I Love me, I love me not?

Here's a beautiful piece on relationships from my friend Mark G;

It’s a pretty simple equation. If you think you genuinely want a great relationship that is founded in love and it’s not happening, then you’d better start to look at why you don’t want a great relationship that is founded in love. It is a most common idea that persists about love and relationships that if we can just “find” the right person, then we will be happy. And so the search goes on to seek out candidates that match our illusionary dream of happiness. And when we finally find or settle on a seemingly mutual connection, we begin to explore a relationship. Most often the path we choose in relationships and love, are the one’s most familiar based on our own experiences of what we were taught and what we experienced with our own parents.

It is true that some can be compatible and live together for years by simply having “things in common.” Sports, arts, travel, habits, sex, and the rest of the twenty-nine dimensions of compatibility we find with internet matchmaking. And it is of course also known that large numbers of marriages end with destructive divorces laced with anger and blame. Someone did not “make me happy, so I’ll look elsewhere.”

Look around. In your general sphere of friends and relatives, how many couples are experiencing genuine love and happiness? Probably not very many I suspect.
Then what is going on here? Why is it such a struggle to love? Why are relationships so crazy and out of synch? Why do we make choices that lead us to unhappiness and anger instead of fulfillment and love? Why is life so cruel!

Well my friends, to find the answer we need to enter the realm of the soul. We need to expand our consciousness and open the door for the possibility that what we “know” is simply not enough for the experience of genuine love. And genuine is the operative word. It is the unconditional, non-judgment of life and total acceptance of ones self that is at the core of genuine love. The good news is that every single physical soul has this ability, as it’s “first nature.” The bad news is we generally live by what we think of as “second nature.” Which basically means that our belief systems are formed by both what were taught, and by our souls karmic collective experiences. Okay, don’t get scared now and close out this session. Just keep an open mind and read on.

When we talk about relationships and love, we are really speaking to our own selves. It is not about finding the “perfect” mate. What we energize into our lives, what we magnetize to externally, only reflects back to us our own issues that need repair and healing. So when we attach ourselves to another in the context of relationships and under the heading of being “in love,” our chosen one becomes an object. Because we have been taught to disconnect from ourselves, from our genuine feelings, we put that power in the hands of the objectified beloved. Then an interesting dynamic is put in place. Love becomes the experience of neediness. When a person hasn’t healed (or at

least tried) to heal his or her own suffering and struggle, there is no relationship out there that will be satisfying and fulfilling. The wounds and traumas of the child are piggy-backed to the adult and are projected outward and can only attract others who are willing to play out this childish dance as adults in a relationship.

Genuine love cannot occur when two are trapped in “acting out” under the false belief that this is what you do in a relationship. What’s at work here transcends our practical application of physical life. This is the work of the soul. Life is not a bitch, but karma can be! The universe is a wonderful, benign place that is here to grant your every desire and need. It is available to all. However few are ready, willing and able to manifest the Divine Nature of Life. Life without the judgment of our ego is simply life. The physical college of life from birth to death.

Therefore, great love and exquisite relationships, gobs of pleasure and happiness, immense personal fulfillment are readily available all the time. If that’s what you think you want, and it’s not coming your way, you are preventing it.
It’s time to take total self-responsibility for the creation of your life. You’ll never find it from the outside. No person can give this to you. It can only be owned and then shared. Maybe you should be thinking about how hard you “work” to acquire external wealth and security, and start putting some of that energy into working on yourself. And when you start opening the channels of your soul, great love can’t help but find its way into your life.

Instead of paying for anti-depressants, drugs, numbing diversions, external toys and alike, spend some of that money on some self-inner work. Try yoga, meditation, consider some therapy. Find those soul-searching environments that will allow you get back to your true “first nature.” And that is unconditional love and acceptance of life and of who you truly are as a soul, not just a personality.
Hey listen, if you don’t do it in this lifetime, don’t fret, you’ll have plenty of others, but eventually, by and by you will, we all will get there. Thank God!