You get attracted to other women from time to time but you try to suppress this interest as it may prove harmful for your marriage. You have a female friend or colleague who’s genuinely a friend and nothing else but you hide her from your wife as you know she’ll make it an issue. You’ve had an interaction with a female today; you liked her, you wish to hide it from your wife; and on your way back home; you buy something for you wife; that she likes. You feel like inviting your neighbor for a cup of coffee as you like him as a person; but you avoid doing so as your wife dislikes his wife and hence she wants you to stay away from this neighbor.
You choose to move away from some of your relatives or friends because your wife doesn’t like them and she keeps pushing you to move away from them. You hate it when her mother interferes in your marriage every now and then; but you keep quiet as you’re afraid that raising your opinion may spoil your marriage. Five years after your marriage; you don’t feel like you should continue this marriage and you rather feel like ending this marriage as you’re tired of the conditions you have to go through in order to keep this marriage; but you choose to continue in order to maintain your image or due to some type of greed or fear based in the future.
You often have this feeling that you don’t love your wife and you should walk out of this marriage but then you suppress this feeling by giving yourself a number of reasons. You may think that your wife is relatively better since most of your friends tell you that their wives are even more troublesome. One such friend of yours got divorced and remarried; but his second wife is even more troublesome than his first wife and that creates fear inside you. You think the same may happen to you also and hence; you choose to continue with your marriage; even if it is troublesome.
She troubles your mother a lot without valid reasons as her intentions are to make her stay away from you, so that she may control you more. You realize her intentions and you feel like speaking out but you keep quiet due to the reason that doing so may harm your marriage. There are a number of other conditions you may put on yourself; and they all mean that your love is corrupted. This is because you’re doing all these things due to reasons rising from fear or greed based in future and you’re not doing them due to the feelings of love you have for your wife. Since fear and greed rise from the ego; your love is corrupted and it is not pure.
If your heart doesn’t have positive feelings for your wife and this relationship is surviving because of positive thoughts you have for her or for your future; it is not a union and it is a contract. As already explained; positive thoughts mean the reasons given by your intellect and the moment your intellect decides the future of a relationship; it becomes a contract.
Since your intellect can change the nature of this contract anytime or it may end this contract anytime; it can’t be called a union. Hence your marriage is dead from the beginning in the deepest sense; and what you have under the guise of marriage is a business contract of personal nature. Accordingly; the true reason you’re making such compromises or you’re putting such conditions on yourself is that you’re either not getting a more profitable contract or you’re afraid of the losses that this contract may bring to you upon termination. Hence you’re imposing such conditions on yourself; due to fear or greed based in future; which means your love is corrupted and it is not pure.
Your heart knows well in advance that this marriage is dead and that is why it discourages you from continuing it. If you choose to listen to your heart and you get out of this marriage; you’re going to get out with minimum possible losses at this time. However, if you choose to listen to your intellect and ego instead; and you decide to continue this marriage by putting conditions on yourself or even on your wife; you’re going to create a lot more negativity which may restrict your spiritual growth as well as her spiritual growth.
This is because spiritual growth means peace of mind and the last thing you’ll have in this case is peace of mind. For instance; when you choose to buy expensive jewellery for her despite not feeling like doing so; this is an act of assertion and it will disturb your inner harmony. Deep down; you don’t want to buy this jewellery for her but you ignore this voice and you purchase it. When that happens; your inner peace is disturbed.
This happens because your subconscious mind is asking you to stay away from this practice; under the influence of your heart which is not at all interested in your wife or in this marriage. However, your intellect and ego influence your conscious mind and they tell it to buy such jewellery; due to reasons based on fear or greed.
Hence you go ahead and buy this piece of jewellery for your wife; against the wish of your heart and subconscious mind. When you do so; a grudge may be formed. This is a specific type of grudge which gives birth to expectations of specific type. Since you’re going out of way to do things for your wife, you start expecting her to do a lot for you in return. Since you’re making so many compromises for her, you expect her to make many compromises for you.
As a result, you start imposing more conditions/expectations on her, though they may be subconscious. Such expectations may trouble her and she may feel uncomfortable. If she fulfils most of your expectations, the relationship may continue with problems. If she doesn’t come up to most of your expectations, you may get restless. As a result, the grudges you have inside may start getting out. Hence the relationship may deteriorate and it may either drag on like this or it may break.
It means whether you put conditions on your wife or on you, such conditions can only spoil the relationship in the long run. It also means that this relationship is based on ego or intellect since heart and conscience don’t know the language of conditions. Hence more is the number of conditions you put on your lover/wife or on yourself, less is the percentage of purity in your love. On the other hand, less is the number of conditions you put on your lover/wife or on yourself, more is the percentage of purity in your love.
When you love your wife purely, there are no conditions and love alone is sufficient. It is only when you lack love that you need other things to fill its place. As long as love is there, nothing else is required. In the deepest sense, pure love is always one sided. It means even if you expect nothing from your lover but love in return for love, your love is corrupted, though this is weakest type of corruption. If you’ve reached this stage, it means that you’ve travelled a lot on the path of spiritual growth and your destination is not far away.
To expect love alone in return for love is the last condition and once you’re free from it, you enter the domain of pure love. This is the time when your love for someone is not dependent on reciprocation. You feel like loving someone, you love him and that’s all. You’re wise enough to understand that you’re going with your feeling and likewise, the one you love has the right to go with his feeling. It means if he loves you back, you’re fine and even if he doesn’t, you’re fine too. Your love is one way in this case and it is not dependent on results. Though the other person may return it with love but that is none of your business.
It means you’re engaging in Nishkaam karma of love. You put all your focus on loving someone and you draw all the pleasure from the act of love itself. Hence you don’t feel the need to focus on results since you’re there to love and not for the results. When you reach this stage, even your lover can’t make you stop loving him/her. This is because your love is not dependent on his/her actions and it is only dependent on your feelings which are pure as they’re coming from your uncorrupted heart. Hence you keep loving him/her regardless of the results.
This is the way God loves us all. He loves us despite all our positive and negative traits. That is why he loves the sinner as well as he loves the saint. This is because true love always comes without judgment. You can only judge your lover if your love is corrupted and not otherwise. God loves us as souls and he knows soul can’t be corrupted and it is unchangeable.
Whatever is changeable is immaterial for him. In the deepest sense, the soul of the biggest sinner is as pure as the soul of the biggest saint; since both of them are absolutely pure. They have never been corrupted and they can never be corrupted. The corruption occurs on the level of mind and God’s not interested in our minds. The mind is changeable and it goes through so much good and bad. He keeps loving our souls and he doesn’t care for our minds as well as karmas generated through interplay of various entities within our minds.
It is like you love your wife a lot and she develops a serious illness. Since you don’t love her body and you love her higher being, such corruption in her body may not make you love her less. Likewise, when you love someone as a soul, the corruption in his/her mind can’t make you love him/her less.
In the deepest sense, when you achieve liberation, God doesn’t come to you or finds you and you find him. To be precise, you become him as you conscience merges into the universal conscience, like a drop merges in the ocean. Though the drop loses its identity, it becomes the ocean. Hence you can’t tell the drop apart from the ocean now.
The reason God doesn’t find you is because he’s already found you. He’s with you and in you, from the beginning till the end. It is only you who realizes that he’s with you and in you, once you reach the end of the journey. It is like your eyes are closed or your vision is blocked and you can’t see anything. Once you open your eyes or the blockage is removed, you’re able to see everything. Though you may think everything has appeared just now, it was always there. It was only your inability to see and nothing else.
It is like there’s a treasure buried under your own house and you’re looking for it everywhere. When you find it, you’ll realize that you always had it. Hence the treasure has not come to you since it was always there with you. You have reached it and to be precise, you’ve realized that you already have it. Likewise, you always have a part of him in you and you always will. It is only a matter of realizing that you already have it, and nothing else.
Hence the journey of liberation is not that of finding anything and it is a journey of realization. Though you may begin it as a mission to find God; by the time you complete it, you’re blessed with this realization that whatever you’re looking for is already there. Hence nothing else but this realization comes and it changes everything.