A Swedish wedding tradition involves the bride and groom holding a lighted candle between and above them during the ceremony. The significance of holding the candle above them signifies something higher or transcendent that they both look up to. It shows that neither person is in charge of the other, instead, both are subordinate to and serve a higher principle rather than individual selfishness, power struggles, or domination.
Spiritual teacher Gary Zukav talks about a spiritual partnership as a relationship in which two people come together not merely for romance, security, or social expectations, but to support each others spiritual growth. He writes- “When you release the wants of your personality in order to accommodate and encourage another’s growth, you attune yourself to that person’s soul“. Now it becomes a dharmic dance with both putting God or Source at the centre of their relationship.
Both the above principles talk more or less of the same view i.e. to act as a conduit for light and allow it to flow through you.
“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.”, wrote Osho. Often our own insecurities cause us to seek ownership over each other. We fear the loss, the changes that a person goes through but seldom realize that you are getting to witness a miracle to be in the presence of another individual. How about some witnessing?
Sadhguru notes that the phrase “falling in love” is accurate because your personal ego and rigid personality must be willing to dissolve or “fall” for love to truly happen. If your personality stays strong and guarded, it is merely a convenient arrangement. We are vulnerable in love and this is what love brings. To give away a part of you that is vulnerable to the other and with the risk of getting hurt is to an extent a fall. This often gets taken as a one-way street to endless emotional investment by one of the partners. What gets missed is that a one-way investment is but exploitation in disguise and it indeed results into anything but a fall.
Indian revolutionary leader Bhagat Singh penned on love – “As regards the moral status of love, I may say that it in itself is nothing but passion, not an animal passion but a human one, and very sweet too. Love in itself can never be an animal passion. Love always elevates the character of man; it never lowers him, provided love be love.“. Today we see jittered partners going to the extent of killing each other out of wrath and in the name of love. Love is meant to bring the best in you and not the worst.
According to Esther Perel, monogamy has evolved in meaning. Traditionally, it was often understood as being with one person for life. Today, many people experience one person at a time, across multiple relationships throughout their lives. She calls this serial monogamy. We enter into a relationship with huge expectations to which Perel writes that we have gradually placed the responsibilities of an entire community onto one romantic partner, which are but impossible to meet.
For Carl Gustav Jung, romantic love can be understood as more than attraction or emotional attachment. It can become a powerful encounter with our unconscious mind revealing the parts of ourselves we have not yet understood, accepted or integrated. This is to a large extent true as we tend to attract people who act as mirror to our unhealed versions. Jung believed that we unconsciously project aspects of our inner world onto other people. In romantic relationships, we may see a partner not only as they are, but also as the person we imagine them to be.
We might see a partner as the perfect protector because we long for safety or as a saviour because we feel incomplete. One of Jung’s central concepts is individuation- the lifelong process of becoming a more integrated, conscious and authentic person. This means that love need not require us to abandon ourselves. The purpose of a relationship is not to find someone who completes us, but to develop the capacity to meet another person without losing ourselves.
Jung wrote – “Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”
Rumi, a lover of the Divine penned- “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Our desire to be protected and safe at times keeps us away from love. A closed heart is not just closed to love, but is in general closed to all other emotions. Our walls don’t protect us, they offer us an illusion of being safe.
Khalil Gibran wrote – “Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
This is a wonderful saying that elaborates on love as two individuals functioning as a unit. It is impossible to not get rubbed off by the qualities of the other and vice versa. The rubbing off is never the problem, losing your authentic self is.
For love is enhancing of oneself in the company of another and not diminishing one’s light.
For love is an effort to stay through the thick and thin and let them bring out long buried shadows to light
Love and light
Yasmin
