Can there be love without communication & sharing?

Can there be love without communication & sharing?

If love is a bird, communication and sharing are its two wings. Therefore, in one’s discovery of love one is compelled to recognize the need to communicate and share.

As I see it, we are, all of us on this planet, like a million waves in a single ocean – related to each other, whether we acknowledge it or not. I am one wave in this vast ocean of humanity, you are another and it is inevitable that we shall meet, communicate and share – as one human being to another. In this sharing, there is no superior or inferior, no teacher or taught, no leader or follower. We meet as waves in a single ocean, in a oneness beyond description. In this sharing, in this reaching out, in this speaking and listening, from one human being to another is the warmth, the tenderness and the love of being
essentially one.

Obviously, to share means to reach out, to break out of one’s shell of isolation, of alienation, of a seemingly separate existence. Further, this reaching out has to be spontaneous, not demanded or forced. One has to feel comfortable with it. There maybe several experiences which we feel insecure about, where we feel more secure in our own comfortable, self protective shell. One might feel vulnerable and exposed to share everything one has  experienced. On the other hand, there may be several experiences which one eagerly wishes to share. Essentially then, sharing should be a spontaneous outpouring of the heart which reaches out in love and joy.

There may be aspects of one’s life which one wishes to share with only a few, maybe family or friends. There may be aspects which one can share with anyone. Sharing does not necessarily imply telling everything to everybody. Each one is entitled to one’s own privacy, one’s own values, one’s own thoughts and feelings. To share cannot mean a demand that everyone express an opinion. Sharing cannot be demanded or enforced. It can only be invited and received with love and affection, with mutual respect. Sharing does not demand, it merely reaches out with love and listens with patience. It does not seek to sit in judgment, to condemn or even correct, nor even to criticize. Sharing, to my mind, is to reach out to another in love and to receive another in a spirit of oneness. It implies no claim to knowledge, wisdom, superiority or greatness. On the other hand, it implies an emptiness that is receptive to what another can give. It implies an empty cup willing to be filled with what another offers with love. It is a spontaneous reaching out and receptivity to love.

Man is a thinking animal. He therefore tends to think more than he feels. This, in fact, may be at the very root of our many problems – our discontent, our insecurity and conflict. Thought itself is based on the notion of a separate thinker. The fact of a separate entity who is thinking is a tacit assumption of all thought. It therefore presupposes separation between the thinker and the rest of creation, between the thinker and the thought, between subject and object. Thought demands a pattern it labels as logic or reason and rejects as absurd all that does not fall into this limited pattern. Therefore, the thought process may actually be man’s greatest barrier to the discovery of his own awareness.

Herein lies the importance of feeling, the subtle, gentle and often hidden impulses from one’s own heart, those faint stirrings from the depths of one’s own consciousness. These are often merely felt, may defy expression, logic and verbalization. Yet, these gentle signals from deep within us might be the language of the infinite intelligence that makes life meaningful, the source of all love, peace and joy. Are we quiet enough to listen to the gentle stirrings of our own soul? Are we sensitive and gentle, loving in our response to these gentle stirrings? Or, are we turning a deaf ear in the vanity of our own accumulated notions, in the sterile patterns of our own limited and repetitive reasoning and intelligence? Can we empty our mind of its accumulated notions to abide in a stillness where we can feel and respond to the loving stirrings from the soul?

I do not refer to soul as a magical, metaphysical entity that outlives the body. I talk of it as the light of infinite intelligence that enables our very ability to be aware, that substratum of consciousness that enables continuity of experience, that witnesses the interplay of the pairs of opposites in our life – joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure. I refer to it as the unseen observer who is present in our every observation, in our every experience.

To my mind, sharing lies in meeting at the level of oneness, in a continuum of consciousness, where the unreality of separation between you and me are felt by both. It is like the point when two waves crash against each other in a movement that encompasses and transcends both. In this magic meeting, our separateness is overcome and we abide in the joy and bliss of sharing. All of us experience this feeling of reaching out and welcoming with love within various relationships – maybe with a spouse, a lover, a child, a parent, a teacher or a friend. Here again, the specific activity or person that we share with is secondary. What is of the greatest importance is that we reach out and receive in love, in a celebration of oneness that is sharing.

We might and many of us do share with animals, with a pet. We may give
and receive love unconditionally, joyously, in recognition of oneness
and joy. We may share with a plant, watering it with love. We may share
with a stranger with a spontaneous smile or nod. We may share with a
small child, with a hug or laughter. We can share with the young and
old, men and women, humans or animals, rich or poor – through language
or through touch, through laughter or through tears. One might even
share one’s togetherness with another in silence and stillness, in the
unconditional acceptance of the way things are. In the spontaneous
giving and receiving of love in a million different ways is sharing.

As our civilizations progress, as man gets lost in materialistic pursuits, as we increase the separation between ourselves and nature
and between each other, as each individual gets buried in his own little cocoon isolated and alienated from another, as the harshness,
conflict and competitiveness of the world stares us in the face and overtakes us, as it threatens to overwhelm us, in these moments, where it may seem least deserving, it is needed most – a spontaneous receptivity to and reaching out with love. Now, more than ever, we need to communicate and share. In the devastating isolation and alienation of our concrete jungles, in the oppressive burden of competition and conflict, we need more than ever the spontaneity, the stillness, the emptiness and the receptivity that will enable us to give and receive with love. What we give and receive is secondary, what is important is that we give and receive with love in a sharing that celebrates our essential oneness. To live is to share and to share is to celebrate our oneness with love.

© Copyright Ashok Gollerkeri