In the recently posted text on the nature of renunciation, Hazrat Inayat Khan says, “Love is a blessing, but it turns into a curse in attachment; admiration is a blessing, but it turns into a curse when one tries to hold the beauty for oneself.”  It is wisdom that often seems easier to apply to the lives of others than to ourselves.  in our circle of acquaintances we probably all know of relationships in which one partner, or both, are possessive, seeking to hold on to the loved one in certain ways. On the other hand, we tend to overlook our own points of attachment, the expectations or even demands we have towards those close to us.  But the consequence of such attachment is the accumulation of resentment, anger, jealousy and other ‘unloving’ feelings. In this way, the impulse of love results in a curse – not through the fault of love itself, but through the inability of people to rise above their own limitations. In these cases, one could say, we have not yet proved worthy of the blessings of love–but there is always hope. Love is divine, and as it says in the Gayan, “the nature of God is possibility…”

Similarly, we may have feelings of admiration for something – an object of art, perhaps – but if we acquire it as a possession, although the object may lend beauty to our surroundings, we then become the servant of the object, and in the end that may demand a higher price of us than we paid for the object, not in a material sense but in our loss of freedom.

Therefore, to admire without any claim is the way of the wise, including without the claim of admiration. Even the simple statement, “I admire you,” is as much about me as about the object of admiration, and the wise prefer to be silent about themselves, so far as that is possible.