How do I practice love as a spiritual path when relationships feel painful?

Mirabai knew this intimately. She loved Krishna so fiercely that ordinary heartbreak became her doorway to something larger—not because the pain disappeared, but because she met it with her whole self. When relationships hurt, there's often a choice point: you can harden against the vulnerability, or you can let that rawness teach you about your capacity to feel, to witness, to remain open. Love as spiritual practice doesn't mean staying in harmful situations. It means examining what the pain is revealing. Is it showing you where you've abandoned yourself? Where you're afraid to be truly seen? Where you're trying to control rather than receive? Mirabai's devotion wasn't about being passive or accepting mistreatment—it was about pouring her whole being, including her grief and rage, into something transcendent. Start by asking: what is this relationship teaching my heart? Not in a toxic-positivity way, but genuinely. What walls am I being invited to soften? What false beliefs about love am I being asked to examine? The spiritual practice isn't in the relationship succeeding. It's in the honest reckoning you do within it.