Love is … work, diligence, discipline and reward
Exciting and loving relationships demand a lot from us. The deeper, stronger and more intimate they are, the less space there is to deceive ourselves. A relationship challenges us to recognize that we aren’t everything we believe ourselves to be when we are on our own. It challenges us time and again to strip off, to be naked in our innermost core – the place where we are love.
We can only experience this deepest of all spiritual truths in relationships with other people when we are truly committed to ourselves. Otherwise we can read up on our divine nature, we can meditate about it and study it, but it won’t do us any good. I know a lot of people with a truly inspiring theoretical knowledge and a vast spiritual library. But many of them seem like seductive virgins – as yet unkissed.
In reality, the amount of vitality and fulfilment in our life is solely dependent on how much we experience our inner truth. How much we experience ourselves as loving beings. How much we trust, challenge and transcend our own selves to bring this truth into being – with patience, perseverance, courage and discipline. How much we dare to follow our hearts and present ourselves as vulnerable. Most of all, how much we can avoid judging our partner and how much we can forgive them. If we feel lonely, cold and empty in our relationship or in our life, then there is a simple path back towards warmth: we have to find a focal point for our love – what it is doesn’t really matter – and let our attention, gratitude, forgiveness and affection flow consciously towards it.
Give it a try. Think of someone, whoever comes to your mind, and open your heart. Maybe you remember a particularly good time with someone and want to thank them. Maybe you are brave and decide to forgive an old issue that locks you in resentment with someone. Maybe you decide to really go for it and unleash all your compassion on your partner, even though you are in the middle of a long-running argument.
Just close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Be aware that your breath is flowing in through your chest and moving deep down into your pelvic region. Give your full attention to your breath and relax with a sigh or by yawning with your whole body. Look for a connecting thought and focus on the middle of your chest. Do you feel something opening up there? While you are indulging in this feeling of wellbeing, notice warmth spreading through you. Something begins to flow inside you and you feel softer inside. You feel the love inside yourself. You sense your divine core.
Stop waiting and longing for a Mr or Ms Perfect, worthy of your love, who will just drop by eventually. Stop being angry and vengeful when others aren’t perfect or behave in an unpleasant way. Don’t wait until everything is right before you say ‘Yes, let’s move in together/marry/have a baby.’ Instead, simply decide as often as you can to look for the loveable heart of the people you meet and direct your love to them. This love is God’s gift – and yet it is your conscious decision. Every day, every hour, every minute, you can consciously decide to either love or not love.
If you do decide to unfold the love in your life, then you need perseverance and discipline. Most people don’t want to know about that. We are all so used to simply consuming. We are looking for a drive-in and a microwave for our needs. And we see superstars who apparently appear overnight. They seem to be like packet soup – just a cupful of hot water and hey presto, they’re ready! In reality, all those great sportspeople, artists, actors or scientists have extraordinary talents, just as everybody else boasts extraordinary inner love. People who achieve truly great things commit themselves to their passion, devote themselves to their dream and train and practise far beyond their limits. They cope with numerous defeats and setbacks and usually make a great many sacrifices in order to reach their goals.
The truth is that we cannot achieve anything important in our lives without perseverance and discipline. With just a little bit of discipline we can initiate something. With total perseverance and discipline we can change a whole life. Total perseverance and discipline mean loving fully the whole time. That’s a championship title worth striving for. It may sound difficult, but the truth is that life is not meant to be easy. From an emotional point of view, we come here to heal, to learn and to contribute. Our soul doesn’t care whether we are enjoying it or not. Its aim is healing, personal development and the transformation of old wounds.
It was Chuck Spezzano who gave me this wonderful piece of wisdom: ‘Do your homework – otherwise it does you.’ What did he mean? If we are alert, persevering and disciplined, always ready to continue developing, if we open up our minds and hearts to others and to new things, if we are prepared to take on leadership and to bear the consequences of everything that we cause, if we are willing to stand by our own truth, then we do our homework. If not, then fate, problems, ‘wrong’ partners, illness and life itself will see to our development, only apparently against our will.
Life is an eternal sequence of opportunities for growth that we normally call problems. Most people don’t want to know this either. Fear of the pain the problems might cause means most people try to avoid them, ignore them or repress them. But time and again we are challenged to face them and to solve them – particularly if we try to avoid them. It is this process that gives life its true meaning. This is real evolution. We can only grow if there is some resistance, because this challenges our strengths, our potential and our faith. And problems cause pain – until we are prepared to face them head on, look at them and accept them with all our curiosity, commitment, understanding and love. Only then will the pain end and life gain some lightness – until the next so-called ‘problem’, the next task to be met with perseverance and discipline. And so on until the next reward.
Don’t wait until you can say: ‘We’ve finally made it!’ That is the wrong approach to a relationship, as is: ‘First I have to find Mr/Ms Right…’ A long-term relationship is like crafting stone. First you hack away the lumpy bits with a hammer and a chisel. In the later stages the tools become more delicate and the workings incredibly fine. Every day your partner does something differently from how you would do it. That means that every day there is something you can learn from your partner. When you first try out this approach you will probably have to hack away quite big chunks. Maybe your partner is cheating on you or is inconsiderate. It’s not easy hacking away at those lumps in the hope of creating an aesthetically pleasing shape eventually. I know that it works. But time and again you will need willpower to heal your relationship, to fully commit yourself to your partner, to express your whole truth, to look at the lovelessness inside yourself and to acknowledge your own lack of commitment.
There is one final question: ‘Is it really worth the bother?’You know my answer: ‘Yessssssssssssssssssssssss!’ A crisis is a source of energy. A crisis gives birth to love. A crisis is an opportunity. A weathered crisis always leaves traces behind: more confidence, courage, intimacy, vitality. We must stop doubting. We know that we can make it. And while battling through all the challenges and storms of a relationship, it becomes more intense and we both grow.
You can recognize people who have been on such a journey: they give off more calmness and joyfulness. They know that life is full of opportunities for growth and they face them patiently. Often they smile when they remember back to how they once thought that a crisis was a problem and that they wanted to run away from it.
The big challenge in a relationship is how we can experience freedom and love, depth and light-heartedness at the same time. How can we accept and acknowledge that the other person is different while still keeping our emotional intimacy and even deepening it? A while ago I talked to a couple bursting with such questions and searching for the next step in their relationship. Both were surprised during our talks to discover that deep inside they held the firm belief that they should never wholly commit themselves to another person, never truly abandon themselves to love because the other person might die. This conclusion baffled me very much and my first instinctive thought was: ‘How fulfilling it would be, if my husband died, to be able to mourn so much love!’
People are more afraid of love than of anything else. We would rather die than take the risk of truly living and loving. I think that these days we have come to a watershed. The old systems aren’t functioning any more. Once whole lives were geared towards ‘higher, faster, further, bigger’. But the foundation of that system is fear – fear of not being good enough, fear of not possessing enough. In this system relationships are seen through a filter of competitiveness. ‘Do I get enough attention and care? Does my partner get more than me? If I invest too much, will I be losing too much?’ The driving force behind a lot of our behaviour is a deep-seated feeling of worthlessness. We feel inadequate and have a fear of loss. We constantly feel that we are not good enough. So we have to make more of an effort to achieve, to create, to achieve even more, to do even more and to make more of an effort…
Day by day we achieve even more even faster. But we don’t feel satisfied. Quite the opposite – for more and more people life feels like standing in a swamp and sinking deeper with every step they try to take. Confusing winning with success has led our Western world into a dead-end street. From childhood onwards we have learned to win and now we are standing here with the trophies – in a traffic jam. And fewer and fewer people are applauding us because every one of our victories creates more losers. As soon as we win, someone else loses. And in global terms, this winner-loser game automatically drives us into a corner. Social systems, businesses, families, relationships and individuals are paralyzed or collapse.
In my view our current worldwide crisis is our greatest opportunity for evolution. We have to acknowledge that we are all in relationships – with everybody and everything. And at the moment there are no victories per se. There are only triumphs that make others losers. That is why it is vital for everybody to learn how to be successful. Success means making the best of ourselves. Success means the best for me is also the best for others. Success means everybody works together. We all learn to have new kinds of relationships. Everybody – men as well as women – discovers the nurturing principle of mothering in themselves. We all become a catalyst for success in the people we encounter. Once other people’s lives – and the world itself – change for the better because of what we do, we will automatically feel successful and fulfilled.
True success happens when we devote our life to personal healing and development, as I have described in this book. For that we don’t have to go into a retreat, nor do we need therapy. All we have to do is to look around us – at our families, our work, our friends. If our life seems threatened, unsafe, lifeless, frozen or lonely, we should stop looking for scapegoats. Our questions should rather be: ‘What do I have to give that I haven’t given before? When do I act out of a false sense of duty? When do I only give out of politeness and fear of rejection? When do I give only in order to be recognized?’This kind of giving will drain you. It creates the feeling of never getting enough. We can only truly give when we are prepared to receive only what is best for ourselves. In order to truly give we have to value ourselves first.
I have noticed that most people are afraid to live their own greatness. We shrink to the smallest common denominator so that we can fit in and belong. We make sure that nobody can criticize us, that we don’t hurt anybody, that we are never different from those whose consent and attention we crave. Or we become self-righteous and claim to be revolutionaries. We debate political issues, we discuss the war in Iraq, the pros and cons of amalgam fillings, state pensions and eating beef. We become successful and make decisions about the closing down of subsidiaries in faraway countries. We can’t deal with the pettiness of our friends and don’t invite them to dinner any more, but greet them in passing with an overly friendly smile. But this apparently brave willingness to argue doesn’t give us what we are looking for either.
True success will flow into your life once you express yourself, once you acknowledge what you want and once you live out your true life tasks. Have you been wanting to speak out for a long time? Have you been dreaming of a different job? Have you been passionate about starting a project? Are you still clinging to security, not daring to finally let go of all your meaningless duties and joyless routines? Are you are hiding behind doubts, mediocrity, tradition and comfort? Are you saying ‘I should … I ought to … if only … soon…’?
Everything would change if only you were willing to look at yourself in all honesty. If you were prepared to show your own truths and express them. If you learned to stop repressing your pain and accepted it. If you began to forgive yourself and others for your apparent mistakes. If you were willing to give up judgement and criticism. If you were ready to opt out of safe but lifeless routines. If you were prepared to take risks again. If you were willing to listen to your inner voice or other people’s guidance. If you were prepared to stand up for another person or issue. Then you would finally discover your talents, your unused strengths, your creativity, your purpose in life. Then all the gifts and emotional tasks you have brought into this life would unfold all of a sudden. When this happens it is as if the former reluctance, the blockages, the pain, the hopelessness and the obstacles in your life suddenly form part of a bigger picture and make sense. And all of a sudden your life makes a difference.
We all have to find purpose and meaning in our life in order to be fulfilled and happy. Then we can help others to do the same. Together we can redeem the world. If you take one step forward, if you heal your own life, then everybody else around you is also able to take one step forward. The further you proceed with your development, the better others around you will feel. Once you are happier, more successful and alive, then everybody in contact with you will feel the strength you are radiating, consciously and unconsciously.
The turbo-chargers on this path are intimate relationships. In no other situation can we get to know ourselves more quickly and more precisely. Everywhere we fall short of our ideal will be apparent in a relationship with another person. And the closer we get to ourselves, the more profound the opportunities for self-knowledge – and the more profound the insights into everything that we have kept hidden from ourselves and would never have looked at otherwise. As unpleasant as they might sometimes feel, intimate relationships are the royal road to transforming your life. Each painful lesson challenges us to move forward, but once learned, it immediately leads to greater intimacy and confidence.
One of the biggest steps you can take is to truly commit to another person – to say: ‘I will share my path with you – the bad times as well as the good times. I will entrust myself to you, even when things get difficult. You are my mirror. In your healing, your happiness, your fulfilment, I recognize my own healing and my power to heal others.’ The very biggest step forward, your greatest gift to the world, though, is the one you take when you love yourself.
A friend shaken up by a recent marital crisis told me he had met a very remarkable woman. They were both part of a small group of friends that was talking very openly about having affairs. There were a few confessions and the sad and resigned consensus was that these days affairs were likely to be part of nearly every long-term relationship. Eventually this remarkable woman had turned the conversation around abruptly by saying, ‘I can’t say anything about affairs. I have been married for 13 years and have other priorities.’ The friends looked at her in confusion and doubt. Was she kidding? Had she simply shut out the facts of modern-day life? But the remarkable woman explained that before her marriage she had lived quite a wild life and at one point even had three relationships going at the same time. Then she had met her husband and one day had decided to share her life with him. They had got married and had said, ‘I do.’ From that day on she had considered that sentence her life task. It was her commitment to marriage.