Profound Insights I Got After Going Beyond Romantic Love

Loosen your attachments enough to see them, and this wisdom is yours to copy

The first time my romantic longings were perfectly and fully reciprocated wasn’t the flowery, other-worldly fantasy I was expecting.

It was warm, cozy, familiar, and…limited.

It existed within bounds — no magic, rather the opposite, in its conditioned ordinary-ness.

If certain causes didn’t come about (physical features, socioeconomic status, personality traumas), then bonding wouldn’t be possible in the first place.

There was nothing “true” about it other than the ‘perfect’ recipe being destined to end!

We’re all searching for happiness. So why does our culture tell us the biggest chunk of it comes from coupling?

I began to question if romance really had to be so central to my life.

Perhaps it was the familiarity of solitude. Or simply that first reciprocation coming to a sudden, unexpected end.

But a big, liberating question appeared in my mind.

Why should I share all this love and warmth with only one person?

I didn’t mean it in a polyamorous way.

I meant it seemed incredibly selfish to act so loving to one person, while being an ass (in comparison) to almost everyone else. Especially those absolutely nothing like my lover.

Why couldn’t I throw conditions & temporal identity markers into the garbage, where superficial things belong?

Why couldn’t I share that same level of care to everyone?

Maybe only the likes of Buddha and Jesus actually did so — but that doesn’t make this liberating aspiration any less valid.

As usual, the East had the answers.

I really got to some deep reflection and introspection, along with perspectives on “love” from civilizations that didn’t spend their leisure time watching Netflix & hooking up through dating apps.

What I found was just incredible. And ironic.

I realized that I’d never have bothered to look deeper if I hadn’t already been profoundly, deeply, and seemingly irreversibly satisfied by romantic validation.

It’s not something to be nihilistically rejected in frustration. Nor seen as the be-all and end-all of human experience.

Approached the right way, it was the middle path. It was just an existential stepping stone.

The next step, the notion of transcending sexual & romantic validation in totality, has probably never been explained better than in the infamous essay From Sex to Superconsciousness:

“One who attains to celibacy in this life owes it to a deep coital union in a previous life and not to anything else.

This is the only explanation…celibacy cannot be imposed; celibacy evolves only as the cream of inner experience.

Brahmacharya, celibacy, is the result of a serene and profound experience — and that experience is of sex. If during sex one has had an absolute revelation, even once, he is released from sex for the unending journey of lives.”

(Osho)

Ask yourself this.

• Does our superficial culture set up the conditions for the above to come about, even once in the average person’s life?
• Do people realize how precious and sacred the energy involved in romantic attachment is?
• If we freed it from one tether, extending it to all beings throughout space, the entire cosmos, as a way of actualizing its importance — what would happen?

We’d probably be walking towards the super-conscious. We’d understand how people like the Dalai Lama can live like they do.

When I reflected on this, I was freed of romantic longing being the one overarching desire of my life. And ironically, much more (and more genuine) romance appeared in my life.

But it never held the same sway over me as the possibility of being a self-generating sun of infinite, unconditioned (and un-endable) love.

I’m sharing this with you because from the depth of my being, I think more people need to have this realization. Imagine the world it would bring about:

• There’d be fewer nuclear-family suburban developments obliterating ecosystems.
• Social lives would be fuller when (& where) coupling isn’t everything.
• Higher-quality children would be born, if sexual energy was treated as sacred fuel, and not a sinful abyss.

Break through the conditioning society brainwashed you with.

We’re all a little bit heartbroken. But that’s good.

Reality deciding to thwart our desires is supposed to sandpaper our ego!

Real contentment should be found permanently, within the liberation (and perfection) of consciousness.

Approaching which, it becomes obvious that using karmic recipes to express love isn’t romantic. It’s delusional.

Free your potential — not by demonizing desire but by fully seeing, consciously, what lies beyond it.

“Love is simply life longing for itself. This longing is essentially to become all-inclusive — boundless. It is only when love becomes all-inclusive that you touch the boundless.

And that is when you realize a simple truth: the soul does not need a mate. It never has.”

(Sadhguru)