Let’s talk about love. Love may just be one of the most misunderstood words ever. What passes for love, is misunderstood, underestimated, personalized, reified, compartmentalized and often exploited.

Love for most, is transactional. If you give me what I want and need, I will love you. If you don’t, I won’t. It’s a love that can be withdrawn, withheld, that can be present one moment and vanish in the next.

One of the many problems with being a desire fulfiller is it is impossible to give someone what they really want. Your lover might think he wants to be loved, but that’s not really the true desire. What is really wanted is to not feel alone, to not feel separate and on our own, to not ache inside from a suffocating sense of unworthiness, to not feel like we are the last person on earth who could ever be truly loved.

It is impossible to give another what they want because, trite as it sounds, they are what they are looking for. It’s just that right now, they can’t see it, can’t feel it, can’t let the beauty of their true being override their stories of lack. Until that changes, they will keep looking for love in all the wrong places, in reactions and behaviors seemingly outside of themselves.

The problem with that is pretty obvious if you’ve been doing your inner work. We see what we are. There is no other. There is only our reactions and behaviors, based in our thoughts and beliefs, that ripple out in front of us, appearing as the world.

If we believe, even subconsciously, that we are unworthy –believing we are separate always holds within it the sense of unworthiness — we will see evidence to support our beliefs. We won’t be able to see the proof surrounding us of how much we are loved and cherished, nurtured and guided. It will be present, for it always is, but it literally won’t exist in our perception.

It is impossible to give someone something you don’t have, that you will never have, that cannot be given away. Love is not a commodity. It is not a thing. It is not even a feeling or a sensation. It is the total collapse of separation. The trumpet blows and the walls come tumbling down. Love’s presence, which is always here, always now, always available, for it is what we are when we are not armored against life, feels magnificent, stimulates the nervous system, awakens long denied longings, cradles sensations of aliveness long awaited. Love is one of the great wonders of life.

We call it falling in love but what actually happens is something quite different, something even more magical. We awaken into the love we are. Because it happens seemingly in conjunction with another, we assume they are the cause. They are not. They may be a trigger, an avenue but they are not a cause. Love is causeless, always present, and we humans are graced to experience its power. Love, all by itself, is reason enough to incarnate, to go through the hells of separation to bow before love’s altar.