These
practices are useful to everyone , but if you truly dedicate yourself to them,
you will walk even faster down the road to discovering the Self. 7. Practicing nonattachment
To be unattached means that you are free from outside influences that
overshadow your real self. This lesson isn’t one our culture teaches us.Modern people place a high value on being committed, excited, passionate,
deeply involved, and so forth, and they fail to realize that these qualities are
not the opposite  of nonattachment. To be committed to a relationship, for
example, ultimately means to have enough love and understanding to let the
other person be who he or she wants to be. Being passionate  about your
work means giving yourself the creative space to approach it from all
angles, finding new directions and opportunities. These new opportunities
can only come from your inner creative core, which you will not be able to
contact if you are immersed in and overwhelmed by the details of your
work. The paradox is that to get the most passion from life, you must be able to
stand back and be yourself. Passion and commitment, love and dedication,
self-worth and fulfillment—all are born in Being; they are qualities of the
essential self that blossom when  you are free from narrow attachments. For
most of us, the person who loved us most dearly was our mother , but if you
reflect on it, this love often implied power and control. As a child you had
to do what your mother said or her love might be withdrawn . “I’m your
mother , you have to pay attention to me” is the opposite of “I love you, and
my greatest happiness is to see you become what you want.” The first
statement may come from love, but it is not a love that easily permits
freedom. Finding your freedom is necessary , and it involves letting go of
expectations, preconceived outcomes, and egotistical points of view . Consider two mothers, each standing in the aisle of a supermarket trying to
handle an upset child who is crying loudly and attracting attention. One
mother is angry and embarrasse d; her primary motive is to stop the child
from making a scene, but of course this doesn’ t work with small children. When they are upset, they are upset. Their feelings are their world, and
making a scene in the market doesn’t mean anything to them. So when the
mother commands, “All right, stop crying. I mean it, stop right now,” the
child knows that his feelings aren’ t really being heard and therefore he isn’t
being allowed to really exist. The mother just wants a result ; she wants
things to turn out a certain way . The second mother, on the other hand, sees that her child is genuinely
upset, and she doesn’ t care about how she looks to others. She isn’ t thinkingabout the situation as it af fects her; instead, she feels for her child and wants
him to be happy again. She says things such as, “What’ s wrong? Did
something scare you? It’s all right, I’m here.” The words she uses are not
the critic al thing—she might just pick up and caress her child for a moment. The child’ s quantum mechanica l body senses that his feelings  have been
understood. Therefore, there is no threat, because his mother ’s intention is
to heal, not merely to end a disagreeable situation. Your quantum mechanical body  has all the sensitivity of a child’ s, and
you can use that sensitivity to get back to your true self, which exists above
and beyond the troubling circum stances of your life. Again, the matter of
self-image is involved. Being oriented to your true self, not to your self-
image, is the most basic healing attitude anyone can take. When you are
oriented to the self, you use your feelings, your needs, and your values as a
jumping-of f point for finding that level of your being where feelings, needs,
and values are already fulfille d. This self doesn’ t exist in action, yet
paradoxically you can find it through action. It will appear as a silent witness that stands back from activity simply to
observe and appreciate what is going on. Soldiers in battle and daredevil
adventurers often feel themselves becoming peaceful, unattached observers
completely divorced from the frantic activity around them. Speaking for
myself, I’ve found that moment s of nonattachment are characterized by the
following:
•  I am present with my body . •  My breathing becomes very refined, approaching stillness. •  Mental activity has calmed down. •  I feel no threat; there is a certainty of belonging. •  I perceive my inner world as an open space with no boundaries;
awareness exten ds in all directions rather than being focused on
specific thoughts. •  Self-a cceptance flows out into the environment. Things “out there”
seem intimate to me, an extension of myself. This experience of unity is also my working definition of love. For most of
us love is an emotion that comes and goes; we feel it intensely at times,
while at other times we don’t feel it at all. But the essence of love isn’t afeeling—it is a state of being. Or to be more exact, it is the state in which
you are in contact with Being. Someone who is truly experiencing love
feels tremendously real and alive, with no desire to do anything except exist
within the fulfill ment of love. Love’s greatest action is simply to be, which
is no action. That is why love is a supreme state of nonattachm ent and yet
the most satisfying state. For your action plan to succeed,  you need to find an outlet for your love,
a place where you can give it freely. The more openly you experience love,
on what ever terms, the closer you will come to finding its essence. Love
that doesn’t flow is no love at all; it is just yearning and longing. The
renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell pointed the way for expressing
love when he said, “Follow your bliss.” Bliss is the tingling rush of love in
action, the flow of Being as it reaches out to meet itself and curl back with
delight in contact. Love wants to find itself, and when the circuit is
complete, bliss flows. Ask yourself, “Where do I find bliss?” then write
down the steps you can take to increase this experience in your life. Do not confuse pleasure with love. There are many things that give
pleasure, such as watching television, with very little love in them. Love
certainly brings pleasure but in a more profound way. Carrying  a meal to a
shut-in is an act of love that is far more pleasurable than watching
television, for example, and there is much more to learn from such an action
in terms of sharing, compassion, and understanding. So don’t be distracted by superficial pleasures. The deep joy and delight
that exist at the core of life must be diligently uncovered. When you make
your list, you’ll  find that many  of your most cherished mome nts of bliss
have gone forever . For example , you cannot duplicate the first new feeling
of fallin g in love with the perso n to whom you are now married. But love
has depth after depth. As you make your list, you will remember how you
felt the day your children were born, and in that reminder is a clue: Your
children can still be a source of bliss, if you resolve to reach deeper into
your relationship with them. Nothing is more important than reconnecting
with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real. Exercise 2: Being Love versus Being in LoveI’d like to explore the state of love further , because it is the surest road
back to Being. The ancient sages declared that ultimately everything is
made of consciousness, and when we experience consciousness purely , with
no extra neous images or assumptions, that is love. The great Bengali poet
Rabindranath Tagore declared, “Love is not a mere impulse; it must contain
truth, which is law.” The merging of love, truth, and reality is the great
revelation of unity consciousness, the moment when a person can truthfully
say, “I am the All,” and, “I am love,” in the same breath. Seen from this
perspective, love is the feeling-s tate that is always present when  a person is
perfectly aligned with dharma, the flow of evolution. Being in love is not the same state as this. When you fall in love, an
opening is created for repressed feelings to rush forth and attach themselves
to another person. If the love is deep enough, the other person seems ideal
and perfect (this has nothing to do with his or her actual state, which could
be quite imperfect and even destructive). But the force of love changes
reality by changing the perce iver. Why and how does this happen? Physiologists have measured the increase in certain key neurotransmitters
such as serotonin in the brains of people who are in love, but chemicals are
only crude markers. Clearly , serotonin does not cause people to fall in love;
it is only the biochemical basis for the pleasant sensations triggered by
being in love. In a series of revealing exper iments, Harvard psychologist David C.
McClelland probed the physiology of love. He had a group of subjects view
a short film of Mother Teresa in her daily work of caring for sick and
abandoned child ren in Calcutta. The film displayed a profound  outpouring
of love. As the audience watched the film, McClelland discov ered that a
marker in their immune systems increased—this was SIgA, or salivary
immunoglobulin antigen. High levels of SIgA, as measured in people’ s
saliva, indicates a high immune response; as it happens, an elevated
immune response is also characteristic of people who have recently fallen in
love. (The popular saying “If you don’t want to catch a cold, fall in love”
recognizes this connection between emotions and physiology .) Curiously , when  the film was over and the audience was asked their
opinion of Mother Teresa, not everyone found her work laudable. Some had
objections of one kind or another, centering on differences in religiousbelief, while others reported feeling disturbed by the sight of children who
were starving or suffering from  leprosy . Yet all the audienc e members
experienced an increase in SIgA levels; their physical response to love
appeared to be more powerful than their rational attitudes. This led
McClelland to question one of the most popular definitions of love in
modern psychol ogy, which holds that love is a reflexive response that arises
when two people meet to fill each other ’s needs. According to that
definition, love would depend on a person’ s conscious evalua tion of the
benefits he or she was getting in a relationship. But here were people whose
bodies were responding at a much deeper level, deeper even than pleasure. McClelland also found that the positive effect on the viewers’ immune
response decline d and disappeared an hour or two after they had viewed the
film. It remained highest among  those subjects who reported a strong sense
of being loved in their own lives and having strong ties to family and
friends. This implied that some  people are already in a state conducive to
love. Instead of experiencing it as a passing state, they had incorporated it
as a trait. In other words, the statement of the enlightened sage, “I am love,”
was present in these people, if to a smaller degree. What is love as a trait rather than as a passing phase? Even the most
passionate exper ience of being in love eventually cools off, leaving people
dismayed to find that little real love, in a lasting sense, remains . Pondering
this problem, McClelland wondered what had become of the experiences
described in the poetry of love. These experiences did not refer to the
selfish advantages of being in love but to altruistic, undying devotion. Was
Shakespeare simply wrong when he declared, “Love is not love which
alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempest and is never shaken.”
McClelland also knew of instances cited in the psychological literature
where people were in loving relationships that made no sense in terms of
gaining any objective benefits. Such people felt deep love and devotion
despite the fact that they had no rational reason for feeling that way . What all this implied to McClelland was that love is a state that
transcends reason and whose purpose is simply to allow the experience of a
larger shared reality . One critical matter in this regard was a person’ s
reaction to the death of a loved one. If two people were in love just for whatthey could get, their interdependence would form the basis for loving and
being loved. Thus, the death of the loved one would cause great  pain as the
bond was ripped apart. Certainly this could be observed in real-life
relationships, but McClelland felt from personal experience that something
very dif ferent was possible:
The death of a loved partner should cause intense suffering and
grief, according to this theory . Yet when my wife died of cancer a few
years ago, I did not react in this way. We had been very much in love,
happily married for 42 years, had raised five children to well-ad justed
maturity…yet when she died I did not feel the amount of pain that the
theory would require that I should feel.…What the experience felt
like was much closer to the poet’s view of love. We had felt that we
were part of something that was much bigger than ourselves—w hich
had nurtured and supported us throughout our long life together and
which continued to support me after her death. This describes a step into the realm of timeless love. When two people
use their love for each other as a doorway into this realm, the death of the
loved one does not close the door or deprive the other of the flow of love. Ultimately , all love comes from within. We are deluding ourselv es when we
believe that another person is who we love; the other person is a pretext by
which we give ourselves permission to feel love. Only you can open and
close your heart . The power of love to nurture and sustain us depends on
our commitment to it “in here.”
It is important to talk about love, to think about it, to seek it out, and to
encourage it. To put this in the form of an exercise, make a commitment to
yourself to do the following:
1. Think  about love. Take time to recall the love you shared with your
parents, the times you expressed love to your siblings and friends. Dwell upon what is most lovable  about the person who is most loving
in your life today . Read deeply the poetry of love, such as is found in
Shakespeare’ s sonnets, and the scriptures of love, such as that
contained in the New Testament or in the devotional hymns of the
Rig V eda.2. Talk about love. Express your feelings directly to someone you
love. If you cannot do it verball y, write a letter or a poem. You don’t
have to send it; the exercise is for you, to stimulate the state of love in
every cell. But sending it is preferable, for you want to hear
expressions of love in return. Don’ t let your love be something taken
for granted. Put a note for your loved one to find in his or her pocket
or on the kitchen table. 3. Seek out love. This is possible in many ways. Intimacy in our
society is closel y identified with sexual encounters, but it is an act of
love to give help to the homeless and the sick, to deliver a sincere
compliment, or to write a note of thanks and praise. People like to
hear that they are loved and appreciated, and if you seek out
opportunities to fulfill their needs in this area, their gratitude will be
mirrored in your physiology as the bliss of being loved in return. 4. Encou rage love. As parents we often teach our children that being
openly affectionate and loving is appropriate for babies and toddlers
but not for anyo ne older than that. In teaching manners and respect,
we often  create a gap that love is too sensitive and shy to cross. We
inflict this sense of separation on our children because it was inflicted
on us. The story  of almost everyone is a story of love waiting to be
coaxed out, of affection that has to wait in silence because it is afraid
to emer ge. So take it as your duty to give those around you permission to love. Encourage their affection by showing it yourself, without regard for what
you may get in return. Real love gains complete satisfaction  simply by
flowing out to what is loved; if love comes back, that is an added joy, but it
isn’t required or demanded. Love that has no ulterior motive is rare—all the
psychological theories based on selfish love certainly are confirmed by
what we observ e all around us. But even the most demanding  and selfish
love is love of a sort. It is a drop taken from the ocean, and if you encourage
it, it can swell to become the ocean. The education of love begins in a moment and ends in eternity . It is
sparked by feelings of delight and resolves into the peace that belongs toBeing itself. In some haunting lines of poetry Kahlil Gibran expressed this
truth:
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’ s timelessness
and knows that yesterday is but today’ s memory and
tomorrow
is today’ s dream
and that which sings and contemplates in you is still
dwelling
within the bounds of that moment which scattered the stars
into space. Use love as your mirror of the timeless; let it nurture your certai nty that you
are beyond change, beyond the memory of yesterday and the dream of
tomorrow . There are infinite ways to discover your true Bein g, but love
holds the brightest torch. If you follow it, you will be guided beyond the
limits of age and death. Come out of the circle of time and find yourself in
the circle of love. OceanofPDF .comABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deepak Chopra is the author of more than fifty books translated in
over thirty-five languages including numerous New York Times
bestsellers in both the fiction and nonfiction categories. www .deepakchopra.com
OceanofPDF .comALSO BY DEEPAK CHOPRA
Reinventing the Body , Resurr ecting the Soul
The Ultimate Happiness Pr escription
Available fr om Harmony Books wher ever books ar e soldThe Third Jesus: The Christ W e Cannot Ignor e
Life After Death: The Burden of Pr oof
Why Is God Laughing? The Path to Joy and Spiritual
OptimismThe Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desir e:
Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence
The Book of Secr ets:
Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Y our Life
How to Know God:
The Soul’ s Journey into the Mystery of Mysteries
Available fr om Thr ee Rivers Pr ess wher ever books ar e sold
OceanofPDF .comWat’s next on 
your reading list? Discover your next 
great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now. OceanofPDF.com
_OceanofPDF.com_Ageless_Body_Timeless_Mind_-_Deepak_Chopra.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        These
practices are useful to everyone, but if you truly dedicate yourself to them,
you will walk even faster down the road to discovering the Self. 7. Practicing nonattachment
To be unattached means that you are free from outside influences that
overshadow your real self. This lesson isn’t one our culture teaches us. Modern people place a high value on being committed, excited, passionate,
deeply involved, and so forth, and they fail to realize that these qualities are
not the opposite  of nonattachment. To be committed to a relationship, for
example, ultimately means to have enough love and understanding to let the
other person be who he or she wants to be. Being passionate  about your
work means giving yourself the creative space to approach it from all
angles, finding new directions and opportunities. These new opportunities
can only come from your inner creative core, which you will not be able to
contact if you are immersed in and overwhelmed by the details of your
work. The paradox is that to get the most passion from life, you must be able to
stand back and be yourself. Passion and commitment, love and dedication,
self-worth and fulfillment—all are born in Being; they are qualities of the
essential self that blossom when  you are free from narrow attachments. For
most of us, the person who loved us most dearly was our mother, but if you
reflect on it, this love often implied power and control. As a child you had
to do what your mother said or her love might be withdrawn. “I’m your
mother, you have to pay attention to me” is the opposite of “I love you, and
my greatest happiness is to see you become what you want. ” The first
statement may come from love, but it is not a love that easily permits
freedom. Finding your freedom is necessary, and it involves letting go of
expectations, preconceived outcomes, and egotistical points of view. Consider two mothers, each standing in the aisle of a supermarket trying to
handle an upset child who is crying loudly and attracting attention. One
mother is angry and embarrasse d; her primary motive is to stop the child
from making a scene, but of course this doesn’ t work with small children. When they are upset, they are upset. Their feelings are their world, and
making a scene in the market doesn’t mean anything to them. So when the
mother commands, “All right, stop crying. I mean it, stop right now,” the
child knows that his feelings aren’ t really being heard and therefore he isn’t
being allowed to really exist. The mother just wants a result ; she wants
things to turn out a certain way. The second mother, on the other hand, sees that her child is genuinely
upset, and she doesn’ t care about how she looks to others. She isn’ t thinkingabout the situation as it af fects her; instead, she feels for her child and wants
him to be happy again. She says things such as, “What’ s wrong. Did
something scare you. It’s all right, I’m here. ” The words she uses are not
the critic al thing—she might just pick up and caress her child for a moment. The child’ s quantum mechanica l body senses that his feelings  have been
understood. Therefore, there is no threat, because his mother ’s intention is
to heal, not merely to end a disagreeable situation. Your quantum mechanical body  has all the sensitivity of a child’ s, and
you can use that sensitivity to get back to your true self, which exists above
and beyond the troubling circum stances of your life. Again, the matter of
self-image is involved. Being oriented to your true self, not to your self-
image, is the most basic healing attitude anyone can take. When you are
oriented to the self, you use your feelings, your needs, and your values as a
jumping-of f point for finding that level of your being where feelings, needs,
and values are already fulfille d. This self doesn’ t exist in action, yet
paradoxically you can find it through action. It will appear as a silent witness that stands back from activity simply to
observe and appreciate what is going on. Soldiers in battle and daredevil
adventurers often feel themselves becoming peaceful, unattached observers
completely divorced from the frantic activity around them. Speaking for
myself, I’ve found that moment s of nonattachment are characterized by the
following:
•  I am present with my body. •  My breathing becomes very refined, approaching stillness. •  Mental activity has calmed down. •  I feel no threat; there is a certainty of belonging. •  I perceive my inner world as an open space with no boundaries;
awareness exten ds in all directions rather than being focused on
specific thoughts. •  Self-a cceptance flows out into the environment. Things “out there”
seem intimate to me, an extension of myself. This experience of unity is also my working definition of love. For most of
us love is an emotion that comes and goes; we feel it intensely at times,
while at other times we don’t feel it at all. But the essence of love isn’t afeeling—it is a state of being. Or to be more exact, it is the state in which
you are in contact with Being. Someone who is truly experiencing love
feels tremendously real and alive, with no desire to do anything except exist
within the fulfill ment of love. Love’s greatest action is simply to be, which
is no action. That is why love is a supreme state of nonattachm ent and yet
the most satisfying state. For your action plan to succeed,  you need to find an outlet for your love,
a place where you can give it freely. The more openly you experience love,
on what ever terms, the closer you will come to finding its essence. Love
that doesn’t flow is no love at all; it is just yearning and longing. The
renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell pointed the way for expressing
love when he said, “Follow your bliss. ” Bliss is the tingling rush of love in
action, the flow of Being as it reaches out to meet itself and curl back with
delight in contact. Love wants to find itself, and when the circuit is
complete, bliss flows. Ask yourself, “Where do I find bliss. ” then write
down the steps you can take to increase this experience in your life. Do not confuse pleasure with love. There are many things that give
pleasure, such as watching television, with very little love in them. Love
certainly brings pleasure but in a more profound way. Carrying  a meal to a
shut-in is an act of love that is far more pleasurable than watching
television, for example, and there is much more to learn from such an action
in terms of sharing, compassion, and understanding. So don’t be distracted by superficial pleasures. The deep joy and delight
that exist at the core of life must be diligently uncovered. When you make
your list, you’ll  find that many  of your most cherished mome nts of bliss
have gone forever. For example, you cannot duplicate the first new feeling
of fallin g in love with the perso n to whom you are now married. But love
has depth after depth. As you make your list, you will remember how you
felt the day your children were born, and in that reminder is a clue: Your
children can still be a source of bliss, if you resolve to reach deeper into
your relationship with them. Nothing is more important than reconnecting
with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real. Exercise 2: Being Love versus Being in LoveI’d like to explore the state of love further, because it is the surest road
back to Being. The ancient sages declared that ultimately everything is
made of consciousness, and when we experience consciousness purely, with
no extra neous images or assumptions, that is love. The great Bengali poet
Rabindranath Tagore declared, “Love is not a mere impulse; it must contain
truth, which is law. ” The merging of love, truth, and reality is the great
revelation of unity consciousness, the moment when a person can truthfully
say, “I am the All,” and, “I am love,” in the same breath. Seen from this
perspective, love is the feeling-s tate that is always present when  a person is
perfectly aligned with dharma, the flow of evolution. Being in love is not the same state as this. When you fall in love, an
opening is created for repressed feelings to rush forth and attach themselves
to another person. If the love is deep enough, the other person seems ideal
and perfect (this has nothing to do with his or her actual state, which could
be quite imperfect and even destructive). But the force of love changes
reality by changing the perce iver. Why and how does this happen. Physiologists have measured the increase in certain key neurotransmitters
such as serotonin in the brains of people who are in love, but chemicals are
only crude markers. Clearly, serotonin does not cause people to fall in love;
it is only the biochemical basis for the pleasant sensations triggered by
being in love. In a series of revealing exper iments, Harvard psychologist David C. McClelland probed the physiology of love. He had a group of subjects view
a short film of Mother Teresa in her daily work of caring for sick and
abandoned child ren in Calcutta. The film displayed a profound  outpouring
of love. As the audience watched the film, McClelland discov ered that a
marker in their immune systems increased—this was SIgA, or salivary
immunoglobulin antigen. High levels of SIgA, as measured in people’ s
saliva, indicates a high immune response; as it happens, an elevated
immune response is also characteristic of people who have recently fallen in
love. (The popular saying “If you don’t want to catch a cold, fall in love”
recognizes this connection between emotions and physiology. ) Curiously, when  the film was over and the audience was asked their
opinion of Mother Teresa, not everyone found her work laudable. Some had
objections of one kind or another, centering on differences in religiousbelief, while others reported feeling disturbed by the sight of children who
were starving or suffering from  leprosy. Yet all the audienc e members
experienced an increase in SIgA levels; their physical response to love
appeared to be more powerful than their rational attitudes. This led
McClelland to question one of the most popular definitions of love in
modern psychol ogy, which holds that love is a reflexive response that arises
when two people meet to fill each other ’s needs. According to that
definition, love would depend on a person’ s conscious evalua tion of the
benefits he or she was getting in a relationship. But here were people whose
bodies were responding at a much deeper level, deeper even than pleasure. McClelland also found that the positive effect on the viewers’ immune
response decline d and disappeared an hour or two after they had viewed the
film. It remained highest among  those subjects who reported a strong sense
of being loved in their own lives and having strong ties to family and
friends. This implied that some  people are already in a state conducive to
love. Instead of experiencing it as a passing state, they had incorporated it
as a trait. In other words, the statement of the enlightened sage, “I am love,”
was present in these people, if to a smaller degree. What is love as a trait rather than as a passing phase. Even the most
passionate exper ience of being in love eventually cools off, leaving people
dismayed to find that little real love, in a lasting sense, remains. Pondering
this problem, McClelland wondered what had become of the experiences
described in the poetry of love. These experiences did not refer to the
selfish advantages of being in love but to altruistic, undying devotion. Was
Shakespeare simply wrong when he declared, “Love is not love which
alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no. It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempest and is never shaken. ”
McClelland also knew of instances cited in the psychological literature
where people were in loving relationships that made no sense in terms of
gaining any objective benefits. Such people felt deep love and devotion
despite the fact that they had no rational reason for feeling that way. What all this implied to McClelland was that love is a state that
transcends reason and whose purpose is simply to allow the experience of a
larger shared reality. One critical matter in this regard was a person’ s
reaction to the death of a loved one. If two people were in love just for whatthey could get, their interdependence would form the basis for loving and
being loved. Thus, the death of the loved one would cause great  pain as the
bond was ripped apart. Certainly this could be observed in real-life
relationships, but McClelland felt from personal experience that something
very dif ferent was possible:
The death of a loved partner should cause intense suffering and
grief, according to this theory. Yet when my wife died of cancer a few
years ago, I did not react in this way. We had been very much in love,
happily married for 42 years, had raised five children to well-ad justed
maturity…yet when she died I did not feel the amount of pain that the
theory would require that I should feel. …What the experience felt
like was much closer to the poet’s view of love. We had felt that we
were part of something that was much bigger than ourselves—w hich
had nurtured and supported us throughout our long life together and
which continued to support me after her death. This describes a step into the realm of timeless love. When two people
use their love for each other as a doorway into this realm, the death of the
loved one does not close the door or deprive the other of the flow of love. Ultimately, all love comes from within. We are deluding ourselv es when we
believe that another person is who we love; the other person is a pretext by
which we give ourselves permission to feel love. Only you can open and
close your heart. The power of love to nurture and sustain us depends on
our commitment to it “in here. ”
It is important to talk about love, to think about it, to seek it out, and to
encourage it. To put this in the form of an exercise, make a commitment to
yourself to do the following:
1. Think  about love. Take time to recall the love you shared with your
parents, the times you expressed love to your siblings and friends. Dwell upon what is most lovable  about the person who is most loving
in your life today. Read deeply the poetry of love, such as is found in
Shakespeare’ s sonnets, and the scriptures of love, such as that
contained in the New Testament or in the devotional hymns of the
Rig V eda. 2. Talk about love. Express your feelings directly to someone you
love. If you cannot do it verball y, write a letter or a poem. You don’t
have to send it; the exercise is for you, to stimulate the state of love in
every cell. But sending it is preferable, for you want to hear
expressions of love in return. Don’ t let your love be something taken
for granted. Put a note for your loved one to find in his or her pocket
or on the kitchen table. 3. Seek out love. This is possible in many ways. Intimacy in our
society is closel y identified with sexual encounters, but it is an act of
love to give help to the homeless and the sick, to deliver a sincere
compliment, or to write a note of thanks and praise. People like to
hear that they are loved and appreciated, and if you seek out
opportunities to fulfill their needs in this area, their gratitude will be
mirrored in your physiology as the bliss of being loved in return. 4. Encou rage love. As parents we often teach our children that being
openly affectionate and loving is appropriate for babies and toddlers
but not for anyo ne older than that. In teaching manners and respect,
we often  create a gap that love is too sensitive and shy to cross. We
inflict this sense of separation on our children because it was inflicted
on us. The story  of almost everyone is a story of love waiting to be
coaxed out, of affection that has to wait in silence because it is afraid
to emer ge. So take it as your duty to give those around you permission to love. Encourage their affection by showing it yourself, without regard for what
you may get in return. Real love gains complete satisfaction  simply by
flowing out to what is loved; if love comes back, that is an added joy, but it
isn’t required or demanded. Love that has no ulterior motive is rare—all the
psychological theories based on selfish love certainly are confirmed by
what we observ e all around us. But even the most demanding  and selfish
love is love of a sort. It is a drop taken from the ocean, and if you encourage
it, it can swell to become the ocean. The education of love begins in a moment and ends in eternity. It is
sparked by feelings of delight and resolves into the peace that belongs toBeing itself. In some haunting lines of poetry Kahlil Gibran expressed this
truth:
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’ s timelessness
and knows that yesterday is but today’ s memory and
tomorrow
is today’ s dream
and that which sings and contemplates in you is still
dwelling
within the bounds of that moment which scattered the stars
into space. Use love as your mirror of the timeless; let it nurture your certai nty that you
are beyond change, beyond the memory of yesterday and the dream of
tomorrow. There are infinite ways to discover your true Bein g, but love
holds the brightest torch. If you follow it, you will be guided beyond the
limits of age and death. Come out of the circle of time and find yourself in
the circle of love. OceanofPDF. comABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deepak Chopra is the author of more than fifty books translated in
over thirty-five languages including numerous New York Times
bestsellers in both the fiction and nonfiction categories. www. deepakchopra. com
OceanofPDF. comALSO BY DEEPAK CHOPRA
Reinventing the Body, Resurr ecting the Soul
The Ultimate Happiness Pr escription
Available fr om Harmony Books wher ever books ar e soldThe Third Jesus: The Christ W e Cannot Ignor e
Life After Death: The Burden of Pr oof
Why Is God Laughing. The Path to Joy and Spiritual
OptimismThe Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desir e:
Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence
The Book of Secr ets:
Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Y our Life
How to Know God:
The Soul’ s Journey into the Mystery of Mysteries
Available fr om Thr ee Rivers Pr ess wher ever books ar e sold
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The author advises to make a commitment to your own love, think about love, talk about love, seek out love, and encourage love in others.
What is the author's advice for cultivating love?
The author defines love as a state of being that is always present and timeless, transcending the limitations of the physical world.
What is the author's definition of love?
According to the author, "being in love" is a temporary and selfish experience, whereas "being love" is a state of being that is timeless and transcendent.
What is the difference between "being in love" and "being love"?
The author criticizes the cultural emphasis on attachment and commitment, arguing that these are not the same as love and can actually create a sense of separation and unhappiness.
What is the author's view on the concept of love in modern society?
The author suggests that people should focus on cultivating their own inner love and self-acceptance, rather than seeking external validation or attachment to others.
What is the author's advice for cultivating self-awareness?