Golden rays pierce the morning clouds, spilling across everything below. The sunshine touches the flower that lifts its face in gratitude. The tree that drinks in the warmth. The child who runs laughing through the light. The sun gives freely, asking nothing in return. It illuminates what already yearns to grow.

A mile downstream, dark water spirals inward. The whirlpool devours everything that ventures too close. Leaves, branches, anything that floats within its grasp gets pulled down into the hungry darkness. It takes. It consumes. It demands.

Two forces. One radiates. One absorbs.

This is what the Yogis taught about love's two expressions. True love flows like sunlight. Freely given. Unconditionally offered. It finds joy in the beloved's happiness, not in what returns.

Selfish love spins like the whirlpool. It pulls everything toward itself. "Love me back or I withdraw." "Change for me or I leave." "Meet my needs or face my anger." This isn't love at all. It's need dressed in love's clothing.

True love is like the love that Viktor Frankl wrote from his concentration camp experience about a fellow prisoner who spoke daily of his wife. Not knowing if she was alive or dead, he found meaning in simply loving her. He didn’t have any expectation of reunion. He just found strength in the pure act of loving. Sunshine breaking through the darkest circumstances.

The Yogis taught that when you love like the sun, you tap into an inexhaustible source. There's no scarcity. There’s no fear of running out. Your happiness springs from the act of loving itself, not from what you receive in return.

To love because love is your nature. Because light is radiated into darkness, whether that darkness was illuminated or not. Because the sun does not choose which flowers to warm. It just shines.