THE RELENTLESS DEMAND FOR LOVE…
…a brief moment of inattention and they make you feel bad for not giving them love.
There are many people who come to our retreats having done lots of “inner work”, believing that they are vibrating with love, making it obvious through gestures, words and attitudes that they encompass love, when in fact, observing how they react to certain circumstances, it can be seen that this search for love in which they find themselves stems from a long-standing lack that has not yet been resolved, and therefore it gets projected onto others emphasising their demands to be treated with love. There are many people who are still in the healing process connected to mother’s love.
Rolando Toro, the creator of the “Biodanza”, said and even shouted: “I want love, I need love, I cannot live without love”. With this expression and in an act of true courage he was acknowledging publicly and indirectly his lack of love. It was from such a place that he created a method that uses love’s vibrations.
Any child who has perceived the love of their parents is never going to exclaim such a thing because they already have it, they know it, they already live it, it has already forms part of their heart; a beloved child does not demand, they don’t even request love; but this is not a common situation for most human beings.
For this very reason we seek, call for and even demand love… in a thousand ways: by blackmailing, by paying for, by forcing the issue… it even happens with many people who have been through therapy and consider themselves spiritual, those well-trained in techniques of sensitivity and love, many of whom will not accept anything that does not come from love. It is a very contradictory or inconsistent outlook because, in the same obsessive way that they demand to be treated with love and that all which is offered to them should be derived from love, thus spawning a judgment that stems from a neediness to acquire love.
It’s simply not compatible, or at the very least dubious, that in cases where you don’t treat a person with the love that they require, they in turn blame you for not giving them love or judge you by declaring that your actions are not coming from a place of love. At such times these people risk the powerful effect of consciousness that faces them when observing this contradiction.
In many known cases, those demanding so much love, I have been able to investigate the person’s surroundings, friends or family, and I discovered something surprising. For example, the person’s children say that they do not receive the love they want from them, that is to say that these people who are so obsessed with being treated with love don’t treat their loved ones with the same love, even their children claim that the only thing they receive from their parents is control, distrust and demands. Isn’t that a bit weird? “I want you to give me love, but I won’t give it in return”. “I demand love, but if someone does not treat me with love I will judge and reject them”. Hence comes one of the worst and most painful questions that can be asked: “Be it love that which they seek? Is it love what they claim to have? Could it indeed be repressed hatred that’s coming to the surface in the form of a demand for something they don’t have?
These people have strong arguments and relatively convincing standpoints, for example: if they are not treated with love they refuse to participate, because they do not want to join a group where there is no love; this means that you have to love them no matter what, love is a condition for them; if they don’t see love, they come to the conclusion that it’s not a suitable group for them. Their start out by rejecting all that is not love, all that has no love, all that is not derived from love; yet they may not be aware of the strange and amazing paths that love can leads us down; for example, when love brings us to places where there is no love or where it is impeded, or when it steers us towards methods like this, where they are confronted by what they think is true.
Why do they flee from heartbreak? What if love were present, but unseen? Is it possible that love has only one way to manifest itself? What if love were hidden behind the apparent coldness or hatred that another manifests?
Such confrontation is difficult and painful when they realize that everything they thought they had conquered, what they call “LOVE”, is nothing more than a recreation of conditioning that arises from an unresolved lack of affection. All confrontations are the product of love.
If I may, I’d like to send a few words to you personally: I will meet with you open heartedly as oft as you want on your search for love, no matter what may have happened, I will comprehend. If our method questions your belief that you are already in love, I want you to know that, although that is not true, it isn’t a problem, because it is love that has guided you here, towards this method and to our retreats; here we’re all in the same boat, owning up to the false beliefs about love within us. We are healing this demand for love, but without desperately seeking it or adding to other people’s demands.
Demand is mistreatment and abuse of power. Demand is humiliation and rejection. It is total hatred, disguised and masked as perfectionism or idealism. It is an unattainable claim that stems from long-standing helplessness that is hell-bent on destruction.
That need that has always been with us, because we have not received the love we once wanted from our mum; has now turn into ultimatums and demands.
Ultimatums and demands…. projections of what we lack; those deficiencies lead to yearning, a muted scream that has no other way out. The desire to be loved.
IS THERE A SOLUTION FOR THIS LACK OF AFFECTION?
The people who work with me are pure love, all of them, in fact all the people are pure love on a plane of reality that most people have yet to see, but each one is discovering it in their own way, at their own pace, generally little by little, what we call “going through the process”. We are putting an end to the unconscious need to flee from love or reject it, we are healing the very idea, inherited from our past that love causes suffering, we open ourselves with the dignity to love and being loved.
Sometimes I am treated with a lack of affection, falseness, aggression or rejection, even by people close to me. This isn’t something they are doing to me but rather to themselves, I can comprehend it, I could even request of these people to treat me with love, but if I do so in a demanding way, I thus need to look within myself to check what hasn’t yet been resolved. This was a huge confrontation in my evolutionary process, because I was aware that although I was being treated badly, I had no right whatsoever to demand that they stop treating me this way. If I were to demand love without giving it in return, then I must make right this attitude through self-indulgence. There’s always time to connect with love; It’s never too late.
It’s possible that when you find real love, it may go unnoticed, because it is a odd language you don’t recognize. Where love is present, love is not demanded. Mistreatment can be a chance for transformation. Love never asks for love because it is self-sufficient, and if it sees indifference or a lack of affection, it can immediately alleviate the shortsightedness of those who cannot yet see clearly.
Love is not something that can be begged for, demanded or conditioned. If that were to happen then one would have before them an enriching opportunity to leave behind the self-delusion of pseudo love and open up to transformation through healing: “I am on love’s path, yet I still demand it, I need it obsessively, and that leads me to adopt an attitude which is incompatible with love’s very nature”.
To realize that the love we have or feel is still infected by such energetic pressure and therefore complaining that it comes from the external experiences of the past, is in itself a compassionate and loving experience.
I regret not talking about love as much as people may want, many even take great exception to it, but I do not need it because I live it every day, and it is infinite, I get it from everywhere, even from people who reject me or judge me, in fact they are also loving, only they know no other way of expressing it… for the moment.
Love is not defined by the way we are treated, but rather by the way we perceive it.
Alberto José Varela
