What is love?

Human love is an illusion.

I’ve always dreamed of eternal love. Whenever I fell in love with someone, I always felt fear and anxiety, along with my love for that person. I didn’t know what true love or eternal love was, and only had fantasies about it. I didn’t feel satisfied no matter who I met, and I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of living my entire life with one person. I was always in 2-3 month relationships. Since I didn’t allow myself to be fully in love with anyone, I assumed that others were the same. Every time I began a new relationship, I always prepared to leave the person in my mind, because I didn’t want to be the one to get hurt.

Then somehow I got into meditation and discarded my fantasies about abstract, pristine love, and I opened up toward real love. I focused on my feelings at the moment. Through meditation, I realized that the human mind is false and therefore human love is also false. Ironically, I felt more and more comfortable being honest about myself, and the more I discarded myself, although I knew it was an illusion, I started to freely express how I felt in my heart.

One day, a man who I had met through meditation, called my name, and my entire body responded to his voice. When I turned around and saw him, I felt a warmth that I’d never felt before. Since then, I wanted to be with him and missed him, and was amused by every little thing he said. He must’ve known that I had such big feelings for him, but he didn’t show any response towards me.

I felt frustrated, but finally worked up the courage to ask him directly: “Do you know that I like you?”

He hesitated a little, then answered: “Love is an illusion” 😳😞😳

I replied, “Oh….right! Love is also an illusion.”🙄😲😵

I already knew that but what was this feeling that I had? I reflected and meditated on my time with him from the moment I had met him until now. After I had finished reflecting, I discovered something ridiculous. In fact, we had never even eaten together or watched a movie or shared any kind of moment. We just stayed in the same place together for 2 months.

I loved meditation so much and had been focused on it for months, so I was away from the places and people that I was used to before that time. I felt lonely, and at that same moment, someone called my name with a warm tone, and my entire body responded. It wasn’t my true self that responded to him, it was just my lonely mind.

Then, I realized that I repeated this pattern in every relationship in my life. I would work, study, do something that I like, and then I would search for love as the deeply rooted loneliness came to the surface. Then, when I didn’t feel lonely anymore, the initial love that I felt morphed into anxiety and discomfort.

The moment I had that realization about love, all the intense feelings I had quickly faded. I suddenly felt sorry for my friend, having confessed a false, delusional love to him. After that, I stopped seeking out love to fill my empty heart, and I felt that I would be okay no matter who I married. Today, I’m married to a husband who’s also my best friend, and we live without expectations – we embrace each other’s wounds and help each other.

I’d like to share a video which helped me to uncover and let go of my self-centered, delusional love, and discover the true love that was already there within me:

Written by Cerina Lim