real love...

The below quote is how I view real love. I strive towards this in my relationships and at times it's extremely painful because to truly love I am forced to face my fears and look deep within myself to find my truth and to speak my truth without expectation, knowing pain or loss might come and yet with the loss and the pain, continue to love. My partner becomes my mirror and because my "stuff" comes up in relationship, this is where all my work is done. It's from "Creating Union, The Essence of Intimate Relationship" by Eva Pierrakos & Judith Saly.

"You use the word love very freely, but only too often there is no meaning attached to the word when it is spoken, or worse, the word love is used as a label behind which very different feelings such as ego-needs and negative aims are hidden. People use each other in the most exploitative way and call this love. But what is the vivid, living experience behind the stereotyped label? The experience of love is primarily an attempt to perceive the multiple reality of the other person. Such and endeavor requires that you temporarily put aside your ego, your own needs, expectations, and personal preoccupations to make yourself empty. Then you let in what is, let in the other person so you can truly perceive, experience, and feel all the complexities of this other being. What more fascinating experience could there be?

When you have no stake in maintaining an illusory image of who the other person ought to be, and then resenting it when he or she is not that, you will be open and sufficiently empty to let in what is. This is one way of expressing love. From that solid basis a feeling-exchange can be built.

If you perceive his or her reality, you are free enough of your selfwill, pride, and fear to deal with what is. You will be able to handle even pain and frustration if necessary, so that reality which is ultimately bliss can come to you. The ability to take frustration and pain is essential to giving and receiving and experiencing bliss. On the other hand, if you are very threatened by and defended against pain – the pain of not having your way, the pain of being hurt a little, the pain of having to give up an imaginary or even a real advantage – you will create a hard wall out of your flowing energy stream. Nothing can come into you through this wall, nor can anything flow out from you toward others. You are isolated in the self-created prison of your defense against pain and unpleasantness. You become numb and cannot live fully. You cannot fuse and thus you can have no real pleasure.

Loving, and therefore the ability to give and receive, depends on one’s ability to perceive reality with uncluttered vision. This ability, in turn, depends on how well you can suffer pain in an undefended way that is free from manipulative interpretations of the pain. Such interpretations only aim to annul the pain, whereas letting the pain be will make room for truthful interpretation of the events which bring the pain about.

The aspect of real love which I refer to as letting the other be means more than just accepting where and who the other person is at any given moment. It means having a vision of the total person, including his or her as yet unrealized potential. Such a vision of the unmanifest in another person is a great act of love. It has nothing to with the illusion of manufacturing another kind of person for the purpose of selfwilled needs. If you can give that freedom “to be who you are” to the person you love, you can exchange trust. You thus gain the freedom to assert your own right to be, which you can then do without defiance and without playing your negative games. Positive self-assertion stems from guilt-free state that follows the truly giving attitude. If you can say “yes” to wholeheartedly giving, you can also say “no.” If you truly give, you can also assert your inner right to receive – and that is not to be confused with childish, neurotic demands.

Not giving feelings makes mutual exchange impossible. Since in reality giving and receiving are one, you cannot give to others without also giving to yourself. Conversely, by withholding from others, you inevitably withhold from yourself. You then blame the consequent deprivation on the other person because you are still clinging to the illusion that giving and receiving are two separate acts. The fusion you long for can only come about if every feeling you long to receive, every single aspect of loving, is richly flowing out of you. These aspects of love include tenderness, warmth, respect, and also the recognition of the essence of the other with his or her capacity for growth, change, and goodness. Add to this patience, and giving the other the benefit of the doubt. Make room for alternative interpretations. Trust, and give the other room to unfold and to be. You also yearn passionately to be given these aspects of perfect love. Fusion can take place on the emotional level only when you are fully committed to learn to expand your own capacity to give these components of perfect love.

But in order to fuse emotionally-and therefore totally-it is equally necessary to express yourself truthfully toward the other person, even when this may not be welcome or desired. Not doing so under the guise of a so-called loving goodness and taking it in silence is sentimental and usually dishonest. For in reality you merely fear the unpleasant consequences and are thus not willing to risk pain, exposure, confrontation, and the hard work of reintegrating the relationship on both a higher and more profound level. This can only be done healthily without guilt when you have dealt with and eliminated your own cruelty. As long as any cruelty exists in you, you will never be able to tell the truth to others without hurting them, because the hidden motive to hurt others so pervades your energies and affects your actions and words that it paralyzes your courage to speak up and confront a situation that requires improvement.

How then can an unhampered giving of love be reinstituted and increased? It is possible that you are free from cruelty and can speak up in a totally constructive way, and still the other person is hurt – maybe because he or she insists on never being criticized or frustrated. But if you can deal with the hurt that arises in you from this reaction, you can truly risk this event and battle it through so that an open exchange of feelings can be made possible. You will find that the more you act out of your sincere intention to love and feel more deeply, the more fruitful the outcome will be when you risk offending your partner. Conversely, when you “speak the truth” because you need to hurt but do not wish to admit it, the outcome must be undesirable. Your guilt for this hidden motivation will be a shield standing between you and the truth and between you and the other person.

The fulfillment and bliss your soul longs for can only be satisfied through fusion with another consciousness. It depends on your ability to risk, to confront, to admit your most guarded secret, and as a result to speak up when the other person puts obstructions in the way. You must also recognize your own reluctance to express your best feelings when the unexpressed negativities and hidden games of your partner make this impossible. The positive assertion I speak of here is entirely different from making a blaming demand, which in fact puts the responsibility on the other person. The right kind of assertion does not blame the other, and yet it also recognizes what the other is doing. When you no longer have a stake in blaming, you can truly speak up. When your recognition of your partner’s negative contribution stems from the clear vision you could only gain as a result of self-confrontation and deep honesty, then you will risk, and the temporary pain will not diminish you.

In order to fuse emotionally, honest exchange at the risk of occasional crises is necessary. Honest exchange is totally dependent on the individual’s self-honesty and goodwill to abandon dishonest, hurtful, and destructive patterns. If you are inhibited and afraid, you also inhibit the mutual scope and depth of the bliss that arises from fusion. In that case, you have to ask yourselves where this fear has its origin in both of you. And since you can only be responsible for yourself, ask especially where the fear originates in you. Where is the cruelty in you that makes you afraid of saying what you see? Where does your blindness toward yourself inevitably blind you toward the other person, so that you are unsure and defensive about what you see –and consequently militant and hostile. Again, emotional fusion can exist only to the degree that the prerequisites I discussed her are fulfilled."