Love - The Yogis Perspective: part 2 The Evolution of Love
The original Blog - Love - The Yogis Perspective
Part 2: The Evolution of Love and Life as the Ultimate Teacher
As I reflect on my understanding of love, one truth stands out: I thought I understood love, but my perception was incomplete. My journey with love transformed in profound ways when my son, Zaccy, was born. It’s not that I didn’t know love before—I had loved deeply, and with commitment. But his arrival opened a new door, one I didn’t even know existed. In that moment, I realised that love was far larger than I had ever imagined. It made me see how small words are—how they fail to capture what love truly is.
Before Zaccy, my view of love was shaped by experiences, relationships, and philosophical reflections. I thought I knew its depths, its intricacies. But, in a way, I was blind. There’s a poetic irony in how a blind man often speaks most beautifully about what he cannot see. I, too, had spent years romanticizing and intellectualizing something I had never truly seen for what it was. The day my son came into this world, love moved beyond anything words could express. It wasn’t just something I felt—it was something I became. It transcended personal, emotional attachments and turned into a profound sense of connection to life itself.
This shift in my understanding of love underscores what I’ve written about in so many of my blogs: that the greatest teacher is not a guru or a coach, but life itself. If we allow life to teach us, every experience holds the potential to show us the essence of what we seek. We don’t need external guides to understand love, or even to achieve spiritual growth—what we need is to embrace life’s moments, its challenges, its surprises.
Love vs. Infatuation: Rumi’s Words and the Illusion of Understanding
We often think we feel love, but sometimes this is just infatuation—an emotion heightened by the power of the unknown or the allure of another’s presence. It’s easy to be swept away by someone’s expressions of love, much like how we get entranced by Rumi’s words. But here’s the catch: Rumi’s poetry, though beautiful and powerful, is merely his experience of love, his overwhelming realization conveyed in words. That’s not what love is. It’s only one man’s attempt to put the ineffable into form.
Love, much like God, is not a collective experience; it’s an individual truth, a realization that varies for each of us. I would often hear the Sufis say that “love is silence.” And now, after having Zaccy and feeling him sleep on my chest every night as a baby until he was too big to fit there, I see what that means. I don’t have the words. Silence is the best option when trying to discuss love.
The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra: Love as a Tool for Awakening
Reflecting on my experience, I’m reminded of the teachings in the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. It encourages us to view love not just as an emotion, but as a tool for awakening. Before Zaccy, I believed I was experiencing love in its full form. But love is a force that reveals itself only as we evolve. Life, with all its complexities, pushes us to grow, and so does our understanding of love.
With my son, love could no longer be contained by language. It had to be lived, experienced, and surrendered to. The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra speaks of dissolving dualities, and I felt that with my son’s birth, the barrier between “me” and “other” dissolved completely. In those early moments, I understood, without needing words, that love is not about separation or self-preservation—it’s about oneness, a merging of souls and energies, much like the union of Śhiva and Pārvatī.
The notion that love is not just a feeling but a path to the divine resonates even more deeply now. Before, I had read and reflected on the metaphor of Ardhanārīśvara—the merging of Śhiva and Pārvatī as one. But once Zaccy was born, I began to understand that love is not something external; it is the very fabric of existence. Just as Śhiva cannot be active without Śhakti, we are incomplete without love, because love is what connects us to everything around us—our families, our partners, our children, and the divine itself.
Conclusion: Love as a Constant Evolution
Love is a force that evolves with us, revealing new depths as we grow. My son’s birth showed me what true love is—a love that transcends words and ideas. It reminded me that life is the greatest teacher, and if we open ourselves to its lessons, we will discover that love is not something to be learned from others but something that is revealed through experience.
In every moment, life offers us opportunities to grow in love. Whether through relationships, parenthood, or the simple act of living, love is the ultimate spiritual path. It connects us to the divine, to each other, and to the essence of who we are. Just as Śhiva and Pārvatī merge to become Ardhanārīśvara, love merges the separate parts of ourselves into one, guiding us toward the ultimate truth that we are all connected, all part of the same cosmic dance.
Zahir Akram - Eternal Seeker
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