Many people hold the strange belief that becoming more spiritual means life will soften, that challenges will fade and everything will become light and effortless. In truth, the opposite often occurs. The more conscious you become, the more challenges arise, not as punishment, but because you are now capable of meeting them. Growth demands strength, and strength invites trial.

One of the great surprises of awakening is not that you float through life in perpetual bliss, but that it becomes almost impossible to fall in love as you once did. The swooning raptures, the feverish anticipation, the little dramas and sentimental spirals begin to feel oddly unconvincing. This does not mean you have lost the capacity to love. Quite the opposite. Love becomes richer, deeper, quieter. Yet the old game of projection and pursuit no longer works. You cannot unsee what you have seen.

You come to recognize that much of what passes for romance is simply two hungry selves arranging a mutual soothing of their emptiness. And once you notice the trick, it is difficult to be enchanted by it again. So there you stand, alive and aware, filled with wonder, and yet strangely incapable of falling in love in the way the world insists you should. What we commonly call “falling in love” is, in truth, a subtle hypnosis. You meet someone, and the mind begins to weave, like a spider spinning threads of memory, desire, and fantasy, until you are no longer relating to the person before you, but to a tapestry of your own imagination. And intoxicated by that creation, you say, I am in love.

There is a curious irony in this. Much of this so-called love thrives not on presence, but on absence. It burns brightest in uncertainty, in the ache of longing, in the delicious torment of waiting. It feeds on hunger rather than wholeness. It is a sweet madness. The ego, ever cunning, disguises its loneliness and calls it passion. Beneath the poetry and trembling glances, it whispers, I am incomplete, and I want you to make me whole. This is not love, but need. And as long as love is confused with need, it will always waver, like a flame kept alive only by the fuel of insecurity.

Most of what we have been taught to revere as romance is precisely this. A subtle bargain. A silent exchange. I will soothe your emptiness if you will soothe mine. Which is why, when the first intoxication fades, so many find themselves disillusioned, wondering whether they ever loved at all or merely entered into an unspoken contract.

Awakening is not mystical spectacle. It is the quiet moment when the veil slips and you see the machinery beneath the performance. You observe the ego, desire, and the endless games they play. You notice how what you once called love was tangled with fear of being alone, with longing, with projection. And once this recognition dawns, you cannot fall back into it blindly. The spell breaks, not because you reject love, but because you now perceive its counterfeit forms.

Through awakened eyes, the illusions that once mesmerized you lose their power. Where you once saw a savior or a missing half, you now see a human being, complete with their own light and shadow. The enchantment dissolves. What once felt like fire begins to feel like smoke. Cravings that once seemed irresistible now resemble fragile paper boats drifting on a vast sea. The drama of pursuit, the agony of uncertainty, the thrill of longing all appear faintly absurd beside the stillness you have discovered within yourself.

It is not that you despise the experience. It is that you no longer mistake it for truth. You recognize it as theater, not ultimate reality. And once you see the play for what it is, it becomes impossible to perform with the same blind seriousness. You may still enjoy the beauty, the laughter, the touch, the intimacy, but you are no longer enslaved by the illusion.

In this way, awakening does not end love. It ends illusion. You no longer seek another to complete you because you know now that no one can fulfill you but yourself. You recognize your own wholeness, your own sovereignty. And it is precisely this wholeness that makes the old way of falling in love so difficult. For what once fueled it was not fullness, but lack.

Where there was once hunger, there is now clarity. Where there was once obsession, there is now discernment. The storm that once felt thrilling now feels like noise when you have tasted calm. And yet, between the old intoxication and the new clarity lies a tender, often painful space. A liminal zone where the familiar no longer satisfies, but the new has not yet fully rooted.

This is where the sense of solitude arises. Not the simple absence of company, but the profound solitude of seeing more clearly than most. You may be surrounded by people, yet feel misunderstood. You may share affection, yet feel unseen. You begin to realize that few are willing to meet you at the depth you now inhabit. And when you attempt to return to the old patterns, to pretend you can still play, it rings hollow. You cannot unknow what you know.

There is also fear in this recognition. Fear that the world may never quite meet your new standards for truth. Fear that the circle will continue to narrow. Fear of carrying your fullness into spaces that cannot yet hold it. But this loneliness is not a flaw. It is a sign of transition. It is the quiet price of awareness.

You are not becoming incapable of love. You are becoming incapable of illusion.

And what waits beyond this phase is not emptiness, but a different kind of intimacy. Love not rooted in need, but in choice. Not in projection, but in presence. Not in desperation, but in reverence. A love that does not seek to fill a void, but to meet another whole being as an equal soul.

The crowd may thin. The standards may rise. The world may feel unfamiliar for a time. But what you are stepping toward is not less love, but truer love. And though you may sometimes mourn the wild intoxication of the past, you will not trade it back. Because now, you know.

This is why it feels impossible. Not because love has vanished, but because your eyes are too clear. You cannot fall in love as you once did, and at times that clarity feels less like enlightenment and more like exile. And so the awakened carry a quiet wish within their hearts. They would rather walk alone in truth than be bound in illusion. They will not barter away their peace, nor return to the theatre of half-loves and hungry games, for they have seen the trick, the blaze that dazzles for a moment only to collapse into smoke and cinders.

The wish of the awakened is not for the old fever, but for a simpler, quieter kind of love. If it comes, it shifts its centre of gravity. It moves from grasping to giving, from the melodrama of pursuit to the stillness of presence. It must arrive clean, unmasked, unforced, free. Not as rescue, not as possession, but as the meeting of two whole beings who choose to share their freedom.

Anything less would be a sleepwalking of the soul, and no amount of warmth is worth the price of closing one’s eyes again. There is no clinging, only the joy of sharing. No bargaining or demands, only a delight that needs no justification. It is love stripped of theatre, yet filled with a spaciousness the old stage could never hold. This is what they long for, though they seldom say it aloud. Not a love that consumes, but one that expands. Not a love that binds, but one that frees.

Better the solitude of clarity than the company of illusion. Better to wait, even if it takes a lifetime, than to surrender again to the old hypnosis. For once the eyes have opened, peace is too precious to be gambled. Peace is not a shabby consolation prize; it is the treasure itself. The stillness you have discovered is richer than any of the storms you once called passion. The old fire, all sparks and noise, now seems like a child’s game beside the quiet flame that needs no fuel. And why trade the steady warmth of wholeness for the fever of incompleteness?

When you live like this, the company grows sparse. It may be a long while before you meet another who has slipped out of the same trance. Such meetings are rare. But what is a diamond if not rare? Its scarcity is precisely its value.

So the awakened carry this vow, whether spoken or silent: better to stand alone in clarity than to kneel before shadows again. To pretend would be to betray the gift awakening has placed in their hands. And so they wait, not in despair, but in patience, knowing that real meeting is rare and therefore precious. What a strange gift it is, both freedom and solitude.

They would rather face the long silence of solitude than the noise of counterfeit loves. They will wait as long as it takes, even if it means a lifetime. For when love finally comes, it will not be born from hunger, but from fullness. Not from fear, but from freedom. And that kind of love, though rare, is the only love that can truly endure.

You do not seek to be completed, for you know yourself already whole. You do not beg for permanence, for you have learned that all things move. And because there is no bargain, there is no cage. You may stay or you may go, and the love remains free. It is not about rescue, nor possession, but the simple joy of presence. Two beings, not halves searching for halves, but wholes who choose to walk together without fear.

This is why the awakened do not fall in love; they rise within it. They are not dragged under by longing, but lifted into freedom. And when love is no longer a prison, it becomes what it always was at its root: the purest expression of life itself. When you are no longer enslaved by the need to be loved, you discover you are freer to love than ever before.