LOVE, HATRED AND ATTENTION-NEED🔗

Hatred and love are opposite sides of the same coin. Love can flip into hatred the moment we feel that our expectations are threatened. In love of this type, it remains love only as long as the conditions remain as expected. The moment the conditions change, the love also changes.

Often what we believe as love is actually related to time and space. So long as the distance between lovers is large and the time of contact is minimal, they feel love towards each other. However, once they get closer and spend more time together, they feel that they are not so much in love after all! That is why they say 'familiarity breeds contempt'. Familiarity can also convert love into hatred. To transcend both love and hatred, we first need to drop expectations. Expectation is the first enemy of love.

We all go through several stages of relationships in our lifetime. If you observe very closely, whichever stage we are in, when we ask for love we are actually asking only for the other person's attention. When we say a person doesn't love us, we actually mean that the other person doesn't give us enough attention. The basic need for any human being is attention from others. The attention-need, along with our dependency on others for survival, is what we experience as love.

The dependency on others might be psychological, physical or spiritual. For example, when you expect someone to lend you a shoulder to cry on, you are dependent upon that person psychologically. When you expect someone to provide you with money or fulfill your bodily pleasures, you are dependent upon them physically. In whatever way people may fulfill this dependency, what it boils down to is the attention that they give us! The whole idea of love is nothing but getting the attention of the other in some way.

In the first session of our meditation camp, I ask people to make an honest list of at least one or two persons in their lives who they really love. Usually in the beginning, people come up with a big list: husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister and so on. They include people whom they would like to please or need to please in order to be happy themselves. As they hear me talk about real love, they start crossing out names from their list – one by one! Understand, if you cross out something, then it was not truly there in the first place.

Many people include certain people in their love list because these people give them a 'feel good' feeling. What do I mean by a 'feel good' feeling? It is a certificate saying, 'You are good. You are this, you are that' etc. We love anyone who pays us compliments, is it not? We think twice before arguing with them. We secretly nurture our good name with them in the name of love. If they go back on their approval of us, we might fall into depression, so we continue to please them and love them. Like this, there is always some hidden reason for our love.

Some people tell me, 'No Swamiji, I don't love my son or daughter for any of these reasons.' I ask them, 'Alright, if your son suddenly starts to make his own decisions, if he suddenly doesn't fit into your framework, if he doesn't follow your guidance, if he doesn't live according to your rules, will your love for him be the same?' listening to you, it means that he is either thinking of something else or he is preparing for his turn. He sits there so that he can start once you finish.

Now if you try this technique, it can take you to a different space alto-gether. When you are with the master or your friend or your beloved, whoever you feel deeply connected with, whoever you are very open with, you can try this technique. It will straightaway lead you to enlightenment. Be very clear, I am not teaching this technique for you to have better relationships or for you to develop your personality. No! I am giving it to you to straightaway experience the pure love that can lead you to enlightenment.

This technique will take you through a quantum jump from the form to the formless, from possessive love to causeless love.

When love happens as causeless overflowing, you simply liberate yourself and the other person from your own attachment and possessiveness, because possessiveness as you know it, binds not only the other person but you as well. It tortures the other person as well as you! Real love simply liberates both of you. It gives freedom to you and the other person.

When I travel around the world, people ask me, 'Swamiji, did you sleep well last night? It is a new place for you.' I tell them, 'Only when you have attachment to a particular house does another house become a new place for you and you struggle. When you don't have attachment to any house, you feel at home wherever you go!'

I never feel any place is mine or not mine. I feel totally at home anywhere. The comfort is always within us, never outside us. When there is no comfort within us, we look for comfort outside us. Feeling comfortable within us is the result of the causeless love energy.

When we don't feel attached to one home, we feel at home in the entire world. We are totally relaxed anywhere in the world.