Excerpt
from How Big Is Your God?: The Freedom to Experience the Divine
by Paul Coutinho, SJ
The Enslaving Illusion of Love
Love is one of the greatest illusions that people have. This illusion
of love is often the biggest obstacle to our relationship with God and
to our greater and deeper experience of the Divine.
Reflect for a moment on the story of the couple who were so madly in
love that every parent who had a teenage child would point to them and
say, "If you want to know what love is, look at that couple." One day
the man died. The woman was so devastated that on his tombstone she had
engraved in bold letters, 'The light of my life is gone." People would
go there to show their children that inscription and to talk about this
ideal couple and how they loved each other. People also stopped by to
console the woman, and one man stopped by often. He fell in love with
the woman, and eventually she fell in love with him, and soon she
wanted to get married again. But that tombstone was an embarrassment.
They went to their pastor for advice. He said, "Let it be; don't worry.
You have written, 'The light of my life is gone: Just add 'I have
struck another match.'"
Abraham Lincoln once said that everyone is as happy as he or she
chooses to be. Happiness, therefore, is an inner choice. When someone
loves you, that person does not make you happy but makes you aware of
the source of your happiness within you. Therefore, when someone you
love rejects you, or goes away or dies, that person does not take your
happiness with him or her.
When we cling to the love of another person or are dependent on it for
our happiness, we become enslaved to that relationship. We fool
ourselves by believing that our happiness comes from that person
instead of from the river of divine life and because we are the beloved
of God. Such a relationship is not a truly unconditional loving
relationship. True love lets me freely be who I am.
God's most precious gifts are sometimes the very obstacles that stand
in the way of our deepening our relationship with the Divine. Sometimes
our relationships, even good ones, prevent us from moving to a higher
spiritual level. Ramakrishna, one of the great Indian sages, tells this
story:
There was a holy man who wandered the forests, always lost in the
presence of God. Through his wanderings, he came to the city one day
and found a young man, a wonderful man, and said to him, "Why are you
wasting your time here? Come with me into the forest, and I will show
you how to experience God, peace, and happiness." The young man said,
"I can't do that. I have a wife who loves me dearly; she would be
devastated if I went away. I have children who depend on me. They love
me so much. Our family is so close to one another. There is so much
love in this family. I cannot just leave them and go." The holy man
said, "This is an illusion. It is a figment of your imagination. They
don't love you the way you think they do. You don't love them the way
you think you do." And the young man replied, "Of course I do." So the
holy man said, "Let's test this."
The holy man suggested, "I will give you this little potion. When you
go home, drink it, and you will fall down as if you are dead, but you
will be aware of everything that is going on. I promise you that
shortly I will come and revive you." The young man agreed. He went
home, took that potion, and fell down as if he were dead. His wife was
the first one to find him, and she began screaming and yelling and
could not be consoled. "This husband of mine," she cried, "I love him
so much. Why did God take him away so soon and so quickly?" His
children also could not be consoled. All the neighbors were in the
house trying to help the family. They were also talking about how much
they loved this man. And the young man was thinking, I hope the holy man comes now, because he would then see for himself how much I am loved and cared for.
The holy man appeared. He asked, "What happened?" The wife said, 'This
husband of mine -- l loved him so much and now he is gone, and I do not
know what I am going to do without him." The children said the same
thing. The neighbors were talking about him too. The holy man
announced, "I can revive this man. I have this little potion. If I put
it into his mouth, he will come back to life." And everyone stopped
crying and looked forward in hope. "But there is one condition for this
potion to work. One of you has to take half of it, and you will die. I
am sure you love him very much and will have no problem doing this."
The wife spoke first. She said, "What is a home without a mother? This
man does not know how to cook. This man will not be able to take care
of the children." So, she said, she could not possibly take the potion.
The children said, "Papa lived a good life. God will reward him. We are
young and have our own lives to lead." The neighbors had their own
families, so no one among them was willing to take the potion. The holy
man revived the young man, and without turning back, the young man
followed the holy man into the forest.
Now, I am not suggesting that you leave all your loved ones and go into
the forest. What I am saying is that you should look at this great
illusion of love for what it is. Don't give your loved ones and friends
more importance, more value than they have. Jesus said, "Unless you
hate your father and your mother and your brothers and sisters, you
cannot be my disciple." I am not saying that you should stop loving
your family. Jesus did not say that. Jesus said, "Love them with all
your heart and all your soul. Love them like you love God. Love them
like you love yourself." Love them, but know that you have to let go of
them at the same time so that you will be able to follow God totally
and unconditionally. This is something that we all need to think about.
We all have to face this illusion in some manner, and the consequences
of how we do so are very real.
When my mother died, all of us at home were worried about our father.
He had spent forty-seven years married to my mother and was very
devoted to her. We wondered if my father would die now that the love of
his life was gone. But he didn't; he survived. He lived for twelve
years after her death. Not only did he live, but he was fully alive. He
was fully present to life. Of course he missed my mother. Of course he
talked about my mother. But her death did not devastate him; it did not
kill him.
When people die, we miss them and we cry for them, but if we truly
loved them and freely enjoyed them, we cry because we're happy. The
tears are tears of happiness, their lives were a gift to us and we
remember the happy moments. Because we fully enjoyed them, we are free
to let them go on the physical level and stay connected to them on the
spiritual level.
This is true even in our relationship with the Divine. One of St.
Ignatius's axioms is "Pray as if every thing depended on God and work
as if everything depended on you." What St. Ignatius is saying is that
we need to give ourselves fully to the task, in which God
is laboring, and trust fully in the Divine. This reflects a childlike
approach rather than a childish approach. In this relationship, we are
free to be who we are, and God is free to be divine. This relationship
is one of freeing love.
Copyright © 2007 Paul Coutinho, SJ