Love needs great courage. In fact, nothing needs more courage than love because the basic requirement of love is to die as an ego. Only when you dissolve your ego does love start flowing in you. The ego is the barrier and it needs guts to drop it. One clings, one thinks that one is nothing but the ego; hence one feels great fear: “What is going to happen to me if I drop my ego? I will lose my identity.”
Yes, there will be a time when you lose your identity, the old identity, the false identity, an interval of time when you will not know who you are – and then the true identity will evolve.
In Zen, they say: “Before you meditate, rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains. When you meditate, rivers are no longer rivers, mountains are no longer mountains. And when the meditation is completed, when you have attained it, rivers are again rivers, mountains are again mountains.”
There is a gap between the two – the old leaving and the new coming – which is going to be a little chaotic. Hence the need of a master to help during those days, to keep on holding your hand, to go on encouraging you: “Don’t be afraid, the dawn is not far off. Don’t turn back. Look ahead because there is no way back. Life never goes back, it is always a forward movement.”
Buddha says, “Charaiveti, charaiveti.” Go on, go on, until you have arrived at the point where there is no desire left. That is the moment of fulfillment, of bliss, of benediction.
