Quest for Love

Rule no.11: The quest for love changes us. There is no seeker among those who search for love who has not matured on the way. The moment you start looking for love, you start to change within and without.

It is very clear that a person requires love to experience life to the fullest and so Shamz asks you to look for love. However, why has Shamz urged people for embarking on a journey to find love outside? The question is; can anyone find love without first having it inside him/her to give it to the world. To me, if you do not have love inside you then you can't find it outside. 

Here I mean to say two things; First is that love is an inherent feeling. You can feel unloved even when you are getting all the love in the world just because you have created barriers mental and emotional. The famous Persian poet and philosopher Rumi said, "Your task is not to seek love but merely to seek and find barriers within yourself that you have built against it". Let me explain it with a recent observation. Just two days back I went to a restaurant where three friends (a couple and a girl) were sitting adjacent to my table. The girl from the couple apparently didn’t know what to order and her lover was encouraging her to choose something which will make her feel good. The apparent love and care in his tone of voice was very touching. Both her friend and her boyfriend were constantly encouraging her to be in good mood but the girl kept on throwing tantrums and complaining  while ordering food and also while having it. She ruined the experience not only for herself but also for her friend and boyfriend. This made me think as to how closed she is to love. She maybe in a relationship but she doesn’t have love inside her to give and whatever love she is receiving right now will eventually dry up as she has put barriers in her heart to receive love. 

The second point is that if you don’t love yourself and be nice to yourself you can’t seek true love outside. If you don’t feel worthy of your own love then no one else would.  If you are not accepting, forgiving, generous and kind to yourself you can’t experience these emotions from outside world whether from the higher being or from other human beings. If you don’t know these emotions then you won’t even acknowledge or accept them from outside, it is as simple as that. 

So.. I was a little fixed why Shamz is telling you to look outside for love.  I kept thinking and looking for answers. These two arguments were not letting me see beyond my limited logic and experience. However, as Shamz says 'quest for love changes user'. The mere fact that I was looking for answers was enough for me to open up my thought process and look and think deeper and outside of my realm of knowledge and into my own emotions and feelings. I realized that as soon as the quest for love starts, the person starts facing one's own demons and starts seeing the (mental) barriers that one has made for himself in order to stop the love from entering into one's life (in my case it was answers to understand rule 11:))

I stumbled upon the answer when a friend of mine said that 'quest for love' is also 'quest for meaning', 'quest for comfort and care', and 'quest for safety'. Very true. American author of spirituality Marianne Williamson writes that, “We experience love as kindness, giving, forgiveness, compassion, peace, joy, acceptance, non-judgment and intimacy. Seeing love as an art and a practice means that we consciously choose to bring these qualities into our lives every day and indeed every moment.” Quest for love is a search where the seeker is constantly searching to find compassion, care, comfort and meaning. A person, who embarks on the journey to seek love, is a person who at least recognizes these emotions and what it means to have them. The bundle of these emotions and experiences is what life is made of and giving and receiving them makes life easier and happier.

The quest may start with looking for love outside but it ends with finding yourself and finding love inside and subsequently and definitely even outside in every person, place and circumstance. The quest starts with the recognition and accepting of such emotions and values such as love and compassion for self. Do you accept yourself? Do you show kindness and compassion for your own body, mind and soul? Once you accept yourselves and your strengths and weaknesses, forgiving self becomes easier. This further makes a person to reflect on his own self and how much of love and compassion he has in his heart and how much of these emotions he/she approves, allows, accepts, embraces and integrates within himself/herself. 

This realisation and subsequent changes in one’s own self and perception of the world slowly but surely matures a person. Hence as soon as the seeking for kindness and compassion, forgiveness and joy starts and one starts to become kind, compassionate, forgiving and happy. Finding these emotions within self makes a person less judgmental and gives a different perspective to look at people.  One starts looking at all the hurt and suffering of the past as lessons and all the miseries of present as opportunities. As soon as love creeps in negative perceptions becomes positive. The seeker of love becomes less selfish and tries to be more giving and spreads joy. Have you ever notices how kind people are always smiling? This change makes one a happy personality and who doesn’t want to be with someone with such positive traits. So, while the person is seeking love two things happen; one self realization and two change to a more positive attitude. Love from outside it bound to come to such people. This is why Shamz gives so much importance on searching for love. Mere searching for love makes one change into a better person.