Love That Blinds. Love That Lets You See.

That does not mean destroying true love.

Love shaped by trauma and true love are not the same thing.

In my account, trauma-shaped love takes knowledge and wisdom away. The traumatic reaction formed at a time when the person did not have the understanding needed to make sense of what was happening. If that understanding had been available, the experience need not have produced the same wound.

The emotion is an echo of that experience. When it comes back, it narrows awareness again, blocking access to what the person now knows.

True love has knowledge and wisdom available to it.

A person who possesses it does not need this lecture to recognize a cult. They see the falsehood from within. They don't need endless meetings about love, because love is not something they are waiting for a teacher to supply.

Someone caught in defensive love senses, somewhere beneath conscious understanding, that something is missing. Their love feels incomplete, hurt, or without wisdom.

That is why promises of a higher, truer, unconditional love have such a pull. They hope to find outside themselves what they cannot find within. That hope is where the trap is set.

God is not a subscription

The same distinction applies to God.

Someone who knows the true God does not need an intermediary selling access on a subscription plan. They can recognize when a religious or spiritual system is building a barrier rather than bringing them closer.

That does not imply that the person is God.

“You are God” is an exceptionally convenient suggestion for a wounded sense of self. If you feel insignificant, suffer from anxiety or panic, struggle in relationships, and see no way to change your life, being told you are actually the Absolute can feel wonderful.

You no longer have to be the person who feels small. You don't have to change anything concrete. You only have to accept a grander suggestion.

But reality still has to be faced. In my understanding, even death does not turn a lie into truth or a person into God. Some illusions are relinquished; others are defended to the end. Dying does not automatically settle the difference between what is true and what we refused to see.

People hold on fiercely because letting go would mean seeing the life they actually lived.

The task is not to trade a small falsehood for an enormous spiritual one. The task is to come to truth.

Love that has nothing to defend

Here is the philosophical distinction I am making: truth carries real love because truth is indivisible.

You cannot break off a piece of truth and make yourself whole by possessing that piece. You cannot injure what is actually the case by inventing a story about it. Reality does not change to accommodate a fantasy.

Truth cannot be driven out of reality. In that sense, it is everywhere. It has no illusion to defend and therefore no need for fear.

It can see things as they are and afford to love.

When you don't have to protect an illusion, you don't have to attack the person who questions it. When truth cannot be harmed, it has nothing to demand from you in exchange for remaining true.

It can love without a bargain: without seeking its own advantage, exalting itself, or imposing conditions.

Ordinary human love is so often conditional:

“I love myself if I'm successful.”

“I love you if you love me.”

“I love the world as long as it does what I want.”

Remove the condition, and the love disappears. In that case, it was a state serving a need, not what I mean by true love.

Truth can love a violent person, a foolish person, or a deceived person without needing to make them different in order to remain truth. That does not mean approving of harm or allowing it to continue.

True love has understanding. It can see what needs to be done.

False love makes you blind. True love gives you back your sight.