“Happiness” is just as fluid
as love itself and equally elusive. Outward conditions have no predictable
effect on either . For example, people who have struggled out of poverty say
that they are happier , but once people are above the poverty line, adding
more money doesn’t increase happine ss. It often takes considerably more
expense to provide a new stimulus, and without stimulus most people can’t
be happy . In the long term, however , depending upon stimulus is a trap. Enough
stimulus of the right kind may create happiness, but the balance is
extremely precarious. Studies have shown that newborn babies, for
example, like to have pretty dangling things in their surroundings. A mobile
with ten shiny objects on it will cause a baby to gurgle and laugh when it’s
placed over the crib. However , if you take away eight of the dangles and
leave behind only two, the baby will cry in loud protest. This is probably the earliest experimental evidence we have that
happiness is vulnerable to loss. Certainly we all grow up coming to this
conclusion—deprive us of our money , our jobs, our relationships, and our
quotient of happiness drops dramatically . Likewise we don’t like to have
our stimulus be out of control. Babies have been sat in front of screens that
flash pretty pictures, which they can make come and go by pulling a string. Having this kind of control is very pleasing. But if the pictures come and go
at random, the same happiness doesn’ t result. Worse still, if the baby pulls
the string and nothing happens  on the screen, he will be very unhappy . Again, this is a lesson we all learn—random events in our lives, or people
who do not prove predictable, undermine our sense of control , leading to
unhappiness.What all this amounts to is that the word happiness  too often means
“pleasure response.” All response depends upon stimulus, just as sexual
pleasure depend s upon being aroused and stimulated. This undeniable fact
leads countless people to panic when their source of pleasure vanishes. Those of us who bounce from one failed marriage to another exhibit in full-
blown form this craving for stimulus. But any desire to keep things smooth,
predictable, and comforting has the same shadow hanging over it. There can
be no sense of security in your existence when it depends upon outside
factors, for the unpredictable changes of reality can never be controlled. The solution is to find a source of happiness beyond pleasu re, since
pleasure seeking  can never be made independent of outside stimulus. As
long as love is pleasure, its end—a sad tapering off into indifference and
inertia—is predictable. Recently this argument has gained supp ort from an
unexpected quarter. Biochemi cal research has isolated certain brain
chemicals associated with pleasure, particularly the neurotransmitter
serotonin. A high level of serotonin is typical of someone who feels a sense
of well-being; insuf ficient levels of serotonin have long been correlated
with depression . Related studies have isolated the left frontal lobes of the
cortex as a site of increased activity whenever someone feels happy . The obvious conclusion is that stimulus to the brain is the same as
happiness. Unfortunately , this is not accurate, because stimulus wears out. Over time our responses weaken if the same stimulus keeps getting
repeated. The taste that was once so sweet grows stale and cloyi ng; the face
that once enchanted becomes ordinary; the most exciting vision becomes
just part of the scenery . It is all-important to found our happiness upon a basis that doesn’ t
change. Compared with pleasure, love is abstract. If you took away the
pleasant feelings  associated with it, most people would be hard-pressed to
define the experience of love. But love has a power to heal, to reveal divine
essence, to restore faith in one’s own Being, to bring harmony to all levels
of existence—an d all these effects lie far beyond feelings. They are tangible
results based on spirit. In our society the more tangible something is, the more likely we are to
have faith in it. Fortunately , for all that love is abstract, scienti fic research
confirms that it is as dramatic  and potent as medicine, both when it is
present and when it is withdrawn.Love aids recovery . Studies conducted in hospital cardiac units have
demonstrated that male patients who respond positively to the question “Do
you feel loved?” are more likely to recover than those who do not, and the
correlation between recovery and this response is higher than that for any
other category , including previous physical status. In other words, an
unloved man in good physical condition afflicted with a mild heart attack
may recover more poorly than another man with a severe heart  attack who
feels loved. For residents of retirement homes, having a pet to love (or even
a plant to tend to every day) reduces disease and depression. Old people
perceive having an object of love as restoring their purpose in life. Love promotes growth. Very young children from abusive homes may
exhibit a condition of retarde d or severely stunted growth known as
psychosocial dwarfism. Besides being small and underweight for their age,
such children frequently manifest underdeveloped emotions and learning
skills. Rapid reversal of this condition can often occur , however , as soon as
a loving environment is provided. Love provides homeostatic balance. No one has definitively proven that
feeling loved lowers blood pressure or prevents cancer and heart disease,
although it is well documented that negative conditions associate d with lack
of love, such as chronic anger or depression, put people at much  higher risk
for all types of disease. One indication of love’ s ability to bring the body into balance was
provided by a study in which subjects were asked to watch a film about
Mother Teresa as she went about her work in India. In the film she
embraces children in terribly wasted conditions, usually children afflicted
with leprosy . Just the sight of this loving act raised certain chemical
indicators of enhanced immune responses. This dramatic effect occurred
even if the viewer did not agree with Mother Teresa’ s vocation—it was not,
in other words, a matter of subjectively feeling good. According to folk
wisdom, falling in love is the best way not to catch colds in the winter ,
indicating that the immune benefits of love were recognized long before
medical research came along to validate them. Finally , a breakthrough study from Stanford on recovery from breast
cancer indicated that women who were in advanced stages of the disease
lived longer if they participated  in group therapy sessions once  a week, as
compared with those who received only normal courses of chemical andsurgical treatme nt. There were no intensive psychological techniques
applied here—the group shared their feelings and supported one another in
their struggle against cancer . These simple acts of love were provably
effective, yet the study undersco res how meager one hour of therapy a week
really is. Could love on a more intensive scale provide even more healing? The answer to this question does not await more medical study; it can be
verified by each of us in our own lives. Healing  is a broad term; being
connected to both whole  and holy, it can be define d spiritually as a return to
the state of unity . Love is not separate from anything in life; it is not divided
into mom ents of love or levels of love or amounts or absence of love. These
are our relative terms, our mere glimpses of a force that remain s intact and
whole. On the spiritual path, or sadhana, the experience of love brings
healing that is not directed to one disease or another but to the state of the
whole person; therefore each of us will experience its ef fects dif ferently . Because sadhana can sound very lofty and abstract, it’s easier for science
to look at people who are lonely, depressed, and sick than to investigate
subtler working s of the self. But if we look at the following features of
people who can live a love story , we see how far they have evolved beyond
the norm. They have learned to separate their actions fr om their belief that they ar e lovable. Since we all started out as child ren who were weaker and less powerful
than adults, it was only natural for us to try to act in such a way that we
wouldn’ t be hurt. Being hurt is usually a matter of power . The powerless are
in no position to offend or antagonize the powerful. This reality was
brought home to us on the playground a long time ago, and its holdover
habit is trying to be nice. Being nice, we expect niceness in return. By
placating someo ne who threatens us, we hope to ward off aggre ssion. In the
name of not being hurt we stay in a defensive posture. People who base their lives upon  love, though, have taught themselves to
separate this whole pattern of behavior from love. Love doesn’ t come from
placating potential threats. Bein g nice all the time won’ t cause others to
love you; when they are stated  in black and white this way, most of us
would agree with these assertions. Yet the imprint of the past is deep, andunconsciously we still act like powerless children. Learning to grow out of
this pattern is a common trait of people who live their own love stories. They can give on all levels. It has become a truism that to receive love we must give love. This
reciprocal action keeps the flow of love alive. Without it love would
stagnate. Learni ng to give runs contrary to some very deep conditioning
that we all carry around inside, however . We have all learned to hold on to a
good thing. Letting go of anything precious is hard. Loving people have
taught themselv es that holding on is possessiveness. Anyone who has ever
been trapped in a possessive relationship knows its smotherin g effect. It
isn’t love when another person cannot give you the space to live your own
life. Giving space isn’t simple. You must be willing to allow another person
their whole being. You must give permission for someone else’s ideas,
feelings, reactio ns, and will to be expressed freely . People who have taught
themselves to give on all levels have discovered a critical ingredient of
living their love stories. They don’ t expect anything in r eturn for being good. We all make a connection between love and goodness. Attraction is based
on the assumpti on that another person has something good to bring into
your life. Our definition of this goodness may be shallow or deep. Some
men will always  believe that a woman is good as long as she is beautiful
and compliant. Some women will overlook a dozen things about a man that
might spell disaster in a relationship as long as he is dependable and brings
in a good incom e. It takes inner growth to appreciate goodness  as a deeper
value. Ultimately people are good because of who they are; good ness is a
quality of being. Once we have made this discovery , we stop measuring
people by their achievements. We expect goodness as part of their essence,
and of ours. When this happens, we no longer expect a reward for doing
good. We no longer bestow love when people are good to us and withdraw
it when they are bad. Instead love becomes a constant in our lives. It just is.People who have reached this stage are in true possession of their love
stories. They don’ t judge or live in fear of judgment. Judgment is whatever tells you that there is something wrong with
yourself or someone else. Because we all have secrets, we all have some
tendency to live in fear of judgment. A voice inside warns us that other
people will judge our transgr essions as harshly as we do. This self-
condemnation has another face—to make ourselves feel safer from being
judged, we look for faults in others first. Loving people have taught
themselves the falseness of this process. You will never feel better about
yourself by making others look worse. Engaging in the habit of criticism
only postpones the day when your own secret judgments come to light. Bringing to light whatever you think is wrong about yourself  is the only
way to diffuse guilt and shame. In reality there is nothing wron g with you
or anyone else: this is what the voice of love truly says. Inner growth
consists of learning to hear this voice and heed it, a process essential to
living your own love story . They do not expect others to make them feel loved. Love is experienced in relation ship. Without someone to love you, the
feelings of love—the warmth in a mother ’s heart, the gladness of
friendship, the excitement of intimacy—have no stimulus. That is why the
commonest image for being unloved is being alone. When you are alone,
there seems to be no relationship. People who find themselves alone rarely
feel any incentive to explore love. They await contact with another person
or run out to seek it. Thus we become dependent on other people to make us
feel totally and permanently loved. This expectation  will, however , always be defeated, and although we
blame those who failed to respo nd to us, who responded but then left, who
stayed but then changed their minds, none of them is finally the cause of
our problem. The cause is our inability to develop an unshakeable
relationship with ourselves. The Self is the source of love. Peop le who live
their own love stories have learned this lesson above all.IN THE  ABSENCE OF  LOVE
The absence of love is as devas tating as its presence is beneficial. We will
have to assume,  unfortunately , that most people are not living a love story
right now. Even those who say they are the most deeply in love may be
deluding themselves, at least in part. The word love applies to so many
situations—from intimate affection to abuse, from dependency to control,
from lust to ecstasy—that asking if someone feels loved is unreliable. Lack of love is less elusive, however , so we can more reliably  describe
what that state feels like. The following are common features of people who
are not living their love stories. They feel numb and traumatized. Once it has grown to fullness, a love based on spirit has no fear of being
wounded. Imperfect forms of love are much more vulnerable. Almost
everyone has asked for love and received rejection instead. We have taken
our frail self-images into situat ions where they got battered, where hope
died and our worst imaginings came true. The effect of rejection, failure,
humiliation, and other traumas is to numb one’s feelings. Love requires
sensitivity . It must have openn ess. Whatever has numbed you makes it
much harder for you to feel love. Therefore people who are numb at the
emotional level cannot live their love stories. They feel valued for what they do, not for who they ar e.
To value yourself is to love yourself. It is really from here that your love
for other s comes. Value is like currency you can draw from a bank account
—if you value yourself a great deal, you actually have something to give to
others. If you do not value yourself, you have nothing to draw upon. So
what is there to value? If you look at yourself and ask, “What would
another person love about me?”  the only enduring answer is “Myself.” The
only people who can give this answer put a value on who they are, not what
they do. Everyone’ s list of accomplishments is finite. Our good deeds end
somewhere. The things about us that society approves of are often
outweighed in our own minds by blemishes best kept out of other people’ ssight. If we value ourselves by what we do—by accomplishments, good
deeds, social acceptance—the scope of our love gets limited. People who
value themselves almost entirely for what they do will not have love stories
of their own. They live on distorted beliefs. The love you have in your life can only be as valuable as you perceive it
to be, and the key to perception is belief. There are no neutral  encounters. We always see others in the light of our beliefs; we always feel seen in the
light of their beliefs. I’ve known people who walk into a room full of
strangers and believe that a wave of hostility greets them. Other people
walk into a room and immediately feel welcome. The differenc e is entirely
one of perceptio n, since this judgment comes before any external evidence. I would say that the first people  believe they are not wanted in this world
while the other group believe they are. Any belief that attacks our ability to value ourselves is a distortion. In
essence the Self is of highest value; it deserves love without exception. People who cannot live their love stories harbor distorted beliefs that
disguise the reality of their infinite worth. They have failed at love and ar e too tir ed to try again. When you are faced with a losing enterprise, it’s only natural to give up
eventually . When we were younger all of us could pursue love with a
certain amount of hope and optim ism, backed by energy, and it takes energy
to carry out any passion. For some people the energy has run out. They say
they have no time for love. They feel they do not need it in their lives. What
they are actually experiencing is lack of energy, the loss of enthusiasm that
follows repeated failure. But energy is a self-renewing commodity . Like water from a spring, its
flow isn’t diminished by how much you take away . People who cannot live
their love stories have not found a way to renew their energy, to tap into
their source of passion. These various factors don’ t all apply to any one person. Some of them apply
in some  degree to all of us. But we can certainly perceive some commonunderlying causes at work—ignorance of the path to love, how to enter it,
how to walk it, even what it is. Our materialistic worldview has reduced love to a haphazard flow of
hormones coupl ed to psychological fantasies. The spiritual truth is very
different. Once the walls fall down we discover that our real problem is that
there is too much  love around us, not too little. Love is eternal and
unbounded; it is only we who take tiny sips from its infinite ocean. Rumi
states this most natural and yet most secret of mysteries  with utter
simplicity:
I look in your inmost self and see the universe not yet created. The mystery of love hasn’ t changed across the centuries, we have only
fallen short of it. Whenever a person’ s heart dries up, it may appear that
love has dried up. In fact, that person has built a boundary to shut out a
force that is always at flood tide. To exist within love’ s full, unbridled
power is terrify ing unless you have walked the path to love in complete
devotion to the very end. OceanofPDF .comLOVING  PRACTICE
Purifying the Heart
YOU ARE NOT going to follow  a path that doesn’ t feel natural for very long,
nor will it bring the growth you need, however well intentioned you are. There is a center in the body where love and spirit are joined, and that
center is the heart. It is your heart that aches or swells with love, that feels
compassion and trust, that seem s empty or full. Within the heart is a subtler
center that experiences spirit, but spirit is not felt as an emotion or physical
sensation. How , then, can you contact it? According to spiritual masters,
spirit is experienced first as the absence of what is not spirit. In India this is described as Netti, netti,  which means, “Not this, not that.”
Spirit is not caused; it is not bound by time and space; it is not a sensation
that can be seen, touched, heard , tasted, or smelled. This may seem like a
baffling way to define somethin g, but imagine that you had never seen the
color white, that the whole world consisted of red, green, blue, and all the
other hues. Then one day a master came to you with a black shirt and said,
“If you wash this enough times, you will see that it is white.” If you ask to
see white before you wash the shirt, what you ask is impossible. Black is
the sum of all colors, and only if you wash them all away will white appear . In the same way your present life is one of sensations, not just colors but
all the stimulus  that comes through the senses. Some of these sensations
may be very pleasurable, but none of them is adequate to tell you what
spirit is. Spirit lies beneath the layers of sensations. To experience it you
must go to the heart and medi tate upon it until everything that obscures
spirit is cleansed. The purpose of the following exercise is to give you the experience of
making your heart pure enough to witness spirit. Pure here doesn’ t mean
good and virtuous; it means free from impurity , with no value judgmentintended. In the words of William Blake, we are cleansing the doors of
perception. MEDIT ATING ON THE  HEART
Sit comfortably in a quiet room by yourself, choosing a time when you feel
settled and unhu rried. Early morning is best, since your mind will be alert
and fresh; try to avoid late evening, when your awareness is preparing for
sleep. Close your eyes and focus your attention on the middle of your chest,
where your heart is. (The fact that the physical heart is off to the left is
irrelevant here—the spiritual heart center lies directly behind your
breastbone.) Be awar e of your heart as a space. Don’ t try to hear your heartbeat or any
other sound you think a heart makes as it pumps blood. The heart center
you want to find is a point of awareness where feelings enter . In its pure
form it is empty , pervaded by weightlessness, absence of care, peace, and a
subtle light. This light may appear as white, gold, pale pink, or blue. But
again, don’t strain to find a light of any kind. You are not trying to sense the
purity of the heart center right now; all you need to feel is whatever is there. Letting your attention rest easily there, breathe gently and sense your
breath going into your heart center. Here you may want to visualize a soft
pastel light, or a coolness pervading the chest. Let the breath go in and out,
and as it does, ask your heart to speak to you. Don’ t phrase this as an order;
just have the faint intention that you want your heart to express itself. For the next five or ten minutes, sit and listen. Your heart will begin to
release emotions, memories, wishes, fears, and dreams long stored there,
and as it does, you will find yourself paying attention. You may almost immediately get a flash of strong emotion, positive or
negative, or a forgotten memory . Your breathing might change. You might
gasp or sigh. Let the experience be what it will be. If you daydream or drift
off into sleep, don’t worry . Just bring your attention back to your heart
center . Whether it speaks to you in sadness or fear, delight or pleasure, its
message is equally beneficial. Paying attention to your heart is the object of this meditation.You will notice as you contin ue this exercise that three things are
naturally coming together: meditation, purification, and attention. You are
learning to be with your heart in order to heed its spiritual meaning—this is
meditation. You are letting repressed material come up to be released—this
is purif ication. You are listening to your heart without judgment or
manipulation—this is attention. Because this process is like washing a shirt to reveal its whiten ess, don’t
be disturbed if strong negative emotions or even physical discomfort starts
to appear . Tell yourself that these sensations are leaving; just bid them to go
easily and comfortably . If voice s of fear, anger , or doubt start to speak, bid
them to leave as easily as they want to. (In the case of persisten t chest pain,
particularly if heart disease is present in your family , you should naturally
consult your physician.) ADVANCED  MEDIT ATION
After some days or weeks of practicing this meditation, you will know
whether you want to make it a permanent part of your daily routine. I
believe that putting attention on the heart is valuable as an addition to any
spiritual program; to live from the center of spirit is a consta nt goal for
anyone on the path. As you progress in the practice, you will begin to notice that sensations,
thoughts, memories, daydreams, and random physical manifes tations start
to decre ase. The heart center will slowly reveal itself as it really is: silence,
peace, a warm glow , or subtle light. Even if these glimpses are only
fleeting, you will find that things are starting to change for you outside
meditation. You will start to walk with a more buoyant step. At unexpected
moments you will feel a swellin g sensation in your chest; you may want to
take deep, satisfying breaths. Flashes of elation and well-being may sweep
over you at odd times. All these are signs that the contraction most people hold around their
heart center is releasing its grip. The heart center is meant to feel open and
relaxed. Before you can receive any profound spiritual insights, this
openness must exist. Contract ion, fear, tightness all keep spirit from
entering you. In truth, spirit doesn’ t enter , since it is always there. Butmaking contact with it is like being penetrated with light and insight; this is
what we call the flow of love. Love and spirit are forming a connection every time you meditate on the
heart, starting with the first time. Advanced meditation deepens this
experience and makes it more conscious. As you continue this practice, you
will find it easier and easier to go to your heart for counsel and wisdom, or
simply to feel that you are loved. You do not have to speak to your heart in
words; your heart doesn’ t have to speak to you in words. The language of
spirit comes to us as silent assurance, self-acceptance, patience, an
appreciation of simply being. As these qualities develop you are maturing
in your experience of the heart center . OceanofPDF .comIN OUR LIVES
“Who W ill Rescue Me?”
HER NAME WAS Nina. On the surface she presented herself as someone in
supreme control  of her life. She was an intelligent, gifted woman who had
independent financial means and used them in a socially conscious way. Privately she was intensely spiritual. I would regularly get late-night calls
when Nina could n’t wait to talk about some new discovery that had excited
her in her voraci ous reading of scriptures, masters, and “messag es” of every
sort. I knew Nina from earlier days in Boston when she sat on our hospital
board, and I had attended her latest wedding early this year . It took place on a mountainside in Oregon facing a spectacular Pacific
sunset. The vows exchanged between the bride and groom were
unconventional; in addition to elements drawn from the familiar Christian
service, the vows contained a Buddhist prayer and New Age verses about
soul mates finding each other across the universe. The joy in the air could
be felt like a warm, nourishing rain from the twilit skies. For Nina  this ceremony marked a huge personal milestone. “I’m going to
do it right this time,” she had declared. At forty-five Nina had already been
married and raised two grown children. Her divorce had been the result of
outgrowing her old self-image,  which was much more conventional than
spiritual. “I lived the way my mother taught me—don’ t think about
yourself, make your husband and children happy . If your love is selfless
enough, things will take care of themselves,” she said. But after ninete en years Nina didn’ t feel taken care of. Her love had
supported other people but not herself. She decided to find self-
improvement on her own. Therapy , meditation retreats, and women’ s
groups quickly followed. When  her husband resisted these changes, Nina
felt fearful but determined. The door to self-exploration was open, and shewanted her relationships to mirror the new person she was trying to
become. She explained, “If my first husba nd insisted on keeping me in a box that I
didn’ t want to be in, then he wasn’ t the person who loved me the most. It
had taken me a long time, but that was what I wanted out of marriage, to be
with a person who could accept me and allow me to grow . That’ s my idea
of someone who loves me the most.” Nina felt she had found such a mate in
Gregory; after a whirlwind romance that began through having the same
therapist in Los Angeles, Nina rushed into marriage a few months after her
divorce. Ten months later I saw her at a reception and asked, “How’ s Gregory?”
Nina’ s eyes grew vague. “Oh, we’re having problems. We both thought it
might be good to have some time apart. I don’t know—things happened.”
Her voice drifted off; she looked  exhausted. I hardly recognized the woman
who had placed such high hopes on her marriage. Nina later confided that although Gregory wasn’ t dominant or demanding
like her first husband, she found herself getting angry at him and distrusting
his motives in marrying her; they were both spiritual, but the soul love she
had expected wasn’ t there. One thing Nina said was extremely telling: “Do
you want to know something? Every morning when I wake up, I repeat the
same question to myself: ‘Who will rescue me?’”
“Who do you think will?” I asked. She shrugged. “Maybe nobody , I don’ t know .”
I knew Nina well enough to be sure that she doesn’ t see herself as merely
a victim or a damsel in distress. There was a deeper reason why this
question was coming up. Nina was expressing the fundamental, haunting
fear of aloneness . “Who will rescue me?” means, “Am I going to survive on
my own?” This fear bespeaks our tremendous need for security , a need so
dominant that it often blocks the insight, courage, and freedom we really
need but don’ t know how to find. When we had time alone I laid this out for Nina, telling her that I thought
the speed of her courtship and subsequent decision to marry Gregory said a
lot about her insecurity after her divorce. “When we set out on a spiritual path, we set out on a solitary journey, yet
pulling against this is all the old conditioning that tells us, particularly
women, that it isn’t safe to go it alone, that we can’t make it without outsidesupport. In other words, commitment to yourself collides with your belief in
commitment to a mate. Society  is changing, and independence for both
sexes is more accepted than before, yet that doesn’ t change the feeling of
aloneness that hits you when you break away from old conventions, old
models, old social standards.”
“Then I have to choose either marriage or being by myself?” Nina asked. “No,” I answere d, “that’ s just fear talking. Your love for Grego ry can be
the starting point for finding yourself; the two aren’ t incompatible.”
Spirituality begins with a vision, but reality doesn’ t fit that vision. The
path is what brings them toget her. Most people who want to experience
inner growth begin, as Nina did, by reading in the vast inspirational
literature. They become discont ented with the distance between their own
lives and the enlightened existen ce they discover in their readin g; they start
to make  a break. Inevitably there turn out to be people—like Nina’ s first
husband or parents or old friends—who don’t fit the spiritual  vision. Yet
after the break nothing seems to really change. The haunting insecurity and
loneliness, the sense of confusion and conflict, are still there. But instead of feeling let down by this “failure,” you need to realize that
all spirit ual work is done by yourself, with yourself, and for yourself. No
one “out there” can take responsibility . It is all right to be aware of a
distance between vision and reality , because that is what it feels like to be
on the path. If you had no gaps to close, you wouldn’ t need a path. We all step onto the path to love out of need, but at a certain point need
can be destruct ive, because it is born of lack and fear. Need must be
balanced with two other ingredients—willingness to be transformed and
support in that transformation. It isn’t easy to have all these requirements met, and it’s nearly impossible
if you don’t know of their exist ence. A highly motivated woman like Nina
would find it particularly difficult to expose her vulnerability , to express
need directly . Her willingness to change seemed genuine, since that was the
motivation behind her divorce,  but was this willingness really deep? In
choosing Gregor y, who had much experience of spiritual matters, she found
the opposite of her first husband, but perhaps Gregory saw too clearly into
her insecurities. Finally , support  depends upon being able to receive it when
it is offered, and it wasn’ t clear that Nina was entirely open to sharingherself with a man whom she had known for only a few months before they
began to live together . Need, willingness, and support. All of these are necessary if one is to step
onto the path to love. They serve as signals to spirit that you are ready to
depart from traditional ways of living, for the old modes can’t be converted
to new ones. I told Nina that there was a deeper meaning to her question “Who will
rescue me?” She was expressi ng an intuition that she was going to be
rescued. But not by a man—it was her own spirit that was summoning her
onto the path. I asked Nina to practice meditat ing on her heart, and this is what she said
she felt: gasps and moments of ragged breathing, occasional sobs followed
by deep , relaxe d sighs, twinges of chest pain, tightness in her neck and
abdomen, restless urges to stop meditating and jump out of her chair . When
asked what was happening mentally , she reported flashes of old memories,
bursts of sadness, fantasies, obsessive repetition of daily worries, and some
fleeting moments of silence. This is very typical of a perso n newly opening up to spirit— a lot of
purification was going on as the mind body system began to release its old
energies. Nina’ s transformation , like everything placed in the hands of
spirit, promised to be tremendously beautiful. For the time being, however ,
she was too caught up in her confusions to see this. At one point in our conversation, Nina was startled by a comment I
made. “If you don’ t mind me saying so, I like you this way ,” I said. “What? In a mess?” she rejoined. “First of all, I don’t think you’re in a mess. You’re in ferment, and there’ s
a big dif ference. Y our confusion has made you open.”
“You mean it’ s turned my life upside down,” she corrected. “And what’ s wrong with that? We can all be wounded, every one of us. The people who try to deny this have to live inside a shell of denial. That’ s
not what you want.”
She suddenly looked tired. “I just want to be happy .”
“That’ s what everyone wants, but you’re aiming much higher ,” I said. “You want to be real. And you’re willing to face what it takes to get there. That’ s how your spirit is expressing itself right now .”Her mood broke , and she gave me a wan smile. “Having a warm body
next to me would help.”
There’ s nothing  obviously “spiritual” about Nina’ s situation, but in fact
the path to love beckons most strongly when old behaviors, beliefs, and
approaches no longer work. Ferment, restlessness, and discontent always
mark the beginning of the path. Before we parted Nina and I embraced. “You don’t feel loved right now,”
I said, “and you doubt whether you are lovable. You feel instead that you
have failed or been let down. Allow these feelings to be what they are;
don’t try to run away from them. But know that the real issue lies
somewhere else—you are trapped in a definition of love that is far too
limited. Expand your definitio n, allow your conception of love to go
beyond your emotional needs, and your whole perspective will change. You
won’ t see failure and defeat. Far from it—you’ll see perfection. At every
moment, from the second you were conceived in the womb, your life has
been about love. Your existence is an expression of love, the only real
expression it can have. Everything else is an illusion.”
OceanofPDF .com3
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE
IN OUR CUL TURE  we are not taught to see falling in love as a spiritual event,
yet for centurie s that was the accepted interpretation. When the question
“Where does love come from?”  was asked, the universal answer was God. According to the New T estament,
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. The lives of saints of every religion have demonstrated love in its spiritual
dimension; at the same time the humblest person who fell in love also
realized he was treading on sacred ground. Over the centuries, particularly
in the West, the divine connection was lost, however , and romantic love
became a more earthly matter , more centered in the entrancing charms of
another individual (“How do I love thee, let me count the ways”). In spiritual terms falling in love is an opening, an opportunity to step into
the timeless and stay there, to learn the ways of spirit and bring them down
to earth. All openings are temp orary—this is not a limitation specific to
falling in love. The real question is, What should we do with the opening? The highest spiritual qualities— those of truth, faith, trust, and compassion
—grow from the tiniest seeds of daily experience. Their first sproutings are
exceedingly vulnerable, and there is no guarantee they will not wither and
die. How can we tend this fragile opening of the heart, nurture it until it
develops into more substantial stages of growth? To do that we must examine romance, the first stage in love’ s journey , as
part of a timel ess cycle that brings greater and greater knowledge of
spiritual reality The insights of this first stage are, naturally enough, those
relating to a new birth:Love knows that you exist and car es for your existence. Timeless spirit can touch you in this world of time. With a new birth of the heart, you will see a new world. Love is never old but r enews itself with every lover . Flesh and spirit can shar e in the same delights. All people ar e innocent in the light of love. When you fall in love these insights come to you like fresh water , yet
they are as ancient as the path to love itself. The sensation of romantic love
is so overwhelming that it is easy to neglect the value of these insights; they
are among the most joyous that anyone can experience here on earth. For
lovers inner growth begins in a state of rapture. There are four distinct phases of romance. Although not everyone can
expect to experi ence them exactly the same way, all four naturally emer ge
once your feelings for someone else go beyond friendship to passionate
attachment. The four phases are
Attraction
Infatuation
Courtship
Intimacy
Attraction begin s when one person picks out, through means usually totally
unknown and unconscious, another person to be smitten by. Infatuation, in
which the beloved becomes all-desirable and all-enveloping, soon follows. In the depths of infatuation the lover ’s fantasy life can become both wild
and extreme. If there are no insurmountable barriers, the phase of courtship
will arrive next. The beloved is wooed to create the same attraction the
lover so overwhelmingly feels. If the courtship is successful, intimacy follows. The underlying sexual
excitement that plays such a strong part in romance, and that at first is
restrained by the oudet of fantasy, is now allowed fulfillment. Through
intimacy the union of two people begins to be played out in the real world
rather than within an isolated psyche. Reality dawns as the lovers’ rosy
images get tested against a real person. For better or worse, there is anunmasking of fantasy , and the way is cleared for the next stage of love’ s
journey , relationship. These four phases of romance occur in a natural, linear sequen ce, but at
the same time they come full circle. For a time lover and beloved are
exempted from everyday reality; extraordinary states of emotion and
attraction place them on a privileged plane. Once fantasy is unmasked,
either the lovers will find thems elves fallen back to earth or they will have
learned from their experience and will be ready to integrate it into love’ s
further growth. Although it happens spontaneously , falling in love isn’t accidental—there
are no accidents in the spiritual life, only patterns we haven’ t yet
recognized. All love is based on the sear ch for spirit. This is the first major insight to be found in romantic love—it really isn’t
about two people who have fallen madly for each other; it is about two
people seeing spirit in each other . One expression of this idea comes from ancient India; here the mythic
king Y ajnavalkya is speaking about love to his queen:
Truly, it is not for the sake of the husband that the husband is dear, but for the sake of the
Self. And it is not for the sake of the wife that the wife is dear , but for the sake of the Self. And it is not for the sake of the sons that the sons are dear , but for the sake of the Self. Indeed, my beloved, it is the Self that should be seen, the Self that should be heard, the
Self that should be reflected upon, and the Self that should be known. This passage from the “great forest teaching” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad )
dates from thousands of years ago. If what it proclaims is true, then falling
in love is undeniably an act of the soul. Falling in love drives you to
passionate merging with your beloved, but the deeper passio n is for the
Self, the source of all love. THE SECRET OF A TTRACTION
Any creature capable of reproducing with another of its kind must feel
attraction, but humans are unique in that we can see meaning  in ourattraction. Hence there is a huge difference between falling in love
unconsciously , as if struck by a bolt of lightning, and consciously
embracing love’ s gift with full knowledge that this is what your soul craves,
what you live for , what you will put foremost in your life. In ancie nt India the ecstasy of love was called Ananda , or bliss
consciousness. The ancient seers held that humans are meant to partake of
this ananda at all times. As I noted before, one famous verse of the Vedas
declares of humans, “In bliss they were conceived, in bliss they live, to bliss
they will return.” Ananda is much more than pleasure, even the most
intense erotic pleasure. It is one-third of the formula for the spirit’ s true
nature, describe d by the Vedas as Sat Chit Ananda , or eternal bliss
consciousness. As we shall see, the path to love ends with the full realizatio n of this
simple phrase. Sat is eternal truth upholding everything in existence; when
sat is fully established, there is no evil or suffering because nothing is
separate from unity . Chit is the consciousness of that unity; it is the fullness
of peace that has no possibility  of being disturbed by fear. Ananda  is the
ultimate joy of being in this awareness; it is the unchanging bliss that all
glimpses of ecstasy aim to become. The path of love carries us to full
knowledge of all three aspects without doubts. But the one we taste most
often here on earth is the last—ananda—in the joy of falling in love. Romance is set apart fr om all other forms of love by the intensity of bliss. Two people who fall under each other ’s spell experience a revolution in
their deepest beings from the sudden discovery that bliss has dawned. Spiritual master s tell us that we were born in bliss, but this condition gets
obscured by the chaotic activity of everyday life. Below the chaos,
however , we are trying to find ananda again; all lesser joys are tiny drops,
while ananda is the ocean. The insights that apply to this phase grow from our yearning to find bliss:
Bliss is natural to life, but once we cover it over , we must sear ch for it in others. The pain of yearning is a mask for the ecstasy of bliss. Bliss is not a feeling but a state of being.In the state of bliss, everything is loved. Our hunger to return to bliss is one reason why falling in love is never
accidental. We all have the subconscious knowledge of what love can do to
the psyche. An isolated person, full of frustration and loneliness, is
suddenly transf ormed, made complete beyond the power of reason to
explain. In place of anxiousness  and doubt there is ecstasy . According to the
New T estament,
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear . This blissful sense of being in a place of peace and safety lasts through the
beginning stage s of romance, despite the emotional ups and downs that
inevitably follow . Yet anan da is often the last thing we think we will find, because before
we fall in love there is an anxious period of intense longing. This state is the
negative of romance, yet it is also its true beginning, for without separation
and yearning, there could be no attraction. To find bliss we have to begin
where bliss is not. In our society this is not a hard place to locate. THE ANXIOUS  SEARCH
Attraction depends upon findin g someone to love or having that someone
find you, and here the difficulties begin. If nothing is more exalted than
falling in love, then nothing seems to arouse more fearfulness. A constant,
anxious search for relationship seems to haunt our whole society . We are
inundated with images of roma ntic attraction, yet ironically the real thing
seems very elusive, and the more heavily our television and movies pile on
the seductive charm, the more tenuously people appear to understand what
love actually is. The sensation of falling in love is not hard to describe. It has been
compared to a thousand delights, from the sweetness of honey to the
fragrance of a rose. Its images are legion, and we are surround ed by them,
as if total immer sion will somehow resolve our underlying insecurity . When
romance actual ly dawns, however , it is more intoxicating than any
packaged image , because romance distills love and desire, eager longingand tender suffering, the joy of a single moment’ s touch and the agony of a
single moment’ s separation. All this we know , yet knowledge has done little to dispel the anxious
feeling that love is never going to arrive, that we are not quite right in some
way and therefore do not deserve this astonishing gift called falling in love. As most of us go about it, our search for love is driven by two potent
psychological forces: a fantasy of ideal romance and a fear that we will
miss out and never be loved at all. Both these drives are self-defeating,
although in different ways. If you carry around an idealized fantasy of what
love should be like, you will miss the real thing when it crosses your path. Real love begin s with everyday interactions that hold the seed of promise,
not with full-blown ecstasy . The seed is easy to overlook, and nothing
blinds us to it more than fixed mental images. In much  the same way, if you go around in a state of anxiety about
whether someone will pick you out to love, you will never make yourself
attractive to anyone, for nothing kills romance quicker than fear . To strive to
be attractive is just another form of desperation, which others see no matter
how hard you struggle to disguise it. So strong is our social conditioning,
however , that billions more dollars are spent on cosmetics, fashion, and
plastic surgery than on psychotherapy , for example, despite the fact that
working on their neuroses would make most people much more attractive
than a svelte figure or designer clothes. Despite their self-defeating nature, these two motivations—fan tasy and
fear—are what most of us fall back on when we search for love. Prompted
by them , men and women approach romance with behaviors that can never
bring about what they hope to achieve. These tactics all grow out of
listening to an inner voice that obsesses about love and directs our search
even though the voice itself is quite loveless. Most of these futile behaviors
will sound extremely familiar:
We constantly compare ourselves with an ideal that we can never live
up to. The loveless inner voice drives us by saying, “Y ou aren’ t good
enough—thin enough, pretty enough, happy enough, secure enough.”
We look for approval in others. This behavior basically projects our
inner dissatisfaction with ourselves in the hope that some outside
authority will lift it from our souls. Here the loveless inner voice issaying, “Don’ t make a move until the right person comes along.” (The
right person in this case is some fairy-tale character who will tap the
ugly duckling and turn it into a swan.) Being an impossible fiction,
that right person never arrives. We assume that falling in love is totally magical, a stroke from the blue
that will come at random, usually when least expected. Many people
wait passively for this magic to appear . Although masked as hope, this
passivity is really a form of hopelessness, for the inner loveless voice
is saying, “There’ s nothing you can do but wait to see if someone loves
you.” The underlying belief here is that we cannot possibly deserve
love—not the passionate, fulfilling love of our dreams. The hope that
someone will reach out to us and bestow love is a surrender of our
ability to create our own lives. Finally , we rely on love to remove the obstacles that keep it away . All
sorts of unloving behaviors are allowed to persist with the attitude that
we will become af fectionate, open, trusting, and intimate only by a
touch of love’ s magic wand. The inner loveless voice keeps us in total
inertia by saying, “It doesn’ t matter how you treat all these people. After all, they don’ t love you, and when the ideal person comes along,
these people will matter even less.” The underlying belief in this case
is that we can pick and choose whom to love, leaving the rejected in a
limbo of indif ference. Can we find another way to approach romance, without fantasy and fear,
without listening to the fearful voice inside ourselves that finds a way to
keep love at a distance? “TO LOVE, BE LOVABLE”
To begin with, we can’t keep confining romance to an emotional state; we
must redefine it as a surrender to the mystery of our own spirit—sat chit
ananda—for beneath the turbulence of emotion that is what romance is. It is
a state in which your primary relationship is not with your beloved but with
your Self. Romance therefore begins when you can show your soul to
another person. The secret to being attractive, if one consults the past record of human
experience, is remarkably simpl e. It is summarized in an aphorism from theLatin poet Ovid, who said, “To love, be lovable.” A lovable person is
someone who is natural, easy with himself or herself, radiating the simple,
unaffected humanity that makes anyone truly attractive. Sometimes, however, the simplest solutions are the most difficult to
achieve. People find themselve s caught up in the anxious search for love
precisely because they don’t feel lovable. The very condition that would
make for romance is absent. It is sad to say, but many of us have never felt
lovable, even in childhood, when we had the fewest defenses against love
and therefore could approach it with the most spontaneous innocence. A
child who does not easily ask for affection and attention, who does not
blossom when these are suppl ied, or who lives with her or his appeals
unanswered, has been deprived of the very essence of childhoo d. Even for
those of us who were loved adequately as children and therefore are in
touch with our lovableness, bringing it forth is incredibly difficult in the
current social climate. Being lovable isn’t a superficial quality; it is a quality of spirit . Ananda
cannot be destro yed, only covered over. In the end, if you can see yourself
as spirit, it won’ t matter what conditioning has occurred in the past, whether
you were fortun ate enough to be raised with loving values or so unfortunate
that you were discouraged and made to feel ugly and worthless. Remember ,
in our inmost being, we are all completely lovable because spirit is love. Beyond what anyone can make you think or feel about yourself, your
unconditioned spirit stands, shining with a love nothing can tarnish. If being lovable really is the secret to attraction, then there is no need for
anxious searchi ng, because your own being, which can never be lost,
doesn’ t have to be found. The whole futile process of making yourself
attractive to others, of constantly waiting for someone else’s response, of
desperately comparing yourself with an ideal image can come to an end. The only requirement is a shift in perception, for those who cannot find
love perceive themselves as not being lovable. This is not true, but they
make it seem true by linking their perception to a powerful system of
beliefs. What cr eates r omance is the ability to see yourself as lovable.This shift in perception happen s not by changing who you are but by
seeing who you are and then shining it forth. If you were able to exhibit the
full grandeur of your being, your whole life would be a romance, one long
love story dedic ated to ecstasy and joy. Rumi puts it elegantly when he
declares,
By God, when you see your beauty
You’ll be the idol of yourself. Nothing is more beautiful than naturalness. It alone contains the mystery
and allure that spark romance. Trying to be cosmetically attractive is beside
the point, for we are talking here about authenticity . We all covet images of intensely desirable people, generally actors and
models who make their living by appearing to be desirable . In reality ,
however , they are likely to be extremely insecure about their desirability ,
since their value is subject to the whims of a public they have  never met. Aspiring to these images is aspiring to be something that you are not. The farther you are from the desired image, the harder you must try to
suppress who you really are. The tendency is to make yourse lf more and
more inauthentic , until, if you “succeed” in becoming as desira ble as your
image, you will have thrown away what is most desirable in yourself—your
unique, multifaceted being. This being doesn’ t live up to any single image,
ugly or beautiful, desirable or undesirable, because it expresses the shifting,
changing light of life. This light is nothing if not ambiguous. Your being
contains shadows and hints of meaning; it is mysterious to the core. To be authentic, you have to be everything that you are, omitting nothing. Within everyone there is light and shadow , good and evil, love and hate. The play of these opposites is what constantly moves life forward; the river
of life expresses itself in all its changes from one opposite to another. If you
can truly embrace these opposites within yourself, you will be authentic,
and as your self-acceptance expa nds until there is nothing to be ashamed of,
nothing to hide, your life will take on the generosity and warmth  that marks
every great lover . Being desirable means being comfortable with your own ambiguity .The ultimate ambiguity that each of us expresses is not that we can be
both good and bad, loving and unloving, but that we are spirit and flesh at
the same time. Nothing could be more ambiguous than this, or more
alluring. OceanofPDF .comLOVING  PRACTICE
Accepting Ambiguity
MOST OF US waste our time trying to become more attractive, particularly by
concentrating on the most superficial level of attraction, the physical. Not
only is physical beauty temporary , which means that fixating on it will pay
decreasing dividends over time, its ideals are never met either . If you are imprisoned by phys ical images, you are certain deep down
inside that you will never be attractive enough. This certainty leads women
to obsessively improve their inevitable weak points through cosmetics and
clothing. Although men may trivialize the beauty issue as female vanity ,
their own huge expenditures on sports cars, designer golf clubs , and power
suits is a produc t of the same insecurity . There is only one way to break out
of the self-defeating syndrome of “I’ll never look good enough.”
What will r eally make you attractive is not working on your weak points but embracing them. Embracing your weaknesses is the same as accepting yourself, and
nothing is more attractive than people who are comfortable with
themselves. Weak points do not have to be physical—any trait that you
think makes you unattractive falls into this category , including
psychological foibles, lack of money or success, low social standing, and
past actions you feel must be covered up. A person who exhibits both positive and negative qualities, strengths and
weaknesses, is not flawed but complete. At any given moment our behavior
has shadings; it is never a simple matter of black or white. These shadings
are what I call the appeal of ambiguity , which the following exercise helps
to develop. Approach it as a free-form activity , in keeping with the spirit of
ambiguity . FILLING IN THE  SHADOWSThe purpose of the following exercise is to take any quality you think you
possess and demonstrate that you also possess its opposite—and many
variations in between. You can perform this exercise in your head, but I
recommend pencil and paper . Write down or think about one particular thing that makes you
unattractive to others. It can be physical or psychological, whatever comes
first to mind. Let’ s say it’ s “I’m too selfish.”
Ask yourself if you also have the opposite trait, which is “I’m considerate
of other  people’ s needs.” Or, if this sounds too altruistic, try “I am not
selfish all the time.” (This has to be true, since no one can be selfish 100
percent of the time.) Having set this down, notice that being considerate
doesn’ t cancel out being selfish —it adds another shade to the picture. All
traits, good and bad, are relative. They can never completely describe who
you really are. Who you r eally ar e is not a collection of parts but a whole. Seeing yourself as whole is the first
step towar d seeing yourself as truly attractive. We are all temp ted to pick ourselves apart; it is this act of self-criticism,
not the pieces themselves, that makes you feel unattractive. Now move on to another undesirable quality; this time choose one that is
trivial enough that you are ashamed of admitting you even care about it—
for example, “My hips are too big.”
Now find the opposite of feeling ashamed of this trait, which can be
phrased in several ways, such as “Marilyn Monroe had big hips, and she
looked beautiful,” or “The last time I felt good about myself, I wasn’ t
thinking about my hips,” or “Someone who really loves me has assured me
that hips are not what matters to him.”
These responses  work on different levels. If your friends say they don’t
notice your hips, the issue may become not whether they are right but
whether you trust them. By seeing more ambiguity in the situation, you start
to grasp how complex and interconnected everything about you is. As you
break the grip of your conditioning, challenging your notion of a bad or
weak quality by considering its opposite, you free your mind  to see the
larger picture about yourself.You can turn this into a very creative exercise. Suppose you write down
“I bad-mouth my best friends,” a characteristic most of us would find
extremely unattractive. The offsetting quality might be “I really  do love my
best friends.” What is the relationship between these opposing traits? Perhaps you aren’ t comfortable telling your best friend when you are angry
or disappointed;  perhaps you lash out indiscriminately when you feel bad
about yourself; perhaps you want to be liked so much that you criticize your
friends to reinforce someone else’ s opinion. All these alternatives undersco re a single truth: you are only human. When you realiz e that the same is true of every person you’ve ever met (as
well as every media darling celebrated in our society), you will gain a sense
of comfort with both the most attractive people  and the least attractive. The
closer you come to seeing the appeal in all people, the closer you come to
God’ s perspective. Equality is the first step towar d acceptance, and acceptance is love. Try articulating a few more of your worst qualities, then move on to your
good ones. What is most attractive about you? “I have lovel y eyes.” “I
adore my children.” “I contribute time to helping cancer patients.”
Whatever you write down, see if the opposite isn’t also present. “My eyes
aren’ t very lovely when I’m jealous or mean.” “My children can make me
feel like running away .” “Sick people depress me so much, I don’t care if I
ever see another one.” Whatever you find in yourself that is nice or good, it
is inevitable that the contrary impulse also exists in you. No saint has ever
lived who did not blame and hate God in her darkest hour; no lover is so
smitten that he has not noticed the allure of another woman. The final stage of this exercise involves reading the following list:
It is all right to be good and bad. I like feeling more than one way about the people who are closest to me. Niceness can have an edge; snideness can be amusing. My best friend wouldn’ t be shocked to see me at my worst. My worst enemy would be pleasantly
surprised to see me at my best. Living up to my self-image is more exhausting than I let on. I’ll never be perfect. I can live with that. An angel is assigned to people who can laugh in the face of misery . It’s all right to find the villain sexy and the hero boring. I will trust the next person who tells me I look good. Letting the demons run can be very educational sometimes.The worst thing anyone says about me contains some truth—about them. You are likely to agree with some of these statements, and a few may seem
preposterous or beside the point. Be that as it may, the next time you sit
down to do this exercise, look over the list again. You may be surprised at
how much more acceptable it seems. Accepting your own ambiguity opens
you to the truth that life itself cannot help but be ambiguous, which is what
makes it so fascinating. OceanofPDF .comIN OUR LIVES
What’ s a Little Gray? WHEN SHE FOUND  a bottle of black hair dye in Alan’ s drawer , Jeanne passed
it off as a touch of middle-aged male vanity . She had always thought of her
husband as intensely attractive; in fact, given how much younger he was
than she—seven and a half years—Jeanne had been secretly flattered to
catch him. Looking in the mirror , she noticed more gray in her hair than he
ever had. Jeanne had found the bottle of dye late at night while looking for aspirin;
it was in a draw er she usually didn’ t open. The next morning  she asked
Alan about it as he was rushing  out the door. He looked surprised and said
the dye wasn’ t his. Jeanne didn’ t know whether to believe him or not. This feeling surprised
her, since she had always assumed that Alan could be trusted. Jeanne had
some time to kill before she went off to her own job—there was no baby to
attend to, since the couple, marr ied just three years, had decided not to have
children. She found herself cleaning out the clutter in the bathroom
cabinets. No more bottles. Jeanne brought up the incident over lunch with her best friend Cecille,
making light of it. Cecille looked worried. “I don’t know how to put this,
but if I were you, I’d be careful.”
“Of what?” Jeanne asked. “Hasn’ t it occurred to you that your husband might be having an af fair?”
Of course it hadn’t. Jeanne flushed scarlet; she didn’ t like having
suspicions plant ed in her head, but instead of saying so she asked Cecille to
elaborate. You can’t let yourse lf go, her best friend warned , not for a
minute. From the age of three little boys are taught that when they grow up
they will have power; they expe ct to run things from the time they are in the
sandbox. Little girls, by contra st, are trained to be worthy of men withpower , which means being beautiful enough to attract them. If she isn’t able
to hold a man, what power does a woman have? With considerable
earnestness Cecille advised Jeanne to buy a hundred-dollar facial and some
skimpy lingerie. Jeanne didn’ t know what to make of her friend’ s little speech— a mixture
of fascination, doubt, and dread warred inside her. But why would Alan lie
about something as trivial as a bottle of hair dye if he wasn’ t hiding
something else? Jeanne decided that buying a sheer nightgown wasn’ t the
worst idea in the world, and when she brought it home her husband looked
pleased. He had a lot of work to do that night, however , and the amorous
evening she had planned didn’ t pan out. Alan seemed less than involved
when they made love; he fell asleep without saying anything. Jeanne had
promised herself that she would never wheedle the words “I love you” from
Alan, but that night it was hard to keep the promise. Jeanne began to feel that Alan probably was having an affair, and why
shouldn’ t he? He was hardly aging at all, while she was falling apart. It’s
always faster with a woman, she mourned, and new nightgowns weren’ t
going to reverse  things. Nobody had ever commented to her face about the
age disparity between herself and Alan, but Jeanne had no doubt that their
friends, especially the women, all remarked about it behind her back. She
began to have fantasies about who the other woman was. The downward spiral would have been swift, but it came to a merciful
halt thanks to second-class mail. A week later an identical bottle of hair dye
arrived in the mailbox. Jeanne went back to the bathroom drawer—the first
bottle also said “free sample” on the back. She now vaguely remembered
having pitched it into the draw er without really looking at what it was. Jeanne didn’ t know whether to laugh or cry . As I see it, this incident isn’t really about how attractive a woman feels. It’s about how deserving she feels. We all attach self-worth  to outside
things.
The_Path_to_Love_by_Deepak_Chopra.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        “Happiness” is just as fluid
as love itself and equally elusive. Outward conditions have no predictable
effect on either. For example, people who have struggled out of poverty say
that they are happier, but once people are above the poverty line, adding
more money doesn’t increase happine ss. It often takes considerably more
expense to provide a new stimulus, and without stimulus most people can’t
be happy. In the long term, however, depending upon stimulus is a trap. Enough
stimulus of the right kind may create happiness, but the balance is
extremely precarious. Studies have shown that newborn babies, for
example, like to have pretty dangling things in their surroundings. A mobile
with ten shiny objects on it will cause a baby to gurgle and laugh when it’s
placed over the crib. However, if you take away eight of the dangles and
leave behind only two, the baby will cry in loud protest. This is probably the earliest experimental evidence we have that
happiness is vulnerable to loss. Certainly we all grow up coming to this
conclusion—deprive us of our money, our jobs, our relationships, and our
quotient of happiness drops dramatically. Likewise we don’t like to have
our stimulus be out of control. Babies have been sat in front of screens that
flash pretty pictures, which they can make come and go by pulling a string. Having this kind of control is very pleasing. But if the pictures come and go
at random, the same happiness doesn’ t result. Worse still, if the baby pulls
the string and nothing happens  on the screen, he will be very unhappy. Again, this is a lesson we all learn—random events in our lives, or people
who do not prove predictable, undermine our sense of control, leading to
unhappiness. What all this amounts to is that the word happiness  too often means
“pleasure response. ” All response depends upon stimulus, just as sexual
pleasure depend s upon being aroused and stimulated. This undeniable fact
leads countless people to panic when their source of pleasure vanishes. Those of us who bounce from one failed marriage to another exhibit in full-
blown form this craving for stimulus. But any desire to keep things smooth,
predictable, and comforting has the same shadow hanging over it. There can
be no sense of security in your existence when it depends upon outside
factors, for the unpredictable changes of reality can never be controlled. The solution is to find a source of happiness beyond pleasu re, since
pleasure seeking  can never be made independent of outside stimulus. As
long as love is pleasure, its end—a sad tapering off into indifference and
inertia—is predictable. Recently this argument has gained supp ort from an
unexpected quarter. Biochemi cal research has isolated certain brain
chemicals associated with pleasure, particularly the neurotransmitter
serotonin. A high level of serotonin is typical of someone who feels a sense
of well-being; insuf ficient levels of serotonin have long been correlated
with depression. Related studies have isolated the left frontal lobes of the
cortex as a site of increased activity whenever someone feels happy. The obvious conclusion is that stimulus to the brain is the same as
happiness. Unfortunately, this is not accurate, because stimulus wears out. Over time our responses weaken if the same stimulus keeps getting
repeated. The taste that was once so sweet grows stale and cloyi ng; the face
that once enchanted becomes ordinary; the most exciting vision becomes
just part of the scenery. It is all-important to found our happiness upon a basis that doesn’ t
change. Compared with pleasure, love is abstract. If you took away the
pleasant feelings  associated with it, most people would be hard-pressed to
define the experience of love. But love has a power to heal, to reveal divine
essence, to restore faith in one’s own Being, to bring harmony to all levels
of existence—an d all these effects lie far beyond feelings. They are tangible
results based on spirit. In our society the more tangible something is, the more likely we are to
have faith in it. Fortunately, for all that love is abstract, scienti fic research
confirms that it is as dramatic  and potent as medicine, both when it is
present and when it is withdrawn. Love aids recovery. Studies conducted in hospital cardiac units have
demonstrated that male patients who respond positively to the question “Do
you feel loved. ” are more likely to recover than those who do not, and the
correlation between recovery and this response is higher than that for any
other category, including previous physical status. In other words, an
unloved man in good physical condition afflicted with a mild heart attack
may recover more poorly than another man with a severe heart  attack who
feels loved. For residents of retirement homes, having a pet to love (or even
a plant to tend to every day) reduces disease and depression. Old people
perceive having an object of love as restoring their purpose in life. Love promotes growth. Very young children from abusive homes may
exhibit a condition of retarde d or severely stunted growth known as
psychosocial dwarfism. Besides being small and underweight for their age,
such children frequently manifest underdeveloped emotions and learning
skills. Rapid reversal of this condition can often occur, however, as soon as
a loving environment is provided. Love provides homeostatic balance. No one has definitively proven that
feeling loved lowers blood pressure or prevents cancer and heart disease,
although it is well documented that negative conditions associate d with lack
of love, such as chronic anger or depression, put people at much  higher risk
for all types of disease. One indication of love’ s ability to bring the body into balance was
provided by a study in which subjects were asked to watch a film about
Mother Teresa as she went about her work in India. In the film she
embraces children in terribly wasted conditions, usually children afflicted
with leprosy. Just the sight of this loving act raised certain chemical
indicators of enhanced immune responses. This dramatic effect occurred
even if the viewer did not agree with Mother Teresa’ s vocation—it was not,
in other words, a matter of subjectively feeling good. According to folk
wisdom, falling in love is the best way not to catch colds in the winter,
indicating that the immune benefits of love were recognized long before
medical research came along to validate them. Finally, a breakthrough study from Stanford on recovery from breast
cancer indicated that women who were in advanced stages of the disease
lived longer if they participated  in group therapy sessions once  a week, as
compared with those who received only normal courses of chemical andsurgical treatme nt. There were no intensive psychological techniques
applied here—the group shared their feelings and supported one another in
their struggle against cancer. These simple acts of love were provably
effective, yet the study undersco res how meager one hour of therapy a week
really is. Could love on a more intensive scale provide even more healing. The answer to this question does not await more medical study; it can be
verified by each of us in our own lives. Healing  is a broad term; being
connected to both whole  and holy, it can be define d spiritually as a return to
the state of unity. Love is not separate from anything in life; it is not divided
into mom ents of love or levels of love or amounts or absence of love. These
are our relative terms, our mere glimpses of a force that remain s intact and
whole. On the spiritual path, or sadhana, the experience of love brings
healing that is not directed to one disease or another but to the state of the
whole person; therefore each of us will experience its ef fects dif ferently. Because sadhana can sound very lofty and abstract, it’s easier for science
to look at people who are lonely, depressed, and sick than to investigate
subtler working s of the self. But if we look at the following features of
people who can live a love story, we see how far they have evolved beyond
the norm. They have learned to separate their actions fr om their belief that they ar e lovable. Since we all started out as child ren who were weaker and less powerful
than adults, it was only natural for us to try to act in such a way that we
wouldn’ t be hurt. Being hurt is usually a matter of power. The powerless are
in no position to offend or antagonize the powerful. This reality was
brought home to us on the playground a long time ago, and its holdover
habit is trying to be nice. Being nice, we expect niceness in return. By
placating someo ne who threatens us, we hope to ward off aggre ssion. In the
name of not being hurt we stay in a defensive posture. People who base their lives upon  love, though, have taught themselves to
separate this whole pattern of behavior from love. Love doesn’ t come from
placating potential threats. Bein g nice all the time won’ t cause others to
love you; when they are stated  in black and white this way, most of us
would agree with these assertions. Yet the imprint of the past is deep, andunconsciously we still act like powerless children. Learning to grow out of
this pattern is a common trait of people who live their own love stories. They can give on all levels. It has become a truism that to receive love we must give love. This
reciprocal action keeps the flow of love alive. Without it love would
stagnate. Learni ng to give runs contrary to some very deep conditioning
that we all carry around inside, however. We have all learned to hold on to a
good thing. Letting go of anything precious is hard. Loving people have
taught themselv es that holding on is possessiveness. Anyone who has ever
been trapped in a possessive relationship knows its smotherin g effect. It
isn’t love when another person cannot give you the space to live your own
life. Giving space isn’t simple. You must be willing to allow another person
their whole being. You must give permission for someone else’s ideas,
feelings, reactio ns, and will to be expressed freely. People who have taught
themselves to give on all levels have discovered a critical ingredient of
living their love stories. They don’ t expect anything in r eturn for being good. We all make a connection between love and goodness. Attraction is based
on the assumpti on that another person has something good to bring into
your life. Our definition of this goodness may be shallow or deep. Some
men will always  believe that a woman is good as long as she is beautiful
and compliant. Some women will overlook a dozen things about a man that
might spell disaster in a relationship as long as he is dependable and brings
in a good incom e. It takes inner growth to appreciate goodness  as a deeper
value. Ultimately people are good because of who they are; good ness is a
quality of being. Once we have made this discovery, we stop measuring
people by their achievements. We expect goodness as part of their essence,
and of ours. When this happens, we no longer expect a reward for doing
good. We no longer bestow love when people are good to us and withdraw
it when they are bad. Instead love becomes a constant in our lives. It just is. People who have reached this stage are in true possession of their love
stories. They don’ t judge or live in fear of judgment. Judgment is whatever tells you that there is something wrong with
yourself or someone else. Because we all have secrets, we all have some
tendency to live in fear of judgment. A voice inside warns us that other
people will judge our transgr essions as harshly as we do. This self-
condemnation has another face—to make ourselves feel safer from being
judged, we look for faults in others first. Loving people have taught
themselves the falseness of this process. You will never feel better about
yourself by making others look worse. Engaging in the habit of criticism
only postpones the day when your own secret judgments come to light. Bringing to light whatever you think is wrong about yourself  is the only
way to diffuse guilt and shame. In reality there is nothing wron g with you
or anyone else: this is what the voice of love truly says. Inner growth
consists of learning to hear this voice and heed it, a process essential to
living your own love story. They do not expect others to make them feel loved. Love is experienced in relation ship. Without someone to love you, the
feelings of love—the warmth in a mother ’s heart, the gladness of
friendship, the excitement of intimacy—have no stimulus. That is why the
commonest image for being unloved is being alone. When you are alone,
there seems to be no relationship. People who find themselves alone rarely
feel any incentive to explore love. They await contact with another person
or run out to seek it. Thus we become dependent on other people to make us
feel totally and permanently loved. This expectation  will, however, always be defeated, and although we
blame those who failed to respo nd to us, who responded but then left, who
stayed but then changed their minds, none of them is finally the cause of
our problem. The cause is our inability to develop an unshakeable
relationship with ourselves. The Self is the source of love. Peop le who live
their own love stories have learned this lesson above all. IN THE  ABSENCE OF  LOVE
The absence of love is as devas tating as its presence is beneficial. We will
have to assume,  unfortunately, that most people are not living a love story
right now. Even those who say they are the most deeply in love may be
deluding themselves, at least in part. The word love applies to so many
situations—from intimate affection to abuse, from dependency to control,
from lust to ecstasy—that asking if someone feels loved is unreliable. Lack of love is less elusive, however, so we can more reliably  describe
what that state feels like. The following are common features of people who
are not living their love stories. They feel numb and traumatized. Once it has grown to fullness, a love based on spirit has no fear of being
wounded. Imperfect forms of love are much more vulnerable. Almost
everyone has asked for love and received rejection instead. We have taken
our frail self-images into situat ions where they got battered, where hope
died and our worst imaginings came true. The effect of rejection, failure,
humiliation, and other traumas is to numb one’s feelings. Love requires
sensitivity. It must have openn ess. Whatever has numbed you makes it
much harder for you to feel love. Therefore people who are numb at the
emotional level cannot live their love stories. They feel valued for what they do, not for who they ar e. To value yourself is to love yourself. It is really from here that your love
for other s comes. Value is like currency you can draw from a bank account
—if you value yourself a great deal, you actually have something to give to
others. If you do not value yourself, you have nothing to draw upon. So
what is there to value. If you look at yourself and ask, “What would
another person love about me. ”  the only enduring answer is “Myself. ” The
only people who can give this answer put a value on who they are, not what
they do. Everyone’ s list of accomplishments is finite. Our good deeds end
somewhere. The things about us that society approves of are often
outweighed in our own minds by blemishes best kept out of other people’ ssight. If we value ourselves by what we do—by accomplishments, good
deeds, social acceptance—the scope of our love gets limited. People who
value themselves almost entirely for what they do will not have love stories
of their own. They live on distorted beliefs. The love you have in your life can only be as valuable as you perceive it
to be, and the key to perception is belief. There are no neutral  encounters. We always see others in the light of our beliefs; we always feel seen in the
light of their beliefs. I’ve known people who walk into a room full of
strangers and believe that a wave of hostility greets them. Other people
walk into a room and immediately feel welcome. The differenc e is entirely
one of perceptio n, since this judgment comes before any external evidence. I would say that the first people  believe they are not wanted in this world
while the other group believe they are. Any belief that attacks our ability to value ourselves is a distortion. In
essence the Self is of highest value; it deserves love without exception. People who cannot live their love stories harbor distorted beliefs that
disguise the reality of their infinite worth. They have failed at love and ar e too tir ed to try again. When you are faced with a losing enterprise, it’s only natural to give up
eventually. When we were younger all of us could pursue love with a
certain amount of hope and optim ism, backed by energy, and it takes energy
to carry out any passion. For some people the energy has run out. They say
they have no time for love. They feel they do not need it in their lives. What
they are actually experiencing is lack of energy, the loss of enthusiasm that
follows repeated failure. But energy is a self-renewing commodity. Like water from a spring, its
flow isn’t diminished by how much you take away. People who cannot live
their love stories have not found a way to renew their energy, to tap into
their source of passion. These various factors don’ t all apply to any one person. Some of them apply
in some  degree to all of us. But we can certainly perceive some commonunderlying causes at work—ignorance of the path to love, how to enter it,
how to walk it, even what it is. Our materialistic worldview has reduced love to a haphazard flow of
hormones coupl ed to psychological fantasies. The spiritual truth is very
different. Once the walls fall down we discover that our real problem is that
there is too much  love around us, not too little. Love is eternal and
unbounded; it is only we who take tiny sips from its infinite ocean. Rumi
states this most natural and yet most secret of mysteries  with utter
simplicity:
I look in your inmost self and see the universe not yet created. The mystery of love hasn’ t changed across the centuries, we have only
fallen short of it. Whenever a person’ s heart dries up, it may appear that
love has dried up. In fact, that person has built a boundary to shut out a
force that is always at flood tide. To exist within love’ s full, unbridled
power is terrify ing unless you have walked the path to love in complete
devotion to the very end. OceanofPDF. comLOVING  PRACTICE
Purifying the Heart
YOU ARE NOT going to follow  a path that doesn’ t feel natural for very long,
nor will it bring the growth you need, however well intentioned you are. There is a center in the body where love and spirit are joined, and that
center is the heart. It is your heart that aches or swells with love, that feels
compassion and trust, that seem s empty or full. Within the heart is a subtler
center that experiences spirit, but spirit is not felt as an emotion or physical
sensation. How, then, can you contact it. According to spiritual masters,
spirit is experienced first as the absence of what is not spirit. In India this is described as Netti, netti,  which means, “Not this, not that. ”
Spirit is not caused; it is not bound by time and space; it is not a sensation
that can be seen, touched, heard, tasted, or smelled. This may seem like a
baffling way to define somethin g, but imagine that you had never seen the
color white, that the whole world consisted of red, green, blue, and all the
other hues. Then one day a master came to you with a black shirt and said,
“If you wash this enough times, you will see that it is white. ” If you ask to
see white before you wash the shirt, what you ask is impossible. Black is
the sum of all colors, and only if you wash them all away will white appear. In the same way your present life is one of sensations, not just colors but
all the stimulus  that comes through the senses. Some of these sensations
may be very pleasurable, but none of them is adequate to tell you what
spirit is. Spirit lies beneath the layers of sensations. To experience it you
must go to the heart and medi tate upon it until everything that obscures
spirit is cleansed. The purpose of the following exercise is to give you the experience of
making your heart pure enough to witness spirit. Pure here doesn’ t mean
good and virtuous; it means free from impurity, with no value judgmentintended. In the words of William Blake, we are cleansing the doors of
perception. MEDIT ATING ON THE  HEART
Sit comfortably in a quiet room by yourself, choosing a time when you feel
settled and unhu rried. Early morning is best, since your mind will be alert
and fresh; try to avoid late evening, when your awareness is preparing for
sleep. Close your eyes and focus your attention on the middle of your chest,
where your heart is. (The fact that the physical heart is off to the left is
irrelevant here—the spiritual heart center lies directly behind your
breastbone. ) Be awar e of your heart as a space. Don’ t try to hear your heartbeat or any
other sound you think a heart makes as it pumps blood. The heart center
you want to find is a point of awareness where feelings enter. In its pure
form it is empty, pervaded by weightlessness, absence of care, peace, and a
subtle light. This light may appear as white, gold, pale pink, or blue. But
again, don’t strain to find a light of any kind. You are not trying to sense the
purity of the heart center right now; all you need to feel is whatever is there. Letting your attention rest easily there, breathe gently and sense your
breath going into your heart center. Here you may want to visualize a soft
pastel light, or a coolness pervading the chest. Let the breath go in and out,
and as it does, ask your heart to speak to you. Don’ t phrase this as an order;
just have the faint intention that you want your heart to express itself. For the next five or ten minutes, sit and listen. Your heart will begin to
release emotions, memories, wishes, fears, and dreams long stored there,
and as it does, you will find yourself paying attention. You may almost immediately get a flash of strong emotion, positive or
negative, or a forgotten memory. Your breathing might change. You might
gasp or sigh. Let the experience be what it will be. If you daydream or drift
off into sleep, don’t worry. Just bring your attention back to your heart
center. Whether it speaks to you in sadness or fear, delight or pleasure, its
message is equally beneficial. Paying attention to your heart is the object of this meditation. You will notice as you contin ue this exercise that three things are
naturally coming together: meditation, purification, and attention. You are
learning to be with your heart in order to heed its spiritual meaning—this is
meditation. You are letting repressed material come up to be released—this
is purif ication. You are listening to your heart without judgment or
manipulation—this is attention. Because this process is like washing a shirt to reveal its whiten ess, don’t
be disturbed if strong negative emotions or even physical discomfort starts
to appear. Tell yourself that these sensations are leaving; just bid them to go
easily and comfortably. If voice s of fear, anger, or doubt start to speak, bid
them to leave as easily as they want to. (In the case of persisten t chest pain,
particularly if heart disease is present in your family, you should naturally
consult your physician. ) ADVANCED  MEDIT ATION
After some days or weeks of practicing this meditation, you will know
whether you want to make it a permanent part of your daily routine. I
believe that putting attention on the heart is valuable as an addition to any
spiritual program; to live from the center of spirit is a consta nt goal for
anyone on the path. As you progress in the practice, you will begin to notice that sensations,
thoughts, memories, daydreams, and random physical manifes tations start
to decre ase. The heart center will slowly reveal itself as it really is: silence,
peace, a warm glow, or subtle light. Even if these glimpses are only
fleeting, you will find that things are starting to change for you outside
meditation. You will start to walk with a more buoyant step. At unexpected
moments you will feel a swellin g sensation in your chest; you may want to
take deep, satisfying breaths. Flashes of elation and well-being may sweep
over you at odd times. All these are signs that the contraction most people hold around their
heart center is releasing its grip. The heart center is meant to feel open and
relaxed. Before you can receive any profound spiritual insights, this
openness must exist. Contract ion, fear, tightness all keep spirit from
entering you. In truth, spirit doesn’ t enter, since it is always there. Butmaking contact with it is like being penetrated with light and insight; this is
what we call the flow of love. Love and spirit are forming a connection every time you meditate on the
heart, starting with the first time. Advanced meditation deepens this
experience and makes it more conscious. As you continue this practice, you
will find it easier and easier to go to your heart for counsel and wisdom, or
simply to feel that you are loved. You do not have to speak to your heart in
words; your heart doesn’ t have to speak to you in words. The language of
spirit comes to us as silent assurance, self-acceptance, patience, an
appreciation of simply being. As these qualities develop you are maturing
in your experience of the heart center.
Outward conditions have no predictable effect on happiness.
What is the relationship between happiness and external conditions?
The key is to find a source of happiness beyond pleasure, as pleasure seeking can never be made independent of outside stimulus.
What is the key to making love last?
The purpose is to help you see yourself as lovable and break free from the cycle of seeking external validation.
What is the purpose of the meditation exercise?
According to spiritual teachings, love is eternal and unbounded, and it is not about external validation.
What is the true nature of love, according to spiritual teachings?
The main obstacle is the tendency to seek validation and approval from others, which is a form of self-sabotage.
What is the main obstacle to experiencing love?