The Awakening: When True Love Reveals Itself
It was only after I encountered true love that I understood what love really is. True love gave me a second life. This profound realization transformed everything I thought I knew about relationships, affection, and human connection.
True love is not what most people imagine. It's not the passionate obsession portrayed in movies, nor is it the constant need to possess another person. True love is something far more profound, more transformative, and more sacred.
"Fondness is indulgence, while love is restraint."
What True Love Really Is
The manifestation of encountering true love is that it doesn't allow you to indulge your desires. Instead, it makes you strive to restrain them, to improve yourself, and then to blossom. This is based on a fundamental principle: the energy you release is the energy you receive.
When someone releases love toward you, you cease to operate on releasing desire. When desire arises, you begin to restrain yourself, and love purifies the released negative energy. This transformative process is what distinguishes true love from mere attraction or infatuation.
True Love is Grand Love
Many people mistake true love for romantic affection between a man and a woman. But true love is much broader—it is grand love. True love is a capacity possessed by those with sufficiently profound personal charisma: an ability to influence others to become their better selves.
This grand love manifests in various relationships:
- Between lovers: It influences you to become a better person
- Between a boss and an employee: It influences the employee to become a better person
- Like a great leader: It influences everyone to become better people
True love is grand love directed towards every individual. Those who possess this ability can influence you to become your better self, teaching you to understand human nature and equipping you with various skills to navigate the world.
True Love Defeats Desire
Desire is addiction directed at a specific person. If desire and true love coexist, true love will defeat desire. This battle plays out in different ways across different relationships:
Between Lovers
True love defeats possessiveness and the urge to control. Instead of seeking to own or dominate your partner, true love encourages their growth, celebrates their independence, and supports their journey toward becoming their best self.
Between Boss and Employee
True love can defeat desire directed at people or material things. A leader who truly loves their team focuses on developing their potential rather than exploiting their labor or controlling their lives.
In All Relationships
If a single sentence from someone makes you see an increasingly better version of yourself, that is true love. It makes your heart fill with more and more love, because true love is constantly helping to purify the negative energy within you.
The Purification Process
As soon as negative energy arises, it is cleared away by true love. This process is very long—like detoxification, it takes time. Gradually, through this purification by true love, you will see an ever-improving version of yourself.
Because you are nourished by love, you will also want to release love back to the other person. This is the law of the universe: what you release, you receive. And then you will discover these profound truths:
"Because I love you, I have come to love myself.
Because I love you, I have come to love this world.
Because of you, I have become the finest person in the world."
True love nourishes and purifies the soul. This is its most precious gift.
Love vs. Infatuation: Understanding the Difference
When many people love but cannot possess (which is actually not love, but essentially unmet desire), they resort to blame and complaint, belittling, suppressing, and trampling the other person. This is absolutely not love.
True love is grand love; all else is desire. This applies not just between spouses, but in any relationship between individuals—teacher and student, superior and subordinate. In the face of worldly desires, one's true character is tested, and the same reactive phenomena are observed.
Mature individuals need to distinguish that love and infatuation are fundamentally different:
What is Love?
Love is sacred. It is restraint. It is mutual growth. It is unconditional giving. It nourishes one another and promotes each other's mental maturity and cognitive elevation. Love makes you realize: "So this is what love is..."
What is Infatuation?
Infatuation with a person is like a poisoned individual encountering drugs. It stems from inner lack. It is desire. What looks like crazy obsession is merely an addict seeing their fix, treating the other person as a tool to satisfy their desires, mistaking it for love.
Infatuation perpetually seeks to fill one's own internal void, frantically demanding, never satisfied, until the other's energy is depleted. The demanding person doesn't realize they are harming others. The person being demanded from doesn't understand why, despite clearly seeing the other do many things for them, they only feel hurt.
How to Recognize True Love
Feelings are real. What the eyes see is not necessarily true. Therefore, whether it is love should be determined by whether the recipient feels loved, not by one's own assessment of one's actions.
This applies not only in intimate relationships but also in the workplace, between superior and subordinate, parent and child. How do you judge? Ask yourself:
- Do people feel fear or love in your presence? If they seem afraid of you, then you have undoubtedly been releasing desire that harms others. No matter what you do, it causes harm, and the end result will inevitably be harm in return.
- Do they feel relaxed and happy? If so, you are releasing love, and the end result will inevitably be love in return.
- Are you promoting growth or creating dependency? True love empowers; desire controls.
- Do you feel the need to possess or the desire to nurture? Love gives freely; desire takes constantly.
Many people feel they do a lot but get no return, thinking the other party is ungrateful. Actually, it's because they themselves have been releasing harmful energy disguised as love. True love is felt, not just seen.
The Path Forward
Finding true love in life begins with understanding what true love really is. It's not about finding someone who completes you, but about becoming someone capable of true love—someone who helps others become their better selves while growing yourself.
True love is characterized by:
- Restraint instead of indulgence
- Mutual growth instead of codependency
- Unconditional giving instead of constant demanding
- Purification instead of exploitation
- Freedom instead of possession
"Love is what improves and nourishes oneself and others; desire is blame, complaint, criticism, suppression."
Conclusion
True love is not what most people think it is. It's not passionate obsession, constant need, or desperate clinging. True love is grand, transformative, and sacred. It's the capacity to influence others to become their better selves while simultaneously becoming your own best version.
When you encounter true love—whether in a romantic relationship, a friendship, a mentorship, or any human connection—you will know it by how it makes you feel. You will feel inspired to grow, supported in your journey, and nourished in your soul. You will find yourself becoming better, not because someone demands it, but because their love naturally purifies and elevates you.
The journey to finding true love in life starts with understanding its true nature. Once you know what you're looking for, you'll recognize it when it appears. And more importantly, you'll be able to offer it to others, creating a cycle of love and growth that enriches everyone it touches.
Thankful to have experienced this truth. Thankful for true love.