LOVE: THE SECRET TO BEING ATTRACTIVE IS.....

Some men will always believe that a woman is good as long as she is beautiful and compliant. Some woman will overlook a dozen things about a man that might spell disaster in a relationship as long as he is dependable and brings in a good income. It takes inner growth to appreciate goodness as a deeper value. Ultimately people are good because of who they are; goodness is a quality of being. That is how I knew Maria was the one. She has so much goodness. We no longer bestow love when people are good to us and withdraw it when they are bad. Instead love become a constant in our lives.

Before Mara... I would have haunting fear of aloneness...."am i going to survive on my own. This fear bespeaks m tremendous need for security, a need so dominant that it often block that insight, courage, and freedom we really need but don't know how to find. Falling in love isn't accidental----there are no accidents in the spiritual life, only patterns we haven't yet recognized. All love is based on the search for spirit. Our search for love is driven by two forces

-fantasy of ideal romance

-fear that we will miss out and never loved at all

Fantasy and fear are what most of us fall back on when we search for love. Prompted by them, most people approach romance with behavior that can never bring about what they hope to achieve such as the following:

-We constantly compare ourselves with an ideal that we can never live up to. The loveless inner voice drives us by saying:"You aren't good enough"

-We look for approval in others. This behavior basically project our inner dissatisfaction with ourselves in the hope that some outside authority will lift it from our souls. Here the loveless inner voice is saying, "Don't make a move until the right person comes along" (The right person in this case is some fairy-tale character who will tap the ugly duckling and turns it into a swan) Being an impossible fiction, that right person never arrives

-We assume that falling in love is totally magical, a stroke from the blue that will come at random, usually when least expected. Many people wait passively for this magic to appear. Although masked as hope, this passivity is really a form of hopelessness, for the inner loveless voice is saying: "There's nothing you can do but wait to see if someone loves you". The underlying belief here is that we cannot possibly deserve love--not passionate, fulfilling love of our dreams.

The secret to being attractive is To love, be Lovable. Using another person isn't loving; it's treating that person like an object. Objects always wear out or the joy we take in them fades. More important, using someone as an object forces you to miss his value as a human being.

When I was young...a woman has to be attractive to even attract me. Few have been able to live up to my ideal perfect lover. I used my fantasies of a perfect lover to preclude any possibility that I might see into myself. My obstacle in life appeared to be that the right woman were all unavailable, but in truth I picked them because they were unavailable. Ensuring in advance that there is a fatal flaw in your partner makes it easy to reject before you get rejected yourself. In my fear of commitment is a fear I am not facing in myself. Fear of commitment comes in many forms. But what does is say spiritually----Fear of commitment mirror a belief that spirit is unreachable. Thus love become hopeless.

When a beautiful woman takes notice of me...I feel special, cared for, and important. What I need is to have my ordinariness deemed special. Spirit loves me for simply being here. When I began to believe this one thing....the woman you attract as a lover will hold the same attitude...Maria.

The intense desirability of another person isn't innate in that person. Desire is born in the one who desire. My underlying self-image is that of a helpless, unloved man, any show of attractiveness arouses incredible yearning in me. There is nothing wrong with this---we all project similar need in our search for love. Each beautiful woman real or imaginary has a repeated message to offer me: "You are loved". It is the simplest of messages, but often the hardest to absorb. For spirit isn't saying, "You are loved as long as your passion for this woman last." It is saying, "You are loved" without any qualification.

I expect alot from my fantasy, but I need to transfer those expectation to myself. What do I really want from woman? Security, well-being, a sense of belonging, sex, and love. These are all available to me from my own self, and my healing will be to fall in love with that self.

I love you has many hidden meaning. Very often we say these words and silently add expectations that underline them. What we really are saying may be:

-I love you as long as you stay the way you are now
-I love you if you love me
-I love you if you don't scare me too much

Fantasy created a false image that love is expected to live up to. We fantasize about an ideal lover, and anyone who doesn not match this ideal becomes unfit for our love. Being old or too young, too dull..too anything that does not pass the test--this is how other people come to be seen as lacking potential for love. Someone who believe that no one will ever love him projection his own lack of acceptance onto others. The internal belief "I'm not lovable" is so painful it cannot be faced, and one way to lessen that pain is to stop claiming it as your own.

The fact is that we rarely see people for who they are; we see them association with people from our past. We carry around in our heads the physical image of our parents and match them to everyone we meet. Too close a resemblance provokes associations, good and bad, that have nothing to do with the new people and everything to do with our own mental process. False love operate by projection. Getting rid of projection is critical if you want to be able to tell true love from false, as either the giver or the receiver.

If you examine any negative trait you insist in present in another person, you will find the same trait hiding in yourself. The more you deny this trait, the more strongly you will have to project it. Thus if you habitually defend yourself before being accused, you feel guilty. That guilt need to be faced in order to stop the projection. If you feel that the man or woman you love is constantly looking at other with sexual interest, you are the one who cannot be trusted.