Two Kinds of Love

Swami Vishwananda: Often we ask ourselves, “How can we please God? In which way shall we please God? How can we make God happy?” There are many ways that God is happy with us. But the best way to make God happy is to be happy ourselves. God is happy when we are happy. It’s because our happiness is His happiness; because we are part of Him.

How we make ourselves happy is through serving and helping others. The greatest happiness is derived from serving. The more you help, the more you will make somebody else happy. You will then see that the happiness you have inside of you will grow and grow. But the more you stop helping others, the more you push yourself backwards on the spiritual path. You will become untruthful towards yourself the more you say, “No, why should I help?” And when you become untruthful towards yourself, you stop the heart from opening up. The more this happens, the more you become miserable.

Christ said: when you help others, it must be unconditional. After we help, we should forget about it. We should love and forget. We don’t expect anything when we love someone else, do we? Well, there are two kinds of love. There’s a love on the outside, where you always expect something in return, but there’s also another type of love, where you will do anything for this person. You will do anything just to please this person. But even that kind of love is still divided into two: unconditional and conditional. Whatever is done unconditionally will always make you happy. But what is done under a condition will always make you unhappy. And to awaken this unconditional love, to make this love grow greater and greater is not that difficult. Like I always say, “You only need to want it.”