12 Eye-Opening Quotes that Will Change Your Understanding of Love

Castle Rock Entertainment, via Photofest

Note: In this article, I am not solely talking about romantic love but love in general.

If there is one subject that has been extensively explored and examined in countless books, songs and movies — it is love.

But I feel how they usually portray love in these mediums gives us misguided perceptions about love.

Love gets often associated with attachment, desire, expectation, control, jealousy, possession — all of which arise out of fear and not from love.

Here are 12 thought-provoking quotes about love that I believe portrays a more accurate picture of what love is all about.

1. "Try not to confuse ‘attachment’ with ‘love.’ Attachment is about fear and dependency, and has more to do with love of self than love of another. Love without attachment is the purest love because it isn’t about what others can give you because you’re empty. It is about what you can give others because you’re already full.” — Yasmin Mogahed

2. “The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it’s not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person – without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.” — Rajneesh (Osho)

3. “If you love a person, you accept the total person. With all the defects. Because those defects are a part of the person. Never try to change a person you love, because the very effort to change says that you love half, and the other half of the person is not accepted.”

—Rajneesh

4. “Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares,

heals.

Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards,

harms.

Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away.

Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.”

— Conversations With God, Book. 1

5. "Love makes no conditions, no ifs, no buts. Love never says, fulfil these requirements, then I will love you.” — Rajneesh

6. “If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So, if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.” — Rajneesh

7. "...people find it very difficult to be a loving person, so they create a relationship – and befool that way: ‘Now I am a loving person because I am in a relationship.’ And the relationship may be just one of monopoly, possessiveness, and exclusiveness." — Rajneesh

8. “Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something and it is only such love that can know freedom.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti

11. “The way of love is the way of no-expectation. Love exists only when there is a total acceptance and no desire to change anything.” — Rajneesh

9. "Do not mistake desire for love. Desire leaves home in a frantic search for one gratification after another. Love is at home with itself." — Vernon Howard

10. "Love in its purest form is a sharing of joy. It asks nothing in return, it expects nothing; hence how can you feel hurt? When you don't expect, there is no possibility of being hurt." — Rajneesh

12. “Love is not possession. Love is letting your loved ones follow their own paths, even if those paths lead them away from you.”— Cloris Kylie

Final thoughts

Many of us may blame love for causing us pain, when in reality, it is usually our own attachments and expectations from people that cause us to suffer.

In romantic relationships, when people say that love hurts, often what they really mean is relationships hurt. For love does not come with a set of agreements and conditions as relationships do.

Unconditional love can be hard for many of us to practice in our lives because we have been so used to giving and receiving fear-based love.

Fear-based love usually involves seeking love of self through another, which can take the form of trying to change someone or wanting them to fulfil our desires and expectations.

To truly love people without any conditions requires a lot of inner work on our ego, insecurities and fears. Awareness is key.

Most of the time, we live in autopilot mode, and in such a frame of mind, we are more inclined to choose actions motivated by fear instead of love when we feel wronged or hurt by other people’s actions.

But the decision to make choices based on love or fear at any given time is always up to us.

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