choosing peace

A peaceful mind comes from a consistent, unified perception of everyone and everything. The thought that Love is really the only motivation for anything in this world greatly simplifies the decision that must be made in any instance. Regardless of the situation, no matter how complicated, difficult or unreasonable it may appear to the eyes, it will immediately relieve you of strain to remember that people are really only either asking for Love FROM others or extending it TO others. In either case the only appropriate, practical response is to simply love. Just as the Truth sets you free so does your decision for Love open your eyes to the awareness that freedom from conflict was always yours to choose.

setting the goal

We often feel like our relationships aren't working. The only way to know for sure is to be clear on what your goal for the relationship is. If you're clear on the goal then it's simple to see if what you're doing with the relationship, what you're 'using it for', is bringing you closer to or pushing you further away from that purpose. 

For example if your goal is to learn how to truly love another person then the times when you are feeling unloving, or choosing to see them as undeserving of love will be given the purpose of practicing loving them regardless of their behavior and then looking honestly at your resistance to doing just that. Their role in your life becomes then a part of the lesson of learning the meaning of unconditional love and your resistance to it, your fear of it. It's easy to feel like we love someone when they're being everything we think we want them to be. It's when they're NOT being what we think we want them to be but we choose to continue loving them anyway that we understand the meaning of love without conditions. 

To my mind that is the proof of the relationship 'working' as the goal was conceived. And really what greater purpose can there possibly be for ANY relationship than learning the meaning of unconditional love? And if you don't have a conscious goal, then how are you supposed to know whether or not what you are doing is actually working?

authentic self-love

Any happiness gained from being dependent on anything outside of yourself (a person, a situation, a thing) MUST be underpinned with fear, the fear of losing it or it changing or being taken from you. If you believe that something outside you makes you happy then you must also believe that losing it will make you miserable. This is not TRUE peace of mind, but a temporary, illusionary happiness where your underlying fear of loss, lack or loneliness is momentarily covered over by your focus on the external object. This focus is thus accompanied by the need to constantly control and possess the object, to ensure that it is not lost, to avoid the experience of loss, separation and rejection. This is the root of all jealousy and insecurity. The belief that without the 'other' the self alone is invalid. This is a relationship based in fear, not love. In need, not fullness.

This is why most relationships end in conflict. People don't like being controlled. No-one wants to be responsible for someone else's happiness. It's a HUGE and impossible burden to place on someone else and is an abdication of your own power of self-determination. It's a betrayal and a rejection of the intrinsic validity of the self. 

Your unwillingness to love yourself expresses your profound belief that you are not worthy of love. Even if someone else loves you unconditionally if you don't love yourself you cannot believe they love you because there's no space within you to receive that kind of love, you don't believe it's possible. And so you will seek for and find justifications for feeling unloved, for them not meeting your needs as you have set them up (nobody can 'check' all of our boxes all of the time), proof that they do not love you or love you enough. Think about what you are 'giving' in this relationship. You do not value yourself enough to truly love yourself unconditionally and so seek another outside yourself of 'greater' value to substitute or make up for for the apparent lack you see within. Is it really a fair exchange to give something you value so little (yourself) to gain something you value so much (the other)? In this situation you do not even value the other unconditionally but only for what you can take from them, for the perceived value they add to your own diminished self-concept. This is why so many relationships break down, you were never really loving, giving to each other but simply trying to 'get' from each other. What seemed like love quickly fades into hate once one stops upholding his end of the bargain. Is it really loving someone to enter into such an unbalanced, unfair bargain and aren't they really also doing the same thing to you? Are either of you truly giving anything then at all? 

To truly give is to know that that which you depend upon cannot be lost. In this world the only thing that cannot be lost or taken from you is your own love for yourself, your acceptance of your own worth. This is the ONLY foundation upon which a lasting joy and peace of mind can be built. Everything external is temporary, transitory. That's the nature of this world. People come and go, either by choice or simply the process of life. Without an inner core of self love you are buffeted about, up or down depending on where the fickle currents of life lead, falling from one love bargain to the next, seeking but never finding the permanence you crave.

When you are truly willing to love yourself you are not seeking another to GIVE you love because you've already filled yourself with self-love and so feel no lack, and so you are free to simply unconditionally SHARE that love with another (with everyone) without the need to control, possess or make demands of them. What need is there to 'take' from another when you have already met your ONLY true need yourself? This is TRULY loving someone. This is loving yourself. Do not feel that it is wrong to enter into relationships based in fear, we all do at the beginning because we do not see that we are afraid, we don't see ourselves clearly. It's not wrong, but understand that it's also not what you really want. Looking with honest, open eyes at their relationships and the self-concept they uphold, who would choose a pale imitation of love when the infinite, lasting ocean of authentic self-love awaits only their choice?