LOVE IS MORE THAN A NEED

I think our emotions and our physical condition (which can affect our emotions as well) often do influence our choices and our behavior, therefore affecting our ability to show love and to keep the love we have more pure and untainted by our needs.

There is so much yet we do not know about this though.

Our ability to rationalize and think clearly can be affected by medications, emotions, mental health, and even pain or discomfort levels in the physical arena. We can become self-focused and pain focused. This is natural. Knowing and accepting that can help us cope with it.

At times we allow our needs (both those needs which are known to us and those which unknown to us) to distort our vision and we think we are loving others when we are in fact trying to fix something within. That rarely works for long.

At those times when we have failed to love because we have tried to fulfill a need that is known or unknown to us, we need to cut some slack for ourselves or others when we recognize this. That inborn desire to survive is very powerful and often we perceive our needs as a survival issue so it is easy to see why we have done what we have done. At those times we will become unbalanced in our efforts to get that need met. It becomes a selfish thing then. We will, under those conditions do “unloving” things. We may shun people or even hate or harass them because they have not fulfilled our need or we may go to the extreme in the other direction and obsess about them which may end in eventual harm for the one harassing or/and his or her object of obsession. We may cause ripples of harm to others in our circle or the circle of the one we are using to fulfill our needs such as family members or fiends of ours or theirs. There are lesser extremes of course of unloving behavior that one may call love when actually it is just trying to get a need fulfilled.

Sometimes we work from the idea that “I will treat you lovingly IF you meet my conditions, fulfill my needs and desires.” As an aside here to those who believe in God, think about this: Sometimes we do that with our idea of God. We think that God will love us if we fulfill conditions that we believe God expects. That is when I think we are giving God a personality based on our own personality, beliefs and our experiences. This only serves to perpetuate the way we perceive ourselves and others and this in turn affects our choices and our behaviors.

I think when a person makes a clear intent to learn what love really is and to practice it, they are given the ability to do that better and better under all conditions. It takes consciousness or awareness on one’s part along with dedication and focus. Nothing is ever forced upon us. We have choices.