Freedom to Love
By Lissette Rios
Are we free to fall in love and still be ourselves? Why does it become so difficult in a relationship to just be and to do as we want without being judged or criticized by our partner? Why do we become so attached to our partners and lovers?
It is said that love is blind, but is it? Actually, nothing on earth is as clear-sighted as love. The thing that is blind is attachment, not love. An attachment is a state of clinging that comes from the false belief that something or someone is necessary for your happiness. Would it not be just perfect if we could love someone and just allow that someone to be, allow that someone to be free, to choose and to feel what he or she wants, without making that someone feel guilty because his or her choices are not what we want.
Love is the greatest gift we have in the universe; IT TRULY IS ALL THERE IS! Freedom to love without restraint, without restrictions, without making the other person feel a sense of guilt or wrongdoing because he or she does not act or think they way we think they should, is our biggest blessing. Would it not be great if we just allow and accepted them just as they are, unique to the world, instead of their being who we want them to be, they are free to be who they feel comfortable being.
How many times do we call our partners or lovers selfish? How many times do we label them as wrong just because they have a different vision of life or just simply because they want something different than we do? Is this our interpretation of freedom to love?
To look at something and to interprete it in our own way is our greatest right; it is our right to be free, to choose the way we look at the world. To love and respect someone who does not see the same things we do is to love freely. To learn to love ourselves as we are without judgment or criticism is our first step to loving freely. It all starts with ourselves, learning to accept ourselves just as we are in our good and challenging moments, in our weak and our strong moments, in our difficult moments as well as in our easy moments.
Accepting that we are perfect and worthy of love at every moment, without judgment, that is unconditional love. It is knowing that we are worthy of love because of who we are and not because of what we are or what we do. Stepping into that place of unconditional love for ourselves is when we learn to love and to accept others just as they are, unconditionally. That is the magic of love, pure love. Pure love means being able to see past all of our judgments to see the pureness, the wholeness, the God in us and in each other.
