ 🙂 [Tweet This]
So when you think you are in Love, ask yourself this question: what if the human you Love does not ‘comply’ with your idea of living life?
Do you feel any negative emotions or you continue to respect the other human nonetheless and DO NOT impose any actions on him or her?
Lust makes us a follower while Love makes us a leader. The leader is the one who creates and receives more spiritual (and even material) benefits, though it is never the objective of the one who leads his life with the possibility of letting Love happen in his or her life.
Whether you want to be a leader of your life and cause joy or you want to remain a follower and chase lustful pleasures, it is really your choice, but know that as a human, each one of us has this as a choice but we often do not realize it.
You can let Love happen or let Lust overtake you, both come with their own consequences, it is really up to you! ?
— x — x—x —
PS: This is a rewrite of my 2013 post with the same title. In past 6 years, so many things have been refined including my perceptions and they are reflected in the above post.
PPS: The picture in the post is taken in Paris, Notre Dame. Paris is considered to be one of the most romantic cities in the world. When we talk about Love and Lust, Paris should not be forgotten! ?
