Is conditional love mere gratification?

[Guest guest]

Is conditional love mere gratification?

 

The husband comes home from work,kisses his wife,tells her how much

he loves her and then asks what's cooking for dinner.The wife says

she has not cooked anything for dinner,she just felt a bit lazy,can

they go out for dinner,have a simple meal? The flourish,the

cheerfulness,the affection disappears like a mere dream.There is a

sullen resentment,a trace of anger.Is the husband seeking love or

mere gratification of his own needs?

 

 

The father kisses his son and tells him how much he loves him.He then

enthusiastically announces that he is going to drive his son to the

nearby park.The little boy wrinkles his nose and says that he would

prefer to play with the neighbour's children.The father's enthusiasm

and affection vanish as he glares at his son.Is the father seeking

love or gratification?

 

 

 

Is our love in our daily relationships actually love or is it merely

gratification? In most of our daily relationships,we love with

expectation and conditions.I cook and sacrifice for you in return for

your approval and love which I crave.Stop the love and approval and

my desire to cook and please you wanes.

 

 

Why do we seek gratification and why do we call it love?

 

 

Obviously,we have various needs,a need for love,for appreciation,for

respect,for attention,for recognition,for praise,for feeling

wanted.All these needs demand gratification.Since other people also

have their own needs,we learn to trade off.We seek approval,we

provide care.We seek company,we offer affection.Yet,whatever be the

convenience of mutual gratification,it is only unconditional love

that can be called love.The rest are merely various forms of

gratification.Ultimately,love with conditions binds us in patterns of

expectation.Expectation,if frustrated,creates disappointment and

anger.Unfulfilled expectations can lead to a sense of being betrayed

or let down.Our love often ends in pain and misery for ourselves and

others.This is because it is not unconditional love but a need for

gratification masquerading as love.

 

 

 

In a sense,our needs may be legitimate.We may seek approval,

respect,love,affection and togetherness.We may seek security.These

felings should be accepted for what they are and expressed

directly.Their satisfaction should be sought directly by means that

will bring about the desired result.There is only one way to receive

love,to give it.There is only one way to obtain friendship,to be a

friend.Achievement brings approval,discipline and strength command

respect.The fulfillment of my needs should not be a condition for

offering my affection.The power of my heart,the power of love gets

trivialised if I barter my affection for the gratification of my

physical or emotional needs.Let us be clearly aware of the moments

when we are seeking gratification,in a stillness of mind and

heart,let us feel and understand the need whose gratification is

being sought.Let us refrain from bartering our affection for the

gratification of our needs,physical or emotional.In the complete

awareness of our needs,as they are,they can be understood and

dissolved.

 

 

My love,when offered,should be unconditional,expecting nothing in

return.In this extraordinary power,the human being climbs to heights

of timeless perfection.The results of unconditional love are

extraordinary,for ourselves and others.Extraordinary

intimacy,kindness,achievement,wisdom,strength and sacrifice

become possible in the presence of unconditional love.Great burdens

become light,great achievements are carried lightly,extraordinary

responsibility and commitment arise,extraordinary courage and

faith,boundless optimism and energy,an indefatigable will,all these

and a million other blessings spring from the treasurehouse of

unconditional love.All of us seek to give and receive love.Let us

tear apart the chain of conditions,of expectation,of

gratification.Completely free from conditions and expectations,our

lives will be transformed as we soar with the power and magic of

unconditional love.

 

 

Ashok Gollerkeri

 

SharingForSelfEnquiry/message/386

[Gauracandra]

This is an interesting proposition. Everything is a gradation in this material world. There are certainly baser aspects to “love” and more refined aspects of “love”. Pure love can only be experienced on the level of the soul. The underlying principle is the same but it might be expressed in material covers. An animal loves its offspring but can only express this love in a physical manner (cleaning, feeding etc…). A human parent expresses love through actions, but also words and symbols. On higher levels “love” is expressed ever more finely, until at the highest level it is pure untainted love.

[Gauracandra]

I have heard that Srila Prabhupada has stated that the love a mother has for her child is as close to pure love as can be found in this material world.

[Guest guest]

Love is self sacrifice-is'nt this a very common misconception? Are we

to sacrifice ourselves,our happiness and our developement,our own

growth as individuals at the altar of duty,marriage or friendship and

call it love? Can love actually demand a sacrifice of one individual

to strengthen another?

 

 

 

Love is a spontaneous fulfillment,a flowering of our consciousness,a

realisation of the essential oneness with another.This realisation

neither makes demands nor does it call for sacrifices.It is an

enhancement of both in the recognition of their essential oneness.

There might be certain actions done by an individual for

another.However,these,if done with a sense of love,of oneness,are not

considered a sacrifice at all.It is actually the celebration of one's

own enhanced and expanded awareness beyond our petty,separative self

identity.An action born of love is a celebration of love not a

sacrifice.To sacrifice is to give up what we want.In an action born

of love,nothing is desired except an enhancement and expression of

the love itself.Thus,an act of love is a fulfillment of one's own

deepest desire.

 

 

 

It can be quite baffling to a mind filled with learnt notions of

virtue and duty to understand the actions born of love.For,a mind

filled with learnt patterns,ingrained with a sense of duty and virtue

by authority,by conditioning,is actually sacrificing its own desires

and needs to fulfill ingrained demands and notions of virtue and

duty.In these,in this artificially ripened fruit,there is a

bitterness,a sense of becoming less,a feeling of self sacrifice for

the sake of another.Since the large mass of individuals in a society

are still trapped in a conditioned awareness,still prisoners of

patterns of conformity,they are confined to an ingrained pattern of

behaviour in the name of virtue,duty or love.These then are labelled

and admired by the very same mass,a kind of self appreciation,patting

one's own back for the trouble taken,by terming it heroic self

sacrifice.This is then sold to others,taught as a virtue,a mere

figment of imagination presented as a sacrosanct principle of life-

that love demands self sacrifice.

 

 

 

There is no doubt that love is selfless,spontaneously so.Yet,it seeks

no rewards and does not claim the credit for sacrificing

anything.Love gives unconditionally and seeks no reward.It acts as a

natural fulfillment of its own capacity,of its own deepest desire,of

its own enhanced awareness and understanding.In fact,it is repelled

by all selfishness,including the vanity of a proclaimed self

sacrifice.

 

 

 

Thus,we have the curious phenomenon of differing perceptions.A human

being acting out of love may feel that he has done only what is

natural to him.He may feel it merits no special attention.He might

actually play down the action as of being little consequence.He might

feel that it was merely what he wanted to do.Yet,the same action

viewed by others devoid of love may be labelled as self

sacrifice.This may further be labelled as heroic and desirable and it

may be sought to be laid down as a role model for behaviour.

Children,especially,may be ingrained with simplistic and erroneous

notions of this kind.

 

 

 

It is typical of superficial observation and thinking to confuse and

mistake the stem for the root,the visible for the invisible,the label

for the fact.In fact,this shows how,in the ultimate analysis,

experience is the only transforming agent.One can only know what one

has actually experienced.In the experiencing,one goes beyond the

label,the word and enters the fact.Yet,our entire system of

thought,of language,our social structures and systems,our accumulated

knowledge is based on what we call impartial observation.Is it

possible that we are merely filling our heads with innumerable labels

of little significance? Is it possible that,in our so called

achievements,we are merely succumbing to an illusion of knowledge?

Is our own vanity,the power and momentum of our own thought

process,actually preventing us from seeing things as they are? Is

experience a comb which we finally get when we have lost all our hair?

 

 

 

Thought operates within a given framework of experience.Since our

experience is finite,can our thought grasp the infinite? Our thought

is merely a pale shadow of our experience.Words are probably an

approximate and pale shadow of our thought process.Since thought and

language forms the backbone of our so called knowledge,is it possible

that the little that we do know is actually preventing us from

knowing the vast unknown? Are our senses,mental and intellectual

faculties actually incapable of knowing reality as a complete

experience? If so,do we have the wisdom to know that we do not know?

Can we,in a complete and unconditional acceptance of this

fact,actually remove the blocks to our own awareness of the reality

that is? This exploration of our own consciousness,this unique journey

of the discovery of our own awareness,calls for both learning and

unlearning.Most of all,it calls for unlearning the vanity of our so

called knowledge and the humility to acknowledge that we may

never "possess" final knowledge.It is only the courage born of love

that can find this strength and this humility.

 

 

Ashok Gollerkeri

 

SharingForSelfEnquiry/message/400