Love has no agenda …

To free ourselves of fear is to free ourselves of everything but love.

And when we do this in dating, we don’t worry about rejection. It doesn’t matter. So, we can share all of who we are, the best of who we are. We don’t try to “make” a relationship work. It’s okay if it doesn’t. And we don’t have to know where it’s going; because love is what we were going to do anyway.

We can trust love. We can trust ourselves. We know who we are and what we have to give; and if it doesn’t work for somebody else, it doesn’t matter. It still works for us. And it’s the only thing that works in our happily-ever-after. … More

When we know that love is truly the only thing that matters, we are free to simply love. We can let go of what doesn’t matter. We can stop worrying about what other people think. We can let go of fear and our attachment to the results. We realize that the only way to “fail” is not to try … and that even when we do, we’re intended to learn from it and go again.

Still, to love well is the work of a lifetime. It seems we can always purify our love just a little bit more. We don’t purify it once and for all. As we advance in love school, so does the purification.

But there is ever deepening clarity in the process. There is abiding peace. And there is true joy.… More

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If the only way to be happy is to be true to yourself, what we really want to talk about is getting to know the self! And when we say it that way, we recognize the enormity of the task. “The essence of knowledge is self-knowledge,” said the Greek philosopher Plato. “Know thyself,” is accepted as the corner stone on which the temples of philosophy were erected; and without the corner stone, all other knowing crumbles. It is the quest that has traveled with man from the launching of a soul until the present day. It has, from the beginning, transcended continent, race, culture, and tradition. But if the sages of every age have sought the knowing, only for the next generation to seek it again, how can we have the audacity to take on the task. How can we not?

The knowing is not knowledge that can be passed on. The knowing is uncovered only in the process of seeking it. No man has rights to it; yet all men have the right to pursue it. And so, we must seek it.

Photo: from Sunday’s walk… More

We cannot be overwhelmed if we stay present. We only feel inadequate when we are trying to be someplace we are not. We must start where we are. Here, now.… More

We’re bound to wonder why somebody else — you know, the loose cannon down the street — can’t seem to commit (or break away, as the case may be) once and for all. But we don’t have to look that far to find an emotional roller coaster. Chances are there’s somebody under your own roof you adore one minute and want to blast to the moon the next.

We lack the blasting power to overpopulate the moon, but domestic violence is a serious social problem in America, with conservative estimates citing about a million incidents a year. And, yes, sometimes all is forgiven before charges are ever filed.

Our emotions can be irrational and still override our intellects.

“Emotion is stronger than thought, preceding it both in evolution and in the wiring of our brain, so an emotion — frustration, rage, sadness, sexual desire, fatigue — can take on a reality independent of external circumstance,” says Henry S. Lodge, M.D., in “Younger Next Year for Women” (also true for men, but I read the women’s version of the book).

It’s no wonder we find ourselves reacting disproportionately when we get caught up in our emotions. While intellectually we know what makes sense — and manage to act on that at least occasionally — our emotions often kick in, particularly in affairs of the heart.… More