Love has no agenda …

The sun shines longer in the spring, telling the trees it’s safe to reveal the countless buds beneath their scales. And when green blankets the earth, we’re inspired to show our own colors; but we don’t have to wait for spring.

I’m looking at stargazer lilies. They’re lush with fragrance and color. While one bud opens, another gains definition and pigment, maturing enough to open. You can almost watch as the stamens release their pollen. Designed to trap and hold the pollen, the stigma is wet and sticky; it literally drips. Flowers are the reproductive organs of plants! Buddha said, “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.” I want to be the miracle!

You don’t have to make babies; but if you want to keep your relationship dripping with life, keep growing … and help your partner grow. How? Stimulate the buds that lie dormant, risk “failure” for growth, live regardless of the consequences, trust life; and give your partner a safe place to reveal the “private” parts of his authentic self, to learn, to aim high, to miss, and try again.

It’s easy to get complacent, though. How do you continue to grow, without getting tired or discouraged?… More

From the time we learn the word “no,” we begin to get the message that what we would do naturally is “bad.”

As young children, we can’t make a distinction between our behavior and ourselves, so we buy into a lie — the lie that in order to be good enough we have to sit still and be quiet, or look pretty, or SOMETHING. But you know as well as I do that some of the demands we place on children (and ourselves) are more apt to stifle them than make them good.

“Even if you were fortunate enough to grow up in a safe, nurturing environment, you still bear invisible scars from childhood, because from the very moment you were born you were a complex, dependent creature with a never-ending cycle of needs. Freud correctly labeled us ‘insatiable beings.’ And no parents, no matter how devoted, are able to respond perfectly to all of these changing needs,” says Harville Hendrix in his bestselling “Getting the Love You Want.”

We have a fundamental motivation to be accepted, which is why you might jump to defend yourself, your parents, your children (even while reading this). Rejection used to point to a problem that needed our attention, and our survival depended on how sensitive and responsive we were.… More

Share more of you. Stop trying so hard to win approval. Don’t think of yourself as a burden. Let people know you, all of you.

Then, there’s nothing left to haunt you. You know they love you no matter what!… More

LET yourself be loved the way you’ve always wanted somebody to love you. How? Stop hiding pieces of you for fear of rejection. Share all of you–every crack and crevice. Tell him what gets you out of your comfort zone. Do with her what you’re afraid to do in front of somebody.

LET him tune into all of you.… More

If you have something to learn in your relationship, you might want to learn it before moving on, rather than encounter another opportunity.

We can’t change a partner; but we can change how we respond to a partner. We can purify our love for that partner. And when we do, we learn the lesson being presented to us; we prepare ourselves for the next lesson. It will be with the same partner or a new partner.

Our lessons are determined by us; and they don’t change because we change partners.

I’m not suggesting that you stay in an abusive relationship, but rather that YOU must be healthy to have a healthy relationship. Sometimes that means walking away. Sometimes that means learning the lesson in front of you, before you walk away. And sometimes it means learning the lesson in front of you … and realizing that you don’t have to go someplace else to be healthy and happy. … More

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