We hear the word "love" almost constantly, but what does it really mean? It seems that our society has two very different meanings for the word, and these meanings have unfortunately been twisted together. True Love could be described as a feeling of transcendent Bliss, a feeling of Freedom and a total release of fear. This is what's known as God's Love, or Unconditional Love, and it's completely different than the other way people use the word love, which is nothing more than a strong desire.
What's wrong with desire? Well, Buddha had a lot to say about that. To put it quite simply, desire is the very thing that keeps people stuck within illusion. A person full of desires is living in the future and the past, they aren't living in the Now. Why is Now so important? Well that's where the whole Multi-Dimensional Reality is present, that "future" people are trying to get to only exists within the mind. If you want to get to Real Love, if you want to get to God, you start at the Present Moment.
Desire can be seen as the dualistic imitation of actual Love. Love gives and receives freely, without expectation or conditions, while desire is always filled with expectations and conditions. Desire makes life about trying to get "things" instead of actually Living. Desire is a bottomless pit, a void that's never really satisfied. Individual desires come and go, but the habit, the pattern is still there. It's not uncommon that for each specific desire that's been resolved, two more have come up to take its place.
