In Yoga Journal’s Archives series, we share a curated collection of articles originally published in past issues beginning in 1975. This article about love and relationships first appeared in the January-February 1983 issue of Yoga Journal. Find more of our Archives here. 

Basic dissatisfaction or dukkha is the first Noble Truth of the Buddha. It results from an inability to completely satisfy a desire, which by its very nature is insatiable. When attractive people, things or experiences present themselves, we reach out in an impulsive attempt to incorporate those experiences within ourselves. When we feel inadequate about our own sense of aliveness, we look for salvation through identification with what lies “out there” in the world. This struggle, according to the Eastern view, is inherently futile, since true peace of mind and freedom resides within.

On the other hand, the Judeo-Christian tradition emphasizes love as the key to truth and liberation. No other word is used as frequently in the New Testament to express the meaning of God. According to John (1 John 4), “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is Love.” In his book, Building The Earth, Teilhard de Chardin, one of the most profound Christian thinkers to date, wrote that “love is the most universal, formidable and mysterious of cosmic energies…

Could it not be, in essence, the attraction which is exercised upon each conscious element by the center of the universe? The call toward the great union, whose attainment is the only real business in nature?… Love is a sacred reserve of energy and the very bloodstream of spiritual evolution.” According to Teilhard, love is an energy which irresistibly draws life toward itself. We can stubbornly refuse the call of love-the call that invites us to unite with the energies of others—or we can gladly surrender and discover the endless mystery of creation that awaits us. The refusal to open to the ever—present reality of love, according to Teilhard, is what Christian theology has termed “sin.”

In light of the Western view of love and the Eastern view of desire, we may have difficulty differentiating the various meanings. When is that “call toward the greater union,” as Teilhard put it, really a glorified name for desire – a craving for something outside ourselves that will compensate for our own inner poverty? How do we know when we are motivated by our deficiencies and when we are called by Being itself to participate in a deeper sense of cosmic mystery and creation?

There are no simple answers to the above questions. Each individual must look at his or her own experience and sense the primary motivations. But we can explore ways to look at ourselves and the motivations behind our present involvements with lovers, friends and acquaintances.

It seems clear that our actions cannot be traced to one simple root; they have a variety of sources. The attractions we feel toward others are seldom pure love or pure desire, but some combination of the two. A chakra model from Hindu psychology may help us to sort out motivations for choosing whom we spend our time with. This ability to become aware of our inner processes may be one of our most accurate barometers of psycho-spiritual growth.

Security or Faith?

The first chakra is associated with survival issues. Similarly, a major impulse for uniting with others is the need to feel comfortable and secure (be it emotionally, spiritually or financially). Relationships in which this element is primary are often doomed to long bouts of conflict and confusion.

This confusion is concerned with issues over one’s identity. In a situation like this, one may lose sight of one’s own feelings, needs, wishes, and growth directions. Sensing a lack of personal identity in the relationship, the human spirit attempts to break the stranglehold of this premature union.

This healthy rebellion is an attempt to reassert one’s own distinct existence.

Giving up the known, comfortable present for an unknown, potentially hostile future can be a terrifying pros-pect, especially when the unconscious bonding endures over a period of years, and when one lacks a personal support system outside the relationship. Why give up a secure (though unsatisfying) present and choose to face our stark aloneness in the world? Contemplating this choice, the ego (or self-image) imagines its own death. But this struggle to maintain the illusion is actually a struggle to maintain the illusion of security. On a deeper level, the individual knows this, and may express the need for a personal identity through disguised or unconscious anger.

In instances where this rebellion is not permitted to rise to consciousness, a person may be convinced that theirs is a “good” relationship, even though it is really boring. In such cases, one’s anxiety (or potential anxiety) is defended against by maintaining some secure belief system about the relationship. As theologian Paul Tillich wrote in The Courage to Be, “Neurotic anxiety builds a narrow castle of certitude which can be defended and is defended with the utmost tenacity.” In such instances, a person may not be aware of their dependency until years later, perhaps during a midlife crisis or as death approaches, and one is forced to look at the meaning of his or her life in a new way.

The antidote to strong security needs is a hearty dose of faith: the faith to let go of the familiar, the faith required to achieve, in the words of Krishnamurti, a “freedom from the known.” Faith, however, must rest upon a firm foundation. Genuine faith requires a clear acknowledgement of the fears that quietly haunt us, as well as impulses and motivations that unconsciously drive us. What is also required is a radical act of courage—a willingness to take responsibility for our lives and move forward in the new ways our organism is silently screaming for us to move. What is needed here, as Paul Tillich suggests, is the “courage to be”; and Tillich goes on to suggest that the “courage to die is the test of the courage to be.” Unless we are willing to face the inevitability of our death, we will cling timidly to those things that bring the illusions of security.

Another kind of security can be discovered by those who are willing to face the basic reality of insecurity (or the “wisdom of insecurity” as Alan Watts calls it in his book of the same title). This type of security is of a new order and is found by those who contact a deeper source of guidance — one which is aligned with the way things actually are. Two beings who come together in this way can sense the organic “rightness” of it. One is prompted by love itself (involving an activation and integration of all chakra centers) rather than by compulsive need. Commitment then becomes not so much a willful decision, as an understanding that no serious alternative exists. It simply ‘feels right’ to be together.

Craving or Energetic Urging?

From a biological viewpoint, the powerful, instinctual energy within sexual desire insures the survival and continuation of the species. From an emotional point of view, it can generate an intense craving for pleasure and sensation (functions of the second chakra). The attachment that can result from such craving can lead to a selective perception whereby we view the other as a means of gratifying oneself.

When this focus becomes the main source of attraction in a relationship, we lose sight of the needs and feelings of the other. Love sees with peripheral vision—it comprehends the other in his or her wholeness. Sense desire has traditionally been identified by Eastern psychology as one of the strongest attachments to which human beings are subject. To avoid the awakening and feeding of this energy, many schools of thought have prescribed celibacy as a way of life. Many Eastern teachers transplanted in the West continue to hold to such teachings and either encourage celibacy or discourage the sexual aspect of relationships.

The tantric perspective, on the other hand, views sexual energy as a blessing. Sexual energy generates the fire that can lead to union between two sensitive beings. The initial energy of desire may be used to transcend desire—instead of being driven by desire, one can become aware of the quality of energy residing there. In this way, both partners may become aware of the kernel of love which exists within desire, generating energy within the couple. From the point of view of Hindu psychology, the raw sexual energy becomes tempered by the higher chakra centers.

The need to give and receive love involves powerful energies in each per-son. The frustrated will to love can be a source of severe pain and anguish. One reason this can be so painful is because Being itself is frustrated in its urge to expand into a deeper union. Another common source of pain is the tendency to imagine or project certain qualities onto the other, which may not actually exist. In such instances we may desire particular qualities that the other represents to us, but in our desire to compensate for our inner lack we are not accurately perceiving the other person.

Teilhard refers to this dynamic when he states: “If man fails to recognize the true nature and the true object of his love, the disorder which follows is profound and irremediable. Stubbornly trying to gratify a passion which opens on the Infinite with something that is simply inadequate, man desperately tries to make up for the fundamental disequilibrium brought about within him by a restless search for pleasures.”

Power Over vs. Power With

Issues of power and self-esteem, the domain of the third chakra, involve a complex series of dynamics. Misunderstanding these issues leads to the major source of hurt and anger in relationships. Each organism will defend itself by whatever means necessary in order to maintain that sense of power and self-esteem. The psychological purpose of defense mechanisms is to protect a person from embarrassing threats to his or her perceived self-image. If one’s integrity is hurt or threatened, one may attack or withdraw—the classic “fight or flight” response.

Ideally, one’s anger is direct and overt. When we acknowledge these feelings, we may discover new aspects of ourselves and others, as we explore what lies beneath our superficial reactions. Health anger is way to reassert one’s sense of personal power and integrity. If it is not acknowledged, or if one is afraid to express the anger, other more destructive means of regaining personal power are resorted to. These secondary means tend to be unconscious and may be expressed passively. One may forget appointments or agreements, or become spiteful in various subtle ways.

This behavior is an attempt to “balance the power” between two people, just as nations react with retaliation when they feel attacked or injured.

Relationships, curiously enough, can survive years of mutually hurtful behavior. One can feel trapped in a relationship when the thought of exit generates a terror of being alone, and the thought of confronting one’s real feelings, motivations and needs is an equally fearful prospect, because it implies change, which, from the ego’s point of view, seems like an annihilation. In addition, one may be reluctant to look honestly at the relationship, afraid of discovering that it is based more upon desire, fear and attachment than upon the spontaneous, mutually nurturing energy of love.

As anger and resentment toward oneself and the other is suppressed, it becomes increasingly threatening to acknowledge one’s real feelings. One tends to retreat to a frozen set of mental constructs and belief systems about the relationship. These may consist of thoughts such as “I love him or her” or “I made a commitment to stay in this relationship.” In many cases, what is called love is actually need or attachment based upon the dynamics of safety (first chakra), sense of desire (second chakra), or a need to maintain a sense of power and self-esteem (third chakra). In these instances love is not love at all, but merely a self-comforting (though self-deceptive) thought, which serves to maintain the status quo. True love is a dynamic energy that liberates and enhances one’s sense of aliveness instead of freezing it into a secure set of ideas about the relationships.

Certainly love may be present in addition to desire and fixating thoughts, especially in those relationships where an energetic connection was once strong. The challenge to such a relationship is whether the love can emerge intact after the couple sorts through the psychodynamic fixations that developed along the way. Is love the main motivation for involvement or is one wrestling with some aspect of maya (the whole series of chakras mentioned earlier) in order to learn some painful, though vital lessons? If the latter, one needs to learn the lessons and move on; if the former, one needs to acknowledge the contaminating influences within oneself as they arise, and discover a way to resolve them within oneself and within the relationship. Some self-insight process, perhaps meditation and a transpersonally oriented growth process such as Focusing, is vital for learning to sort through the subtle, yet powerfully entangling influences that distort one’s shaky journey along the path of relationship. Otherwise, one may be tempted to abandon the existing relationship in the futile hope of finding a new one that will solve all of one’s woes.

Resolving the complex set of issues involved in power struggle dynamics leads to a confident sense of personal power. No longer enslaved by the whims of the other, one moves from mere reacting to responsible, conscious acting. This new kind of personal power in which one has the strength and power to choose, initiate and create what one wants is the function of the fifth chakra. It does not involve the “power over” variety; rather, it evolves into a “power with” the other.

The Call of Love

Although a person is never “finished” with the desire for security, sensual craving and the will to power, these forces tend to lose their paralyzing grip. As we come to understand them, they slowly transform into a sense of faith, bio-cosmic love, and heightened self-esteem. The continual willingness to greet and accept one’s feelings and motivations leads to the blossoming of the phenomenon we call love. When we consistently direct non-judgmental attention toward the inner process, love emerges as we slowly shed the shell of desire. As we come to know ourselves, and as we become strong enough to welcome the vulnerability that love implies, we attract those at a similar level of “love-readiness.” The alternative is to contract into a slow death as our spirit shrinks for fear of being hurt one more time. As Teilhard explains,

“In singular opposition to the irresistible attraction manifested in Love is the instinctive repulsion which as a general rule drives human beings like molecules, away from each other. This repulsion can in fact result only from the timidity or cowardice of an individual in face of an effort of expansion which would ensure his liberation.” The reactive tendency to retreat from the call of love can lead to a certain kind of guilt which has been termed ontological guilt. Such guilt stems from a failure to follow the call of Being which invites us to fulfill a greater potential. We may refuse this invitation, unwilling to face the anxiety which accompanies an entrance into the unknown.

Guilt can arise from the desire to maintain the status quo. Pain can arise from a desire for a specific object of love. Fixating upon a certain person or form of lover is painful because we are forcing love to follow a narrow identification. Pain can also occur when another refuses to receive our love. This kind of spiritual pain is not necessarily due to frustrated desires, but may result from a frustration of Being itself to engage in its natural tendency to expand its energy outward. With clearer perception, we may learn to recognize the lack of love-readiness in the other, and instead of becoming fixated upon one object, love can gently turn to other sources of expression.

Love is experienced as a pull to expand beyond personal boundaries toward a transpersonal dimension of Being. Desire is felt as a burning urge to protect or aggrandize itself. Desire implies fear of loss or fear of non-gratification. Love is a blossom which grows from the soil of pain and anxiety—it resides within and slowly refines its nature as the raw desire burns itself away.

Rather than view desire as an unacceptable impulse, we may view our awareness of it as an entry point into the realm we call “love.” Accepting our desires allows us to look honestly at our feelings, needs and motivations. Only through this friendly approach toward ourselves will we feel inclined to move from comfort and security to further reaches of our growth.