True Love Beyond Religion: A Nondual Understanding of Love
In this post we’ll take a look at the topic of love and explore why true love is an impossibility in traditional religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We’ll discover that true love emerges only when it arises from our very being. In other words love is a spontaneous power that radiates from our very nature as our very nature.
The Need for Love
Love is often considered to be the greatest virtue of all, and the pursuit of it is what motivates many people in their lives in an infinite amount of ways. However, love remains this elusive treasure which seems to be almost, but never quite, discovered. There are various treasure maps promising to lead to this prize of love, but something is amiss. Something is missing with these “maps”. The Bible and the Quran are a couple of these maps that promise the treasure of love to its adherents. However, love will never be the complete fulfillment that people hope it to be in these religions.
And, so, we continue to lack what we desire from the first moment of our lives to the last. Never quite experiencing absolute, unconditional, genuine love. This lack of experiencing the real thing leads to all kinds of blame. Oftentimes, we blame ourselves that we are incapable of loving or incapable of receiving love. Something must be wrong with us. Or we, perhaps blame our partner for not living up to the person we are able to love. Yet, in reality the blame doesn’t lie with anyone!
Why, then, is the experience of true love seemingly so elusive?
On Religious Love
It’s often said that this or that religion is a religion of peace and love. Although I’m quite familiar with many religions, as an ex-Christian pastor I’ll use Christianity to explain why love is not to be found in religion. (See my post on my Departure from Christianity by clicking here.)
It’s common for Christians to say that Christianity is all about love. After all, the most quoted verse in the entire Bible is probably John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (Italics mine) So, it is taught that the god of the Bible loves us so much that he sacrificed his own son so that we won’t experience his wrath, and by this, most Christians mean his wrath in the form of eternal conscious torment, or in other words, Hell. And, how does one escape this (non-existent) place of unending suffering? “Whosoever believes in him will not perish.”
But, it doesn’t stop there. In Christian theology “faith without works is dead.” So what are the works of faith? The works of faith are the obedience to the commands of god. What are the commands of god? Well, there are many, but the New Testament says that the two greatest commandments are, “You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind (in another place it adds, “and strength”),” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Commanded Love vs Falling in Love
What could possibly be wrong about these two commandments? Nothing is wrong as long as you’re content with never experiencing true, genuine love. Why do I say this? Because, the truth is, true love can never be commanded.
Take the experience of love between two lovers. Why do we say that we “fall in love”? We say we are falling in love because the idea of falling is one of helplessness. I am falling and there’s nothing I can do to stop it! It’s happening of itself, and I have nothing to hang onto to stop this process of falling! Why do we never hear of people being commanded into a love relationship? Because a commanded love is no love at all. It’s a machine love. It’s a fabricated love. It’s a fake, a fraud. It’s not the real thing!
If my wife asks, “Why do you love me?” and my response is, “Because I’m supposed to, baby,” or “Because god commanded me to,” or “Because I’m making myself do it,” this is going to be something of a problem between us. But, if my response is “Because I love you, and I can’t help it! I couldn’t not love you even if I tried!” it’s clear that this is much to be preferred.
The Christian, when asked, “Why do you love God?” may perhaps say, “Well, because he loves me, saved me, and gave his son for me!” This amounts to a husband saying to his partner, “Because you cook for me, and you do things for me, that’s why I love you.” But, if the Christian (along with the Jew and Muslim) is honest, the response would be, “Because God commands love, and so I obey…” and in their mind they silently add, “…and I don’t want to experience the wrath of God, so I’m saving my own ass ultimately.”
To be commanded to love immediately throws one into an impossible situation. One might believe they love God and others, but from the start it’s a fabrication of true love and cannot be it.
Because this kind of “love” is commanded, and because it is not true love, then actions following this faux love can potentially be utterly opposed to true love.
In the Name of “Love”
This is why we see some of the atrocities carried out in the name of this or that god. This is why we see planes hijacked and flown into towers. This is why we see people burned at the stake or stoned for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, and many other so-called “sins”. This is why in the Old Testament we see Israel obey a command from their god to “kill the men, women, children, infants, and even the animals” of a pagan people. They obey it, not out of love, but out of fear. Because love that is commanded is only fear.
Then What About True Love?
At this point, don’t lose hope! True love is something that is experienced! How, then, are we to find this elusive treasure?
As I’ve explained in a previous post (click to read 3 Practices to Experience Nonduality), the real you is not some separate entity that is trying to survive in a hostile world. The ego believes it is a separate person, and that there are billions of other separate people out there and gazillions of other separate things. However, the ego is an illusion. In fact, separation is an illusion.
To believe that one is separate from everyone else is like a wave believing that it is separate from the ocean. Not only is the wave not separate from the ocean, the wave is the ocean. It is the entire energy of the ocean waving in trillions of forms. The wave as a separate entity is an illusion. The idea of you as a separate entity, is an illusion. You are a wave of the ocean of being. Not only are you not separate from the ocean of being, but like the ocean wave of water, you are the ocean of being itself!
And so is everyone and everything else.
Loving Others IS Loving Yourself
There is no true command to “love others as you love yourself”. The reality is that in loving others you are actually loving yourself! Because, there is no separation between your “self” and “others”. There is nothing other than yourself, your real self! You and I are the exact same ocean of being, the exact same existence. We are the same primal energy in the forms of billions and trillions of waves. The waves just so happen to develop something called an “ego” which believes that it is a separate entity.
And Finally, True Love
Understanding this is the key to the experience of True Love! Experiencing and trusting yourself as existence itself, as nondual, inseparable, indistinguishable reality, leads to this spontaneous, uncommanded, all-encompassing love and compassion that is unlike anything found in religion. In fact, this love is not found at all. What is found is that you, as existence, are love itself! In other words, it isn’t love that is found; it’s you that is found, as love itself. This awakening to who you really are leads to a deep compassion and connection with others that has the potential to transform not only our lives, but also the world around us.
When you know yourself to be existence itself, love can no longer be commanded. For love to be commanded is seen as a joke. Impossible! Love is a spontaneous power that radiates from your very nature. It transcends the boundaries and limitations set by religion, race, gender, culture, and ideology, and allows us to see it all as the organic, interconnected one process that it really is. There is this and not that. There is THIS, and you are it, along with every other form that you as existence are taking.
Once this is realized every “other” person you see, is not some “other” person. They are, at the most fundamental and real level, you; not the ego you, but the real you. A self-realized person sees no “other” (except as part of the illusion of separation). When everyone around you quite literally is you, how can there be anything except love and compassion? You begin to look upon “others” with wonder as you observe them in the most interesting and compassionate way. You watch them as part of the entire process of existence. Existence yourself doing what it is doing in this form.
Romantic Love
This obviously affects how you see and interact with your partner. You begin to take less offense at things that once may have created an incredible amount of pain or anger. You desire yourself not to cause pain or suffering to your partner. Perhaps your partner doesn’t know who they really are, they don’t have quite the same understanding and experience that you do. Because of this, too, you look at them with more compassion and understanding than you once did. Or perhaps you and your partner share the same self-realization, and you both see one another as truly one, as yin and yang coming together to form a perfect circle. If this is the case, then your relationship has taken on a whole new experience. One of complete love and unity.
This love experienced in complete oneness is one that religion has tried to produce. And, yet, the product is something that falls short in every case. The illusion of separation, of true duality, is the killer of love before it even begins. It’s destroyed at once at the very command to love.
It’s time to recognize this distinction, to put away all “wrongs”, to let the illusion of separation dissolve, and to experience once and for all True Love by discovering your True Self.
Your Experience
I’d love to hear your thoughts and about your experience of love! Leave a comment or reach out via email below.