How do we overcome attachment to a person we can’t avoid seeing everyday, and the hurt of being ignored, that they'll never reciprocate the way we feel. How do we remain unruffled and centred on God and Guru ?
—Preksha, India
Dear Preksha,
When we understand how give to love to another person without attachment we have understood how to love God and how God loves us. Our personal relationships are one of the most important ways we learn about this. God loves us unconditionally. His Love shines forever on us and within us whether or not we reciprocate his love. He is not indifferent. He lovingly watches out for our spiritual growth, guiding us in many subtle ways. He allows us our free will to draw closer to Him or turn away. He knows our love for Him must be freely given or it is not true.
The love we feel for another person can be a personal expression of that infinite love of God that flows through us. In the highest sense it is our soul loving God as experienced through another soul. We know this love flows from our heart’s pure uplifted feeling. This love is a remembrance of God’s Love.
We know that our heart’s love can also go out into attachment, desire to have or control the object of that attachment and desire to ‘receive back’ love in return. This ‘love’ is not a pure expression of divine love. This attachment feel contractive, painful and frustrating as the heart that is looking outward to find fulfillment does not find the love it seeks. It cannot!
Swami Kriyananda’s song God’s Call Within beautifully captures this dilemma of the heart.
“Long you’ve plumbed the dark for answers. Long you’ve begged from beggars’ empty hands, gifts of life they too were seeking: gifts none could share. Friend, how long will you wander? Friend, as long as you seek your home in a land where all are strangers, love locks her door.”
And gives us the answer:
“Leave to the weak his craven life! To the coward leave his dreaming! O my saint, wake up! Reclaim the light. Seek the truth behind all seeming. Turn, turn, turn within: in silence of soul, in cave of love find My abode.”
You can hear this beautiful song here.
http://www.anandamusiclibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/gods_call_within_1k_ss.mp3
Then there is your question of ‘what to do’ when you cannot avoid seeing the person every day. Take the energy away from your ‘little self’ and expand your heart’s love. A powerful tool is to direct healing prayers to the person. When we pray we open a flood of Divine Love to the person we pray for and we, in turn, are blessed and protected by that Love as it flows through us. In this way we give to the person with no expectation of receiving. You might try offering prayers every time you feel rising within you the old hurt and attachment. Your prayer must be for the person’s highest rather than that they somehow turn their attentions to you or act in a certain way. Visualize the person in Divine Light and also you in Divine Light both blessed, both no longer ‘beggars’. Feel your own aura strengthened, your heart’s love flowing freely without condition, centered in God.
As you tune in more and more deeply to Divine Love I pray you will recognize this Love shining through many of the experiences and people in your life.
God bless you,
Nayaswami Mukti
