I feel that many of us do not understand the difference between like and love and remain convinced that like and live are the same. Like is quite "I" centric. "I" is the center of existence and "I" like certain things because they please me. "I" may like money because money gives me pleasure or the things "I" buy with money give me pleasure. "I" may like power because when "I" get VIP treatment, "I" get the pleasure. "I" may like the company of a certain person because that feels pleasant to me. Love is a completely different phenomenon. Love is soul-centric and can not be experienced till we are fixated on likes and dislikes.
The reason is very simple. We like the XYZ thing because it feels pleasant. Pleasure is nothing but a sensation that the body experiences unconsciously due to the secretion of a particular neurotransmitter like dopamine. For example, we meet an old friend and we get a dose of a neurotransmitter that makes us feel happy. Every such experience gives feedback to the body and we develop a stronger like for the cause. The pleasure of meeting the friend gives happy feedback to the body and we develop a stronger desire to meet the friend next time.
The same thing happens with dislike. The moment we have some experience that we dislike, we feel a painful sensation in the body. For example, when we meet a person whom we do not like, we feel unpleasant sensations. Mind again sends feedback to the body and we develop a stronger dislike. Each time we meet a person we do not like, we experience unpleasant sensations and our unconscious memories of dislike become stronger. This process keeps happening every moment of our lives unconsciously in our bodies.
Thus, one gets into the loop of likes and dislikes. As we grow old, our likes and dislikes become narrower and stronger. They become the driving force of our lives. As if we get caged into a very small part of our existence. We remain happy so long as the circumstances keep supporting us and become sad as soon as the circumstances take a negative turn. We fail to realize that each such negative turn is to widen our perspective. We were always born with the wideness as all the babies are born. They are not fixated on any thoughts or concepts. They just want to explore whatever comes their way. As we age, we get fixated on certain experiences and stop growing. We can see the difference between infants and toddlers. Infants are happy to explore whatever comes their way while toddlers start developing likes and dislikes and therefore start being a little more firm about what they like.
That process slowly takes us to what we are as of date. Bundle of likes and dislikes. We get so trapped in our likes and dislikes because we never examine ourselves from a distance. "I" is always mistaken to be associated with the likes and dislikes. "I" neither likes nor dislikes, that just observes. However, since we never work to understand what we really are, we remain trapped in just one room of the entire palace we own, considering that to be all we have. With age, it becomes all the more difficult to convince a person to come out of the room and look at the palace he owns and leave aside coming out of the palace. That is almost out of the question for most people.
Love is a completely different phenomenon. Love arises with the connection of souls. Love is an impossibility until one connects to one's own soul. Only souls can connect to each other. Else either it may be a parasitic relationship where one is dependent on the other to fulfill one's desires based on one's framework of likes and dislikes, or it may be a symbiotic relationship wherein both support each other in fulfilling their respective desires. Some of the elements of exchange in such relationships remain intangible. For example, a person may appear to be helping others for no return, while he may be doing so either to get social validation or to remove the self-guilt (as happens in the case of many businessmen donating huge amounts of money for charitable purposes).
When two souls connect, that turns out to be a wonderful relationship. It is because when we connect to our souls, we become contended. The divisions between likes and dislikes disappear and therefore there is hardly any desire. As we connect with our souls, we feel complete. In that state of completion, when we connect to someone, we just like to play like two babies playing with each other in an explorative mode. There is no competition because there is no incompletion and they just collaborate for wider and deeper explorations. There is a natural instinct to help the other. However, when the other is not so complete and connected, that natural instinct is mistaken to be a support system and the other starts getting into the trap of likes and dislikes once again. That makes the relationship burdensome. The best example of love in this world is the love between Krishna and Arjuna but that did not make Arjuna expect Krishna to fight his battle rather Krishna stood strong with Arjuna to strengthen him and enable him to fight his own battle. That's true love: without expectations and yet with complete trust and the other knows me better than myself.
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