We distort our capacity to love others with reference to an imaginary future. We see ourselves in this story and believe we know what love will do for us. We use emotion to force others to do what they “should”; what we desire; what we have in mind. We even withhold and limit love as a threat, ignoring the fact that death stalks us all. If we do this, we are drowning in our minds reflecting pool.
Ironically, we may justify our actions by imagining a love that will exceed the bounds we impose today!
We twist love confusing it with ego fulfillment. If others begin exercising their freedom in harmless ways contrary to our vision, these self-seeking schemes become more obvious.
A mental sense of self is fiction. Do not insist we can judge well from such a vapid thing. Others do not exist to prove what we think of ourselves. When we stop mistaking a concept for who we are, we stop demanding that others must sustain this imagined self.
By Todd Vickers
Excerpt from the unpublished work on the poetry of Kabir
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