Unlearning the second lesson is how you stop having to control other
people, for it was in early childhood, almost exactly at the time you were
first left to your own devices, that you started feeling the urge to establish
control. Despite its appearance of normality , then, control is based on a mistake,
and that mistake is rooted in separation. To be able to relinquish control the
mistake has to be corrected. Learning that the world is safe doesn’ t happen
overnight. The world as a whole  is far too overwhelming, given all the fear
and distrust each of us has inherited. But the love you have for one person
is a safe zone and thus a good place to begin. The beloved is like a harbor in
which your heart takes refuge. In an indif ferent and hostile universe, there is
at least one person who understands, sympathizes, and provides for you. Somehow , miraculously , this one person is enough to cancel out the hostile
world. Every day brings many opportunities to replace controlling with
allowing. If you can extend allow ing to your beloved, the effect is to release
you from attachment—both of you are spiritually served by the same act. The key stances in letting go of control are all forms of allowing:
acceptance, tolerance, nonresistance. Needing to control life, either yours or
anyone else’s, is based on spiritual desperation. Look at your interactionwith your beloved and honestly  confront any fear-based behavior you are
exhibiting. When control is ready to loosen its grip, a definite relaxation
takes place. The facade of the demanding, critical partner who is so quick to
blame begins to melt. You start to feel love once more, not as an idea but as
a sensation in your heart. And at last you find it possible to allow . When this stage  is reached with the beloved, the healing process begins
to branc h out into other aspects of your life. The following changes will
often be in evidence:
You stop measuring people by whether they live up to your
expectations. Y ou begin to resist the ur ge to correct their mistakes and
give unwanted advice. You lessen your habit of taking care of others without really caring for
them. You become tired of trying to keep track of every detail of your life
and bored with people who have always given in to you. You begin to listen to objections and disagreements instead of using
them to trigger your own opinion. Unexpected emotions come to the surface. This usually arouses self-
criticism because you can’ t control your feelings anymore as you once
did. At another level, however , this eruption of emotions comes as a
great relief. Your impatience begins to lessen. Y ou stop living according to the
clock. You take stress seriously , no longer believing that you thrive on it. You begin to listen to your body , which has all along been giving you
signals of tightness, fatigue, contraction, and overstimulation. Your mind gives up calculating every move in advance. Some room is
made for spontaneity . You stop holding grudges and remembering slights. Resentment begins
to be replaced by tolerance. You quit setting external goals for yourself and believing that
achieving these goals faster , better , and more tirelessly makes you a
good person. The most loving  thing you can do for your beloved, if he or she is dealing
with control, is to encourage these shifts, but this is something no one whois still in a state of need can do. In the mind of a needy person, any loss of
attachment equals loss of love. In fact, however , exactly the opposite is true. The craving to possess and cling is what smothers love. Attachment is that
condition in which your needs overshadow your spirit. So how can you love
without need? Know the difference between ego and spirit. Ego is needy , but spirit is
not. It exists to give and not to take. It wants to bring joy; it has no hunger
for approval. It does not crave the obedience or agreement of another
person and lives  beyond all demands. When you see yourself in this way,
your relationship will become sacred. Without nonattachment this can’t
happen. The choice between the mundane and the sacred has always been
with us, and it will always be true that to choose the sacred is to choose
love. OceanofPDF .comLOVING  PRACTICE
Healing Our Inner Needs
ALL OF US bring needs to relationships, but they don’t have to turn into
attachment. Attachment is created when needs aren’ t understood and faced. Needs you place  on your partner  never really get resolved; there fore even if
your partner bends over backward to satisfy every need you have, the final
outcome will be the same as if none of your needs was met: you will be left
to confront why you have such needs. This “why” is answered by
examining how you feel about being in separation, for the underlying
anxiety of separation from God, spirit, and Self is what created need in the
first place. When you heal separation, your needs will not r eflect fear and insecurity . Relationship is meant to heal separation; therefore the proper attitude
toward need is that you want to heal. However , in many relatio nships there
is a confusing mismatch betwee n what two people actually consider most
important. How can neediness be healed when there is constant jockeying
over what two people want? We have to make a distinction between
external needs, like food and shelter , and inner needs. Inner needs come
down to what makes you feel secure, as tested in this questionnaire. PART ONE
Look at the following statements—preferably with your beloved—and
check the conclusion, right or left, that applies best to you. Answer each
item even if both alternatives seem remote or improbable. 1. I would be mortified if my friends found out that I
lost all my money . or     had plastic sur gery.2. I would rather
be pr omoted at work . or     be at my ideal weight . 3. I’d be a lot better of f if I spent more time
getting back into shape . or     improving my diet . 4. I would rather be
respected . or     accepted . 5. I’d keep it a secret if I was
looking for a new job . or     planning to have an affair . 6. I’d like to have my children look back on me as a parent who taught
them
right fr om wr ong. or     not to hurt others . 7. In a flood I’d like to be the one who
rescued the victims . or     shelter ed the homeless . 8. My problems would be solved if only I had
more money . or     more self-understanding . 9. You’re my friend if you
back me up . or     listen to me . 10. If I failed a test at school, it meant that I was
not pr epared. or     not in the mood. 11. The worst thing my enemies could say about me is that I’m
weak and incompetent . or     selfish and uncaring. 12. In my nightmare the whole world thinks I’m
stupid. or     ugly. 13. I’d rather be
productive . or     happy .Now calculate two totals—all your points from the left column and all those
from the right. In evaluating your score, we will consider the left-hand
column male and the right-hand female. If you ar e a woman  your score from the right-hand column will tend to be
more than that from the left-hand. If you ar e a man  your score from  the left-
hand column will tend to be more than that from the right -hand. This
difference alone can cause conflict in a relationship. We were all shaped by
society to expect security from dif ferent sources. Men tend to find security in power , career , skills, information,
intelligence, winning, and physical strength. Women tend to find security in
family , a strong mate, sharing, communication, their own emotions, and
being loved. If you have more than five answers from the column that is not your
gender , you are likely to be able to define your needs without reference to
society’ s standa rds. If you have  more than eight answers from  the right-
hand column, your feminine nature is quite strong. Man or woman, you put
a great emphasis on your emotions and sense of well-being. Self-
understanding is one of your highest values; you put your own fulfillment
ahead of external motivations. Now compare your score with your partner ’s. There is no right or wrong
match here, but your scores say a lot about the dynamic of your
relationship. A marriage in whic h the woman scores high on the male while
the man scores high on the female often implies an exchange of social
models. The woman is driven by success and the man by emotion. If both
partners score high on the same column, they share a similar view of the
world, but the balancing half may be lacking. A marriage that is very male
or very female can be a happy one, but in times of stress the predominance
of one worldview may make it difficult to find the coping skills to pull
through. For example, if both partners are so emotional that no family
decisions can be made without much drama and little concession to reason,
strains will develop. Finally , if the man is very male (ten or more) and the wom an very
female, this may indicate a conflict of values and therefore a conflict of
needs. A strongly masculine man mated to a strongly feminin e woman is
held up as a social ideal, but in reality , if the man is motivated by power and
status while the woman is motivated by emotions and communication,equality is difficult to sustain in the marriage. You are on two different
paths, not a shared path. One way or another the weaker partner will wind
up giving in to the stronger , or one of you will repress your true needs in
hopes that you will find happiness through sacrifice. This rarely if ever works. Giving in to another person’ s needs is actually
a form of attachment. Having thrown away your own desires, you will be
forced to cling to the other person to bring you satisfaction. This is a form
of separation from your true identity, and in the end you cannot hope to use
separation of any kind to reach unity . Now that I have  said all this, what can you do? You need to recognize
imbalances where they exist and take responsibility for them. A man who
has many female needs shouldn’ t rely on his wife to make all the decisions,
while a woman with strong male needs shouldn’ t ignore her partner ’s
emotions. The object is to find the balance of male and female within you
rather than take the easy road, which is to attach yourself to someone else’s
strengths as a compensation for your weaknesses. We will now examine
how this dynamic can change. PART TWO
Satisfying inner  need has to go deeper than what society or your ego tells
you will suf fice. T o be in separation is by definition to be insecure. Inner need must be faced befor e you can feel secur e.
To be aware of inner need is healthy , to deny inner need is unhealthy . Everyone brings needs to a relationship, and admitting this makes it more
honest. Nevertheless, inner need can become so great that it distorts your
view of yourself. A person dominated by neediness will tend to have
recurring thoughts like these:
I’m not smart enough. I’m not beautiful enough. I’m not desirable enough. I’m not lovable enough. I never do the right thing. Something’ s wrong with me. I’m not as good as X.Whatever is happening to trigger these beliefs, and no matter how
convinced you are by them, they are totally false. In the light of spirit you
are wholeness and therefore lack for nothing. You are love and therefore
must be lovable and desirable. You are unique and therefore cannot be
compared with anyone else. In the eyes of spirit you ar e always enough. A relationship should constantl y reinforce the belief that both partners
are enough, that fulfillment lies within by its very nature. “I am” is the
primal feeling of existence, and within “I am” there is total peace and
security . More often than not, however , relationships are unbalanced. One
partner feels much more insecur ity, much more inner need. This imbalance
is tested in the following questionnaire:
Answering as honestly as you can, which of the following statements
apply to you? In my marriage, I’m the one who
1. Feels more unhappy if left alone at night. 2. Has a harder time making decisions. 3. Asks for help more often. 4. Has more fears about not being loved. 5. Would feel more guilty if I had an af fair. 6. Goes along with plans after they are made. 7. Hates to ar gue. 8. Asks “How are you feeling?” more often. 9. Keeps the family together . 10. Wishes that everybody would come to the dinner table instead of
watching TV . 11. Can’ t help but show how I feel. 12. Writes all the Christmas cards. 13. Tries harder not to hurt other people’ s feelings. 14. Would rather cooperate than raise disagreements. 15. Would believe a doctor ’s opinion. 16. Has a harder time standing up for myself. 17. Suffers in silence.18. Needs a good provider . 19. Wishes everybody would just be nice at Thanksgiving. 20. Won’t call a friend on the carpet, no matter what. 21. Has a harder time asking for a raise. 22. Is more willing to do volunteer work. Give yourself one point for each answer that applies to you. Now tally your
score. 15–22 points. You have a deep streak of dependency and seek your security
through a stronger mate. You would have a hard time agreeing with the
statement “I am enough,” because you identify with family so much. Claiming power  in your relationship frightens you—you equate doing this
with losing love. Y ou are also more likely to be a woman than a man. 8–14 points. You are comf ortable giving away some power in your
relationship in order to feel secure. The statement “I am enough” sounds
possible to believe but perhaps not that important. Meeting your inner needs
on your own isn’t something you’ve consciously set out to do except in a
limited way. Two can live more strongly than one is still your motto. Most
people fall into this category , although many men would give themselves a
lower score than their wives would. 0–7 points. Your sense of relationship is based on ego and control. You
prefer the notion that you are the strong one in your marriage over the
possibility that you are actually the selfish one. To you, “I am enough”
means “I get what I want.” If, by contrast, you know yourself well enough
that this descrip tion doesn’ t fit, you are among the rarest of people: you
have taken complete responsibility for your inner needs and have worked to
fulfill them without attachmen t to another person. “I am enough” is a
spiritual credo you have learned to live by after years of raising your own
consciousness. PART THREE
We are now at the level of inner need where the spiritual concept of “I am
enough” is truly critical; as long as you dwell on more superficial levels ofneed, as long as you lean on a stronger person to carry you through, the
anxiety of separation is disguise d—and that may be what you need for the
moment. It takes real spiritual commitment to expose the wounds of
separation hidden in the unconscious. If you look deep enough these wounds show up as black holes in your
sense of self. Like black holes in space, which suck energy out of the
universe, the psyche’ s black holes suck out your confidence, your sense of
worth, your certainty that you can survive. When you approach just a small
one of these holes, you can expe rience a drastic range of sensatio ns, none of
them pleasant. Mild uneasiness and disembodiedness give way to
nervousness, dizziness, nausea, vertigo, anxiety , panic, terror , and dread,
depending upon  how close you come to the black hole. Sometimes there
seems to be a hole in your chest  or abdomen, or a suffocating pressure, as if
all the air was being sucked out of your lungs. Terrible as these feelings are, they have no spiritual reality; they are
conditioned reactions. Stored-up fear magnifies the experience of a black
hole because of the effort we all exert to avoid existential anxiety , fears
about just being here on earth. Keeping away from a black hole seems like a
good tactic, but it isn’t the same as healing. If left unhealed a black hole
only gets larger until it becomes a gaping wound. The largest wound you
can have is the wound of separation, the trauma of losing love, spirit, God. This is the primal black hole; it breaks you off from the source of love,
peace, and joy . Someone who hasn’ t healed this primal absence will have no energy to
cope with life in any but the most basic ways—the black hole will seem to
undermine all optimism and meaning; there will be a floating sense of dread
that may not be felt directly but that drains the vitality of existe nce. This is
the condition known as despair . Approaching the primal black hole results
in feelings of devastation, deprivation, being stripped to the bone, and
massive fear of death. The follo wing is a test based on primal fears about
survival. Answering as honestly as you can, how many of the following things do
you think could happen to you before you are seventy years old? (If you are
already over seventy , how many do you think might still happen to you? )I might lose my job and be out of work for a year . I might lose my house. I might be audited by the IRS. I might get cancer . I might be arrested. I might go bankrupt. I might lose my family . I might get a divorce. I might be fired. I might be humiliated over an af fair or other sexual misconduct. I might have a heart attack. I might be cheated out of a lot of money . I might be sued. I might start drinking heavily . I might not be able to pay my bills. I might die. Total your score—16 is maximum. The aim of this test is to find out if you
are prey to survival fears. A score of 9 or more means that you have great anxiety about your
survival. You approach life defensively and are not likely to be the kind of
person who has found a spiritua l vision or any strong inner purpose in life. Because you are so busy avoiding or obsessing about all the horrible things
that might happen to you, you don’t have much time to seek higher
fulfillment. If your score is 8 or less, you have a realistic view of life’s dangers. You
may or may not be spiritual, you may not even see yourself as a seeker , but
at least you have  created enough inner expansiveness that spirit  can contact
you. You feel open to the world and interested in its possibilities. Whereas a
person with strong survival fears thinks that life is dangerous with islands
of safety , you think life is safe with a few islands of danger . If you scored 0, you are denyin g reality . Either you didn’ t take the test
seriously or you live in a fantasy of invulnerability . You are likely to take
big risks that end in disaster , although you would be the last to admit it. Survival fear is the deepest motivation for attachment. Whenever you
feel that you have to hang on and cling to something in order to survive,
you are perched over a black hole. Although this is a powerful metaphor ,
many people do not believe that black holes are real. Let’s take a specific
example: physical appearance is a source of insecurity for almost everyone,
men and women alike. Women tend to express this insecurity directly with
thoughts such as “I’m not pretty ,” “I’m too fat,” “My breasts are too small,”“I’m not young anymore.” Men tend to express this insecurity indirectly
with thoughts such as “I’m out of shape,” “I can’t perform the way I used
to,” “W omen don’ t notice me,” “I’m lucky anybody will have me.”
These are all negative thoughts that we cling to for one reason only: we
are protecting ourselves from even worse thoughts lying underneath. For
example, a woman who says, “I hate this dress,” could be defen ding herself
from the thought “I’m too fat,” which in turn could be protection from
“Everyone think s I’m ugly,” which if peeled back would revea l something
like “I don’t deserve love.” Horr ible as it would be to live with that thought,
it too is a defense that your psyche will cling to if it must, because the next
layer down says, “I don’t deserve to live,” and beneath that “I am nothing.”
The worst experience you can imagine is to approach a black hole;
therefore you paper it over with layer after layer of defenses. None of these
defenses is positive, all are negative, some a lot more negative than others. But once you’ve faced your fears about survival, there is nothing left to
cling to—a black hole lies straight ahead. Fortunately , the terror of a black hole can be disarmed before any crisis
or trauma occurs. This is done in a very simple way:
Black holes ar e healed by filling them with spirit. Despite their terr or, black holes ar e just lack of
love. The following statements expre ss a healing attitude toward any extreme
fear, or the need it arouses:
I do not lack for anything. Fear is always wrong—even if bad things happen, they will increase my knowledge and strength. My life is mine to take care of. I can do it. Spirit is always my ally . No matter what, I am enough. How does your beloved fit into this? You can both take the healing
journey based on the safety you first found in love. Falling in love removes
the immediate pain of loss and gives a taste of what it feels like to be whole
and full. Wisdom tells us that this is only temporary . Love from  an external
source can never be raised above the field of change. The only eternal
relationship anyone ever has is with the higher Self. Sometimes in the madpassion of romance you can feel as if your beloved is inside your heart. This
feeling comes from having a loveless space filled. The real spiritual work is to fill this lack yourself, which is a kind of
circular process. The mind can be trained into self-love by being shown,
over and over, that the higher Self is a safe haven of love and protection. The higher Self cannot protect you until you seek its security; this process
begins when you devote time and energy to self-love. Self-love grows when
you refuse to follow the impulse s of anger and fear, trust that the universe is
on your side, form your desires from the heart and watch the higher Self
carry them out, believe that you are enough in and of yourself, heed the
tenderness and sweetness of your love for others, put your attention on
positive energies in every situation, honor your own needs without having
to seek outside approval, and cultivate the peace of inner silence. When you put these things foremost in your relationships, you will help
your beloved toward self-love instead of expecting love to be constantly
directed at you. Most of us approach things exactly the wrong way around. As though we were children we first want someone else to make us feel
secure by lavishing us with affection and approval. But you are the source
of love, which is full to overflo wing. When you have done your spiritual
work, you will fill in the black holes that keep you from that source. Letting
go, although frightening to the ego, is actually entering into the boundless
ocean of love. I am reminded of Walt Whitman, who poured forth his exuberance in
rapturous embrace of everything  around him yet was equally the unattached
observer who rested at peace with the inner man:
I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by far the lar gest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now , or with equal cheerfulness I can wait . . . I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time. At some  point every love story reaches this all-embracing state of peace
within. There is no way to achieve real contentment, real fulfillment otherthan through the Self. OceanofPDF .comIN OUR LIVES
Connor ’s Story
CONNOR, AN OLDER  former patient of mine, came to me recently expressing
deep distress over what had happened to Mary Patrick, his wife of thirty
years. Both immigrants from Ireland, where they had married late in life,
Connor and Mary Patrick were seventy but still good looking and vigorous. After a long period of calm and happiness in their lives, their youngest son
contracted AIDS and died. The family was grief stricken, but the boy’s
mother healed her grief by reaching out to others. Mary Patrick became a
full-time advocate for AIDS victims. She worked politically on various
fronts but spent most of her time offering herself personally , driving AIDS
patients to the grocery store, visiting them in the hospital, clearing the way
for them to pay their enormous medical bills. “Your wife soun ds like a saint, ” I told Connor , unembarrassed to use a
cliché because nothing less would fit. Connor had a defiant look in his eyes. “You think so? Then why was she diagnosed last week with advanced lung
cancer?” he asked bitterly . I was shocked and told him so, of fering to help in any way I could. “Does your wife smoke?” I asked, expecting that she must, since lung
cancer among nonsmokers is extremely rare. Connor shook his head. “She doesn’ t smoke or drink. She is the most
loving person I’ve ever met, and this has to happen.”
I was silent for a moment as various thoughts ran through my mind. The
woman in question is seventy , I told myself, an age not incon sistent with
cancer . The general medical finding is that tumors are presen t in almost
everyone in old age, even if a malignancy doesn’ t manifest in declared
symptoms or become the cause  of death. We have all become used to the
fact that diseases strike randomly from a statistical point of view , afflicting
the good and wicked alike. But we find it hard to accept this when diseasestrikes close to home. My reflections seemed like puny rationalizations in
the face of Conn or’s bitterness. We both knew what he was saying: you try
to be good and loving, and look what happens to you. I asked what the prognosis was, and Connor shook his head. “No hope,”
he said. “It’ s spread everywhere.”
“How is your wife taking all this?” I asked. Connor ’s expres sion became less defiant. “Much better than I am. She’s
still doing her volunteer work with the most incredible peace of mind, but
deep down I know that she’ s suffering.”
“Do you?” I thought. I could have simply agreed with him to show my
sympathy , but we had a candid relationship. We both sat for a while, not
speaking. It’ s very common in my experience that one person’ s tragedy isn’ t
necessarily another’s, and that if Mary Patrick was as loving as I knew her
to be, she may very well have found the inner peace to see beyond her
“dreaded” disease. “Even saints die,” I said quietly , “and they don’t all pass away kneeling
in prayer.” I thought Connor would glare at me again or push this comment
away . He didn’ t, though. He paused, waiting to hear more. “What I mean is that love isn’t defeated by death. Your wife has found
something that death cannot touch, with you and with your son, which
makes her situation very different from that of someone for whom the
prospect of death is terror and ultimate loss. What if death isn’t a loss? Since you and I haven’ t experienced it, we project our own feelings onto it,
but there is another approach. You can fortify yourself with love, not as an
emotion but as your sense of identity .”
Life brings losses of every sort; death is only the most drastic and
unanswerable. At some level everyone knows that death is inevitable, but
rather than learning the nonatta chment brought by love, our response is to
cling—to each other , to things, to life itself. How can you cling to life when
it is constantly changing? Y ou might just as well try to cling to a river . When a grieving husband says about the death of his wife, “It was like
losing part of myself,” the phen omenon is physical, even visceral. To the
ego the loss of a beloved feels like a survival threat, despite the obvious fact
that your body didn’ t perish. Another person was so closely identified with
you that you extended your identification beyond its boundaries in time and
space. Thus grief mimics love. In both instances two are felt as one.Connor reacted to his wife’ s crisis with anger , one of the first responses
of the ego to any loss. Anger says, “This isn’t fair; it’s an outrage.” The loss
seems totally unjust. If I had met him another time, Connor might have
reacted with denial instead. Denial says, “This can’t be happening.” In
denial loss is rejected and made unreal. Or Connor might have reacted with
fear, which lies deeper than ange r or denial. The voice of fear says, “I won’ t
survive.”
Although it was his wife who had contracted cancer , Connor could easily
have gone through all the now-familiar stages of dying. In the dying process
the final stages are acceptance and transcendence. Only when they have
been reached does a person stop futilely bar gaining with the inevitable. Unlike the ego’s reactions, acceptance is a spiritual state. Acceptance
says, “This is reality , and I am at peace with it.” The dying describe this as a
beautiful stage, which often has no parallel in their lives. The way is opened
for relea sing all claims on this world and acquiring a higher vision, which is
the stage of transcendence. But the dying do not return to us, and therefore
we have to find acceptance on our own, before the crisis of death. That is
why so many spiritual traditions  speak of “dying every day” or “dying unto
death”—these are metaphors for nonattachment, the state Christ called
being in the world but not of it. Connor and I didn’ t talk again for almost a year. When I saw him next his
wife had died. Despite an extensive course of radiation, Mary Patrick’ s
condition had deteriorated rapidly. Sometimes a person with lung cancer
can be very active up to her or his final days. Connor ’s wife had continued
to visit AIDS patients in the hospital until she was forced to admit herself. She died peacefully with her family around her, having made her farewells
and requested that her last hours not be prolonged by life-support machines. Outwardly Conn or seemed to have surmounted the immediate trauma of
his grief, but as he recounted these details his voice betrayed much of its
former bitterness. It hadn’ t gotten easier for him to discuss his wife’ s dying. “Have you ever thought much about dying?” I asked. “Never ,” Conno r replied vehemently . “If I had it in my power , I’d refuse
to die. The best I can do is get incredibly angry whenever anybody else
dies.”
“You’d like to be immortal, in other words,” I said. Connor  nodded. “What if it turns out,” I sugges ted, “that you ar e immortal? What if yourwife’ s death is trying to show you that?”
“You’re speaking in paradoxes,” Connor said abruptly . “Most people
would say that a dying person reminds us of our own fear of death.”
“That’ s one interpretation. But the sight of someone dying isn’t just
painful or cruel. It’ s real. And in the real must be a spark of spirit.”
“I think dying might be too real,” Connor said with conviction. “By which you mean too overw helming,” I replied. “In my experience,
the antic ipation of death is always unreal. What do we typically imagine
death to be—extinction? falling  down an endless hole? going unconscious
forever? But these are all projections. Can you imagine the day you won’ t
exist? Can you imagine the day before you existed? Both are essentially the
same, aren’t they? Therefore couldn’ t both just be stages of life that we
aren’ t in contact with?”
“I suppose someone with a great deal of faith could believe that,” Connor
said. “It’s not a matte r of faith. If you enter into the process of accepting the
real, which means stripping away what is unreal, you could be free from
death, here and now. Our worldview assumes that death is an ending when
in fact dying is a transition.”
“A transition to what?” Connor asked. “Why not find out now instead of waiting?” I asked. “No amount of
anticipation gives us a preview  of death. Fear, anger , and denial are all
mental ways of pushing away and rejecting. Why don’t we go into the fear,
the anger, the denial, and find out what lies underneath? Because we have
conditioned ourselves to believe  that clinging to life is the only way to face
death. Actually it is the worst  way. It is a response rooted in fear and
ignorance, and only when we stop clinging can we hope to find the reality
beneath the illusion—presumably what you find out when you die. Reality
is always on the move, shifting the known out from under us and bringing
the unknown into view . Dying to the known brings knowledge that cannot
be acquired any other way. The scriptures have called this ‘dying unto
death.’”
It is a commonly held tenet of psychology that death is our model of loss,
so that any loss— losing money in the stock market, having your house burn
down, being fired from your job—creates a deep unconscious terror akin to
the terro r of death. But in spiritual terms loss isn’t reality , it’s a conceptcreated in the mind. When the mind applies judgment to change, what gets
created is loss. The sun coming up in the morning is the loss of the night. Buying a new car is the loss of money . Falling in love is the loss of solitude. We don’t call these things losses because we don’t judge against them. The
mind has to choose to “make wrong” before the concept of loss can take on
meaning. The law of karma assures us that every debt is accounted for, therefore
nothing can ever be lost. When you perceive that something has gone out of
sight, you assum e it is lost. But in karmic terms this can’t be true—all that
happens when anything is lost is that its energy has been rearranged. The
falling apple disintegrates to provide fertilizer for the new growth of the
apple tree. The gazelle killed by the lion returns to life in the cells of its
predator . The cycle of life and death, the rhythm of the seasons, the coming
and going of species is happ ening on a karmic scale, shuffling the
ingredients of life from one place to another without disturbing the
exquisite balance of the whole. “Do you still have Mary Patrick with you?” I asked Connor . “Yes, but not the way you might be thinking,” he replied. “I know it’s
very common for the bereaved to feel that the one they’ve lost is still in the
room, watching them, offering reassurance. Mary Patrick isn’t there like
that for me. She simply isn’ t gone. Does that make any sense? Am I crazy?”
“No. What you are perceiving is true,” I said. “Does this percept ion come
and go?” Connor shook his head . “Do you see your wife’ s face or hear her
voice?”
“That’ s just it, I don’t. Whatever I’m sensing,” Connor replied, a look of
bafflement on his face, “it’ s not the woman I married but something else.”
I said, “The woman you marrie d is not here, but what you loved in her
has no here or there. It just is. Its reality is part of something whole. I think
your marriage fostered the kind of love that has this endurance, because you
found a way to love beyond personality—that is a very rare achievement.”
Connor nodded  slowly , taking my words in with recognition and
appreciation. “I was taught by the priests in Cork that when we die, our
souls go to heaven. Perhaps that is how it is, I don’t know . But Mary Patrick
hasn’ t gone, that I do know . I’ll spend a long time trying to figure it out. If
that’s what you mean by ‘dying unto death,’ then that’ s what it will take.”OceanofPDF .com6
WHY WE NEED PASSION
UP TO THIS point I have spoken of the cosmic dimension of your self as a
Self that lives beyond three-dim ensional reality . But we have not yet fully
addressed the cosmic dimension of your relationship. What is your marriage
in terms of Self and Self, two spirits being joined? Since you lack for
nothing in your higher Self, it might seem at first blush that there is no need
for your Self and that of your beloved to relate. But in truth the very fact
that you can love each other in flesh and blood has its origins in spirit. Your marriage is a play of the divine. T wo spirits pr etend to be separate for the sheer joy of
coming together in love. The difference between a cosmic love affair and an earthly one is the
difference betwe en play and need. Some amount of need enter s into every
relationship in the material world—survival is too pressing an issue for us
to feel that our life is pure play. But in spirit you only play. Your purpose is
not to survive but to express every grain of passion that love arouses in you. In Vedic terms only one marriage has ever taken place. It is the union of
God as male with God as female. When these two poles meet passion flies
between them. But this passion must be playful, since God knows in reality
that male and female are One. There was only one divine purpose in
dividing into two sexes, and that was the joy of sexual union. Sexual union imitates divine cr eation. What you expr ess thr ough your passion is God’ s love for
God. What we need to explore next, then, is how a marriage can deepen in
spirit to justify its cosmic purpose. If we could remember what it felt like tofall in love, we wouldn’ t ask why we need passion. The immediacy of
romantic love doesn’ t raise questions—the experience is all-enveloping. Passion puts two lovers in a world of their own, as Whitman exalted in
one of his most erotically char ged poems, “From Pent-up Aching Rivers”:
O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think? What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust each other if it must be so. . . . From sex, from the warp and from the woof, . . . From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers through my hair and beard,
From the long sustained kiss upon the mouth or bosom,
From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk, fainting with excess. This poem brings the immediacy of sexual connection as close as words
can. However thrilling words may be, passion itself cannot be captured
outside the moment. In this it is like happiness. Anyone who is happy has
no reason to doubt what happin ess is. But once it has slipped away , even
ever so slightly , asking questions about happiness won’ t bring it back. The
mechanism of desire is even more delicate. As soon as erotic passion gets
eclipsed by niggling doubts or fears, spontaneity vanishes. In our culture, because we define passion so exclusively in sexual terms,
people find themselves bewildered when sexual interest fades in their
relationships. Sometimes a more mellow love ensues, akin to the love
between friends , or we may be left with just indifference. Rekindling
passion in nonsexual terms isn’t something our culture knows much about. Therefore the secret in many marriages, once a decade or more has passed,
is that both partn ers are struggling with ennui. The fading of passion has led
to boredom, and neither person knows what to do about it besides dwell in
nostalgia. As hard as it is to admit, relationships that begin in passion’ s
raging fire often end in the coldest ashes. Yet relationship should be about
uniting yourself with your beloved in a passion for life, not just for sex. Real, lasting passion must come from a deeper level. The intensity of human sexual desire is a pale reflection of the pent-up
longing that sends each of us on the quest for our ultimate lover , the Self. Passion isn’t personal, even though another person triggers it; passion is
universal. When  Rumi declares that “all the particles of the world are in
love and looking for lovers,” he has conferred passion even on the force of
gravity . At the same time he gives back to spirit one of its most important
qualities—power .Without power spirit might be loving and inspiring, but it would n’t make
a difference in the way things  turn out; it would be an abstraction far
removed from daily events. Of course that is exactly how many people
regard spirit, but the soul is endowed with its own unique kind of power ,
which in Sanskrit is called Shakti . In Indian cosmology Shakti is the female
principle of creation, the wife of Shiva, who stands as the male principle. Shiva does not act in the world; he is unmanifest and invisible. Shakti is the
visible creation; she is like the mother tending her child, aware of every
movement, however minute, in the manifest universe. In our sexual love we
reenact the union of these two forces, and whenever we feel loved, we are
actually feeling the attention of the cosmic mother , consort, seductress, and
lover . Shakti is portrayed in all these  forms and countless more. The tender
cosmic mother is Shakti, but so is the fanged destroyer Kali with her
necklace of skulls. Many of Shakti’ s forms are sexual—it is Shiva’ s passion
for Shakti that inspires her to perform her cosmic dance of creation to
delight him. The whole universe is thus a gesture of erotic love, and every
dancing molecule is moving in longing for an unseen lover . Rumi echoes
this notion when he says,
There is someone who looks after us
From behind the curtain. In truth, we are not here. This is our shadow . The divine love of Shiva and Shakti is the only thing that is real; all else is
appearance—the costume of the dancer rather than the dancer herself. But what is Shakti outside mythology? Shakti has no simple equivalent in
English—she includes the infinite energy of the physical universe as well as
the spiritual energy our moder n physics doesn’ t yet recognize. Galaxies
spin through space propelled by Shakti, but she also carries silent prayers to
God’ s ear. Shakti flows through  creation as the evolutionary impulse that
keeps order from  flying apart into chaos, but her existence is so intimate
that no instrument yet devised can detect it. When the Bible  speaks of “the light” emanating from God to create the
world, Shakti is being described , though stripped of her gender . But Shaktididn’ t appear only at the moment of inception. Creation contin ues as long
as the universe exists; it is the spirit’ s unending expression of love for life. Shakti is cosmic passion, and whenever you feel passion for anything you ar e expr essing Shakti
through yourself. Although most of us consider ourselves fortunate if we can still feel
passion about anything as we grow older , feeling passion for your work or
politics or even sex is not the same as having a passion for life. It is not just
that life is bigge r than work, politics, or sex. Shakti is life itself; it is present
in every rhythmic pulse of existence. A passion for life implies that you are
passion; it is in your very being. Therefore the most natural way to be is
passionate; the slow ebbing of passion is unnatural. If you mourn the fading of passion, realize that nothing endures on the
surface of life, where change is the only constant. Things come and go,
people come and go, and althou gh they once stoked the fires of enthusiasm,
eventually the temperature cools. This is particularly true of sexual desire. Erotic attraction is not a permanent state but an opening that allows us
temporarily to step outside our ego boundaries and enter into the love affair
of Shiva and Shakti. What this means is that sexuality is an opportunity to
be in unity , outside the limitations of the ego-dominated self. The
opportunity must be taken when offered or else your Shakti— the energy
released in sex—will be wasted. In spiritual terms, Shakti flows in any situation, not just sex, that arouses
interest, excitem ent, and attraction. The greatest waste is to expend passion
on needs and drives that are selfish and without spirit. Among these wastes
would be material accumulation, greed, love of money and power for their
own sake, lovel ess sexual activity , and obsession. Shakti is the raw ore of
life, waiting to be refined and shaped. Insights about passion, therefore, all
have to do with sustaining Shakti in yourself and transmuting  it in your
relationship to love and union:
Passion is the ener gy that love cr eates with no object other than itself. The ener gy born of love is cr eative—it makes everything it touches new . To see how passionate you
are, look ar ound at what you have cr eated. The sour ce of passion is within yourself. When passion wanes it must be r ekindled at its sour ce.PASSION FROM THE  ASHES
“What do you expect me to do? I put myself on the line every day for
fifteen years, and now I’m an old coffee cup? It’s criminal. I’d sue them all
if I had the guts.” Jarret slumped in his chair , his outburst spent. I was
talking with him alone while his wife, Gail, waited outside. For half an hour
our talk had been pointless. Jarret’ s current situation—being fired after a
long time with a company he’d helped to found—had made him depressed
and listless. He had barely aroused himself above feeble complaining until
this sudden outburst—it almost came as a relief. “I don’t expect you to do anything,” I said. “You have money; you can
get along. What’ s next?”
Jarret sighed and looked away . Whatever was next, he didn’ t have the
energy for it. “Gail wants to move to Florida, but I’d really feel used up
down there.” I knew this couple from my former medical practice, and Gail
had more or less forced her husband to see me on the pretext that his
depression might have some physical cause. In truth she wanted someone
who might productively listen to Jarret’ s endless resentment without being
driven as crazy by it as she was. “Gail doesn’t seem like the type who wants to park you in a retirement
community ,” I said. “Not at fifty-three. Perhaps Florida repre sents a new
start to her .”
Jarret shrugged. “We used to do stuff with boats down there. We were
just kids.” I asked what kind of stuff with boats. “Racing. We both grew up
around the water , and actually Gail first took an interest in me when I was
crewing on a friend’ s sloop. It’ s ancient history .”
It didn’ t seem like that to me. “Do you mind if I call Gail in?” I asked. Jarret shrugged, preoccupied with his grievances and annoyed by my
refusal to discuss them any further . When Gail came back in, she looked worried but not drained or in
despair—whatever hope lay in the situation, she was it. “First off, there’ s nothing physically wrong with your husband,” I said,
much to her relief. “And there’ s nothing wrong psychologically either .”
Both of them looked surprised, and Jarret protested, “If you think there’ s
nothing wrong with me, try sitting where I am.”“I’d like to,” I said. “Not many people get to stand at a crossroa ds; it’s an
incredible oppor tunity . The trouble is that you are framing it in your mind
as a loss—the loss of your reaso n for living. Was your old job your reason
for living?”
“That company wouldn’ t exist without me,” Jarret replied, evading the
question. “That describes why you put your heart and soul into it fifteen years
ago,” I said. “But how did you feel about it lately?”
“He was wasting his time,” Gail interjected. Jarret glared at her. Her
comment came as no surprise. She had already informed me that what Jarret
was good at—bringing innovative ideas into production— no longer
counted for much at the computer company he’d helped to build. The
company had entered a phase of consolidation in which management skills
were far more important than innovation; Jarret had become less than
useful, a fact he bitterly resented. “Your situation has changed, but you don’t want to accept the emotions
that accompany  change,” I pointed out. “I’m not telling you to pretend
you’re not angry, and although it’s harder to admit I’m sure you’re also
hurt. Y ou must feel betrayed by those who should be most grateful to you.”
“Damn right,” Jarret grumbled. “But by framing  this as a negative situation,” I said, “you’ve missed the
beauty in change, which is that it renews passion. That’ s really what you
need.” I asked Jarret to imagine what he’d like to do if he had all the money
and time he needed. He shook his head. “Nothing,” he replied. “That’ s resistanc e talking,” I said. “You’ve invested yourself in negative
emotions, and as a result you’ve  missed the source of passion that’s as close
to you as anythi ng in your life.”  Jarret looked confused. “Just turn to your
right,” I said. “There she is.”
Now Gail looked confused and embarrassed. “In your certainty that this
problem is all about you,” I said, “you’ve shut down the flow of passion
inside you, and at the same time you’ve shut Gail out. You’ve taken a
wonderful opportunity to renew your bar gain with life and made it a waste.”
Jarret sat back, looking chagrined. “I’m not here to attack you,” I said,
“but you’ve been hurting Gail quite a lot without noticing it. What we’re
here to talk about is how to use your marriage to make your life worth
living, from a very deep level. Your motive for throwing yourself into yourcompany once had passion in it, but now I sense that what you miss is
externals—power , money , status, respect. At this point, in my opinion,
you’re not ever going to have that passion again.”
The couple looked stunned, and I sensed that Gail wanted to jump in to
defend her husband. Instead, she said, “He’ s just not being used well at his
old company . That’ s why I thought we could build sailboats or start racing
again.”
“Because you see Jarret from a deeper level than he sees himsel f,” I said,
“you see him from the level of love. You want to bring out his passion
because passion is vitality—that’ s what makes a marriage, dedication to
being alive. But your vitality is as important as his, and I don’t see him
doing much to sustain it.”
“You’re wrong,” Gail said. “I never feel more alive than when we do
things together .”
“Only there hasn’ t been much time for that, I imagine. You should
seriously consid er sailing, or whatever it is you can share with mutual joy,
as your purpose in life, not as a diversion you make time for if work—or
the loss of it—allows. From my perspective, Jarret’ s being forced into
retirement at this young age is the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Jarret looked thoughtful. His mood, which had been self-pitying and
introverted, had changed. He looked somewhat angry (which at least had
brought him to life), but his whole life had been centered on challenge. If he
could take my words as a challenge, I knew he would rise to it. “I know that a lot of fear surrou nds you now,” I said more gently to him. “But the best way to get throug h fear is to find a new purpose , otherwise
fear will just increase its hold on you. The highest purpose you can have is
with your wife. The merging of two energies, male and fema le, is much
greater than what can be expressed just through sex or friendship. There’ s a
spiritual potenti al here waiting to be fulfilled. Enter into it. Find out what
you can gain from your marriage that goes beyond individual personality
and isolated need.”
I turned to Gail. “And the same is true for you. Make your motto one
word—courage. Love and tenderness are not powerless; patience and
tolerance can produce tremendo us change. Yet these energies have to be
used not in submissiveness or resignation but in passion.”A passion for life is a passion for completeness. This means, at the most
primal level, merging the male and female within oneself. The marriage of
Shiva and Shakti is about spiritual potential, nothing less. In men this means the advent of tenderness, nurturing, and trust. Having
a woman supply these qualities is not enough. Male attributes of force and
violence have become grotesquely exaggerated in this world because men
leave the feminine energies to women. Aggression and violence will
become unnecessary as the shadow energies they disguise—fear and
impotence—come to the surface to be recognized and healed. Being
vulnerable will then be seen as a human quality , not a weakness  that makes
a man only half a man. Competi tion based on raging (and insecu re) ego will
diminish with healing, and the ability to cooperate will increase. The worth of women in men’ s eyes will rise as men stop defining
themselves as the opposite of female. Spiritually , male is the complement of
female. Once this is accepted the awakening of male spirituality can come
about, since it takes an infusion of female energy before our bodies and
minds can totally merge with the silent field of pure awareness. By
welcoming Shakti a man can truly be Shiva. For wom en the journey to wholeness is different, because it first entails
raising female qualities to full dignity with male. A woman must build up
her energies, so long forced into submission by society , whereas a man
typically has to diminish the dominance of his. In both instances what is
being achieved is balance. No one has ever claimed that the world had too
much affection,  tenderness, nurturing, intuition, and beauty— all female
spiritual qualities—while it is all too obvious that aggression, force,
struggle, and competition—exaggerated male qualities—have gone too far . A woman needs to allow herself however much time it takes to use
Shakti energy to accomplish what has been reserved for the male ego. Shakti energy runs in everyo ne, but women have been given their
femaleness to accentuate the difference between Shakti, which is subtle and
spiritual, and brute force. This dif ference can be summarized as follows:
Shakti understands. Instead of imposing, she communicates. Shakti has patience. Instead of forcing an answer , she waits for spirit to produce one. Shakti is tender . Instead of ignoring emotions, she uses emotion to tell when someone else is ready
to listen and act. Shakti is peaceful. No situation ever requires force. Shakti is creative. She creates answers where none were seen before.Shakti is wise. She considers the whole picture rather than a few parts; she takes the cosmic
perspective, which always comes from love. I saw these very qualities being displayed in the way Gail appro ached her
husband’ s predicament. She had the ability to sympathize, to be patient, to
offer emotional support, to allow , and to be tender . These aren’ t just ways to
find a solution— they ar e the solution . “If you were as kind to yourself as Gail is,” I said at the end of our
meeting, “if you wanted to understand yourself as much as she does, with as
much love and lack of ego, you would have solved your predicament
months ago. I hope you’ll be able to accept her perspective for the
cherished thing it really is.”
Jarret nodded, not quite able to say, “I’ll try,” because he was still too
stuck in his old ways to admit he might have been wrong. But I sensed that
he knew he was at a crossroads. Leaving defeat and bitterness behind would
be his way to open up to the new . THE MARRIAGE OF  SHIVA AND  SHAKTI
Having already touched on the concept of a sacred marriage, now we can
expand that concept by looking  at the energies of Shiva and Shakti. It is
totally inadequate to call Shiva male and Shakti female, since these terms
limit God, who cannot be limited. Our minds are limited to seeing
masculine and feminine as polar  opposites, but Shiva and Shakti have been
married since before the dawn of creation. They are a divine whole that
chooses to express itself by taking on the appearance of being masculine
and feminine. You and I do the same thing. Although my body may be male, my inner
self identifies with spirit as a whole, and therefore my soul must include
both Shiva and Shakti:
Shiva is silence. Shakti is power . Shiva is creativity . Shakti is creation. Shiva is love. Shakti is loving. These qualities aren’ t opposites but complements, which is a perfect
description of a sacred marriage. Mature love consists of being able to see
yourself in your beloved and your beloved in yourself. To remain stuck ingender stereoty pes, to defend one’s maleness or femaleness, to aim
criticism at the other sex for causing problems—these are all betrayals of
marriage’ s sacred foundation. A sacr ed marriage draws its passion fr om its inclusiveness. Passion for another person has to
fade, but passion for life itself is eternal. When the two cosmic energies, Shiva and Shakti, are connected , the flow
of passion brings unlimited creative potential. The poles of silence and
power set up a tension between them, like the yearning felt between a man
and a woman that can only be satisfied by the exchange of love. The current
that connects them is the creative force of the universe, which is
concentrated nowhere more than in you. You are the ground for this current
to flow, it needs  no one else. Only when Shiva and Shakti are married in
you will you be able to enter a sacred marriage with someone else. Setting Shiva aside for the moment, since that energy is more abstract
than Shakti, let’s explore why Shakti is feminine. In our culture  a woman’ s
role has long been to serve as helpmate, mother , attendant, and supplicant,
not to wield power herself. Power in the Vedic sense, however , is always
creative, and creativity is always sexual. Out of a divine sexual act the
world was born;  therefore the feminine, as birth giver , is the natural vehicle
of power . Shakti can be extremely viscera l and physical, as anyone who has ever
attended a birth knows. At the moment of delivery the whole room is
charged with a vibrant, raw energy that emanates directly from the mother ,
and the appeara nce of the baby  is like nothing so much as the birth of the
world in miniature. Even though the fetus has been gestating, in the womb
for nine months, this sudden appearance of a fully formed human being is
miraculous. That is the concepti on of Shakti I hold in my mind —the force
that can create out of nothing. Shakti can totally transform, melting away features of our inner
landscape and creating new ones in their place. Yogis report tingling energy
running up the spine in meditation (its esoteric name is Kundalini , one of
the thousand names of the divine mother). The presence of this ener gy gives
direct knowledge of God, perception of other worlds, and ecstatic fusionwith the divine. But if you aren’t a yogi or a mother in the delivery room,
what is the experience of Shakti like? Shakti is the hidden power that turns matter into life. She is the divine
spark, the flow of God’ s love. Anyone who is connected with spirit has Shakti, which manifests in five
ways that the God Herself manifests. (For the sake of simplicity I will use
the word God and apply feminine pronouns whenever I have the goddess
Shakti in mind.) As described in the ancient Shiva Sutras —“teaching about
Shiva”—these are the five powers:
Chitta Shakti:  the awareness of God
Ananda Shakti:  the bliss of God
Icha Shakti:  the desire or intention to unite with God
Gyana Shakti:  knowledge of God
Kriya Shakti:  action directed toward God
If the voice of God spoke to you, Her powers would be conveyed in simple,
universal phrases:
Chitta Shakti:  “I am.”
Ananda Shakti:  “I am blissful.”
Icha Shakti:  “I will” or “I intend.”
Gyana Shakti:  “I know .”
Kriya Shakti:  “I act.”
If a child came to me and asked, “How did God make me?” these five
things would be my answer , because this is how God made Herself, or at
least made Hers elf known to us, and at each stage of giving birth a new
exclamation of discovery emer ged. First She experienced Herself as
existence (“I am!”), then creative joy (“I am blissful!”), pulsing desire (“I
will!”), cosmic mind (“I know!” ), and finally the shaping force that molds
all things (“I act!”). Because none of these except “I am” had ever existed
before, each came as a revelation. All of these qualities have universal application. It so happens that the
vocabulary comes from the Shiva/Shakti tradition, but any flow of spirit—
from lover to lover , from an artist’ s hand to her canvas, from a musician to
his instrument—can express spiritual power . A brown autumn landscape
under overcast skies sounds drab, but if painted by Rembrandt it has
tremendous Shakti—his kriya, or action, is connected to spirit.Shakespeare’ s plays are quiet on the page, but in the hands of an Olivier or
a Gielgud, the Shakti pouring from the stage is electric. A sacred marriage would also derive its passion and energy from the five
Shaktis, and in the same order as God Herself discovered them. Setting
your spiritual priorities straight means preserving being first and action last. Being  in this case means identifying with spirit; action  means identifying
with career , accomplishment, and the daily give-and-take of life. “I am”
comes first because it makes the present moment the most perfect time to be
alive. “I am blissful” makes it possible to celebrate life from a joyful heart. “I will” makes cherished desires  come true. “I know” allows total trust and
self-acceptance, and “I act” makes creativity the purpose of every day . These five powers form a cascade, spilling like water from unmanifest
spirit to the material world. Tagore employed almost the same analogy
when he poetically asked, “Wh ere is this fountain that throw s out these
flowers in such a ceaseless outbreak of ecstasy?” In one beautiful line he
states the mystery precisely . What is the origin of the infinite display of
nature’ s abundance? The flowers are outside, but the fountain is inside, in
divine essence. To realize this you must become that fountain ; you must
have the assurance that the flow of life can gush through your being at full
force. This state of connection is supreme existence. When you join the
cosmic dance, the powers of God as creator -mother fully infuse you. Now let’ s look at each of these powers in turn. Chitta. Chitta is God’ s awareness in its simplest form. When your mind is not
occupied with thoughts and emotions, it rests in itself alone. Simple
awareness is a divine quality , because in chitta the distractions that disguise
spirit are stripped away . In place of complex issues and conflicts, you
perceive love as the only reality . You see that you have always been
nourished and supported; you no longer need to justify your existence. God’ s most primal quality is this silence and self-suf ficiency , needing
nothing else. If we think of creation as a vibrating string anchored at a fixed
point, the fixed point is here. Chitta simply is. Ananda. Ananda is considered the first quality of God to manifest in creation out
of primo rdial silence. Her bliss, love, and peace are the subtlest and yet themost powerful of Shakti’ s creative powers. Grasping this fact is a
tremendous spiritual insight. Ananda gives the solution to all suffering, for
instead of having to struggle against pain, any person can go within and
find a level of awareness that suffering cannot reach. Ananda is the
untroubled face of God. When you realize this aspect of spirit in yourself,
unconditional love comes as naturally as breathing. Icha. There is a beautiful saying in the Shiva tradition that God created the
world out of “His sweet will,” which was gifted into Shakti’ s hands. The
Sanskrit word for will is icha, which also means “desire” or “intention.”
Will is the next level to emer ge from bliss, because when you are full of joy ,
anything you intend or desire must be aligned with the divine. At this level
there is no question of wrong desires or willful behavior that can harm
yourself or anyone else. God can be compared to someone looking in a
mirror that surro unds her on all sides, so that everywhere she gazes she sees
her own reflecti on. There is nothing outside this to see, therefore anything
God creates is just a modified form of Her own bliss. Icha is like the bow
that shoots life outward, giving it a loving purpose and direction. Gyana. Knowledge abou t God is of two kinds, direct and indirect. Indirectly we
can read scriptures, listen to sermons, consult authorities, and from these
sources build a reasonable case that God exists. But such a God transmits
no love to earth. Therefore nothing substitutes for gyana, which is direct
knowledge of the divine. Instea d of having thoughts about God, you share
God’ s own thoughts. Her thoughts can only be about Herself . This isn’t
cosmic self-centeredness, however . It confirms the fact that spiritual
knowledge is essential; truth, trust, devotion, and love are inside our
thoughts. Gyana is the mind in communion with spirit. Kriya. The last Shakti is the most visible. When God acted She brought the
material world into existence. Although both words mean “action,” kriya  is
not the same as karma. Karma is action  born of cause and effect; it is action
that reinforces separation. Kriya is action inspired by spirit; it abolishesseparation and brings communion. In India a holy person who has entered a
trance would be exhibiting a kriya; the inspired words from his mouth, his
hand gestures, facial expression s, and even breathing would also be kriyas. Vedic scriptures contain thousands of descriptions detailing exactly which
inward state is signified by which kriya (the smile of the Buddha and his
uplifted hand with thumb and forefinger touching are just two examples). But in a broader sense the chan ge of behavior exhibited by someone who
has realized God, turning from violence to peace, from conflict  to serenity ,
from egoism to altruism, is taking place in the realm of kriya. This is the
last cascade of the divine into creation. The stillness of pure awareness
cascades into bliss, bliss into will, will into knowledge, and finally
knowledge into action. The fivefold nature of Shakti has revealed itself
completely . THE SILENCE OF  SHIVA
If our cultural background makes it hard to see Shakti as feminine, the
silence of Shiva—motionless, uncaused, ineffable, nonattached —hardly
seems to us the model of mascu line power . Masculine power isn’t the same
as male behavior , however .
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:

        Unlearning the second lesson is how you stop having to control other
people, for it was in early childhood, almost exactly at the time you were
first left to your own devices, that you started feeling the urge to establish
control. Despite its appearance of normality, then, control is based on a mistake,
and that mistake is rooted in separation. To be able to relinquish control the
mistake has to be corrected. Learning that the world is safe doesn’ t happen
overnight. The world as a whole  is far too overwhelming, given all the fear
and distrust each of us has inherited. But the love you have for one person
is a safe zone and thus a good place to begin. The beloved is like a harbor in
which your heart takes refuge. In an indif ferent and hostile universe, there is
at least one person who understands, sympathizes, and provides for you. Somehow, miraculously, this one person is enough to cancel out the hostile
world. Every day brings many opportunities to replace controlling with
allowing. If you can extend allow ing to your beloved, the effect is to release
you from attachment—both of you are spiritually served by the same act. The key stances in letting go of control are all forms of allowing:
acceptance, tolerance, nonresistance. Needing to control life, either yours or
anyone else’s, is based on spiritual desperation. Look at your interactionwith your beloved and honestly  confront any fear-based behavior you are
exhibiting. When control is ready to loosen its grip, a definite relaxation
takes place. The facade of the demanding, critical partner who is so quick to
blame begins to melt. You start to feel love once more, not as an idea but as
a sensation in your heart. And at last you find it possible to allow. When this stage  is reached with the beloved, the healing process begins
to branc h out into other aspects of your life. The following changes will
often be in evidence:
You stop measuring people by whether they live up to your
expectations. Y ou begin to resist the ur ge to correct their mistakes and
give unwanted advice. You lessen your habit of taking care of others without really caring for
them. You become tired of trying to keep track of every detail of your life
and bored with people who have always given in to you. You begin to listen to objections and disagreements instead of using
them to trigger your own opinion. Unexpected emotions come to the surface. This usually arouses self-
criticism because you can’ t control your feelings anymore as you once
did. At another level, however, this eruption of emotions comes as a
great relief. Your impatience begins to lessen. Y ou stop living according to the
clock. You take stress seriously, no longer believing that you thrive on it. You begin to listen to your body, which has all along been giving you
signals of tightness, fatigue, contraction, and overstimulation. Your mind gives up calculating every move in advance. Some room is
made for spontaneity. You stop holding grudges and remembering slights. Resentment begins
to be replaced by tolerance. You quit setting external goals for yourself and believing that
achieving these goals faster, better, and more tirelessly makes you a
good person. The most loving  thing you can do for your beloved, if he or she is dealing
with control, is to encourage these shifts, but this is something no one whois still in a state of need can do. In the mind of a needy person, any loss of
attachment equals loss of love. In fact, however, exactly the opposite is true. The craving to possess and cling is what smothers love. Attachment is that
condition in which your needs overshadow your spirit. So how can you love
without need. Know the difference between ego and spirit. Ego is needy, but spirit is
not. It exists to give and not to take. It wants to bring joy; it has no hunger
for approval. It does not crave the obedience or agreement of another
person and lives  beyond all demands. When you see yourself in this way,
your relationship will become sacred. Without nonattachment this can’t
happen. The choice between the mundane and the sacred has always been
with us, and it will always be true that to choose the sacred is to choose
love. OceanofPDF. comLOVING  PRACTICE
Healing Our Inner Needs
ALL OF US bring needs to relationships, but they don’t have to turn into
attachment. Attachment is created when needs aren’ t understood and faced. Needs you place  on your partner  never really get resolved; there fore even if
your partner bends over backward to satisfy every need you have, the final
outcome will be the same as if none of your needs was met: you will be left
to confront why you have such needs. This “why” is answered by
examining how you feel about being in separation, for the underlying
anxiety of separation from God, spirit, and Self is what created need in the
first place. When you heal separation, your needs will not r eflect fear and insecurity. Relationship is meant to heal separation; therefore the proper attitude
toward need is that you want to heal. However, in many relatio nships there
is a confusing mismatch betwee n what two people actually consider most
important. How can neediness be healed when there is constant jockeying
over what two people want. We have to make a distinction between
external needs, like food and shelter, and inner needs. Inner needs come
down to what makes you feel secure, as tested in this questionnaire. PART ONE
Look at the following statements—preferably with your beloved—and
check the conclusion, right or left, that applies best to you. Answer each
item even if both alternatives seem remote or improbable. 1. I would be mortified if my friends found out that I
lost all my money. or     had plastic sur gery. 2. I would rather
be pr omoted at work. or     be at my ideal weight. 3. I’d be a lot better of f if I spent more time
getting back into shape. or     improving my diet. 4. I would rather be
respected. or     accepted. 5. I’d keep it a secret if I was
looking for a new job. or     planning to have an affair. 6. I’d like to have my children look back on me as a parent who taught
them
right fr om wr ong. or     not to hurt others. 7. In a flood I’d like to be the one who
rescued the victims. or     shelter ed the homeless. 8. My problems would be solved if only I had
more money. or     more self-understanding. 9. You’re my friend if you
back me up. or     listen to me. 10. If I failed a test at school, it meant that I was
not pr epared. or     not in the mood. 11. The worst thing my enemies could say about me is that I’m
weak and incompetent. or     selfish and uncaring. 12. In my nightmare the whole world thinks I’m
stupid. or     ugly. 13. I’d rather be
productive. or     happy. Now calculate two totals—all your points from the left column and all those
from the right. In evaluating your score, we will consider the left-hand
column male and the right-hand female. If you ar e a woman  your score from the right-hand column will tend to be
more than that from the left-hand. If you ar e a man  your score from  the left-
hand column will tend to be more than that from the right -hand. This
difference alone can cause conflict in a relationship. We were all shaped by
society to expect security from dif ferent sources. Men tend to find security in power, career, skills, information,
intelligence, winning, and physical strength. Women tend to find security in
family, a strong mate, sharing, communication, their own emotions, and
being loved. If you have more than five answers from the column that is not your
gender, you are likely to be able to define your needs without reference to
society’ s standa rds. If you have  more than eight answers from  the right-
hand column, your feminine nature is quite strong. Man or woman, you put
a great emphasis on your emotions and sense of well-being. Self-
understanding is one of your highest values; you put your own fulfillment
ahead of external motivations. Now compare your score with your partner ’s. There is no right or wrong
match here, but your scores say a lot about the dynamic of your
relationship. A marriage in whic h the woman scores high on the male while
the man scores high on the female often implies an exchange of social
models. The woman is driven by success and the man by emotion. If both
partners score high on the same column, they share a similar view of the
world, but the balancing half may be lacking. A marriage that is very male
or very female can be a happy one, but in times of stress the predominance
of one worldview may make it difficult to find the coping skills to pull
through. For example, if both partners are so emotional that no family
decisions can be made without much drama and little concession to reason,
strains will develop. Finally, if the man is very male (ten or more) and the wom an very
female, this may indicate a conflict of values and therefore a conflict of
needs. A strongly masculine man mated to a strongly feminin e woman is
held up as a social ideal, but in reality, if the man is motivated by power and
status while the woman is motivated by emotions and communication,equality is difficult to sustain in the marriage. You are on two different
paths, not a shared path. One way or another the weaker partner will wind
up giving in to the stronger, or one of you will repress your true needs in
hopes that you will find happiness through sacrifice. This rarely if ever works. Giving in to another person’ s needs is actually
a form of attachment. Having thrown away your own desires, you will be
forced to cling to the other person to bring you satisfaction. This is a form
of separation from your true identity, and in the end you cannot hope to use
separation of any kind to reach unity. Now that I have  said all this, what can you do. You need to recognize
imbalances where they exist and take responsibility for them. A man who
has many female needs shouldn’ t rely on his wife to make all the decisions,
while a woman with strong male needs shouldn’ t ignore her partner ’s
emotions. The object is to find the balance of male and female within you
rather than take the easy road, which is to attach yourself to someone else’s
strengths as a compensation for your weaknesses. We will now examine
how this dynamic can change. PART TWO
Satisfying inner  need has to go deeper than what society or your ego tells
you will suf fice. T o be in separation is by definition to be insecure. Inner need must be faced befor e you can feel secur e. To be aware of inner need is healthy, to deny inner need is unhealthy. Everyone brings needs to a relationship, and admitting this makes it more
honest. Nevertheless, inner need can become so great that it distorts your
view of yourself. A person dominated by neediness will tend to have
recurring thoughts like these:
I’m not smart enough. I’m not beautiful enough. I’m not desirable enough. I’m not lovable enough. I never do the right thing. Something’ s wrong with me. I’m not as good as X. Whatever is happening to trigger these beliefs, and no matter how
convinced you are by them, they are totally false. In the light of spirit you
are wholeness and therefore lack for nothing. You are love and therefore
must be lovable and desirable. You are unique and therefore cannot be
compared with anyone else. In the eyes of spirit you ar e always enough. A relationship should constantl y reinforce the belief that both partners
are enough, that fulfillment lies within by its very nature. “I am” is the
primal feeling of existence, and within “I am” there is total peace and
security. More often than not, however, relationships are unbalanced. One
partner feels much more insecur ity, much more inner need. This imbalance
is tested in the following questionnaire:
Answering as honestly as you can, which of the following statements
apply to you. In my marriage, I’m the one who
1. Feels more unhappy if left alone at night.
The beloved, as a safe zone, is the primary source of love.
According to the text, what is the primary source of love?
Allowing, which includes acceptance, tolerance, and non-resistance.
What is the key to letting go of control in a relationship?
Encourage their shifts and the healing of their inner needs.
What is the most loving thing you can do for your beloved if they are struggling with control issues?
Shakti is the divine spark, the flow of God's love, and is the source of creative potential.
What is the purpose of Shakti, according to the text?
Separation from God, spirit, and Self, which is the underlying anxiety that created the need in the first place.
What is the primary motivation for attachment, according to the text?