When its necessary to let the loved one pass through pain

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): Pranam Acharya Ji, there is a line sent by you:

“If you can’t be free without passing through that pain, why do you want to insulate your loved ones from the pain, why? Let them pass through this pain and when they will pass through this pain, if you love them, you too will pass through a pain. This Pain will purify both of you.”

~ Acharya Prashant

In the above line what is meant by ‘This pain will purify both of you.’

Acharya Prashant (AP): Take something as obviously external as chewing gum, right? The ordinary gum that you get in the market. If even such a thing sticks to your body, it will be painful removing it. Especially if it sticks to one’s hair or some delicate part of the body god forbid. This is when the phenomena would be not even skin deep, very very superficial, still there would be pain.

It is obvious that the thing is external, it is obvious that the thing is not conscious, it is obvious that the thing is just gum. Yet if it comes and forms a bond with just the surface of your physical being, there is a pain in separation, right?

Love is about separating the loved one from all kinds of gums. Even the superficial gum can be a testing issue, then what to talk of all that which sticks internally to us. It would be demanding and painful to remove all that.

There can be earthly love only of two kinds — real love, real earthly love of two kinds. One when you get associated with someone so that he can separate you from all that which is lifeless and useless. And the second type is when you relate to someone in order to liberate the other one from trivia and gums.

Whatever be the case, the essence of love is purification which is another name for ‘wise separation.’ Separation of the real from unreal, of the life-giving from the life-sapping, of the true from the false, of contentment from titillation.