We've all seen it in the movies, Love enabling a wounded warrior to fight for his beloved. Sometimes the protagonist fights against fantastic creatures, sometimes he fights against wicked witches, and yet other times he fights against typical bad guys, bullies who want to take everything away from him. The reality of love is that it allows for us to deal with the bad, it enables us to look past flaws that could easily transform a beautiful woman into a hag, and to remain steadfast in our dedication. Love enables us to grow and change. When someone truly loves another person they want to actively change themselves- to ultimately become a better person. Love is hope, and love is endurance. Love is dealing with the hag, melting away her cold artifice and wicked guile, until the woman within has been completely liberated from the illusory world of emotions and again made real. It is the caress and the kind ear that liberate the man who cannot express his emotions. Patience is another attribute of Love.
It is necessary to understand what Love truly is before understanding what it is not. Love is one of the ultimate keys to transformation and enlightenment. By creating a bond with another person, we should, ideally be creating a bond to constant growth. The sad fact is that love is commonly misunderstood, and instead of creating a life together based on these higher ideals, people pervert and destroy all the love and hope that they could create. It is hard, because not many people want to constantly look within all the time, be reminded of and realize their own faults, or grow- change can be difficult and frightening- we get used to thinking of ourselves a certain way. As part of the vision of Monad Photography, I am a proponent of always striving to see oneself in a new light, a manifesto that helps one to break cyclical thoughts or behavior, and to strive towards new experience.
Recently I have seen the demise of relationships that had lasted more than twenty years. At first it was a shock, but then I thought about all of the things that I had noticed over the years, and that was what initially spurned my urge to write about the subject of Love. Do I feel hokey writing about it? A little. Do I realize the necessity to address this subject? Absolutely. Especially because people tend to repeat the same patterns over and over again, until they learn their lessons, a concept commonly referred to as "eternal return" or "eternal recurrence". How would you like to repeat the same scenes over and over again for all eternity? The truth is, whether we like it or not, we do. Sometimes we have such a strong unconscious tug to live out a certain question, that we end up focusing on one small element in our past, these actions could be in relation to choosing a partner to work out problems we haven't solved since childhood. Sometimes this means being in an abusive relationship, or a codependent relationship. I have often seen this occur with drastic, and unhealthy results. If people have committed to each other but don't pay attention to the inner alchemy going on, or the reasons why they are together, then they are simply just reliving the trauma they experienced in the first place. Part of the reason that I am writing this article is because I want to see other people transcend their trauma instead of being mired in it. The first step in avoiding trauma and experiencing Love is to become your own witness and to actively pay attention to the decisions you make.
Often in relationships people will unthinkingly do things that hurt the other person in an arbitrary fashion. This is one of the first obstacles to actual Love, especially if they are just repeating the habits shown to them by their parents. It is unfortunate that many people never think to try new concepts, and inadvertently limit themselves, but that is also a result of our society, because our society tells people that if "somebody doesn't love them just the way they are" then that somebody should be kicked to the curb. We are not supposed to stay "just the way we are" for all eternity! We are supposed to grow, we are supposed to change. Love is certainly about a degree of acceptance, but most of that applies to self-acceptance and self-love. If we don't love ourselves, how can we expect someone else to love us? Self-love also allows us to be self-critical of our own actions and ideas. If we cannot see the truth behind what others say, whether in the relationship or elsewhere, then we cannot grow. By accepting criticism, we start our path towards Truth, as well as Love.
Sometimes when experiencing difficulty in my own relationship, I would have dreams that my partner would be with an alternate version of myself- a more actualized, healthier, and more talented me, or in other words, my higher self. This was during a long period of unemployment, which is always stressful and depressing. The dream was my way of understanding that although my partner loved me for who I was, that I would still have to go through quite a few more transformations and take more steps towards my goals in order to continue on this path. This was hard for me to realize because even though I was stressed, I had also begun to adopt self-limiting behavior as a defense mechanism, and I was beginning to get too comfortable with being miserable. By eventually becoming critical of my own situation, and spurred to action by my dream, I was able to transcend that lower aspect of myself- even though it was very hard to do. Love is not two people who stay together even though they are miserable. Love is all about alchemy as well as inward and outward transformation. Love is about being with someone who will challenge you to grow with them, otherwise someone might get lost along the way. Love is also the patience our partner bestows on us when we are going through our inner alchemy, as we do need to occasionally rest along the path and allow these changes to occur.
In the beginning paragraph, I said that "Love [is] enabling a wounded warrior to fight for his beloved. Sometimes the protagonist fights against fantastic creatures, sometimes he fights against wicked witches, and yet other times he fights against typical bad guys, bullies who want to take everything away from him." In essence we are the hero, and we are the beloved, and we are the monsters that we have to fight. Love is simply having a companion on that journey. We don't need to be in relationships where we have to be the "hero" or the "princess" or even the "monster", because all of those things are really just inside of us. One dimensional roles are passe. There are many layers in love, but one of the most profound layers exists where there are no masks, and roles are not designated willy-nilly. I'm tired of the blame game, I'm tired of false epithets that accompany false prophets of "love". Love occasionally is a battlefield, but usually when we need to fight against ourselves, and our own preconceived notions.
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