The Mastery of Love Part 4 of 10: The Man Who Did not Believe in Love
March 19, 2009 by dr. lam · 11 Comments
There was a man who did not believe in love. He simply said, “Love does not exist. It is an illusion.” He likened most relationships to what goes on between a drug dealer and an addict. The drug dealer gives the addict what he/she needs, and the addict craves that addiction. Similarly, in many relationships, there is one member who is needy for love and the other one who really does not need love but gives love out and thereby controls the relationship. This unhealthy relationship is very prevalent and leads to mutual destruction or lingering dependency.
One day this man encountered a woman sitting on a park bench. He saw that she was visibly distraught. He asked her what was the matter. She said, “I have been married for many years to a man who no longer loves or respects me. I do not believe in love.” The man who did not believe in love responded, “Yes, love does not exist.” Then, the man and woman who did not believe in love became steadfast friends, and that friendship blossomed into a burgeoning romance. They both could not believe in fact that this time what seemed to be love was founded on respect and mutual admiration. There was no petty jealousy or negativity like from the past.
One night a shooting star came from the heavens, and the man gave that star to the woman. The woman became afraid of the overwhelming love and dropped the star, which then broke into a million pieces. Whose fault was it that broke the star? It was the man’s. He thought he could give another person happiness. However, in any relationship, we are only responsible for our own happiness not the other person’s. We cannot make that person truly happy but we can simply exude our own happiness every day. When we start to become responsible for another’s happiness, we can lose our own. As my mentor always said, “Happiness comes from within.” We cannot live in the shadow of another’s happiness. We can only be responsible for living our own happiness.
When we have the responsibility to make someone else happy, we create internal anxiety within us for that responsibility, which ultimately leads to failure. Our fear that we will lose that love and our anxiety to please our significant other can ultimately ruin that relationship. Focusing on our own happiness, peace, and contentment will radiate to our partner without necessarily being explicit in our desire to make that other person intentionally happy. Just be responsible for your half of the equation.
Ruiz divides relationships into two distinct categories: fear and love. Too often 95% of the relationship is based out of fear with only 5% given to love. Fear is conditional: I only love you if…; whereas love is unconditional. Fear is selfish and controlling; whereas love is generous and filled with respect. When we start to let go of fear and focus on our own half of the relationship and the success of that half, our relationship can flourish. When we are gripped by fear of how to make the other person happy or we feel that we must be in charge of that person’s happiness, we allow fear to dominate that relationship and move it toward a lower state and possible disintegration.
The Mastery of Love Part 3 of 10: Self-Abuse
March 18, 2009 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
We are always punishing ourselves. We play the Victim because that is the role that has been assigned to us during our period of domestication. We always feel that we should be punished because we see ourselves as imperfect: ”I am not good enough. I am deserving of this abuse” so I will abuse myself. Ruiz perceives us as domesticated animals. We respond in ways that reflect our domestication. The only difference with an animal is that we will punish ourselves a thousand times for the same mistake. We are convinced that we are imperfect and must therefore be subjected to punishment.
As I have said in a past blog, I have tried to stop saying that “I am imperfect.” It brings to light our own self abusive tendencies to play judge and jury so that we can become Victims again. Ruiz calls the indoctrinated belief system that society (aka, the Dream) has imposed on us as the Parasite that sucks on our emotional wounds. The language that the Parasite uses is fear. Fear grips us and paralyzes us and distorts our relationships.
Many times we wonder when we see others, “How does she live with that abuse?” The answer is simple: she already is abusing herself (I’m not good enough or worthy. I deserve this.) and therefore accepts as only natural abuse from another. With the emotional poison that is there, she gives it back to them, and he accepts it because he is used to thinking of himself with that same level of self abuse. Ruiz’s insight (that I have mentioned in a previous blog and is worth repeating here) is that we will only tolerate an abusive relationship as much as we tolerate our own abuse. When that relationship exceeds our own level of self abuse, we will flee. However, many individuals live in such a sustained level of self abuse that they can tolerate many levels of abuse and will remain in that relationship.
When we can begin to clear the storing house of false thoughts that the Parasite has made us believe, think, and really fear, we can then escape those abusive relationships because we will stop abusing ourselves. When we begin to love ourselves without self condemnation and without judgment, we can then have the prospect of entering a healthy, loving relationship.
The Mastery of Love Part 2 of 10: Emotional Ping-Pong
March 17, 2009 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
We return again to our early childhood when we only knew love and happiness before our period of domestication by society began. When we were children we would run and play and only see running and playing as natural. However, in our household, the ideas of justice and injustice began to develop from our parents and we had to act in certain conforming ways. When we were in the presence of someone who was angry, we tried to flee. When we were attacked, we shriveled up. We tried to escape these negative emotions. However, the more we developed in society, the more that we began to have sores show up on our emotional body that at the slightest provocation would be painful to the touch. We allowed those wounds to develop and we returned the favor. When we started to build up pain from someone touching our wounds, we started to want to dish it out and release our emotional pain. When someone else would react to our emotional pain, they would then give it back to us.
Picture this scenario, the wife returns home early to wait for her husband who is running late. Inside she is angry at him so she releases a volley of fuming hatred. The husband is attacked and feels the emotional sting that is present and must then angrily call out a weakness of his wife, usually unjustified. Also, that attack could be leveled at a past grievance that lingers in his heart. This interchange continues to mount until both individuals shut down in anger, frustration, fear, and hatred. This emotional ping-pong is a typical scenario that plagues many households, relationships, friendships, and business colleagues. When we ourselves are filled with emotional poison, we will invariably need to unload it on another. That pain and suffering will be easily returned to us, which only continues to escalate. We need to work on cleaning ourselves of our own emotional poison (hatred, fear and anxiety) so that we do not return the volley and so that we do not reach a point of no return.
The Mastery of Love Part 1 of 10: The Wounded Mind
March 16, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
Once again we return to my old favorite, Don Miguel Ruiz, who authored The 4 Agreements and The Voice of Knowledge, which we explored a couple of months ago. I have found Ruiz’s Toltec message to be one of the clearest voices for sanity and ordered living that is out there. He need not have a 1000 page tome to get his message across. Instead, using ancient Toltec wisdom, he expresses truth in a profoundly simple but not simplistic way. Here we explore his book, The Mastery of Love, in detail. This blog series will cover some of his basic ideas discussed but also my own thoughts and feelings about the subject.
Love is a universal sentiment that we all desire, but few find because of big barriers that we erect as humans between one another. In his opening chapter, Ruiz explores the idea that we are like beings filled with open wounds on our bodies filled with a rancid infection known as emotional poison. We are afraid to be touched and are afraid to touch others because it hurts. We live by the dictum of hate, anxiety, fear, and hypocrisy. In fact, our lives are ruled by fear: fear of rejection, fear of betrayal, fear of failure, fear of loneliness, etc. We are emotionally closed to one another so that we cannot see the person next to us except our own contrived perception of that individual that is filled by a dense fog.
The dense fog, mitote, we talked about before is the thousand voices that cry out in a collective human dream dictated by societal rules and regulations that constrict our every behavior. When we were but 2 to 3 years of age, we laughed and played and did not hold an image of ourselves created by others. However, as we grew up, our parents educated (or Ruiz calls domesticated) us, and society began to create certain expectations for the way that we should behave and act. We were forced into seeing ourselves the way that others saw us and we began to create roles for ourselves that matched what expectations others had imposed on us.
Before we seek the love of another, we have already created two distinct images, one that is pure and that represents our true selves and one that is already a product of what society sees in us. Then when we seek our mate, we conform to the perceptions that other person has created for us. In so doing, we have created 6 images between two individuals that only leads to more and more confusion and psychological division. We create our own living hell because we must act according to so many perceptions of ourselves and become frustrated and fearful when we do not match those external perceptions. We dream our own dream of hell. It is hell on earth that we have personally created and that we live out of fear. This week we will explore how to love and how to let go of our own self-imposed punishment.