“There is a loneliness that comes from heartbreak, emptiness, distance, loss, absence, or abandonment. But there is another, more subtle and paradoxical kind that arises at the very heart of true love. One can be deeply in love and still experience a loneliness that is not a lack, but a fulfillment. This loneliness is not the absence of another, but the presence of oneself.
When love reaches a certain depth, it does not become fusion or possession. It transforms into a wide, silent, and living space where the soul can inhabit itself without fear, without noise, and without escape. It is then that one discovers that the most genuine love does not nullify individuality, but rather reveals and sustains it. Authentic love is not a chain or a perpetual promise of companionship. It is a deep ocean surrounding the island that we are. The waves of the other’s presence come and go, touch our shores, bathe us, invite us. But they do not drag us away, they do not flood us, they do not nullify us, they do not destroy us. The deeper that sea of love is, the more solid our island becomes. The more firmly rooted we are in being.
True love is not self-forgetfulness, it is rediscovery. It does not ask us to disappear for the other, but to appear in our fullness. It gives us the opportunity to be with the other without ceasing to be with ourselves. It teaches us that only those who know how to be with themselves, without fear and without haste, can truly love without losing themselves. The value of love is not that it distracts us from our loneliness, but that it illuminates it. It offers us the possibility of being seen without ceasing to see ourselves. Of supporting the other without losing our inner balance. Of walking together without blurring our footprints.
That is why, in the most profound and sincere moments of love, an intense, silent, almost sacred loneliness can arise. Not because of the absence of the other, but because in their presence, one returns to oneself with greater clarity. Love, then, is not a refuge from emptiness, but a place where one’s own silence is appreciated, where the soul can rest without hiding. And it is precisely this solitude that makes love valuable. Because those who have found in love the space to return to themselves have found the only bond that does not imprison: the one that accompanies without invading, that remains without possessing, that touches without breaking.
When love is true, it does not fill a void, it opens up a world. And in that world, everyone can be themselves, whole and free, under the same shared sky.
Prabhuji
