To Love

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

It is easy to be in love.  It is difficult to love.  Because to be in love is a perception from the self.  But to love is a reality.  What this means is that most people claim to love, but what they really love is their perception of something, and not necessarily what it is. 

For example, people imagine they fall in love, and they get married.  In their feeling of love, they see what they want to see.  The enhance the parts they like, and diminish that which causes disquiet.  What they have truly loved is a reflection of themselves in the other.  Such a love is an illusion.  When it fades, there is nothing to hold that relationship together, and the go their separate ways. 

True love is ikhlasw, sincerity, such that one does not see himself, only the other.  In taswawwuf, a person cannot claim piety and love of Allah (s.w.t.), as long as he wants for himself.  This seeking of Paradise is itself a want, and part of nifaq, hypocrisy.  True love is, thus, nothing less that fana’, annihilation, in that Ocean of the Divine.  When the drop has dissolved itself in the ocean, all qualities of that ocean is inherent.