Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: The Way of Grace

Pain is part of love. This is what Christ symbolizes on the cross. The cross is pain and Christ is love. With understanding, the pain of love gets transformed into another dimension. It becomes longing.

If you really love something, you will long for it. Can there ever be a love without longing? Longing is the other face of love.

When you are aware of this phenomenon, you accept longing as part of love. Then your love grows. It becomes divine love.

Usually when we long for something, we don’t allow the longing to be there fully. We don’t experience it totally and go through it. We want to put a quick end to it. We want instead to possess.

But in the act of possessing, you destroy love. When you demand love, you bruise it. Trying to possess love is like holding a flower by its petals. You crush the blossom.

Hold the flower where it has to be held. Know that pain and hurt are part of love. You can be hurt only by one you love. Be with it. Experience it. Go through it. Then your love becomes mature.

Longing is the most beautiful thing. Longing increases the love in you. When there is longing, there is prayer. Longing is the basis of prayer. In that longing the ego melts. When there is longing, then the voice of God will be heard.

What a Master does is kindle your longing for the Divine. When this longing is kindled,
love dawns in you.

In the presence of the Master your heart definitely opens, either today or tomorrow. It’s infallible, you cannot miss it.

— From The Path of Love, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Commentary on the Bhakti Sutras of Narada

When the bud breaks, it becomes a flower. When the heart breaks, the love becomes divine.