Love and Freedom

Loving your mate or lover unconditionally can make you free.

But for most of us, love becomes attachment. Conditional love is attachment. Attachment is a bondage. And if love is bondage, it is also an illusion.

According to Osho in, "Love, Freedom, Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships," we say we want to be free. Freedom is the goal, but if we are totally free we're alone. So we must be brave enough to be alone if we want to experience freedom.

But we're not brave enough to be alone. We want someone else in our life. We fear loneliness. We fear being unoccupied. We started out looking for love, but maybe we were really looking for attachment. Our need may have been attachment all along. Love was the way to attain it -- the bait.

A love of unconditional acceptance will not become attachment. But the moment you say to your partner, "Love only me," you begin to possess them. And in possessing, you're making your lover into an object -- a thing -- something to be used.

According to philosopher Immanuel Kant, to treat another person as a means is an immoral act. In other words, if you see your lover as being there for your gratification, or to fulfill your sexual desires, or to provide something else for you ... you're reducing your partner to an object. Thus you are in bondage to each other.

But once you're in bondage, you'll desire freedom again. Whatever you get, you will become bored with, and whatever you desire but do not get, you will long for.

Maybe you want to be free while still possessing your partner, causing a struggle.

Osho says, "I want to be a free person, and still I want you to be possessed by me; you want to retain your freedom and still possess me -- this is the struggle. If I possess you, I will be possessed by you. If I do not want to be possessed by you, I should not possess you. Possession should not come in between. We must remain individuals and we must move as independent, free consciousness. We can come together, we can merge into each other, but no one possesses. Then there is no bondage and then there is no attachment."

So the idea is to establish love without possessiveness, without jealousy or clinging. There should be no judgment, no blame, no expectations and no attempts to control. The soul can grow only in freedom -- unconditional love provides freedom.