LOVE IS NOT. . .

Thoughts from Ashtora on LOVE:  Love is not about what you can do for me or what I can do for you. Love is not about what we have or have not in common. It is not about what we have or don’t have. It is not about independence or our accomplishments, individual or collective. Love is not about earning or proving anything.

Love is about who we are. Love is the willingness to be with each other. Love is about our mutual ability to allow the other into our lives; and also, to allow ourselves to be vulnerably open to one another. If I cannot allow you into my life, cannot allow myself to welcome and need (at least sometimes) your strength, your weakness, your love and all that comes with who you are, I cannot love you; and in the end, you cannot love me.

Ashtora, March 2008

Thoughts from Albert Einstein on LOVE:  A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.