What is True Love?

What is True Love?

by Diane Linsley

In our confused modern world, most people have the mistaken

belief that love is a feeling. If you practice mindfulness meditation,

you will soon learn that feelings come and go. They flow like ocean

waves, in and out. They arise and then pass away.

Is this the kind of love you want in your relationships? It's nice to

feel loving, but it's not enough. What if you could develop the ability to act with compassion, no matter how you are feeling? This requires self-control and willpower. It also requires the development of relationship skills and new habits of thinking and acting. Most of all, it requires faith in Someone greater than yourself - the true source of Love. To start with, let's look at the different facets of love.

True Love is Understanding

In a beautiful little book called True Love, Thich Nhat Hanh says that "understanding is the essence of love." In order to love someone in a way that will be beneficial, you first need to practice "deep looking." This is observation with the intent to understand the other person and their needs.

People dream of finding the "right person" who will understand and love them unconditionally. That's a childhood fantasy. The only One who can fulfill this deep desire is God. However, it is possible to find a human being who has enough awareness that they will make a sincere effort to understand you through close observation and communication. When I found such a person, I married him.

Clients sometimes ask me how they can make another person love them. They want to control the process. I tell them that you can't make another person love you. If someone loves you, it's because of who they are. Likewise, your ability to love is a reflection of who you are.

Rather than seeking for someone who understands you, focus on developing this ability yourself. Then you will see more clearly, and you will choose relationships that support your growth.

In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm says that learning to love consists of two parts: learning the theory and then practicing until you become skilled.

"Here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art.... In spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power - almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving." ~Erich Fromm

True Love is Compassion

The word compassion literally means "suffering with." It's the recognition of our own humanity in other people. Every one of us will suffer as a human being and ultimately die.

Most people try to deny this obvious fact. They keep themselves busy chasing money, popularity, possessions and relationships - all in an attempt to escape from the pain of looking closely at suffering.

The more you embrace the human condition, instead of turning away from it, the greater will be your capacity to love. This is the secret of the great lovers of the world - and I'm not talking about romantic lovers. Mother Theresa was a great lover of humanity because she worked very hard at it.

In a letter to his daughter, Albert Einsten said, "There is an extremely powerful force that, so far, science has not found a formal explanation to. It is a force that includes and governs all others, and is even behind any phenomenon operating in the universe.... This universal force is LOVE.... After the failure of humanity in the use and control of the other forces of the universe that have turned against us, it is urgent that we nourish ourselves with another kind of energy…. If we want our species to survive, if we are to find meaning in life, if we want to save the world and every sentient being that inhabits it, love is the one and only answer."

You can begin to embody love by practicing self-compassion and then extending that love to other people. Try Loving Kindness meditation and Tonglen meditation.

True Love is a Choice

One day, my daughter was talking to me about her sister, whom she deeply loves, and she asked me, "Why do I love her so much?" My immediate response was, "Love is a choice." Then I added, "We could talk all day about the psychological reasons why you love someone, but the fact is you choose to love. Then you act on that choice by doing something loving."

I believe that the purpose of incarnating as a human being is two-fold. First, it is to individuate, which requires freedom and the ability to make choices. Second, it is to learn how to love.

We choose in every moment whether to be loving or unloving in our thoughts, words and actions. Each choice reinforces the habit of love or unlove. If we want to feel more love, we must start by training our thoughts - uprooting the unloving thoughts and replacing them with loving ones. Anyone can experience love as a momentary feeling, but it takes daily practice to develop a consistently loving character.

It's a fallacy to think that we need to feel loving before we can act. Our greatest acts of love come from doing what we know to be right, even when we aren't having warm, fuzzy feelings. Then we know that the love comes from God working through us, not from our miserable little egos that just want feelings. When we aren't feeling loving, we can pray for God to help us do the right thing anyway.

The good news is that the more we choose love over ego, the more God's love will flow through us, relieving us of the misery of the ego.

True Love is Action

In couples counseling, therapists help people improve their listening skills and other relationship skills. How can you understand someone if you don't listen to them?

Listening requires us to humble ourselves and set aside our own egos for a brief time in order to understand another person's perspective.

After going through a marriage and another relationship with men who simply walked out of the room whenever I tried to talk to them, I was very grateful to find my current husband. He's a good listener.

The next step is to act on what you have learned from listening. Consider this quote by David Whyte: "Courage is what love looks like when tested by the simple everyday necessities of being alive."

Courage requires willpower. To increase your willpower, practice making conscious choices. Keep your promises, and develop good habits. Not only will you be a better lover - you will also feel better about yourself, and your self-esteem will increase.

The more we act on our loving impulses and ignore our selfish impulses, the easier it becomes. Action becomes habit. Habit becomes character. In Christian terms, we become like Christ by acting like Christ.

True Love is Selfless Service

Jesus taught that the first commandment is to love God. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Your neighbor is the same as yourself in one sense - you are both made in the image of God. Since this applies to all human souls, you don't have to worry about finding the "right person" to serve.

How do you love God? By obeying him. How do you love your neighbor? By serving him. Since we are commanded to love our neighbor, serving our neighbor fulfills both commandments.

Who is your neighbor? It is the person who is in closest proximity to you at any given moment. How do you serve him? Let God move through you. You will know what to do and say when you are one with God. How do you become one with God? Through prayer, scripture study, and the burning desire to be one with God, giving up your ego's plan in exchange for God's greater plan for you.

After you have finished your daily devotional practice, arise and serve others.

True Love is Who You Are

Some people have the experience of being the embodiment of Love. After this experience, they might say, "It doesn't make sense to talk about love as a concept. Love is who you are."

True love may be defined as the manifestation of the true Self. Where does the love go when you are not acting in a loving way? A person can have the most profound experience of enlightenment, but then act unlovingly or fail to take needed action. Realization alone is not enough.

The person who has mastered the art of loving rarely thinks about the concept of love. Instead, they ask, "How can I serve others today?" You don't have to wait for an earth-shaking spiritual event before you start doing this. Enlightenment happens to those who practice.

I don't think of myself as a container full of love, but as a conduit through which the love of God flows. My job is not to fill myself up with love (which is a useless endeavor, as you might know if you've ever tried), but to clean my conduit so the love of God can flow freely.

I clean the conduit by repenting of the things that clog it up like resentful or self-righteous thoughts, materialism and greed. I read uplifting spiritual books that help me correct errors in thinking and increase my desire to be one with God. It's not me who is cleaning the conduit, but God Himself. I put myself into His hands with faith, humility, and the desire to be scrubbed clean.

Love and Shadow Work

If you are not yet able to see God in every person and serve them without ego, I recommend doing shadow work. My favorite book on this subject is The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford. You can also do shadow work with Voice Dialogue.

Everyone in your life is a mirror to you. I recently had a client who questioned this teaching. She said, "What about so-and-so?" I replied, "It's not a question of whether or not someone is a mirror to you. The answer is always yes. A better question is, how is this person a mirror to you?"

Stop focusing on what the other person is doing wrong, and look at yourself. This isn't denying that the other person is doing something wrong. But you have no power to fix them. You can only work on yourself. If you want to love more deeply, do your shadow work.

True love is a lifelong pursuit. There's no end point at which we can say we have achieved the goal. There's always more to learn and do. It may seem overwhelming at times, but it's the most worthwhile thing I know of.

Here's a reading of the story of Cosmo Von Wehrstahl, which is a fairy tale from George MacDonald's book Phantastes, chapter 13. It demonstrates the difference between true love and attachment.

Here's a recording by C.S. Lewis that talks about the four types of love and how we learn and grow from each of them.