Our Love is Mixed With Need. Our love is still mixed with a considerable amount of need. Love wants to give. Need wants to take. Sometimes what we are seeking to take is very subtle and requires deep inner inquiry.

Whenever we feel pain, fear or anger in our relationships, it is because we believe that our needs are in "danger" of not being satisfied. When this happens, our "love" turns to hurt, disappointment, fear, loneliness, inferiority, or bitterness, and sometimes, anger, hate, rage and desire for revenge.

How can love become all these negative emotions? It cannot. The simple truth is that our emotion never was pure love to begin with. It was an "attraction" based to some degree also on need.

This does not mean that we should reject ourselves because we have seldom really loved purely. As we are not yet enlightened spiritual beings, how could we? It would be like rejecting ourselves because we do not yet have a university diploma when we are still in the first grade or because we are a flower bud, which has not yet blossomed. It is only natural that we cannot yet love unconditionally. This is our stage of evolution.

Freeing our Love from Need

The first step towards opening our hearts to real love is to accept and love ourselves exactly as we are with all our weaknesses and faults. Only then can we proceed effectively.

The second step is to begin observing the feelings that are stimulated in our transpersonal. Through objective self-observation, we can determine in which situations we love unconditionally and in which we are feeling "loving" with specific conditions. Following are some examples that will help.

Needing Those Who Make Us Feel Secure

We look to others for security. We might seek security from our parents, spouses, siblings, children, employers, friends, ministers, spiritual teachers or others.

We do feel love toward these beings, but often that love is based on the fact that they offer us a sense of security. If they start behaving in ways that obstruct our feelings of security or if they decide to leave or ignore us, will we still love them?

If our employer fires us, will we still love him or her? If our parents throw us out onto the street, will we still love them? Or is our love tightly woven with the need for security?

If as parents we dream that our children will become economically well off and socially accepted professionals, will we love them the same if they become street artists, beggars or anarchists? Some parents will be able to; others will not.

The basic question is whether or not our feelings of love are steady and consistent regardless of the various changing behaviors of those we "love". In each case where we perceive our heart closing, we need to discover what we fear in that situation. What might we believe is in danger? Most frequently we lose our love when we fear that our security, self-worth, freedom or pleasure are in danger.

Only when we have realized total inner security, perhaps based on an inner spiritual awakening or on our faith in the Divine, will we be able to love without security attachments.

Only when we know that we can live without others can we really love them steadily.

Society has caused us to completely confuse this matter. We believe that if we love others, then we must be totally dependent on them and should fear that our world would fall apart if something happens to them. This is insecurity.

This is a lack of awareness of our inner spiritual nature and our ability to deal with life. It has nothing to do with love.

Perhaps this is why the Apostle John wrote, "Where there is perfect love, there can be no fear".

Be sure to look for the remaining the parts of this series:

1. What is Love ?

2. Love or Need for Security ?

3. Love, Pleasure or Affirmation?

4. Selfless Love

5. Spiritual Universal Love