In the beginning your love was innocent and then ...

Once upon a time, when you were still very young, you received your first toy from big people. You were encouraged to play with your toy and you were expected by those big people to be happy when you played with your toy. And while you were happy with your new toy, you were even happier when you saw that they were happy, that you were happy. The more you loved your toy, the more the big people, who gave you the toy loved you, or so it seemed. Gradually you learned that happiness and love were dependent on acquiring and playing with toys and letting the big people know you were happy and that you loved them more for making you happy.

Then one dark and predestined day, you had your first earth-shattering experience. Someone broke your toy. You screamed and cried and, for the first time, you knew the pain of sorrow. Your heart broke, briefly. Your heart had become attached to the toy and, when the toy was broken, it seemed like your heart was also broken.

Of course, your heart didn't break literally but metaphorically and you created your first experience of suffering. You also succumbed to the illusion that the person who broke your toy, was the same person who broke your heart and was, therefore, the creator of your suffering! Since that moment it's been downhill all the way!

Selfish Becomes Natural

This first experience of pain, which you thought was caused by someone else, triggered your decision to try to protect yourself from a recurrence. So you began to protect your toys. No-one else was allowed to play with your toys, especially with your favourite toys. This was then interpreted by the big people, who gave you your toys, as 'selfish'. While it was obviously a negative judgment of you, they seemed resigned to the emergence of your selfish nature, as if it were ... natural. You learned to believe that being selfish was OK. As you built an imaginary fence around your toys, you didn't realize you were really building a wall around your heart. This began to diminish the natural emanation of the energy of your heart, often referred to as love. Your heart was becoming blocked.

While you allowed new toys to come 'over the wall', you began to keep other people, those breakers of toys, at a distance, just beyond the wall. Occasionally you would let someone in, or you might come out and let your heart shine all over a new person in your life (as if they were a toy).

Once again, however, they would do something unexpected, something which contradicted an image of how you wanted them to be, an image to which your heart had become attached. With your heart invested in your expectation of them, once again you suffered and the illusion that other people were the cause of your suffering became stronger and deeper.

So one day, just to be on the safe side, you decided to completely isolate some parts of your heart altogether. This served to completely deny the sunshine of your love, to a few others at first and many others later. Slowly, but surely, your heart began to freeze over.

Life Without Love

Little did you realize that, as you blocked the sunshine of your heart to others, you were doing the same to yourself. Instead of radiating an unconditioned love to those around you, you began to give love to some people a little, to others more and a few not at all. Being completely ignorant of your self as the first source of love to your self, you did not realize that, as you denied your love (your self) to others, you were really denying your self (your love) to your self! Like a lake that becomes a desert without rain, like a tree that withers without water, your heart withered without the nourishing flow of your own love.

By now your heart was broken, blocked, frozen and withered. But you were just getting started! As you watched those around you, especially those big people, who brought you your first toys, it seemed they had found love and happiness in life in other more interesting ways. As you became bewitched by the technicolour, multi-channel, multicultural, electronic window onto 'life as entertainment', you learned to believe that love and therefore happiness, could be gained from others, either through your looks, your status, your personality, or your achievements.

The external searching and striving for love, in the form of others' recognition and approval, began in many areas of your life. You began to search in your work, in the acquisition of objects, in your relationships with others, in your achievements and even in your family, for something, or someone, to restore love to your heart and bring happiness to your life.

You were occasionally able to dull the pain of your aching heart but it was always only temporary and you succeeded only in creating a feeling of fragmentation as you became torn between people and toys, career and family, leisure and work. Even as you accumulated more possessions, even as you acquired more friends, even as you gathered the trophies of greater achievements, you couldn't quite understand why your heart and therefore your life, felt increasingly empty.

Flower of hope

But still, your heart held the delicate flower of hope. A hope that was fuelled by the mythology of romantic love. A hope that fed your imagination. Somewhere out there was your perfect partner, your soul mate, their moon to your sun, their light bulb to your lampshade and the promise of a love so complete, so true, so comforting. You looked, you sought, you searched, ready to collapse the walls and turn on the fountain behind the rusty gates of your heart.

In your desperation, you allowed one or two, or maybe three to enter, only to find that their heart was also broken, blocked, frozen, withered, fragmented and empty, in similar ways to your own.

You eventually realized that they too were in a state of neediness and also searching for the sunshine of love to illuminate the lonely darkness of their self-isolation. Deep down, you knew two needy people could never satisfy each other's 'need' for love. And with each passing encounter, with each disillusion, you suffered a further withering of your own heart, now so parched and dry that hope itself was beginning to fade.

Then one day, one splendidly fateful day, it happened! You caught each others' eyes from across the room and, in one glance, one moment, one magical, stunning moment, you were hooked. This was the mythology of 'love at first sight' come true. 'Falling in love' was real and it was happening to you now. In an instant, your heart surrendered. Walls tumbled, barriers dissolved, the ice melted and out you came, nervously, gratefully, into the light of another's love, somehow trusting, somehow knowing, somehow feeling safe, secure and, most of all, sure ... this is it! They are it! Everything else in life became a secondary distraction and you only had thoughts about them. From your first waking moment, to the closing thoughts at the end of each day, so strong were your feelings for each other going in both directions, it was as if you were glued together in each other's presence, even when you were hundreds of miles apart.

It would be some time before you would realize that your heart had been stolen by them and that you were attempting to steal theirs too.

Just as some children will steal the toys of others under the illusion that they are more deserving and that the acquisition of the others' toys will make them happy, you try to do the same with another's heart. If only you could have exclusive access, if only you could be the only one to be loved by them, then it would be as if you had won the lottery of the ultimate affection.

Novelty Wears Off

So the emptiness disappeared, the withering ended, the fragmentation seemed to be healed and the ice melted. But only in their presence and not for long. Honeymoons end, almost as surely as flowers must wilt. Familiarity soon sets in and you fall back into old patterns. You forget the newness of each other; you tire of the creative discovery of aspects of your self that no-one else has been able to show you in the mirror that is relationship. The novelty wears off, just as it always did with your toys. The honeymoon time, which contained giving, sharing, understanding and much laughter, subsides into routine.

The demise of the relationship is foretold when the first expectation is born. You did not realize that, in your giving and sharing, you were really 'taking' in disguise. You didn't realize that the water of another's affection could not flow constantly in the way that you wanted it. You didn't see the real reason why they showed up in your life - to give you a chance to burst your own dam, to give your heart an opportunity to flow out freely as it once did in those innocent times before toys.

In those times, in your innocence, you loved unconditionally, without exclusivity, without fixating on one object or one person. You loved without expectation. Your heart was the fountain of your life and the pathway to connect you with all other life. In those sweet, innocent days, your love was pure. Your love made no judgments, needed nothing and recognised everyone and everything was equally deserving of your attention and, as you attended, you loved.

The 7 Myths About Love ... Actually!

Did you recognize the story? It is a story we all share. Perhaps not in that precise sequence. We all fall prey to a process of assimilating a number of illusions about love and happiness. It is a process that leaves most of us with a heart that feels like it is broken, blocked, frozen, withered, empty, fragmented, stolen. It is a story about how your heart (your consciousness) is gradually poisoned by a set of false beliefs, a series of myths about love, which lead us far away from love itself.

These myths are both our inheritance and, if we are not careful, will also be our legacy. Here are the main myths that have evolved and expanded within our consciousness and to a large extent now run our world, without us being aware that they do.

Myth One:

"Love is Required"

Are you sure?

We often hear it said, "We all need love, we all need to 'be loved', and know that we are loved." But you don't. If there is a 'need', it is to give love, which simply means to give of oneself, because love is what we are. But you don't know you are love until you open, see and give of your 'self ' (not your body!) to something or someone, free of the slightest desire for anything in return. Often referred to as 'unconditional love'.

Give what? It doesn't really matter. It can take the form of time, attention, a gift, some wisdom, guidance, anything. It's not 'what' is given that matters but the intention. It's not what is visible in the giving but what is invisible in the offering. We intuitively know that love's intention never seeks anything in return. Love's intention is only to extend, connect and flow. True love is never incomplete. It cannot be added to. It therefore seeks nothing nor needs anything. Love is not an object. It is not something separate from you/I/we. It is you/I/we. Only the language of words make love seem like an object, like something separate.

If love is 'concerned' about anything, then it is concerned with bringing happiness to others. It just takes time to figure out that 'the other' can only be truly happy when they also realize themselves as love, and that only freedom from all neediness is what makes it possible to know and be love. The greatest gift you can give to another is to be love your self, which is the same as saying 'be your self '. This may then spark the other into realizing they too are love, as you show them the way. However, as we shall see, 'being your self' is not quite as easy as it sounds.

At least once a year you may visit a department store, buy a gift and give that gift to someone in your life saying, "This is from me to you with love", in that moment, you acknowledge where love always lives. Not in the department store (we wish!), not in the gift, not even in the wrapping or the card, but in the giving that originates within you. This then begs the obvious question, why do we spend our lives searching outside our self for what we already have within our self? A question to which we will return later.

The only way to 'know' love is to give love, which is exactly the same as saying the only way to 'know' your self is to give of your self. And when you do, it becomes obvious that love is not 'required' simply because both the 'self' and 'love' are one and the same. And neither ever runs out! However, 'giving' is not an idea that needs to be thought about. If we have to think about 'giving with love' then it's unlikely to be authentic. But it's better than not giving.

We often 'give' only because we are expected to, or we have been taught that we 'should'. We tend to give out of custom or tradition, or sometimes simply out of habit. This is not love, only ritual. Sometimes we give with a smile and an embraced, but, if there is the slightest desire to be recognised, or for reciprocation, it's not giving; it's still wanting, still taking. The illusion still persists that love is required. Behind this illusion sits an even more powerful myth, that love can be 'acquired'.

Always Giving is so Tiring!

Some people believe they are always giving, giving, giving and that it just feels draining and tiring. This only means 'real love' is not yet at work. While the heart is straining to be loving the head is thinking, "You are always taking from me. Why don't you give anything back? Why don't you just recognise my lovingness?" If there is the slightest desire for anything in return, it is not giving but taking. Behind the apparent expression of generosity there is a 'desire' to acquire. And love has no desires for itself. It is the intention to 'get' something, which sits behind the gesture of giving, that generates the negative thinking when there is no reciprocation. And that is the real cause of feeling drained and tired. One sure sign that the energy of love is flowing for real is that it will never be tiring, only energising and empowering.

Myth Two

"Love is Acquired"

Is that true?

The only real energy in life that cannot be acquired is the energy of love. Why? Because you are that energy. You cannot acquire your own self. You cannot acquire your own heart. You cannot acquire what you already are.

Love is not an external energy that you can 'get' and 'keep' and 'store' and 'use' on a rainy day. This truth escapes most people in their search for love. It ensures any search will always fail. The association of romance and love only serves to strengthen this myth, as it teaches us that love in life is only possible when you find the right person for you. The illusion, that when found they will be the 'true source' of love in your life, will keep you looking in the wrong direction i.e. outside and away from your self.

In many schools of psychology and psychiatry, there is a belief that children need to acquire love from their parents. But they don't. They can't. It's an illusion to think that you can 'get your love' from your mother and father. You can receive it but it's not where you get it! The parent's true role is not to give love to the child but to 'be love' for the child. 'Being love' is prior to giving love. Being love IS giving love. Being love in every situation and in every relationship teaches, by example, the child how to be love and give of themselves in a clean, pure and unselfish way. Unfortunately most children don't learn this because the parents themselves have learned and then teach, by example, the opposite – that love is 'required' and that it has to be 'acquired' from someone else, which may explain why so few of us ever realise love is what we are.

In teaching the child that they need a parent's love, we teach dependency, one of the foundations of lifelong suffering. In showing the child how to be love, which is how to be themselves, we build the foundation of freedom.

Even more fatally and fatefully, parents also tend to pass on the inherited belief that if you don't acquire the love of others you must not give the love of your self, which is the self. This is the equivalent of a death sentence for the very spirit we are. Not death in the literal sense, where an ending is created, but the death of the ability to do what we are designed to do, which is to give, radiate, share, extend, connect ... selflessly.