Here is a mistake that most people make in their relationships with others. They try to build a steady nesting place in the ever moving stream of life. Everything in the entire existence is limited by time, including relationship, and therefore it comes with an expiry date. 

Now think of a person whose love you desire. Do you want to be important to this person, to be special and make a difference to his or her life?

Do you want this person to care for you and be concerned about you in a special way? If you do, open your eyes and see that you are foolishly inviting others to reserve you for themselves, to restrict your freedom for their benefit, to control your behavior, your growth and development so that it will suit their interest.

It is as if the other person said to you, “If you want to be special to me then you must meet my conditions, because the moment you cease to live up to my expectations, you will cease to be special to me.”

If you want to be special to someone, you must pay a price in lost freedom. You must dance to the other person’s tune just as you demand that other persons dance to yours if they want to be special to you.

Any kind of dependency on external entities like any particular favorable place, time, object, beings, relationships, situations, conditions and environment for our joy pleasure or happiness is a cause of bondage and any kind of bondage is a cause of misery.

Pause now to ask yourself if it is worth paying so much for so little.

Imagine you say to this person whose special love you want, “Leave me free to be myself, to think my thoughts, to indulge my taste, to follow my inclination, to behave in ways that I decide are to my liking.”

The moment you say those words you will understand that you are asking for the impossible. To ask to be special to someone means essentially to be bound to the task of making yourself pleasing to this person and therefore to lose your freedom. Take all the time you need to realize this.

Maybe now you are ready to say, “I would rather have my freedom than your love”.

If you could either have company in prison or walk the earth in freedom all alone, which would you choose?

Now say to this person, “I leave you free to be yourself, to think your thoughts, to indulge your taste, follow your inclinations and behave in any way that you decide is to your liking.”

The moment you say that you will observe one of the two things:

1) Your heart will resist those words and you will be exposed for the clinger and exploiter that you are (so now is the time to examine your false belief that without this person you cannot live or cannot be happy).

Or

2) Your heart will pronounce the words sincerely and in that very instant all control, manipulation, exploitation, possessiveness, jealousy will drop. “I leave you free to be yourself to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations and behave in ways that you decide are to your liking.”

You will subsequently notice something else:

3) The person automatically ceases to be special and important to you.

Now he / she becomes important the way a sunset or a starry night sky or a symphony is lovely in itself, the way a tree is special in itself and not for the fruit or the flower or the shade that it can offer you. Your beloved will then belong not to you but to everyone or to no one like the sunset or the starry night sky or the full moon.

Test it by saying those words again:

“I leave you free to be yourself….”

In saying those words you have set yourself free. You are now ready to love. Instead of being attached you become a lover. For when you cling, what you offer the other is not love, but a chain by which both you and your beloved is bound.

Love can only exist in freedom.

Therefore love is always unconditional.

Attachment or clinging, which is mistaken for love, is always conditional. When those conditions cease to exist, the so called love, which is nothing but an attachment or clinging to those conditions, will also cease to exist. 

The true lover seeks the good of his / her beloved, which requires especially the liberation of the beloved from the lover.

To be always happy in life, practice the philosophy of

WOW – With Or Without!