Love is our freedom.

Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something, and it is only such love that can know freedom.

And if you have loved a man or a woman, you will want to give the other person as much freedom as possible. If love cannot give freedom, then it is not love.

Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.

In true love, you attain freedom. When you love, you bring freedom to the person you love. If the opposite is true, it is not true love. You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free. (p.4, Shambhala Publications)

In true love, you attain freedom.

Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty.

Why freedom? If we accept that God is love, and that it is human beings who are to respond to this love, the explanation is simple. Love cannot be forced, ordered, or made obligatory. It is necessarily free. If God liberates, it is because he expects and hopes that we will come to know him and love him.

Love the person, but give the person total freedom. Love the person, but from the very beginning make it clear that you are not selling your freedom.

Freedom is the key to Godliness

Do you know what it means to love somebody? Do you know what it means to love a tree, or a bird, or a pet animal, so that you take care of it, feed it, cherish it, though it may give you nothing in return, though it may not offer you shade, or follow you, or depend on you? Most of us don’t love in that way, we don’t know what that means at all because our love is always hedged about with anxiety, jealousy, fear — which implies that we depend inwardly on another, we want to be loved. We don’t just love and leave it there, but we ask something in return; and in that very asking we become dependent.

So freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something — and it is only such love that can know freedom.

All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that's a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.

Love does not claim possession but gives freedom.

You have to remember that freedom is the highest value and if love is not giving you freedom then it is not love. Freedom is a criterion: anything that gives you freedom is right, and anything that destroys your freedom is wrong. If you can remember this small criterion your life, slowly, will start settling on the right path about everything: your relationships, your meditations, your creativity, whatever you are.