Love & Freedom

– By Dr Nav Ropra.

Valentines day is the opportunity to come closer with your beloved.  The time to celebrate and to share love and appreciation for yourself and each other.  People just want to be loved and appreciated for who they are.  This is what others want and this is what you want from others.

How we go about doing this is unique and based upon our own set of values and priorities.  If you feel that spending vast sums of money is an expression of love, then this is what you will do.  If you feel that a quiet night in together is your expression of love, then this is what you will do.

The word love is not love.  Love is not a word, it is an experience.  Don’t give too much attention to the word itself.  Words are only indications, like symbols.  It’s the associations that we make that can sometimes cause harmony or disharmony in relationships.  Putting words aside, you will feel the actuality of love as an experience.  Love is an experience.  Be loving like a river is flowing.  To be loving is more of a richer and deeper quality than to simply love.  A loving person enjoys each moment, afresh, dancing with spontaneity.  Share yourself from that perspective with others, not wanting or expecting from the other, but simply sharing and giving.  Economics and love differ in this regard.  When you share your money, you will have less to share, but when you are loving, you will have more to share.

When you are loving, you are coming from a higher state of consciousness.  Higher than this is freedom in love.  Love which includes freedom is greater than just love alone.  When you give your partner the freedom to be who they are, and they give you the freedom to be who you are, then you are both free in love.  The coming together of two free individuals in love has the capacity of immense potential.

Ultimately our hearts just want to love and give love.  This is our birthright and what we are all looking for deep down.  How we do this with our actions and our behaviours will be unique to us.  But the mind can play games and prevents freedom in order to gain from the other or because of our own fears/insecurities.

A beautiful poem by Kabir summarises this well.

“Lift the veil that obscures

the heart and there you 

will find what you 

are looking for”

Kabir

What does he mean when he says “Lift the veil?”  The veil is the mind.  Lift the mind and remove the thorns around your heart.  Only then can you drop into the heart and “find what you are looking for.”  The mind has to drop in order for you to become loving.  Love does not exist in the head otherwise there will be a conflict between the head and the heart.  The head is absolutely needed to make decisions, to choose, to decide, however the language of the head is not the same as the language of the heart.  Love is always communicated from the heart.

The head can know about love but this is not the same as experiencing love.  Knowing is just a collection of knowledge.  You can read many books and encyclopaedias and know all about love.  Knowing about love through the stories of the great lovers of the world, the ‘Romeos and Juliets’ will not be anything in comparison to being in love.  Unless the fire of love has happened to you, you will only ‘know’ about love.  Love has to happen to you and you have to fall into it.  You have to take the risk, it is a gamble.

One has to fall in love with oneself before you can fall in love with the other.  Physiologically, its only about 30 centimetres from your head to your heart, but it can take a lifetime to gain the understanding and to really fall in love.

The real meaning of the phrase ‘Falling In Love’ describes the falling of the energy from the head to the heart.  This is the real fall.  I have never seen anyone who has ‘Fallen In Love’ and is on the floor, fallen!  Have you?  When someone has ‘Fallen In Love’, it is more like a ‘Rising In Love’.  They feel on top of the world, expansive like an Emperor or an Empress.  Let your quality of love be a rising, an expansion and magnification of your own being.

Live life lovingly and watch how your love turns to freedom.  Freedom for you and freedom towards others.  When you have found love and freedom together, then you have arrived home, and home is where the heart is.