Nothing, no teaching, no force, no realization will ever prepare you for love.

I want to dispel an illusion tonight.

Gurus and teachers may claim that they can lead you up a path of peace and of unbroken bliss. But while they are not misleading you, the equanimity of enlightenment works behind-the-scenes to free us from bondage to our emotions.

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. – Rainer Maria Rilke

But nothing, no teaching, no force, no realization will ever prepare you for love. It is the greatest challenge of your existence, the work for which you were born. Before love, you are self-sufficient, your suffering is your own, your solitude is your safety.

But when you love someone, you open yourself to suffering, their well-being intimately intertwines with your own. Their pain becomes yours; your joy becomes theirs.

it is like this -
What stillness brings to me it brings to you,
what pain brings to you it brings to me,
the very same warmth
that opens us to our unity,
opens us to our solitude. – Mila, Pema

When we love, we bring other beings into our concept of self; they become part of us, vital organs that enrich our lives in myriad ways, and just as important to us as the organs we carry inside. And while many teachings cultivate patience and ability to see beyond our momentary emotions, none can show us how to avoid the pain and disease and difficulty that inevitably accompanies caring for another being. None could, not without depriving us of our very humanity.

The truth of love is that without it all other feelings remain impotent, powerless to affect us. Even the dark intensity of hatred arises from love mistreated.

Without the self-identification that happens as care and love take root, some emotions find no reason to exist, while others find no place to infect us. But we do love, and we love in so many ways: our forms, our families, our world, our ideas, our partners… and no matter how hard we try, to love is a fundamental part of our form.

And thus there is no teaching that can free you from your form without denying the truth of who and what you are; there is no teaching that can prepare you for all the dizzying joys and all the agonizing dissonance that happens when two beings try to find their way, try to balance “You, and Me” with “Us”…

The feeling itself never gets easier, the ache never less intense, even though awareness and wisdom help us see beyond the current moment. If you allow yourself to love anything, especially other beings (and you really have no choice in most cases), you will undoubtedly experience great sorrow, great anger when your love is met in disappointing ways.

You must realize that loving is imperative. We cannot live without loving, and so we cannot live without both joy and despair. We cannot truly live without connecting with everything around us. To embrace this, to embrace our form and our being, to accept the many reactions we have to our surroundings as the children of the emotion of love — we embrace our humanity.

But you will love. And you will break hearts & have your heart broken; you will cry when your faith or belief in others is shattered beyond recognition; you will experience loss and regret. But you must, and there will be rewards beyond measure.

Love comes to us each time as if we were innocent children, fresh and unwise of the path ahead. We learn how to deal with situations, but we are eternally students of love; nothing else so challenges our ability to choose wisely.

You can and will find peace, but not in the form of freedom from love or other emotion. You will find it in the wisdom of understanding that you are the one that hurts, but you are not the hurt itself.

Love with all your heart. It’ll hurt like hell sometimes, no matter how enlightened you are. Be who you are with all your being. And know that you are not reaching up to attain something you’ve never had; you’re discovering your own natural perfection, the source of love and of all the joy and pain in our lives.