Love means different things, depending on which part of us that is doing the looking. ****


The soul/spirit part of us - the only part of us that is real or true - knows that we are inextricably linked with all life, and that everything we need we already have within us. Everything we desire is there, waiting to be called on and brought to life.

Our soul does not lead us to look for partners to be all the things we cannot be ourselves; nor does it create an expectation that others can or will make everything all right for us. We understand only we can do this for ourselves and we look for mates who are filled with love for themselves, making possible a life filled with the bliss of bountiful love.

Understanding this is the ultimate love and the consummate power. We love ourselves because we are one with all life and we love all life because it is us. We have the power and the ability to look within and manifest whatever we truly desire.

If this seems obscure and far-fetched, then consider the alternative: namely, the ego search for love. This is how love is usually sought by most of us, until we realize it is, in fact, the road to pain and suffering.

The ego is the voice within us that tells us we are not enough, we are alone, we are unworthy and inadequate. Thus we need someone else to fill the gaps in ourselves, to make up for our deficiencies.

As Angelina Heart and Catherine Ann Clemett say in their book Finding the One True Love: How Breaking the Rules Will Change Your Life, **the**ego is the voice in us that screams “What’s in it for me?” and “Meet my needs because I’m incapable of meeting them from within.” Rather like a child, the ego demands continually “I want, I want, I want”.

The voice of self-hatred, isolation and fear, the ego tells us we need to look to someone else for fulfillment and it has high expectations of what they can and should do for us: “‘Provide for me, make me feel secure, feed me, clean up after me, and make me feel beautiful/handsome, be loyal and stand up for me regardless of my rude behavior or lies, meet my sexual fantasies…”

It is usually only when we have been brought to our knees by the failures of our ego demands, when everything has collapsed and disaster has struck, that we are ready to listen to the other, quieter, voice of our soul which, though soft, is ever there.

Love is what we are; it is all we are. It is our very essence. True love, the love we all crave and dream about, is the outward manifestation of all that is already within us; the love that will never fail us.

This is the love Sophocles was referring to when he wrote: “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love”.

Eileen McBride
Eileen McBride is the author of Love Equals Power 2, a spiritual seeker and teacher. This article was published on August 18, 2011.