It is only when we are profoundly, utterly alone, we may begin to love.

Dependency poisons love, it is the antithesis to it. You can’t love what you depend on, you can’t love what you need. When what you crave is given to you, you feel happy, grateful. When it is taken away from you the next moment, you feel angry, resentful, sad, lost. You’re not in control of yourself, you’re a beggar - and beggars can’t give. Everything dependency touches, it poisons and corrupts, because underneath every dependency there’s always deep hatred, deep resentment towards those we depend upon, those we have willingly enslaved ourselves to.

Before true, authentic independence is realized, love is a pretense, a game. It is neither freely given nor freely received, it is a transactional exchange. You soothe my dependency, and I’ll soothe yours. There’s an unspoken pact: you allow me to continue my dysfunction, and I will allow you to continue yours. We will enslave ourselves to each other, and we will hate each other for it till the end of time.

Unfortunately, the same sick game of mutual dependency and ego gratification is strikingly apparent in most contemporary spiritual communities, led by very immature teachers, who, instead of bringing to light egoic insecurities, as well as hatred, anger and resentment stemming from them, foster an alternative spiritual hierarchy, based on artificial (displayed) values of compassion and love. And so the game continues, the same ugly game, but using very exalted words this time.

It is precisely this end of dependency, the complete and utter aloneness, the total spiritual autonomy coming from the depths of one’s equanimous, healed heart, is what ego perceives as death.