SPIRITUAL/DATING: WHY YOU FEEL EMPTY

I always sensed there was some mysterious cosmic order to things, but I could never figure out how it applied to my own life.

We were taught a very bad philosophy, a way of looking at the world that contradicts who we are. We were taught to think thoughts like competition, struggle, sickness, finite resources, limitation, guilt, bad, death, scarcity, and loss.We were taught that things like grades, being good enough, money, and doing things the right way, are more important than love.
We were taught that we’re separate from other people, that we have to compete to get a head, that we’re not quite good enough the way we are.We were taught to see the world the way that others had come to see it.Love is what we were born with.  Fear is what we learned here.
The spiritual journey is the relinquishment, or unlearning, of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts

Love isn’t seen with the physical eyes or heard with the physical ears. The physical senses can’t perceive it; it’s perceived through another kind of vision. Love requires a different kind of “seeing” than we’re used to – a different kind of knowing or thinking. Love is the intuitive knowledge of our hearts. Love isn’t material.  It’s energy.  It’s the feeling in a room, a situation, a person. It has nothing at all to do with the physical world, but it can be expressed nonetheless. We experience it as kindness, giving, mercy, compassion, peace, joy, acceptance, non-judgment, joining, and intimacy.


What I learned is that the change we’re really looking for is inside our heads. Change in life is always going to happen; they part of the human experience. What can change, however, is how we perceive those experiences.  

 I began to realize that taking love seriously would be a complete transformation of my thinking. Surrender to God means surrender to love.The mind that’s separate from God has forgotten how to check in with love before it saunters out into the world.  The mind’s function is to experience love.To surrender to God means to let go and just love.  By affirming that love is our priority in a situation, we actualize the power of God. Through a mental decision a conscious recognition of love’s importance Love is energy. Very few people feel enough love in their lives.  The world has become a rather loveless place.  We can hardly even imagine a world in which all of us were in love all the time, with everyone. Most of us are violent people – not necessarily physically, but emotionally.  We have been brought up in a world that does not put love first, and where love is absent, fear sets in.  Fear is to love as darkness is to light.  It’s a terrible absence of what we need in order to survive.  Fear is the root of all evil.  It’s the problem with the world.


We get in life, that which we focus on.  Continual focus on darkness leads us, as individuals and as a society, further into darkness.  Focus on the light brings us into the light.Very few of us were taught that we’re essentially good.  Very few of us were given sense of unconditional approval, a feeling that we’re precious because of what we are, not what we do.We were raised by people who were raised the same way we were.What we lost was a sense of our own power.  And what we learned was fear, fear that we weren’t good enough, just the way we are.

No thoughts are neutral. Taking responsibility for our lives, then, means taking responsibility for our thoughts. The purpose of life is to grow into our perception.  Once we call on God, everything that could anger us is on the way.  Why? Because the place where we go into anger instead of love, is our wall.  Any situation that pushes our buttons is a situation where we don’t yet have the capacity to unconditionally love. It’s the universe’s job to draw our attention to that, and help us move beyond that point.


What if we truly believed there is a God – a beneficent order to things, a force that’s holding things together without our conscious control? You and I are integral parts of that system, too.  We can let our lives be directed by the same force that makes flowers grow – or we can do it ourselves. To trust in the force that moves the universe is faith.  Faith isn’t blind, it’s visionary.  Faith believes that the universe is on our side, and that the universe knows what it’s doing. Without faith, we’re frantically trying to control what it is not our business to control, and fix what it is not incur power to fix. Violation of these laws doesn’t bespeak a lack of goodness; just a lack of intelligence.

When we surrender to God, we surrender to something bigger than ourselves – to a universe that knows what its doing. Surrender means, by definition, giving up attachment to results. To place something in the hands of God is to give it over, mentally, to the protection and care of the beneficence of the universe.Surrender is process of emptying the mind.Surrender means the decision to stop fighting the world, and to start loving it instead.

A return to inner peace.  We’re not asking for something outside us to change, but for something inside us to change.  We’re looking for a softer orientation to life. Our greatest tool for changing the world is our capacity to change our mind about the world.  If we think we’re magnificent creatures with an infinite abundance of love and power to give, then we tend to behave that way. We have a mission – to save the world through the power of love. To heal the world through the power of love.  This has very little to do with verbal communication, and everything to do with a quality of human energy. To teach is to demonstrate. Our job as a teacher of God, should we choose to accept it, is to constantly seek a greater capacity for love and forgiveness within ourselves.  We do this through a “selective remembering,” a conscious decision to remember only loving thoughts and let go of any fearful ones.  This is the meaning of forgiveness


Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it.  If we’re frantic, life will be frantic.  If we’re peaceful, life will be peaceful.  And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace. Our internal state determines our experience of our lives; our experiences do not determine our internal state. Real transformation of the world comes not from what we’re doing, but from the consciousness with which we’re doing it.

When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter.  As you see him, you will see yourself.  As you treat him, you will treat yourself.  As you think of him, you will think of yourself.  Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself.

The attainment of inner peace.  Forgiveness is the key to inner peace because it is the mental technique by which our thoughts are transformed from fear to love.The ego is the great fault-finder.  It seeks out the faults in us and others. Forgiveness is “selective remembering” – a conscious decision to focus on love and let the rest go. The last thing I wanted to be told was that the only error was an error in my own thinking.People who do make us angry, however, are our most important teachers.  They indicate the limits to our capacity for forgiveness.

 If a person behaves unlovingly, then, that means that, regardless of their negativity – anger or whatever – their behavior was derived from fear and doesn’t actually exist.  They’re hallucinating.  You forgive them, then, because there’s nothing to forgive.When someone has behaved unlovingly –when they yell at us, or lie about us, or steal from us –they have lost touch with their essence.  They have forgotten who they are.  But everything that someone does, is either love or a call for love.  If someone treats us with love, then of course love is the appropriate response.  If they treat us with fear, we are to see their behavior as a call for love.


 The spiritual path involves taking conscious responsibility for what we choose to perceive. People are not perfect – that is, they do not yet express externally their internal perfection. What we think of as people’s guilt is their fear.  All negativity derives from fear.  When someone is angry, they are afraid. When someone is rude, they are afraid. When someone is manipulative, they are afraid.  When someone is cruel, they are afraid.  There is no fear that love does not dissolve. There is no negativity that forgiveness does not transform.If we want to be rid of fear, we cannot fight it but must replace it with love. The miracle is a shift in our own thinking:  the willingness to keep our own heart open, regardless of what’s going on outside us.

Relationships are assignments.  They are part of a vast plan for our enlightenment, a blueprint by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. No meetings are accidental. “Those who are to meet will meet, because together they have the potential for a holy relationship.” There are three levels of teaching in relationship.  The first level is what we think of as a casual encounter, such as two strangers meeting in an elevator or students who “happen” to walk home from school together.  The second level is a “more sustained relationship, in which, for a time, two people enter into a fairly intense teaching-learning situation and then appear to separate.”  The third level of teaching is a relationship which, once formed, lasts all our lives.  At this level, “each person is given a chosen learning partner who presents him with unlimited opportunities for learning.”

·         It is mostly in causal encounters that we are given a chance to practice the fine art of chiselling away the hard edges of our personalities.Relationships are eternal.  They are of the mind, not the body, since people are energy, not physical substance. Often we see a couple who has separated or divorced and look with sadness at the ‘failure’ of their relationship.  But if both people learned what they were meant to learn, then that relationship was a success.

People who have the most to teach us are often the ones who reflect back to us the limits to our own capacity to love, those who consciously or unconsciously challenge our fearful positions.They show us our walls.  Our walls are our wounds – the place where we feel we can’t love any more, can’t connect any more deeply; can’t forgive past a certain point.We are in each other’s lives in order to help us see where we most need healing, and in order to help us heal.

The search for the perfect person to “fix” us is one of our biggest psychic wounds, and one of the ego’s most powerful delusions.  Our desire to find one “special person”  who will complete us, is hurtful because it is delusional.  It means we’re seeking salvation in separation rather than in oneness.  The only love that completes us is the love of God, and the love of God is the love of everyone.  That doesn’t mean that the form of our relationships is the same with everyone, but it means that we are seeking the same content in every relationship; a quality of love and friendship that goes beyond the changes of form and bodies.

 A relationship is not meant to be the joining at the hip of two emotional invalids.  The purpose of a relationship is not for two incomplete people to become one, but rather for two complete people to join together for the greater glory of God

For an bad relationship is based on differences, where each one thinks the other has what he has not.  They come together, each to complete himself and rob the other. They stay until they think that there is nothing left to steal, and then move on.  And  so they wander through a world of strangers, unlike themselves, living with their bodies perhaps under a common roof that shelters neither; in the same room and yet a world apart.A good relationship starts from a different premise.  Each one has looked within and seen no lack. Accepting his completion, he would extend it by joining with another; whole as himself.  How do we find a holy relationship? Not by asking God to change our partners, but by asking God to change our minds.

 Spiritual progress is like a detoxification.  Things have to come up in order to be released.  Once we have asked to be healed, then our unhealed places are forced to the surface.  A relationship that is used by becomes a place where our blocks to love are not suppressed or denied, but rather brought into our conscious awareness.  We never get crazy like we do around the people we’re really attracted to.  Then we can see our dysfunctions clearly; and when we’re ready, ask God to show us another way.

 God’s idea of a “good relationship” and the ego’s idea of one are completely different. To the ego, a good relationship is one in which another person basically behaves the way we want them to and never presses our buttons, never violates our comfort zones.  But if a relationship exists to support our growth, then in many ways it exists to do just those things; force us out of our limited tolerance and inability to love unconditionally.  We’re not aligned with God until people can behave in any way they choose to, and our own inner peace isn’t shaken.We love purely when we release other people to be who they are. The ego seeks intimacy through control and guilt. Love seeks intimacy through acceptance and release.

Rejecting another human being simply because they are human has become a collective neurosis.  People ask, “When will my soul mate get here?”  But praying for the right person is useless if we’re not ready to receive him.  Our soul mates are human beings, just like we are, going through the normal processes of growth.  No one is ever “finished.” Love is a decision.  Part of working on ourselves, in order to be ready for a profound relationship, is learning how to support another person in being the best that they can be. Partners are meant to have a priestly role in each other’s lives.  They are meant to help each other access the highest parts within themselves. Our pain doesn’t come from the love we weren’t given in the past, but from the love we ourselves aren’t giving in the present.  Salvation is only found in the present. We don’t get to the light through endless investigation of the darkness.  After a certain point, the discussion always becomes circular.  The only way to the light is through entering the light.

We think we’re need to understand people in order to figure out whether or not they’re worthy of our love, but that actually, until we love them, we can never understand them.  What is not loved is not understood.  We hold ourselves separate from people and wait for them to earn our love.  But people deserve our love because of what God created them to be. As long as we’re waiting for them to be anything better, we will constantly be disappointed. When we choose to join with them, through approval and unconditional love, the miracle kicks in for both parties.  This is the primary key, the ultimate miracle, in relationships.

And so it is that, in relationships as well, we’re brought together for real work.  Real work can only occur in the presence of rigorous honesty.  We all long for that, but we are afraid of honestly communicating with another person because we think they’ll leave us if they see who we really are.It’s far better to communicate than to suppress our feelings.  Anger is often a result of a series of uncommunicated feelings building up inside of us and ultimately exploding. In a good relationship, we consider it part of our commitment to stay current in the honest expression of our feelings, and to support our partner in doing the same. Couples that they agree not to break up a relationship because a fight. It’s very important to have a safe space for fighting.  I say that because fighting isn’t always fighting. Once I was having a “dramatic discussion” with a friend.  A mutual friend of ours spoke up and said, “I can’t stand the way you guys are fighting” “We’re not fighting, we were having a passionate conversation.'

An outburst of emotion doesn’t have to be so quickly labelled anger. It’s a release of energy and doesn’t have to be thought of as a negative or “unspiritual” emotion. The unhealthiest thing you can do with anger is to deny you have it. The miraculous perspective is not to pretend you’re not angry, but rather to say, “I’m angry but I’m willing not to be.  Dear God, please show me what it is I’m not seeing.”  There is a way of sharing our anger with people, without expressing it as an attack. Instead of saying, for instance, “You made me feel this or that,” you say, “This is how I’m feeling.  I’m not saying you made me feel this way, or that you’re to blame. I’m simply sharing this as part of my healing, in order to release this feeling and move beyond it.” Miracles arise from total communication given and received.If anger isn’t brought up into conscious awareness, it has no place to go. It either turns into an attack on self or an inappropriate unconscious attack on others.

We often must become painfully aware of the unworkability of a pattern before we’re willing to give it up. It often seems, in fact, that our lives get worse rather than better when we begin to work deeply on ourselves.  Life doesn’t actually get worse; it’s just that we feel our own transgressions more because we’re no longer anesthetized by unconsciousness.

It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last t the rest of our lives. So what are we to do with our fear, our anger, and the clouds that cover the love inside us? Relinquish them to the God. He transforms them through love, and never through an attack on another person.  It is attack, not the anger itself, which is destructive.

The price you pay for not taking responsibility for your own pain is the failure to realize they you can change your conditions by changing your thoughts.The only way that I can accept someone’s finding me wonderful, is if I find myself wonderful.  But to the ego self-acceptance is death.  This is why we’re attracted to people who don’t want us…..The reason we’re not attracted to them is because we’re not available ourselves.

We heal through noticing  Awareness alone does not heal us. If analysis by itself could heal our wounds, we would all be healed by now. Until the choice is made to do it differently, you just keep going around in circles. When we give up the childish obsession with scanning the planet for Mr. or Ms Right, we can begin to develop the skills of compassionate relationship.  We stop judging people and start relating to them instead.We recognize, first and foremost, that we’re not in a relationship to focus on how well the other person is learning their lessons, but rather to focus on learning our own.

Unconditional love I could understand, but not unconditional dating. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate.  Accepting people as they are has the miraculous affect of helping them improve.  Acceptance doesn’t prohibit growth; rather, it fosters it. People who are always telling us what’s wrong with us don’t help us so much as they paralyze us with shame and guilt.  People who accept us help us to feel good about ourselves, to relax, to find our way. Accepting another person doesn’t mean we ever share constructive suggestions.But like everything else, our behavior is not so much the issue as the energy that it carries.…communicate from love instead of attack.…the key to communication is not what we say, but rather the attitude that lies behind what we say.The choice to join is the key to communication because it is the key to communion.  The point is not to seek our goal in a communication, but to find a pure ground of being from which to mount our message.

Commitment in a relationship means commitment to the process of mutual understanding and forgiveness – no matter how many conversations it takes, nor how uncomfortable those conversations might sometimes be.Ultimately you discover that how the person treated the last one is exactly how they’ll treat you. Love is not neutral.  It takes a stand. Why is marriage a more profound commitment than other forms of relationship, such as a couple who are living together? Because it is an agreement that, while a whole lot of shaking and screaming might go on, no one’s going to leave the room.  We don’t get married to escape the world; we get married to heal it together.

There is no coming to consciousness without forgiving our parents. We are not held back by the love we didn’t receive in the past, but by the love we’re not extending in the present. Forgiveness remains the only path that leads out of hell.

With work..realize that you are here to represent God who sent me. I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me.  I am content to be wherever He wishes,  Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and abilities were used in a way that served others. We’re compensated by grateful looks in people’s eyes, whatever material abundance supports us in performing joyfully and at high energy, and the magnificent feeling that we did our bit today to save the world.  The Atonement means putting love first.  In everything.  In business as well as everything else. You’re in business to spread love.The question to ask is, “When I do anything, how should I do it?” And the answer is, “Kindly.”.Remember that my real job is to love the world back to health.No matter what form our job or activity takes, the content is the same as everyone else’s:  we are here to minister to human hearts.  If we talk to anyone, or see anyone, or even think of anyone, then we have the opportunity to bring more love into the universe. The choice to be used as an instrument of love, right here, right now, is a choice for personal empowerment.People don’t come into your place of business so that you can get anything.  They’re sent so that you can give them love.…if the purpose of my career is to channel God’s love, them I’m only there to open my heart, open my brain and open my mouth. The miraculous transformation here is from a sales mentality to a service mentality.God, please use me” is the most powerful affirmation we can say for an abundant career

In God’s world, there’s only one work going on, and that’s the preparation of His teachers, those who demonstrate love. “Dear God, I surrender this situation to you.  May it be used for your purposes?  I ask only that my heart be open to give love and to receive love.  May all the results unfold according to your will?  Amen” Whatever you do, do it for God.Heaven is a conscious choice to defy the ego’s voice.At the highest level of our being, we don’t do anything. We’re at rest when the power of God works through us.