Does love require sacrifice?

One voice says "give." Another whispers,
"but what about me?" And in that tension,
we invent someting noble sounding.
We call it sacrifice.

We were thaught that love proves itself
through pain. If it costs you, it must
be real. If you sacrifice, it must be deep.
But look deeper, is there a sacrifice
without inner conflict? If my giving is
forced, not natural, is that really love?

Isn't that what real love is?
Putting aside my needs and wants
and serving another?

Most people try to reach love by erasing
their needs. They become agreeable, useful,
endlessy self-sacrifing. But be honest,
what happens in the future when your sacrifice
is not acknowledged or returned?

I will be hurt, probably become angry.

So if your love and giving came with
conditions or expectations of being returned
in the future was that really love? Sacrifice
can look holy, yet underneath it waits a quiet
accountant, keeping score of every compromise.
And one day the bill arrives.

But that is natural. We are only human.
Our love is conditional. Relationships are
based on an exchange of energies. We have
needs and wants.

Exactly. We are only human. People believe,
if I give myself away, if I endure and erase
my needs, I will get love in return. But the
body is wiser than the mask. It carries the
unsaid no. It remembers the truth. What is
not spoken in words will one day be spoken
in symptoms, as a disease. Not as punishment.
But as the soul's last attempt to bring you
back to yourself.

You were never meant to disappear in order
to love.You were meant to arrive.

Arrive where?

Back to yourself. Your truth. Your needs.
Your wants. Love begins in total self-acceptance
and inculsion. It is not built on exclusion in
order to serve another. Love is wholeness.
It is the place where nothing inside you needs
to hide in order to belong.

The moment you start cutting pieces of yourself
off and calling it sacrifice, division has entered.
And where there is division, there is tension,
conflict between the heart and the mind. And where
there is conflict, love cannot breathe, it suffocates.

Love can only stem from wholeness. Wholeness says,
"I am not loving you instead of myself. I am loving
you with myself. All of me is present. No exile within.
No division. No war"

So if sacrifice brings division, resentment, self-betrayal
and blocks love, what is true love then? Is that even
humanly possible?

True love arrives the way a wave falls back into the ocean,
naturally, effortlessly, because there is nowhere else to be.
Nothing in you is screaming to be heard. Nothing is left
unlived. Nothing is begging for recognition. Nothing is divided.
Nothing demands or expects.

But you cannot jump to that place of being by suppresing yourself.
You first need to become fully yourself. Becoming precedes being.
You reach it by passing through truth, by listening to what is
real in you, by honoring your yes, by respecting your no, by
allowing your life to teach you what it came to teach, by
honoring your needs and desires. Truth integrates. And only the
undivided heart can dissolve into love.

Love is not the reward for being good or nice. Love is what
remains after nothing true in you has been left behind.
It is the quiet movement from "I sacrifice myself to be loved"
to "I am whole, therefore I am love."

So follow the thread of what is real for you. Even when it
shakes your whole world. Even when it changes relationships.
Even when it disappoints images and egos. First you become
real. The you become one. Then you are love. And the you can
serve another because you have finished serving yourself.

freedom.from.the.madness