For a lot of us feeling “unloved” is probably one of the biggest sadness generating factor, it can even lead to stark depression or imbalanced behaviors of frustration. Also, there some of people who don’t really feel “unloved”, in fact they may get a lot attention from the outside, but feel a lack of that real connection that they long for. Life by itself is a relationship between the physical and the non-physical aspects of this one conscious energy, the non-physical life-energy knows itself through the mirror of physicality – the physical is the beloved of the non-physical energy (its love child). I am not being poetic here, it’s such an obvious truth of life that it’s totally in love with itself, it’s an innocent selfishness, because life is all there is so it has only itself to love and all its physical expressions are ultimately in service to its own self-realization and self-appreciation, though the mind’s limited thinking cannot, sometimes, see this evident truth especially when it’s agitated about the perceived negativity of life. (You can read this post – The value of negativity, to get a sense of life’s perspective in creating a mind that’s capable of negativity).

Since you are the same life-energy you have the characteristics of this energy, and one of them is the desire for a “relationship” that allows for self-appreciation and self-realization. The problem is that most of us go after “outside” relationships first, before starting a love relationship with ourselves – the relationship of self-realization/appreciation that you seek has to first happen within you, with your “self” by yourself. The non-physical aspect of you (the space of being or space of awareness) has to bring love to the physical aspect of you (the mind/body), and this love is what you deeply desire more than anything else, and in the absence of this self-love you can keep trying to find “love”, outside, as much as you want but you can’t really find it – it’s just a scientific deal that you can’t find outside what you lack inside.

The search for love ends with finding yourself

Humans seek love, from the outside, in various forms, such as

– Seeking love from an intimate partner

– Seeking love from parents, friends and relatives

– Seeking love from a “divine” image/presence (in the form of a external God)

– Seeking love from a hobby/career, or body of work

– Seeking love from the society/community

The basic reason why most humans never find the love they desire is because they try to find it by “renouncing” themselves in some way, or by trying to “change” themselves in some way. You’ve heard the protagonist lover, in the movies, make a solemn commitment stating – “I promise I will change myself for you, to get your love”, and such a relationship may have a happy ending in the movies but in reality it spells an inevitable break-up, or a stressful relationship. If your motivation to change yourself is to get someone’s love, you are already a prisoner to their approval of you and such a mindset always ends in a desperate neediness. Another way of “renouncing” yourself is by placing yourself at an inferior level to your object of love – it’s called placing your beloved on a pedestal, here you basically act more like a slave than as a lover. People in spiritual circles are no different in that they try to renounce their mind/body (its desires) for the sake of communing (finding love) with the divine, if you ever meet such people, and have some awareness, you can sense an energy of suppression, in them, which is repelling.

If you have to suppress your natural make-up in order to seek someone’s love, it’s already doomed to failure. Your suppression by itself creates an energy of negativity in you which can manifest as neediness, over-sensitivity, over-possessiveness, desperation and even hatred towards your object of love for making you feel so enslaved. Secondly, if you are “trying” to be in love with someone out of a need for security, or for the fear of being lonely (fear of being single), this again leads to a loveless relationship because your motivation for the relationship is for all the wrong reasons. Also, when you have a lack-based mindset, you learn to “compromise” on what you really desire in your partner and try to “adjust” to, somehow, make it work and soon end up burying your feelings/desires, thus living an empty life – you even console yourself by believing that this is the “reality” of life, that you can’t always find what your heart desires.

When you are out to find love you are already working on a wrong premise, because you can’t find what you lack. A lot of spiritual teachings talk of finding love within, this is again misinterpreted by the mind and it starts seeking some “feeling” of love through spiritual practices, meditations or mystical experiences. But the pointer of “find love within” is not for you to find a temporary feeling/experience of love within you, but about bringing love to yourself, to your mind by letting go into your space of being. Who you are, as life-energy, is already unconditional love and when you allow your mind to rest in your space of being it’s touched by this love. So instead of finding love outside you fall into the love of your own being. To put it in simple words, just let go of trying to find love, also let go of trying to love yourself as an efforted practice (because all of it becomes a mind strategy), and just allow yourself to relax in this space of silence outside the mind (the practice of relaxed awareness connects you with this space), this space automatically brings a permanent feeling of inner wholeness/love.

It can take sometime before you can really start feeling the “love” present in this space outside the mind, the space your life-stream/being (usually a few months of connecting with your space of being). And, it takes time for this space to feel permanent. The reason it takes time is because initially the mind has such a strong cloud of negativity that it does not allow you to “sense” the vibration of love inherent to your being. However, when you become connected with this source of love you inherently realize that you are no longer needy of an outside love (this realization is not a passing thought but a permanent knowing) and this is when you really start looking at relationships in a new light, you understand that it was never supposed to be about “seeking” but about “sharing” yourself – also, you realize that an intimate relationship was never about seeking love or possessing someone, it’s about sharing your experience of life with someone who can feel what you feel, who can meet you deeply enough to understand the way you experience life, and you can’t live such a relationship until you first understand yourself in the light of the unconditional love of your own being.

How love operates in the mind

If love feels painful that’s because the mind infiltrates it with grief, fear or hatred. Love in its truest form is free of pain, the grief is always felt when your mind perceives a “loss” of love, and the neediness is always felt in an attempt to prevent the loss. The mind can’t help but grieve for loss, it’s part of the mind’s design (it’s also biological that the mind has to bring down a lot of neural pathways in response to the loss, and this “deconstruction” is felt physically as the sensation of pain). The grief of the mind can feel overwhelming to you if you already have a huge load of “pain” (negativity) within you from your past store-up, plus if your mind has a strong momentum it keeps recycling the thoughts of loss, at a fast pace, creating a sense of depression – there is no space of relief, and this can create a lot of resistance to the harmony of your body and external reality.

The mind, on its own, will always have a hard time with relationships. It either gets too clingy or it gets too cold, it either gets needy or it gets distant, it either gets over-excited (at the prospect of getting love) or gets into a depression (at the prospect of losing love). Unless you have a connection with your space of being you will always find yourself in a “shaky” ground, and this instability becomes highly pronounced when you end up in an intimate relationship. A lot of us try to avoid “intimate relationships” for this reason, and try to go for “lukewarm” relationships (surface-level), in a bid to play it safe – the mind will do anything to keep itself from feeling hurt, even if it means sticking to a totally incompatible relationship if it gives some sense of pseudo-security. It’s only when you become grounded in your space of being that you find an inner stability that’s free of the influence of mind movement – this is when you become a free being. By “free” I don’t mean reckless or careless or irresponsible, but someone who is no longer a prisoner to the mind’s responses/reactions.

By “self love” I am not talking about the narcissistic love of a “bloated” mind, which is a highly egoic love for oneself created from a feeling of superiority over others – this is again something a mind is capable of. People who have such “bloated” minds never find the warmth of true love, what they always feel is a sense of hatred towards the outside, in some way, out of a feeling of superiority – of course, the sense of superiority is always rooted in a fear of inferiority, so they are never at ease with the world. By “self love” I mean knowing the love inherent to your space of being/self or your source nature outside the mind, and bringing this love to the mind by resting in this space of being – this love is what inevitably starts shining through in your expression in the form of creativity or connection.

It’s not about becoming “all loving”, neither is it about trying to make yourself loving – all of this becomes a mind strategy, and it will just make you a “fake” person. When you truly find a grounding in your space of being, you bring a total alignment/acceptance to your mind without resistance of judgment, and this allows your mind to express itself, as per its natural make-up, in full freedom – it will not make your mind all-loving, if your mind is dark natured it will not become light natured, if your natural makeup is to be introverted you will not become extroverted; what will happen is that you will express your natural makeup in an aligned manner, thus becoming fully true to your natural expression. As you can see, unconditional love comes from your space of being towards your physical aspect (the mind/body) and this allows an alignment with yourself. This alignment is what attracts an aligned relationship(s) on the outside, which just becomes a mirror reflecting your inner congruence and thus a source of joy for you.