Between Love, Guilt, and Obligation
So many people try to manipulate their dear ones to stay with them using GUILT. Some parents try to make their children feel guilty so they stay close to them in their old age. Some lovers, husbands, and wives try to make their beloveds feel guilty for the pain they caused them, and by that guilt keep them "loyal" to them in committed relationships.
Guilt creates a feeling of OBLIGATION in our hearts. When I feel guilty I feel obliged to pay in some way for what I am guilty of. Thus guilt is maybe good for keeping the public order (not so sure about that as well) but definitely it is not good for Love, as love grows only in the fields of freedom.
Love, real love, the feelings of love, and real acts of love are all wild and spontaneous. Love can never be a result of OBLIGATION, it can only be given out of free will.
There is such a deep error in the system when partners start to, subconsciously, manipulate each other into some relationship stability using guilt as the instrument. It is actually a bit tragic. Those people who blame and create guilt sometimes want nothing but love, nevertheless, in their desperate attempts to sustain love, they poison it. GUILT can only create an obligation, which in its turn dims down the free expressions of love.
This is a short article, written at the full moon of December 2020, as this year ends and the old structures of power that were all built on OBLIGATION, crumble away.
This is a call to lovers not to use blame and guilt in the attempt to receive love, as it is like trying to feed the fire with sand.
Love can never grow as a result of obligation, it can only appear as a gift "totally free, absolutely present and ultimately out of control" (as my brother Baba Dez says) since love can never be controlled and any attempt to control it is similar to the "wise people of Chelem" who were trying to catch the light of the Full Moon by locking its reflection in a barrel of water.
Ohad Pele / December, 2020
