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| PHOTO BY SI |
*احبك التى احببتنى له
Ahabbakal-lathi Ahbabtani Lah
May God, for whose sake you love me, love you also.
"I love you" is not easy to say but in this day and age, we say it a lot, and often impulsively, without understanding its profound meaning.
Love, in its true essence, is infinite, unconditional, awareness.
In my life experience, I've witnessed how it's used to trap people in co-dependent relationships, in abusive relationships, in controlling relationships, in manipulative relationships, in conditional relationships...What all of these types of relationships have in common is the threat of punishment if one or both or several members of the pair/group behave in a manner that does not comply with the "rules" that are supposed to be understood when "I love you" is said. Parents can do this to their children so they adopt family norms and values, and the roles and identities that the parents demand of them. Friends can do this to friends to gain loyalty. Lovers can do this to each other to keep them faithful. Etc.
"I love you" can also be used to deceive someone into thinking that the relationship is authentic and that it has a future. When the words do not translate into action, our intuition might inform us the relationship is toxic and in order to save ourselves, and possibly the other person, we must remove ourselves from the situation, for a while, or forever.
But some of us were born fools. Our lives are forever chained to self-destructive cycles. Unrequited love, heartbreak, and shame remain part of our life narrative.
How do we detach ourselves from the need to say "I love you" out of fear of losing someone? How do we detach ourselves from the yearning to hear those words said to us overlooking the fact that they may not be coming from a genuine place of love?
When we connect Love to the infinite - this may be God in their various forms, the universe, the spirit world... - we might find the key to our liberation from the kind of harmful attachments that get in the way of us reaching our full potential as beings capable of experiencing infinite awareness - the awareness of seeing and being everyone and everything all at the same time.
Our full potential is just that: a deep, abiding Love for everything and everyone, without attachment to one thing or one person. This is why Muslims are encouraged to say the Arabic dua above when they are told "I love you" by another/others. The dua immediately connects the person who said "I love you" to the infinite energy that is God/the universe; it is a prayer for that person that he/she/they might experience the infinite awareness of seeing and being everyone and everything and therefore, learning and imbibing Love's true essence.
We can nurture this Love in us when we say "I love you" from a place of understanding, compassion, and kindness, and not from fear, infatuation, or possessiveness. We can say it without the need to make the other person do what we want them to do or make them change for us. We can say it when we truly see that in our uniqueness, even in the messy, tangled circumstances of our lives, we are all reflections of one another.
I might see myself in you and you might see yourself in me if we dig deeper and go beyond the superficial, the mediocre. The drama.
Self-transformation is possible when we let go of the need for the one and embrace the freedom inherent in our universe/god, in its abundance, in infinite awareness, in the all. That is Love.
Next time, think before you say "I love you" to someone. True liberation comes when there are no strings attached and no games played.
I am grateful to the wisdom of Sufism, Indigenous spirituality, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and all the people out there who continue to teach me the lessons I need to learn to move me towards absolution. I forgive you and I forgive me.
*The 2nd word in the Arabic should have the letter "thal" not "tal" as it is written here. The letter "thal" wasn't on the Arabic keyboard I used.
