Hella Schneider: The Opposite of Ego Is Love

This is the essence of love. Rumi, a Persian poet from the Middle Ages, his full name was Dschalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, some call him Jelaluddin Rumi, put it into words in the 13th century. Love is universal, it always has been. What love is does not change. It is the defining, all-encompassing emotion of all that is. There is no is without love. Is is a place without judgement, the field that Rumi is talking about.

Some who read this may be quick to judge these words as spiritual blah blah, as big words, inapplicable. If that is you, what is talking to you is your ego, and I mean the spiritual meaning of ego, which more equals the mind. In that sense, love is the opposite of ego. Ego does not want to be, it wants to do. It is never still, it never is. The mind is a perpetuum mobile that keeps itself alive through senseless movement. And ego, is the opposite of love. We can put Rumi’s words into more simpler ones, though, or the man that I love has.

he once told me after we had one of our countless fights. I was in New York, he was in Paris; we talked every day but I was in longing and he was on the defense. I was trying to force the relationship into what I wanted it to be; he wasn’t ready to give what I asked for. I was in fear and becoming impatient; he felt pressured and cornered. What he said is right, I understand this now. It is the only way to love him, and I’m glad he forced me to, as this is pure.

The entanglements of the mind today have found ways to disguise the ego, how clever. There are a lot of terms for that. Boundaries, wants and needs, those kinds of things. I am not arguing that there can’t be actual boundaries, wants and needs within the realm of the kind of love I am talking about – what the soul rejects should never be done. But love exists outside of those constructs, and these terms stem from ego as they consist of protection and protection means they consist of fear. And there is no love where there is fear.

Last night, I dreamt of him. It was a classic plane crash dream, you can google what that means if you want or need to. I fought my way out of that burning plane and ran to his apartment. Luckily, he was there. Apparently, that plane crashed near Paris, lol. I told him about the dream, or nightmare I should say, this morning.

he responded. I think that is what love should be like.

In its pure form it is. It should not feel like work, but it does require work to get there. I struggle with it, as everyone does. The ego is struggle, at its core it is, it thrives in struggle. Because ego wants, ego pushes, it is never satisfied, because if it were, we would be rid of it. There are spiritual teachers who compare the ego to the devil. You don’t have to be Christian to understand this, or to feel this. The ego is all of our fears accumulated, turned into action without actual meaning.

I learned to understand this because I had to, because I could not cultivate the love for said man with ego. My actions that were in ego, meaning in fear, in wanting, in pushing, were in vain – only the unconditional kind is what feels right and real, what builds true trust. So please don’t get confused when I now say: Love is giving. Because giving is an act, and a few lines ago, I did say that the ego is all about doing.

The intention is what makes the difference, or the root is. Of course, doing can stem from love, but the outcome of the action does not matter then. To illustrate, I shall talk about God now. If it works better for you, you can replace the word God with the word universe. True love is equal to surrendering to God. The attachment to, the focus on an outcome of love hinders love. The sheer existence of love has to be unconditional, per definition. How else can it be love?

That does not mean you cannot aim for things or have desires. What makes the difference is the non-attachment to the outcome. My good friend, Ellen Nielsen, who was so kind to provide some of her art for this article, has a good way of describing that. She once told me:

Romantic love exists when love for God exists. Trusting God, surrendering to whatever he has in store.

Think of the love a mother has to her child. A mother does not love her child wanting anything in return, she does not expect anything, her love is naturally there, by sheer existence, as a force of nature. The love she feels is a natural instinct. Maybe it is the most natural state a human can be in, the most connected to oneself and God. And maybe, if you think it through, it is our most natural state to love. We have just forgotten it, as ego has replaced it.

When I was at Soho House today, there was a trendy tacky song playing.

I don’t mean to ruin 98% of love songs for you, you can choose to cultivate that idea of love, there is no judgement in that. On the surface, it is easier to stick with ego, that is how strong it is, there is some sort of Stockholm syndrome situation in play. But think of where unhappiness stems from, especially in so-called love – it is all ego. And each of us can choose to be determined by it or not. Naturally, it is very unnecessary.

For sure, some will call this piece of writing toxic. I am used to only a few understanding the kind of love I am talking about. But what I have been through has only let love evolve, in its very own, maybe very different, form. As of now, there is no word that feels right to use to describe what we have – another thing we have fought about, funnily, without any good conclusion.

So I do understand it is hard to grasp for everyone outside of it, and it is easy to reject its plea, to oppose it even, to let go of the ego. It is all a decision, and so is love. It is worth it, though. As this article started with Rumi, let me end it with The Beatles – yes, I am actually quoting The Beatles, because the simplest messages are often the truest.

And this is how this article should have, could have ended. This is how I thought I could be, this is how I aspired to be. Unfortunately it is not my reality, and I learned it the hard way the other week when I was in Paris. When we met, it felt as connected as two people can be. The next day he said that he is unsure how I would feel about him being in a relationship. I told him I would feel horrible, as I’ve always been in love with him.

My ego caught up with me. I had to end it. My love is not as pure as I thought it was, apparently. I had lost myself in wanting him, and wanting is not pure, as it comes from a place of lack and need, and that is a place where love, actual love, can not exist. I have work on myself to do, I said to him, and asked him to find understanding for me needing space. As of now I have lost the person that is the most important person in my life (that’s what he always called me, too, by the way), due to ego.

I could be sad about it, but I am not. Because I am finding myself again, through, as of now, losing him. My last words, as of now, to him were: Until we speak again.