Love Does Not Demand
Edited from a transcript: Meditation group, Highgate, London, 26 August 1981.
There is enough love in us to keep giving and giving and giving. But people are afraid to love, because they don’t know how to love. Their love becomes a demand. And the people they love make demands. So they are afraid to love because of the demands that are made on them. But love does not make any demands of us. The more we love, the more we give of ourselves.
Truly in love, what can we give? Only our time. It only means taking the time from some worldliness and giving it to someone who needs it. But we have to develop the discrimination to know who needs it, who is asking for it. People are not good at developing that discrimination because they are busy demanding love, as others are busy demanding love from them. That’s what we call a relationship. We have to get rid of the relationships in our lives, such as the demands of our mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles and children. I will not have those endless demands for love. I will not have love demanded from me. I shall be love.
If love is demanded of you, will you give it? If you do not, then that which demands it will get hurt, scream at you, cry, put on a tantrum - any demand that can be made will be made. All that is very upsetting for you. But you have to be strong. ‘I will not have love demanded of me. I cannot give you what you want.’ Most people try to give what is wanted and in so doing they live a lie. That’s not living love. 'I will not have that relationship. You have my love. As your love is mine. And so we can live in love.’
Of course man, woman and child will have their relationship, but it becomes the lesser part if they keep giving to each other. The disciples asked the Christ, 'How many times shall I forgive, or turn the other cheek?’ He said, 'Seventy times seven’. For in the beginning the only way to love is to keep on loving and giving - with no discrimination. But when you have done that enough, you can enter the state of love and then have the discrimination to say, 'No, I cannot give you what you want’. For love is a great power and it will never lose its integrity. It is not us - but a power that we can become. That power will not give in to emotion.
The world is not much aware of what love is. We start off with love of parent and child, especially the mother’s love, which is a necessary security, and then the child becomes a man or woman in an ethereal, romantic relationship. Is that the end of it? No, it is just the beginning, a testing ground for the next stage. What is beyond loving the one closest to us? The next stage is to love our fellow man and woman enough for them to realise love itself. That is universal love. It’s not a personal love where the two of us live happily ever after. That is a great delusion; not what life’s about at all. The higher love is for all to live happily ever after.
Certainly you must love your family and your partner, but do it well. Learn to love. And eventually learn to love with discrimination. Then you will not give in to the demands of emotion. When the demand comes, it comes from someone who is not loving enough, who has to be taught to be more love. You do not give in. And the person says, 'Why don’t you love me? You’ve got to love me.’ But love says 'No, I cannot give you what you demand’.
Your Place Is Not Your Position