Is it Love or Infatuation?

Adapted from Sri Krishnaji – Co-founder of Oneness and World Centre for Enlightenment. Author of Four Sacred Secrets: For Love and Prosperity

In the spectrum of romantic relationships, there are four levels. The first stage is a crush. In this stage, you feel warm inside while hanging out with a man or a woman who pays attention to you, looks sweetly at you, smiles at you or who is kind to you. You find that you like each other. This is a crush and it passes away with time. It doesn`t stay strong and there is no significant bond there.

Second Stage: Infatuation

The second kind of experience is an experience of infatuation. Infatuation is when you begin to obsess over someone. You are constantly thinking about them and you desperately want them to think about you. You are fantasizing and daydreaming about them. You want them to fantasize and daydream about you also. It is a state of euphoria and a great deal of chemistry gets engaged along with neediness and anticipation.

When do you become infatuated? You become more infatuated more often when you are feeling low. For example, you are not feeling good or good enough. You are not happy and may be feeling lonely. Then someone comes along and gives you attention. In this low, you have a bleeding heart and a suffering mind of hurt and loneliness. With this emptiness and unworthiness throughout your life, you will keep falling in and out of infatuation.

What is infatuation centred on? It is centred around the “I”. With all your fantasies and imaginations, the “I” is becoming bigger and bigger. With the “I”, you are deriving pleasure by imagining how important and how significant you are for each other. And there is a lot of bitterness when your infatuation is not reciprocated. It can turn to hate.

Third Stage: Heartfelt Connection

The third stage, is an important one. This is discovering a Heartfelt Connection. Only with a Heartfelt Connection do enduring relationships and nurturing relationships begin. In this stage, you have had some awakening where your heart has opened to feeling what the other is feeling. Even though there are moments you are centred in yourself, there are numerous moments in this relationship where you are centred in the other, where you feel what the other is feeling. You feel the other’s joy, you feel the other’s sadness and you feel the other’s anxiety. You are sensitive. You want to bring joy to the other from this space of sensitivity. You want to bring the other out of their inner unhappiness. It is an experience of fullness and ease.

When you awaken to heartfelt connection, you feel it with your romantic partner intensely, but also with your mother, your father, your best friend; because you as a human being are now transformed. You are different as a human being. You are not isolated. You have gone past the boundaries of selfishness. Hence your heart has flowered.

Fourth Stage: Love

The most important level, the fourth level is what could truly be called Love. And this is an enlightened consciousness. You are free of the tendency of the mind to obsess over oneself. When you are able to be: more in the now, then the other person looks like a miracle. You celebrate your beloved. You don’t celebrate them because just because they are special or because they are not flawed. You celebrate them because your awareness is so magnificent. You frequently have moments of wonderment and marvel and an immense sense of preciousness.

Since this is an enlightened consciousness, you would feel this in an intimate relationship and you will also feel this marvel when you look at the clouds hanging over a mountain.