This Perspective Has Changed My Thinking about Love
You will never experience pure love until the idea of yourself is gone
“Love is that state in which there is no ‘me’; it is that state in which the thought process, as the ‘me’, ceases. In that state there is no ‘you’, nor is there a ‘they’. Love is not personal; it is not something experienced by the ‘me’. Love is a state in which the ‘me’ is not.” — Jiddhu Krishnamurti
Love is a topic that has always been with me. I have pondered it, dreamed about it, looked for it, wanted to have it, and wanted to give it. Those are aspects that I kept to myself, in silence, as I moved through my teenage years.
That childhood was challenging for me, as I was in an environment that I would not call conducive to real love. Even today, I have a difficult time fathoming myself as a child and being in a position where my parents verbally and emotionally abused me and then told me that they loved me almost immediately, right after those incidents. Pain then love; you can probably see how that might affect someone over time.
Looking back, I remember an incident in my pre-teens that changed my life forever. I was in trouble with my parents, for which I was punished. My father yelled at me, put me down, and then physically shoved me to my room. There I was, in my room, at the head of my bed against the wall, in tears and in fear. I then heard my mother telling my father to come in and tell me that he loves me, and he did just that. Shortly after, something shifted in me that changed my life forever. I came to realize that their actions were not love at all. I do not blame my parents for these actions, as their actions did nothing but strengthen my inner being. Furthermore, I also knew that they did not understand what love is either. That specific experience was part of my search for real love and truth that is with me to this day.
I am way beyond those days as a teenager, and as I have gotten older, I have come to see in myself that love is an action with no motive behind it. This may sound unusual or confusing, but I hope to explain my insights into that statement. Unknowingly, that statement has been something that I have kept deep inside myself, and it is also why I never gave up in life.
Those teenage years are gone now, but with my attention looking at love for so long, I have realized that love is a pure action with no motives attached. It is not static like an image or a role we all play. It is a living thing that is beyond our own thoughts. Not only that, but it is an essence like the smell of a sweet flower that you sense, but when you look to find it, it is no longer there. Likewise, it is this expanding energy deep inside that never stops radiating, regardless of my circumstances. It is like holding a little ember in my hands, in secret, so nobody can take it from me; love was definitely something that my parents’ suffering could never take from me.
Let’s explore this together as we examine what I see as love and what it is not—at least, from my experience.
The Essence of Love, I See
“Love is not a thing of the mind, and therefore it can be approached only through direct experience, not through a thought process. Love is something that is new, fresh, alive. It has no yesterday and no tomorrow. It is beyond the turmoil of thought. Only when the mind is silent, quiet, not projecting itself into the future, only then is there love.” — Jiddhu Krishnamurti
For me, love is an entirely unconditioned, timeless, and boundless movement. It is not something I can freely cultivate or make up through my effort. This genuine love spontaneously shows up when my mind is free of fears, desires, and attachments. It is like being in a river and feeling the effortless flow of it pushing against me with no disruption. This love is not generated inside of me as the ego would like; it exists in the movement of life itself. It is untouched by time and thought. It is a fountain of pure energy available to all who actually see it.
This perspective has changed my thinking about love, which I used to think needed to be achieved or obtained. Instead, I now see that love is inherent to my being and only reveals itself when I am open and free from my chattering little monkey mind.
Love and My Relationships
“Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something — and it is only such love that can know freedom.” — Jiddhu Krishnamurti
With my relationships, I have noticed how love often gets bound up with attachment, possessiveness, and expectations. These entanglements, I have learned, distort the purity of this love. When I get clingy or expect something in return, I’m not genuinely loving; I merely seek some ego security or gratification. That is just some transactional exchange, nothing more.
I’ve found that real love in my relationships means caring deeply without wanting to possess or control another person. It’s about giving without the thought of receiving or having a motive and creating a pure connection based on respect and freedom. I see this kind of love as something that allows both people to grow without the fear or constraint imposed by our monkey thoughts.
I do not think I am far out in space with my thoughts; I see that love is free-moving and not suffocating. It is not some transactional process at all.
My ‘Self’ and Love
“Love is that state in which there is no ‘me’; it is that state in which the thought process as the ‘me’ ceases. In that state, there is no ‘you’ nor is there a ‘they’; love is not personal. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something — and it is only such love that can know freedom.” — Jiddhu Krishnamurti
There is a thought that continues to bother me, and that is the role of the ‘Self’ in disrupting pure love. The ‘Self’, with its relentless desires, fears, and ambitions, has created endless barriers to me experiencing pure love. When my monkey-mind ‘Self’ is preoccupied with its own needs and insecurities, it can never be fully open to love. After all, it is only concerned with itself in its unique egotistical way.
I am now starting to see that I must fully understand the monkey-mind ‘Self’ that resides in my head to truly love. I have found that this involves a deep awareness of my own thoughts and emotions and a willingness to let go of my egoistic tendencies, this is hard to do. When my ‘Self’ is quiet, this pure love pops up naturally, like a flower blooming out of the silence.
Compassion Comes Out of My Love
“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” — Rumi
From my exploration of love, it is clear to me that love is inseparable from compassion. Compassion is not a simple reaction to the suffering of others; it is a profound and deep understanding and honest empathy that arises from the recognition of shared consciousness. When I recognize that we all share the same pains, emotions, feelings, desires, and all the rest of it, I start to see others as part of myself, and this love begins to flow effortlessly. This recognition of shared humanity and the desire to alleviate the suffering of others is what we call compassion, and it is a natural extension of love.
This compassion bleeds beyond all personal relationships to include all of humanity and the external world. It leads to a deep sense of responsibility and care for the well-being of others.
In the typical world, I see the pain and suffering that we constantly bounce off each other. We hurt each other daily as if it’s a simple habit, and we think nothing of it. This all seems like normal everyday practice everywhere I look, yet while we do this, we also preach some kind of love I do not recognize. Look at the world, the wars, endless fighting, controlling, violence, and the rest of it. We cannot only love our family, our country, our religions, and no one else; this only leads directly to separation and conflict. The world is a reflection of us, and when we see violence, it is because we are violent. That is not love.
I Use Negation To Get To Love
“To find out what love is, we must first negate what it is not. The negation is the most positive action. To negate all the things that are not love — attachment, jealousy, dependency, possessiveness — is to allow love to be.” — Jiddhu Krishnamurti
Negation, as I have come to understand it, is a process of clearing my mind of all its collected beliefs, assumptions, and conditioning. It is not about rejecting or denying anything but about deeply questioning and understanding the nature of my thoughts and emotions. Negation is a productive tool I have come to treasure.
When I use the process of negation, I observe my mind without judgment or bias. I closely examine my beliefs, fears, and desires and ask myself if they are true or merely constructs of my conditioning. My observation is done with honest curiosity and truthfulness and not with a goal to prove something in me is right or wrong.
As I use the process, I see how much of my thinking results from external influences, experiences, and societal pressures. When I start to question these thoughts, I am able to drop what is false or unnecessary. I am peeling away layers of an onion to get to a more precise and unconditioned state of mind.
Negation has been so helpful for me. It has given me a perspective and approach to life, free from the restraints of things that are not mine. It shows me things as they are rather than what they ought to be. I was doing this even at a young age, and as children, we tend to see things from a simpler perspective; we know love when we see it.
My List of What Love Is Not
- Love is not attachment.
- Love is not possessiveness
- Love is not desire
- Love is not an expectation
- Love is not jealousy
- Love is not emotional dependency
- Love is not fear
- Love is not attachment to ideals or beliefs
- Love is not sentimentality
- Love is not romanticism
- Love is not a bargain
- Love is not conditional
- Love is not control
- Love is not conflict
- Love is not a duty
- Love is not limited to relationships
- Love is not a means to an end
- Love is not emotional turbulence
- Love is not habit or routine
- Love is not fragmented
- Love is not the ‘Self’
- Love is not indifference
- Love is not judgment
- Love is not a comparison
- Love is not past
- Love is not the future
- Love is not an obligation
- Love is not exclusive
- Love is not forced
- Love is not an illusion
My List of What Love Is
- Love is freedom
- Love is selflessness
- Love is compassion
- Love is non-attachment
- Love is unconditional
- Love is presence
- Love is understanding
- Love is kindness
- Love is patience
- Love is non-judgmental
- Love is supportive
- Love is honest
- Love is respectful
- Love is forgiving
- Love is joyful
- Love is empathy
- Love is gentle
- Love is humble
- Love is sincere
- Love is generous
- Love is trusting
- Love is equanimous
- Love is inclusive
- Love is creative
- Love is healing
- Love is alive
- Love is enlightening
- Love is unifying
- Love is natural
- Love is boundless
Where I See Love At
“To understand what love is, you must understand what it is not. Love is not the product of thought, which is the past. Thought cannot possibly cultivate love. Love cannot be divided into the sacred and the profane, into divine and physical; it is only love — not the one or the other. When you say, ‘I love you,’ you have already divided love. Love, and the process of thought, are two different uthings. Love is not of the mind.” — Jiddhu Krishnamurt
This leads me to this point in my exploration into love; I see love in a whole other light than most for many reasons. I see that genuine pure love is timeless, and only exists beyond the reach of the thing we call ‘Self’. This entity we call ‘Self’ is solely a construct of thought, images, beliefs, and ideas, nothing more. There is no permanent thing called ‘Self’. It was created from the collection of our experiences and the knowledge we have gained over time. It is the stuff that fills a cup, and we are the cup.
Essentially, the ‘Self’ is the ego, the censor of all we experience. It is the thing that keeps us separate from ‘what is’. It says I am different from you because I am unique, and the world revolves around me. It is conditioned information that leads us to think it is us. This illusion is so far from the truth.
Our entire existence is lived in the past — the psychological past, not the time on our watches. It should be obvious that everything we know is just a memory. It is remembered information; even language is remembered. Every time we think something is just some image or thought from the past, we move through this information at a rapid pace, which makes it appear seamless.
I have an image of myself and an image of everyone I know. I expect to see the ones I know the next day as I think of them today. I hope that image and memory will be there. Our mind and ego do just that for us, which gives us this sense of security and safety in a world where that does not exist in reality.
I hope you see and understand this mechanism. We live our lives psychologically from the past. Our minds are only capable of knowing what they know and no more. That means we can only envision a future by using images and knowledge from the past. It is a fact that our minds are just plain limited in nature by its construction and nature. So where does that leave us?
In our dualistic world, you cannot have one thing without its opposite. For example, you may be happy or sad. You cannot possibly know what happy is unless you know what sad is. The mind and ego need a relationship to see this; otherwise, it would have no reference and be unknowable. Love is not part of this because it is not a static image or memory; there is no opposite to love.
Toward the beginning of this essay, I stated that love is a movement. That means it is not an image or a memory. Love is an action and is in constant flow with life. You cannot just grab it and say that’s what love is because as soon as you do that, you make it an image that is nothing but a dead thing. Love is living, and the only place it can exist is in the present moment. But we all say we are present; no, you are not. We live our lives from the past because of the ‘Self,’ which thinks it’s a permanent fixture that does not change. Love is a movement constantly evolving and only exists in the present moment; it cannot be static. I hope you see this.
Where does that leave us, then? It leaves us with the present moment, the elusive state outside of psychological time, ego and the ‘Self’. We cannot just get rid of the thoughts of ourselves, but when we can start to see and understand that we are actually nothing, then the love we seek starts to reveal itself with no effort.
Imagine a world where you are unencumbered by an ego that gets hurt because someone does not like your shoes. A world where when someone hurts you, your pride is not affected, and you feel genuine compassion for them and see they are just as screwed up as you are. You see your lover and partner as an actual human instead of some image you have created. You see the world as a reflection of what you are, a human being, not your image.
Only when this ‘Self’ has been removed from the equation can love exist in its purest form. Otherwise, it manifests as an image with some motive behind it. Unfortunately, most people in the world think we are separate from everything and everyone else, which causes suffering and is the result of ego thinking.
I see love in that pure way, though I have a lot of deconditioning to do myself. My increased awareness, which I have cultivated over my life, now gives me more leverage to see ‘what is’ love rather than ‘what should be’ love.
My only question now is, is it possible to fully get there, and sit in that toroidal fountain of expanding love?
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