As we aim for the pure expression of love, we may find ourselves facing one of its imposters: fool's love. In the same way fool's gold passes for gold at first glance, fool's love can pass as love in the world. In actuality, it is more damaging than good. This love is an expression from collapse, an attention that lacks power and so doesn't have directness and honesty when that is what's truly needed.
Because collapsed attention is invariably lacking power, it seeks a payoff as a sub- stitution for power: to play the good guy, the rescuer, the compassionate one; the one who will offer aid when no one else will; the one who has understanding.
Fool's love is rooted not in true caring—the capacity to be with—but in wanting benefits for ourselves—to be seen as a caring person or to have the other person owe us one. We are matching our conditioning with their conditioning, almost as if we are connecting holes in our head with horns in their head. They need to be broken and we need to save; they need to act out, we need to control.
Fool's love is ultimately opportunist. It's uncomfortable to be with someone's pleading, so we feel urged to offer help to them. Some part of us recognizes that when it comes to delusion, offering aid would be like offering water to a person with a stomach wound—what they most crave is what would kill them. To give in to their pleas would be fool's love.
The root of fool's love is not liberation of the other; it is control. It is contributing to their bondage in order to keep them in our grip—either needing or wanting us. When we commit fool's love we will often tell ourselves we are sacrificing, when in reality, we are doing anything but. We are capitalizing.
When we are in fool's love, we see another person cutting themselves off from their own road to freedom and we become the one who supplies the stones to block the path, and then cry that we are exhausted from all the stones we had to carry.
True love is a sword. It is a cutting through of delusion, a cutting away of the bondage that we believe is our true identity. True love is the willingness to remain with another person in their suffering without taking the opportunity to grab something for ourselves, like validation, feeling needed, or a hit of their energy while it's low and unprotected. True love is the willingness to forego the bribes a person gives us for feeding their conditioning and to instead stand in the starkness of truth.
This holding firm in truth requires we have a backbone that is able to withstand the inevitable protests from the person who is in the bondage of a delusion. It is trusting that a person who is in bondage will send out heat-seeking missiles in defense, will protest in exactly the way that will hit our personal insecurities.
If we falter when another person cries, then they will cry. If we falter when they stonewall and withhold, then they will stonewall and withhold. If we cannot stand it when someone is depressed and listless, then depression and listlessness it will be. If it is demonstrating discontent that has us falter, then expect them to drip with the inability to allow anything to satisfy them.
If we are susceptible to their creative seductions to make us into their special, secret confidante, then know we will be their king or queen until they get their hit of our resources. This heat-seeking missile is endlessly creative, always looking for our Achilles' heel because when it finds it, and we go unconscious, it can set to feeding itself with our resources. It's crucial to remember no one can destroy themselves in isolation; it takes "helpers."
If our Achilles' heel is that we are always looking to do the right thing, then they will convince us we are the one with the problem and we are the ones who should be looking at ourselves. Of course, we should be willing to look at ourselves but not at the expense of looking directly in the eye at the bondage that is holding that person.
If the worst thing we did was withdraw resources and later discovered we had some of our own issues to look at, that would be far less damaging than feeding this force.
This is why true love calls out a challenging aspect of self: the ferocity that has no resentment or punishment. It is the ability to starve the force that is taking over our friend while loving the friend who it is acting through. True love is the willingness to face the projections of that force—the disdain, the victimization—and remain in steady attention without falling prey as we watch it contort to a thousand faces before our eyes, hopefully finally dying off.
There is of course the chance that it may find another fool's lover who will feed it and we may lose physical proximity with our friend while they are in the grips of the new fool's lover. We must know we are not losing our friend at that point. In fact, our only hope of keeping that friend is being willing to lose them so as not to harm them; it is the kindest thing we can do. It is not easy, it can even be terrifying, but in private, in silence, when it is us alone with ourselves, we can know we loved them in the only way they would let us.
Should the day come that they have battled the force enough to get free enough to look for genuine aid, we will be a place they know they can trust—a person who did not take advantage of their pain in order to feel good about themselves.
