Real Love

Where will you be in ten years?

2011-11-08T12:18:00.000-07:00

What will your life look like in 10 years if you keep it the status quo? What dreams won't have been realized? What relationship will you miss out on? Who will have left your life? Will you still just be getting by? Will you still think that it is your environment rather than your mindset that determines the quality of your life? Will you still be letting other people make decisions for you? Will ...you still be living your life wondering, "what if"?

Today is the day my friends; today is the day to draw a line in the sand and say NO MORE! What B/S thought have you let hold you back? What have other people in your life told you about what's possible - and you believed in? What victim story are you still telling? What story are you telling yourself about your life that you no longer want to believe? What part of the past pain is still living in your heart not able to see love when it's standing right in front of you? What unchecked pain is taking up that part of your heart meant to be expressed?

What would it cost you to keep thinking this way?

I am so thankful for this Real Love community. I am so thankful for the courageous people who take a stand to stand for others. To step up to the plate and swing the loving bat to help us see and tell the truth about ourselves, to make a commitment to you so valuable to be your wise person. To see your pain and help you identify when you are bloodied and blinded by the core pain of your past. To help you see the lies about yourself that you are still living by. To help guide you and help you see when love is really standing right in front of you. Living the pain of the past you are deflecting love away with the protecting behaviors that cause separation. This high level of commitment to live in that space of becoming so loving that you will never help someone stay in the past victim roles for those who want to move out of it.

And to those who come in new, that step into that fear but really commit to exposing the real truth, to let others who have been there to call you out to a place of healing. To look at where you have been unloving due to past pain and protecting yourself. To look deeply at the behaviors you operate from that are protecting and getting, that are selfish and self centered and really deflect love away even when it stands right in front of you. Looking in the mirror is not easy and takes great courage and faith to heal the past wounds. Here is to all of you that take steps daily to learn how to be loved, loving and responsible, to those who have given up the victimhood of the past. This is a tribute to all the wise people who have daily called me on my shit. That protecting myself really deflects the love away I want and hurts others in the process. We can only have this awareness when we are open enough to receive Real Love. Hearing the truth about ourselves and practicing doing it differently. To take the steps daily to see that when we run and protect ourselves that we are really hurting those we love and not letting love in when it’s there for us. There is no connection in the getting and protecting behaviors. And unless we can see that we are doing them, then we are not being loved, loving or responsible to ourselves and others. Light and dark cannot live in the same place at the same time. If there is still pain from the past, you cannot be loving in the present.
When we use getting and protecting behaviors the other person hears “I don’t love you”….no matter what words are said.

Learn about the getting and protecting behaviors that causes all of our relationships to disconnect. www.reallove.com

Love and Teach

2011-09-30T11:50:00.001-07:00

Dad is out of town. My son is supposed to be staying with Grandma. He went “out” last night and failed to come home.

Mom was in TERROR. She didn’t think to call me until she was in complete panic. Couldn’t find her meds and was in total “freak out”.

I got it all settled, Shane finally arrived and we had a family pow wow.

It was interesting as I learn to LOVE AND TEACH that I show up so differently. I taught Shane this morning when he leans into responsibility and practices seeing, loving and being there for Grandma that he is learning a very important skill. He is learning how to be a happier person. His not being able to do it perfectly as he makes his mistakes, that it is my fault for not knowing how to teach this to him sooner. I have his back, but do not take over his commitments for him. He wanted to take off this weekend on a road trip to California with Friends and asked me to cover. I said no, not because it was inconvenient to me (which it is) but that I cared more for his happiness and teaching him that he is happier as he learns to keep his commitments.

Grandma wanted me to take all his things out of the house before he arrived and never wanted to see him again. Attacking. Fear. Terror.

Normal.

I helped her See him better and that he in some ways was really a child that had not been taught well yet how to be really responsible because I had failed to teach him. I had saved him one too many times. He has a good heart but his critical thinking was not up to adult yet. He did what he was taught. He had all the chores done and then went out. He drank so he did what I taught him. Don’t drive if drinking, sleep it off, then come home. He did that.

He just didn’t know Grandma was so afraid to be alone.

So once he was able to “see” grandma more clearly he easily moved to more compassion and is more clear on his job now. To love her and be present. It was never about the chores.

So they both learned a lot today and so did I. How to be completely inconvenienced. When I got the call from Grandma this morning I was on a SKYPE call with a client and left that meeting immediately. Then to show up really loving and seeing both of them for who they really are and helped them see each other more clearly. Grandma got that telling the truth about he fears was important. The façade that she is always ok, does not serve her and to ask for the love she deserves. Keep it clear and honest.

As I was inconvenienced I had not one bone in my body that said “anger”. I got there and held my mom for two hours until she felt calm again. We just talked and I held her. I stroked her hair and told her that she was not alone.

Shane walked in about 10 AM.

Shane could not have learned more how to be loving if I had been angry. He had to hear first that my words were coming from a place that I was concerned for his happiness.

I am so happy that I have learned to be happy.

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGDA0Hecw1k

Dear Dad,

I write this to you today because I love you so much. I have no greater gift to give you.

I wanted to tell you the awareness that I have gotten in this life because of the work I do and have done on myself.

When we were growing up, mom was a bit broken, hurt from past experiences. She caused a lot of upset, pain and discomfort to us all. I get she was hurting. But what I learned as child was appalling.

What I remember is that “you were to blame”. Therapist, counselors used to say that Dad was the problem. He was mean. They actually trained our minds to not love you or dislike you. It is horrifying to get those kind of signals.

So what I have learned is that everyone has behaviors that are less than loving when they are stressed, fearful, trying to survive this thing called life, with the less than useful tools given during childhood.

What the counselors did not tell us, was that everyone was broken, hurt by the past, not given enough love to be like Jesus or Buddha. All we ever needed was understanding and love. Yet they taught us to hate and to be afraid.

All you ever needed was love. We all did. We needed to be accepted in those times of fear and……. the crying out was, really, “can you love me when I am imperfect”. The Real Love practice I teach now, teaches we all just needed that kind of love.

I can’t go back to the days of my childhood. I cannot fix what I did. I was definitely taught from a victim perspective that you were a bad guy. Yes, I know you showed up angry, but you really needed love. We beat the crap out of you. We killed you and you just kept providing and loving us, No matter what. As I am writing this right now, I am filled with so much love for you and at the same time remorse. All I have is such a deep appreciation for who you really are, Perfect and loving. You are a child of the divine. God made you perfectly. Others treated you badly. I treated you badly. All you ever wanted was to feel our love. All you ever deserved was to be loved. I am crying right now, because I held this back and it’s time to tell you.

All I give you now is love, a healed heart, a new way of seeing and deeply loving you. I have been withholding this message for you for a few weeks. I regret that now. I should have told you earlier. I heard a song this last weekend. The words are included here for you. This made me understand that every day is precious and I could not wait another day to tell you how much you mean to me.

With all my heart….I wanted to tell you “in the living years”.

Happy Father’s Day!

Love Sharon

In the living years By Mike and the Mechanics

Every generation

Blames the one before

And all of their frustrations

Come beating on your door

I know that I'm a prisoner

To all my Father held so dear

I know that I'm a hostage

To all his hopes and fears

I just wish I could have told him in the living years

Crumpled bits of paper

Filled with imperfect thought

Stilted conversations

I'm afraid that's all we've got

You say you just don't see it

He says it's perfect sense

You just can't get agreement

In this present tense

We all talk a different language

Talking in defense

Say it loud, say it clear

You can listen as well as you hear

It's too late when we die

To admit we don't see eye to eye

So we open up a quarrel

Between the present and the past

We only sacrifice the future

It's the bitterness that lasts

So Don't yield to the fortunes

You sometimes see as fate

It may have a new perspective

On a different day

And if you don't give up, and don't give in

You may just be O.K.

Say it loud, say it clear

You can listen as well as you hear

It's too late when we die

To admit we don't see eye to eye

I wasn't there that morning

When my Father passed away

I didn't get to tell him

All the things I had to say

I think I caught his spirit

Later that same year

I'm sure I heard his echo

In my baby's new born tears

I just wish I could have told him in the living years

Say it loud, say it clear

You can listen as well as you hear

It's too late when we die

To admit we don't see eye to eye

Mother's day!

2011-05-08T06:24:00.000-07:00

I have seen a life unfold. I have been the safe keeper of a soul that was never "mine" but God's. I have learned to love another with all my heart.

I had no idea that when I had my son, that my life would never be the same. I didn't know that because of you my heart and soul would cry out to be the best I could be.

I was broken and lost, alone and afraid. I had no idea that having a child could give me the motivation to be the seeker of higher self, to be more so I could give more.

Timothy Shane Stephens Taitano. You have been my inspiration to be more. To grow to a place where my sole intention is to learn to love more. You are why I am who I am now.

Some days I see you cry out for more. You ask me how you can learn to be more present and loving like me.....you are so much more than me. Just look inside yourself. The inspiration you gave me is inside you. It has always been there. You gave it to me. You gave me the greatest gift I could ever have. Your heart. You gave me life. I thought I gave you life. I was wrong. Happy Mother's day son......

My Father

2011-03-16T22:28:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share my story.

Real Love has saved my life. Tonight I spent time with Greg Baer about my life. He held me while I talked about the men in my life. We talked about how I had never had a man in my life that loved me without wanting something back.

My father was a very broken man. He showed up for us very angry and controlling. I was severly crippled by this man in many ways. He never spoke to me unless is was with veins popping out of his neck.

Fast forward and I am 50 years old now. I have spoken many times about how my life with him has gotten more peaceful and loving. He didn't work on changing him. I worked on healing me.

Tonight I crawled into his recliner with him and he held me for an hour while we watched a full hour of law and order. He patted my back. I left and cried the whole way home. I had waited a lifetime for this.

If anyone doubts the healing power of REAL LOVE, please sit with me and I will tell you how it has shown up for me.

REAL LOVE melts monsters. EVEN MINE.

I love you all for supporting my life and work. All of the love you gave me, I learned to give my father. He wants to love me. He always did. I am teaching him how.

Love Sharon

Mom and Dad

I feel therefore I am alive!

2010-11-22T13:05:00.000-07:00

Real Happiness comes from "feeling" our feelings. Quite literally.

If you can track your feelings they will reveal the lies and expectations that shackle us to our unhappiness. So they are a gift. The greatest learning and light comes in those moments of shear consciousness of "what our feelings mean".

So feelings are an indicator of where we are at AND what we need to change.

Change comes from not being afraid of our feelings.

Fear of our feelings is what causes us to kick into a behavior. When we have pain, it feels like it will kill us. So we kick into getting and protecting behaviors.

Real Happiness is "I feel therefore I grow and learn". Not "I feel therefore I medicate".

If we medicate our feelings we never learn our light. We never make it to the next level of our lives. We never live to our potential. We repeat the same patterns over and over again.

Sitting with a feeling for as long as we need to without medicating, we get the awareness of what we need to change.

What a gift.

So in those moments of confusion and pain, the thing to do is identify the feeling. Do not cover it up, stuff it, run from it or medicate it.

Once you have it identified, then ask, "what is the lie or expectation you are having that is keeping you from moving ahead?"

So a man called me today. He said he was sad. But we identified his real "feelings". He was insecure and unworthy. So once we identified that, then we were able to identify that he felt still like he needed to be "further along" or " doing real love more righter" or "had to jump through a hoop" to somehow earn the love I had to freely give.

He has never been loved this way, so he has a "habit" of showing up to the world by "buying" his love in imitation currency. He still feels "bad". So what he is really needing is proof over time that people will love him just the way he is. That takes time and repetition. It does not happen over night. The world has taught him that the world does not love this way.

So he needs to make multiple calls to wise men and women who are "full" and capable of helping him see his lies. Wise men and women can get the currency of real love to him in each call. Eventually, and the key word here is "eventually", he will begin to "feel" happiness.

So you see by this example, that if we don't "feel" all the emotions then we never can make ti to "happiness"

True joy comes from having all the feelings all at once totally accepting and embracing them and not feel afraid of them AT ALL!

Then joy arrives. Our fears are our preditors. But the reality is, fear and feelings will not kill us. In order to become a "mature" adult we need to get that "AHA", that none of it will kill us.

We just have to realease and let go. Practice the steps to happiness with wise people. They will train you how and help you on your way to happiness.

Be loved
Be loving
Be responsible

Three steps to happiness.

What are you feeling today?

1.Joy/Appreciation/Empowered/Freedom/Love

2.Passion

3.Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness

4.Positive Expectation/Belief

5.Optimism

6.Hopefulness

7.Contentment

8.Boredom

9.Pessimism

10.Frustration/Irritation/Impatience

11.Overwhelment
12.Disappointment
13.Doubt

14.Worry

15.Blame

16.Discouragement

17.Anger

18.Revenge

19.Hatred/Rage
20.Jealousy
21.Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness

22.Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness

I made a promise this year to make this Blog personal!

2010-11-07T21:13:00.000-07:00

This is my first entry really telling the truth about myself and sharing on a different level than before.

As I practice real love or just any spiritual practice I get Aha's that I would like to share and haven't really done that at a personal level as it pertains to me.

I went about two weeks ago to the doctor and found out I have shingles. It's the chicken pox virus that stays in our body dormant through out our lives. If it comes out later again, it shows up and transforms itself in a different way. It is shingles.

I got it on my face. I got it around my eye. Left side. The outside appearance of rash and itchy stuff is the first symptom. The other symptons are non-visible. The disease is nerv driven and causes a lot of pain. Since it is near my eye, the doc told me it is "ocular" shinlges and I could loose my eye. He told me the pain is severe and some people have committed suicide because it messes with the brain and causes depression.

So I pushed through the pain, trying to be super woman. I realized after about two weeks and another visit to the doc that the pain was really wearing me out.

A mix of pain, tiredness, fear of loosing my eye......behaviors started to come out.

The realization that emptiness can show up due to physical cahllenges. It gave me a greater understanding to people with extreme back pain or other pain. My mom is on pain killers for damage to discs in her back. I can relate more now.

It's just plain hard to be loving when one is in pain. So I isolated myself, felt depression coming on, attacking myself for being non-superwoman, pushed away loved ones because a I must be flawed, because love is only for the emotional healing, right? I had lot's of confusion around this. My brain was being screwed with. Pain does that. I didn't know.

Once I began to see that even exhaustion can cause us to be less capable of being loving I emptied out. I live thinking I am superwoman or should be. Can anyone relate?

Well, I finally allowed some loving people to be with me in this and I can't tell you the difference it made. My head still hurts but I feel loved. Thanks to the loving people who hold my hand when I tell the truth about how I am being unloving and fearful, I feel better. The pain has not stopped yet. The Doctor said for sure I have to be on meds for at least a month more to kill it. He said it could take 8-12 months of meds to do it all.

But what did go away was fear. I am not alone. I am never alone. People love me even when I am stressed beyond my capacity. I never have to be alone. I remember driving home from the opthamologist and being told that I could loose my eye feeling very alone in that and crying.

With me telling people about it and letting them love me, it has made all the difference in the world.

Thanks real love community! I love you........Sharon

How does real Love show up?

2010-09-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

How does real love make a difference?

Shane, my son, came in to my room at 3:00 am this morning. Keep in mind he is 19 years old. He said he needed something. I said, “what’s up?” He said, “Mom, I took a cab home because I had a couple of drinks at the party I went to and I didn’t want to drive.” I said, “ok, good choice.” (I thought he was asking me for money next to pay the driver)

He proceeded to tell me that the cabbie was downstairs waiting for him because he needed a “Real Love” book. I kind of shook my head trying to wake up, take in what he had just said and said “what?”

He said the cabbie was from Somalia and spoke very little English but was reading a book about relationships. Shane said the cabbie was very down and spent time telling him about real love. Shane asked, “Please Mom, can I gift him a book?” So I said, “of course” . He said "I will pay for the book."

So he went back downstairs and was gone for a while.

I am amazed at a boy, who at age 14, was putting holes in walls with his fist and I was calling the cops to calm him down. I had complete fear of this boy who was then bigger than I and we were spiraling out of control.

Two days ago his best friend, Dillon and Dillon’s girlfriend had a spat. Shane called me and told me he lent her the real love book from my office. Hoped it was ok…….????? OK???? Yeah!

He is a walking referral machine for real love. AND he has never read the book……………

By being loved in a different way, he is naturally being more loved, loving and responsible.

He still makes mistakes, but wow…what a difference. I still make mistakes, but wow, what a difference!

I can’t remember the last time we irritated each other. Out of sight, out of mind……..it’s hard to recall those bitter days.

Real Love melts monsters!

Sharon

Freedom

2010-09-14T09:09:00.000-07:00

There is complete freedom with being ok with being flawed with ourselves and others. That is what unconditional love is. And in that is the ultimate freedom. When we can see that others are doing the best they know how, to see their behaviors as empty and drowning, its easier to not take it personally but to move to having compassion. Compassion is freedom. Everytime we are upset with someone we are saying " there is no love in the world but the tiny piece you are withholding from me right now". This is simply not true. The truth is there is an infinite supply of love waiting for us. The freedom comes from knowing where to get it, knowing who does have it for us and having complete compassion for those who don't. Flaws are the gifts that help us learn. We need each other to see ourselves.

We are flawed. We are human. and I am ok with that.............

Live with it and like it!

2010-07-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

Trying to change someone is a waste of time. The very thought of changing someone is saying that they are not good enough as they are, and it is soaked with judgment and disapproval. That is not a thought of appreciation or love, and those thoughts will only bring separation between you and that person.

You must look for the good in people to have more of it appear. As you look only for the good things in a person, you will be amazed at what your new focus reveals.

http://www.reallove.com/
http://www.sharonawinningham.com/

Pulling over to a gas station! It's all about focus!

2010-07-24T12:49:00.000-07:00

Pulling over to a gas station!

“People talk about the reality of their life as if it is important. And we want you to understand, it’s only the temporary indicator. Do you go to the gas station-your gas gauge is on empty-do you go to the gas station and look at your gas gauge in horror? “How did this happen? Why, why, why did this happen to me?” Do you lay your head on the steering wheel and just sob? “Oh, look what it’s come to. I’m finished. I’ve lived all of this life, and look where I am.” Or do you just fill up.”

~ Esther & Jerry Hicks from the Law of Attraction

Our emotions are our indicators. It is an indicator that we will stay in the same place as long as we hold on to those lies (focus on what is today). Do we have a bad feeling, even sometimes unidentifiable? Pull over to a gas station and trust the process........ tap in to source energy...make a real love phone call....for a phone call list of volunteers who will teach and guide you ..... swinningham@reallove.com

Love Sharon

Greg Talks about one kind of love that matters.

2010-07-05T21:01:00.000-07:00

Greg Baer.......... Imagine that I tell you I love you. I smile at you, speak kind words to you, and perhaps even present you with a gift of some kind. Understandably, you enjoy this, as we all would. Five minutes later, however, I storm into the room describing a mistake that has been made, and while shaking my finger in your face and scowling with rage I say, “Are you the one who did this?!”

How loved do you feel now? That feeling disappeared the moment I entered the room, didn’t it? We’ve all experienced moments like this. For most of us, in fact, this has been a lifelong pattern. This kind of “love” is very disappointing and unfulfilling, because it vanishes when we make mistakes and when we fail to meet the expectations of those who “love” us. This kind of “love” is conditional.

There’s only one kind of love that can fill us up, make us whole, and give us the happiness we all want: unconditional love or true love. It is unconditional love or true love that we all seek, and somehow we recognize that anything other than that kind of love isn’t really love at all—it’s an imitation of the real thing. Unconditional love—true love—is so different from the kind of love most of us have known all our lives that it deserves both a name and definition of its own.
Real Love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves.

It’s also Real Love when other people care about our happiness unconditionally. With Real Love, people are not disappointed or angry when we make our foolish mistakes, when we don’t do what they want, or even when we inconvenience them personally. Real Love is unconditional. for more information: http://www.reallove.com/ http://www.sharonawinningham.com/

Wise men speak out on Love!

2010-07-05T07:00:00.001-07:00

Can a person feel loved by incoming calls?

Yes, it is possible to feel someone's love via a phone message. Imagine how you would feel, for example if you heard this message on your voicemail: "Hi, Sharon! I was thinking about you at this very moment and wanted to express what a blessing you've been to me. Thanks for teaching and showing me RL."

But your heart is open to such expressions of love, gratitude and appreciation. You can recognize happiness when you see or hear it. You're accepting of the nature of love, its power to heal your own life, and the peace it can bring.

Someone with a pride-filled and hardened heart, however, won't feel anyone's love for as long as they choose to push it away regardless of the medium.

Persistent attempts to smother the hard-hearted with "love" only hardens their resolve to be 'right' because fundamentally we are refusing to accept their choice in that moment to refuse love.

Our constant efforts to change their decisions becomes a source of irritation for them and they only dig their heels in deeper in fighting to hold their ground.
If you model unconditional ACCEPTANCE and don't force what you know to be true and priceless on anyone, this will allow the resistor to 'stew in their own juices' and experience how isolated and alone it will be to reject whatever love is offered. Never stand in the way of someone's 'rock bottom' as it only delays their eventual awakening' is a valuable piece of advice shared with me by a wise person.

Perhaps loving our partner is accepting him as he is with the knowing that we all can choose to learn our life's lessons the hard way, or from the mistakes that others make.

Either way we are destined to learn. It is only for infants and toddlers that we are obligated to make choices for others, but only until they have an appreciation for a particular consequence. We don't allow the immature and incompetent to play with loaded firearms. Adults are allowed to screw up their lives ad nauseum...and we simply love 'em through their learning curves.

There is a very fine line between loving someone and clinging to them--and guess who gets to make that call? It comes down to everyone's perceptions and expectations, doesn't it.

Are we full or empty (needy)? Open or closed? Receptive or resistant? Optimistic or pessimistic? Donkey (Shrek) or Eyore? Accepting or dismissive? Living or dying, metaphorically-speaking.

Emptiness and fear is the source of highly predictable behaviors--when you drown you choke, gasp, and behave in crazy ways. When 'drowning' is preferred to love, however, that is pure selfishness to the nth degree. Everyone else becomes an IT, and an IT is simply an object there to facilitate my selfishness or IT stands in the way of me getting what I want. Or if IT does nether, IT isn't worthy of my time or attention. I move on.

Sad way to live because I am emotionally autistic and unable to really connect with people. Empty, alone, and terrified when I'm not milking an IT for Imitation Love.

-Andy Carillo, CRLC

Saying "I am sorry"

2010-07-03T14:24:00.001-07:00

Greg Baer once said in a seminar that we only grow when we hurt each other. It's a part of the human experience. We are not perfect and we will make mistakes that cause others to hurt and other's will hurt us.

There is a real opportunity for us to learn in these moments. When someone does something to cause us discomfort or pain, we can look at our level of reaction and use this as a learning tool to evaluate our own level of happiness. If we react really badly then it's a sign that we really are needing more unconditional love in our own life. We can then look at what we could do differently to gain the fullness we need.

We can also evaluate the other person for signs of fullness or emptiness and gauge how close we should really be with them intimately. It is an ever fluctuating dynamic but a great tool to "see" ourselves and others and to potentially learn and make better decisions.

When we hurt someone and feel regret we generally have been taught to apologize.

Let's take a look at that dynamic.

If we are empty, regret is really the feeling of another person potentially withholding their love from us, having disapproval of our actions and therefore us. So the traditional apology is for us to get our pain of withdrawal removed. It is to ask for forgiveness. If we look at it as a "getting" behavior, we can therefore see it as a Me Me Me, self centered action. Sometimes the other person may not be ready to forgive us.

I see a "real love apology" in a very different way. We can inspire hope in the situation if we do it correctly, giving a gift instead of asking for something from the other person.

Since we cannot change what we can't see, we can give hope to the other person (a gift) if we can articulate the following:

Here is what I did:
Here is the behavior I used:
I regret how it hurt you:
And this is what I could do differently:

My son, at seven years old, said to me once, "why do you keep apologizing if you still keep doing it". That really was profound for me and made me think deeply about what I could do differently.

So without "needing" approval or forgiveness, that the other person may not be ready to give, if ever, we can give a gift of hope, by telling them what we do see and how we are working to change it. The gift of hope is given to them and therefore opening up the door for love to gain it's ground again in the relationship.

So the next time you want to apologize, think it through first. Who is it really for?

Is it to ease your own pain or bring hope?

Love,

Sharon Winningham, CRLC
602-405-0144

2010-06-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

The Big Idea — (Emotional) Fuel Gauges

“When the fuel gauge on your vehicle indicates that the tank is empty, you do not criticize the indicator. You receive the information that it has offered you, and you do something about adding more fuel to your tank. Similarly, a negative feeling is an indicator that your current choice of thoughts has you offering a vibration that is so out of harmony with your Source Energy that you are currently disallowing your full connection to that Energy Stream. (You could say your tank is reaching empty.) Your emotions do not create, but they do indicate what you are currently attracting. If your emotions are helping you know that your choice of thoughts is not taking you in the direction that you desire to go, then do something about that: Replenish your connection by choosing better-feeling thoughts.”

~ Esther & Jerry Hicks from Ask and It Is Given

That’s really cool. A big theme of the great book, Ask and It Is Given, is the fact that our feelings are a wonderful guidance system to check in and see how closely aligned we are to Source Energy (or Spirit, the Tao, God, whatever you call it!).

Are you depressed and feeling hopeless? Um… That’s a pretty good (actually, make that a definitive) indicator that your “Source Energy tank is on empty” and you need to fill up with some more positive thoughts to get yourself more closely aligned with source!

Are you overflowing with enthusiasm mixed with a joyful desire to create and to serve??!? BINGO!!! That, my friends, is the perfect indicator you are aligned. Your tank is full. You’re ready for a great trip with nothing to worry about! GOD is in the house. (Literally, actually. Did you know the word “enthusiasm” comes from the two little Greek words en and theos? “Enthusiasm” literally means “God within.” How cool is that? :)

Alright. All that’s exciting. But here’s the most powerful part.

Just as you’d never criticize your fuel gauge for telling you that you’re running low on gas, don’t (ever!) criticize yourself and your emotions for telling you that you’re currently running low on good thoughts and Source Energy!

Again, you’d NEVER get upset at your fuel gauge when you see it close to “E.” You’d simply pull over to the nearest gas station and fill up with some gas, right?

OK. So, how about this: The next time you’re feeling depressed/stressed/angry take a look at your “fuel gauge,” notice that you’re running a little low on “Source Energy,” feel as much gratitude as you can possibly muster (!!!!), and pull over to the next Source Energy “gas station“—whether that’s doing some affirmations, going for a run or hike, playing with your baby, doing some volunteer work, dancing to your favorite song, meditating, thinking of all of the things you’re grateful for, doing a random act of anonymous kindness…whatever your “gas station” is, fill up with Source Energy and you’ll be back on the road in no time!!!!! :)

Fun. :)

(And, a friendly reminder, this is DEFINITELY all (yes, ALL!) supposed to be FUN. (ALL CAPS. :)
…

“Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Brian Johnson-Philosopher's notes... http://www.philosophersnotes.com/

Marriage Vows

2010-04-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

Greg's Blog Post on January 10, 2007

In the absence of sufficient Real Love, we tend to marry our partners with the expectation that they will make us happy for the rest of our lives. Regardless of the words actually spoken at the wedding ceremony, what we hear our spouses say is this:

“I promise to make you happy—always. I will heal your past wounds and satisfy your present needs and expectations—even when you don’t express them. I will lift you up when you’re discouraged. I will accept and love you no matter what mistakes you make. I give to you all that I have or ever will have. And I will never leave you.”

Neither partner is consciously aware of making this bushel of promises, but each partner still hears them and insists that they be fulfilled. When both partners lack sufficient Real Love, however, they can’t possibly make one another happy, and then their efforts to do that yield only disappointment and anger, no matter how hard they try.

I have been asked on several occasions what marriage vows would look like if both partners understood the principles of Real Love. I suggest these vows might look something like the following:

I spent a lifetime looking for a kind of happiness that eluded me. Again and again, I was deceived by the temporary satisfaction that came from approval, praise, excitement, power, and safety.

But then I found Real Love—unconditional love. I found people who cared about my happiness without wanting anything from me in return, and gradually I’ve learned to care for others in a similar way.

That love has changed everything for me. I’m not empty and afraid all the time anymore, and I’m no longer a prisoner to my anger.

I’ve discovered the peace and genuine power that naturally flow from loving others without conditions. I’ve learned to feel that way toward many people and to have healthy, rewarding relationships with them. I don’t claim to love perfectly, but I’m getting better at it.

So why, of all these people whom I have learned to love, have I chosen to make a vow of marriage only with you?

Because in addition to the unconditional love I share with many, I want to share with you a higher, unique level of loving. I choose to seek that higher plain with you because I believe you have a desire to participate fully in an honest, healthy relationship and because I believe you are willing to commit to the process of learning how to become an unconditionally loving human being. I believe that I can feel more unconditionally loved, become more unconditionally loving, and feel greater happiness with you than with anyone else I know.

Seeing that combination of reality and potential in you, with a full heart I commit:

- that I will continue to share with you the truth about who I am—my mistakes, flaws, fears, foolishness, and successes.

- that when I become empty and afraid—and when I then behave badly—I will not quit our relationship. I will stay with you. I will try to admit the selfishness in my feelings and behavior and will then do whatever it takes to find the Real Love I need to participate in a loving relationship with you.

- that when you become empty and afraid—and when you behave badly—I will not leave our relationship. I will stay with you. Instead of protecting myself or getting my own needs met in the moment, I will try to see your need for love and will do whatever it takes to find and share with you the Real Love we need to have a loving relationship.

- to share my body with you, freely, in a way that I will share with no one else.

- to share with you my material resources, completely and without reservation, again in a way that I will share with no one else.

- to share my heart with you in a way that no one else will ever know.

- that I will stay engaged in a relationship with you while I learn to love you, no matter what the temporary difficulties might be.

Vows like these reflect a realistic understanding of what a healthy relationship can become. They also serve as a guide for the development of that relationship.

This is worth waiting for & aspiring to develop towards.

Getting the love you need!

2010-02-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

People are starved for love. Starved to the point of ruin, anxiety, lonliness, disorders and addictions. Every day people come to me spiraling out of control and beg "please help me".

I love them and support them. I give them loving guidance and tell them all the same thing. The thing that is hardest for every single one of them. Tell the truth!

Truth>Seen>Accepted>Loved

The one thing that everyone needs most to do, they can't do it.

Why would you not want to be happy and GO AFTER IT WITH A VENGENCE!

Here it is: If you want to feel loved by me, then I have to accept you just as you are. There is a catch. I have to be able to see you first to accept you. But how can I see you thus accept you when you won't tell me who you REALLY are.

Tell the truth!

So let's look at this from another angle. In order for you to feel really loved you must know I really know you. In order for you to FEEL it!

So our job is to line up a million people and tell the truth about who we really are, warts and all. YOU will find those who can love you just as you are.

How can you possibly find those few if you are always hiding the real you.

Is rejection so bad that you would sacrifice having real love in your life?

There will be 90 % of all people out there who will not have capacity to love you.

Some will, some won't, so what?

Just go find those who can.

But one thing is for sure, if you don't tell the truth you will be lost, alone and afraid for your whole life.............

and so the story goes.....

Sharon Winningham Certified Real Love Coach 602-405-0144

Outreach Opportunity! Finding love in all the right places!

2010-01-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

This I do know. Being an observer of our own life is only possible when we give up victimhood. Living in the flow allows us take every opportunity to learn and learn some more. What a fun day.

We went to the Mall. We wore our Free Hugs t-shirts and WE LEARNED more about real love and ourselves.

Each hug or rejection of hug gave us a deeper understanding about ourselves and how we operate in the world. It gave us an opportunity to discuss it with each step we took and each hug we gave.

We saw that within ourselves there is an innate fear of rejection, a sense of unworthiness. What if someone says no? Is it really about them or about me? Everyone who joined in the exercise was comfortable at different levels to reach their arms open and approach someone.

Those who were fuller found it easier because we did encounter rejection over and over.

Then we began to see how open people were and excited to get hugs, as well as people very closed off and could not possibly let anyone in. What a great lesson that it really wasn't about us.

So we likened it to our real love practice in our own life. All we can do it tell the truth "we are real lovers", open our arms to hugs and see who will step up and accept us for who we are.

Some will, some won't, so what?

There is one thing I know to be true. If we allow life to teach us, the lessons are there everyday. You MUST take action, have faith and stretch yourself out of your comfort zones. Live life. It is here to help you become all that you were meant to be.

If you can get out of the swirling mess of fear and confusion, there are lessons everywhere. It just gets better and better.

Join us next time in our outreach opportunity. What would you learn about yourself?
We love you.

Thanks to all who came out and hugged the world today with me. (Christina, Donna and Gali) There is nowhere to go but up when you practice with intension to "be loving". It's miraculous!
Love,
Sharon Winningham From my heart............
http://www.meetup.com/REALLOVE/calendar/12291199/ Next meeting

CHAPTER THREE by Greg Baer

2009-12-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER THREE

THE THIRD PRINCIPLE OF PARENTING

When I’m Angry, I’m Wrong

Because of their age and inexperience, children are naturally

inconvenient in so many ways:

• They’re always spilling stuff, falling down, making messes,

and getting involved in all manner of “accidents.”

• When they get ready for school, clean their rooms, prepare

for bed time, or do anything else involving a time limit, they

move at a slow and erratic pace rarely compatible with our

own schedules.

• They’re often unable to perform even the simplest tasks

without help or supervision.

• They incessantly make unnecessary noises in a wide range of

both volume and pitch.

• Frequently they are unable to clearly communicate their

needs.

• When they do express their needs, they are often insistent and

demanding. They have no patience.

• Everything they do seems to cost money.

When we don’t feel sufficiently loved ourselves, these

innumerable inconveniences often become more than we can

stand—the straw that breaks the camel’s back—and then we

understandably respond with behaviors designed to minimize the

effects of these inconveniences on us. We’ve learned from a lifetime

of experiences as children and as adults that one effective way to

get children to listen, and to change their behavior, is to get angry

at them. When we’re angry, children—as well as adults—tend to do

what we want, and they tend to do it more quickly.

THE EFFECTS OF ANGER

Although our children often respond to our anger in the short term by

doing what we want, the overall effects of anger are overwhelmingly

negative. When we’re angry:

• our children cannot feel loved by us.

• because they don’t feel loved, they respond with even more

Getting and Protecting Behaviors, the very behaviors we

were trying to stop in the first place with our anger.

• they can’t learn.

• we can’t be happy.

• we teach our children the lie that other people make us

angry.

Our Children Can’t Feel Loved by Us

On one occasion in Chapter One, I lovingly described to you the

mistakes you made while planting some bushes in my yard. Even

though I was talking about your mistakes—a potentially negative

subject—you could feel my concern for your happiness. In the

scenario that followed, however, I was disappointed and irritated

at you, and the effect on you was quite different. Why? When I’m

angry at you, I’m saying, “How dare you inconvenience the true

center of the universe—ME. You have somehow failed to remember

that your purpose in life is to serve ME, or you have done something

unpleasant to ME.” We could, in fact, replace the word angry with

ME-ME-ME. Anger is the ultimate arrogance.

Imagine, then, that I’m standing over you in anger, with my

words and behavior shouting ME-ME-ME. While I’m completely

focusing on myself in that way, is there any way in the world that

you could feel my unconditional concern for your welfare? Utterly

impossible. This is such an important concept that I suggest you

indelibly etch the following in your memory:

Every time you are angry at another human being—husband,

wife, lover, friend, parent, boss, co-worker, or child—that

person hears you say only four words: “I don’t love you.”

If you have any doubt about the truth of this, blow up at anyone

you know—especially a child—and watch his or her face. When

we’re angry at our children, we’re powerfully telling them that we

do not love them unconditionally—at least in that moment—and

they feel that. We may not be trying to say “I don’t love you,” but

when we’re angry, we’re just too consumed with our own needs and

fears to be capable of loving anyone else.

There is nothing children hate to hear more than “I don’t love

you,” and that’s why they are so easily motivated by our anger.

They’re willing to do whatever it takes to get us to stop being

angry—to stop expressing our lack of love.

Anger Can Literally Define the World

For a Child—in a Very Negative Way

The cost of anger is especially high when we express it to our

children. Young children don’t create out of thin air the view they

have of themselves or of the world. They learn who they are, what

the world is like, and how they relate to the world mostly from

what we say and do as their parents. Early in their lives, they accept

completely what we tell them, and so we have a virtually god-like

influence over them. When a child makes mistakes, for example,

and we become impatient and irritated, the child learns this:

• When I make mistakes, my parents obviously love me less.

• When I am flawed, I am therefore less worthwhile.

• Since I am flawed most of the time, I am obviously worth

very little.

• The world is a harsh, judgmental, and unloving place.

I cannot over-emphasize the destructive impact of these lessons

on a child. A young child is quite incapable of questioning these

conclusions when they are taught by a parent, who stands in a

position of unquestioned power. When you are angry at a child,

there is no way on earth that he or she could have the courage or

insight to say, “Dad (or Mom), I see that you’re angry. You must be

feeling unloved. Even though you’re expressing your anger at me,

I know you’re just reacting to a lifetime of not feeling loved, not

primarily to something I did or did not do in this moment. Is there

something I can do to help you feel more loved?” Absurd. No, a

child can conclude only that your anger is all about him or her, and

the effect is disastrous, as outlined above.

They Respond with Even More

Getting and Protecting Behaviors

It’s hugely ironic that when we get angry at our children, we cause

the very behaviors we’re trying to control or eliminate. Here’s how

that happens:

• All the behaviors in children that inconvenience and annoy

us—disobedience, rebellion, whining, insistence, sullenness,

withdrawal, and so on—are only Getting and Protecting

Behaviors that exist in response to their not feeling loved

unconditionally.

• When we don’t feel unconditionally loved either, the

behaviors of our children then make us feel even more empty

and afraid.

• To alleviate these painful feelings, we get angry, which gives

us a sense of power and safety.

• From our anger, our children hear only “I don’t love you,”

which greatly magnifies their feelings of emptiness and fear.

• They respond by using even more Getting and Protecting

Behaviors, exactly what we were trying to prevent.

Children will do almost anything—they use all the Protecting

Behaviors—to avoid any expression of our disapproval: a sigh, a

frown, a raised eyebrow, a change in our tone of voice, or an unkind

word. To our children, disappointment and anger are different only

in degree, and both are devastating.

They Can’t Learn

One beautiful fall day, George came to see me about his son, Dan. He

was quite animated and irritated as he told me about Dan’s negative

attitude, disobedience, and lack of responsibility. “Only yesterday,”

George said, “I was trying to talk to him about something, and he

just sat there, giving me that sullen stare. It’s like he doesn’t hear a

word I say.”

“He can’t,” I responded.

“What do you mean?”

“When you’re angry, he can’t hear anything you’re saying.”

“I wasn’t angry. I was just being firm. He doesn’t listen unless

I’m firm with him.”

“It doesn’t sound like he listens to you when you’re ‘firm,’

either, but you were more than firm. You were angry.”

“How do you know that? You weren’t there.”

“I didn’t have to be. I’m here with you now, and you’ve been

angry at Dan from the moment you started talking about him.

You’re also angry at me for questioning what you did—which

doesn’t bother me in the least. I’m only describing what I see so

that you can see it. You’ve already proven that the way you talk to

Dan doesn’t work, and because I care about you, I’m helping you

see why he can’t hear you. Considering all the anger you’re showing

here, it’s utterly impossible to believe that you were not angry with

Dan when you talked to him. If I spoke to you in the same tone of

voice you used with Dan yesterday, would you think I was angry?”

“Okay, I get the point. So I might have been a little irritated at

him.”

“Let’s assume for a moment that I’m your employer. I supervise

you, sign your paycheck, and have the authority to fire you. Can you

picture that?”

“Sure.”

“Now, suppose I come to you and describe a mistake you made at

work yesterday. I tell you that it’ll cost the company a couple hundred

dollars to fix the mistake, and two other employees will have to work

overtime to correct it. But you can see that I’m not the least bit irritated

by any of this. In fact, I apologize that I didn’t give you enough

information to do the assignment correctly in the first place, and then

I describe how you could do the task in a way that will be easier and

more productive. Would you be willing to do it the new way?”

“Of course.”

“How do you feel about me describing your mistake?”

“Fine. You’re just trying to help me.”

“Now imagine that I come to your office and throw a pile of

papers on your desk. I say that what you’ve done is completely

unacceptable, and I yell at you as I describe what a bumbling fool

you are. Do you feel different about our conversation this time?”

“Sure.”

“What’s the difference?”

“It’s hard to listen to you when you’re yelling at me.”

“Why?”

“It just is,” he said.

“The first time I talked to you, it was easy to hear me, because—

in your words—I was just trying to help you, right?”

“Yes.”

“What was different about the second time was that I was angry

at you. We rarely appreciate what our anger means. I can describe

your mistake and still have a genuine concern for your happiness, as

you discovered when I talked to you the first time. But the moment I

become angry, I’m telling you my primary concern is for whom?”

“Yourself.”

“Exactly. Every single time I’m angry, I’m mainly concerned

about what I want, which means I can’t possibly be concerned

primarily about you. Every time I’m angry, I’m telling you I don’t

care about you—which is the one thing we all hate to hear more

than anything else—and then you will react to that, instead of

listening to my correction of your mistake. You’ll defend yourself

by withdrawing from me, or being angry at me, or acting like a

victim, and so on. While I’m angry, you can’t really listen to me,

because all you can hear is my telling you I don’t care about you.”

“I never saw it that way before.”

“Most people don’t, but you have to understand this before

you can change the way you interact with Dan. Every time you’re

angry at him, I promise you he hears you speaking only four words:

I don’t love you. Once he hears that, essentially he becomes deaf

to everything else you’re saying. You’ve been wondering why he

doesn’t listen to you, and this is the answer: your anger.”

“But I’m not always angry when I talk to him,” George

protested.

“That’s probably true,” I agreed. “Let’s go back to the example

of my being your boss. Suppose that I blow up at you only half the

times we speak. During the other half of the times we talk, what will

be going through your mind? Will you feel relaxed?”

Whenever we’re angry at our children, they hear us say only

four words: “I don’t love you.” And then they respond with

the Getting and Protecting Behaviors that are so destructive

to them and to others.

“No, I’ll be waiting for you to blow up. I’ll never be sure when

you’re about to get mad at me.”

“Right, and that’s how Dan feels. Also remember that if you

want to estimate how much of the time you’re not mad at him, you

can count only the times he’s making mistakes—when he’s screwing

up. If you treat him nicely while he’s doing what you want, that

doesn’t count for much, frankly. On those occasions, he can feel

only like he’s buying your affection. It’s only when he’s making

mistakes that he can feel whether you love him unconditionally—or

you don’t. If I had to guess, I’d bet you get angry at him a lot more

than half the times he makes mistakes, and that leaves him with only

one conclusion: that you don’t love him. That has a huge impact on

him. He’s constantly waiting for the next blowup from you.”

Most of us have said to our children on many occasions, “How

many times have I told you to _____? Why do I have to keep

repeating myself?” If our children had the insight and courage, they

would answer, “You have to keep repeating yourself because each

time you teach me that principle, you’re angry, and I can’t hear you

when you’re angry. If you would speak to me with any concern for

my welfare, I could probably hear you.”

We Can’t Be Happy

Think about the last time you snapped at a child. Did you feel a

growth of your inner peace? Did you feel warm and fuzzy inside?

Never. Not only does our anger have a negative effect on others, but

it eliminates the possibility of happiness in our own lives.

Genuine happiness comes from feeling unconditionally loved

and from loving others. Because anger always interferes with our

feeling loved and loving others, it makes happiness impossible.

We Teach Our Children the Lie

That Other People Make Us Angry

Every time we express anger at our children, we’re strongly

implying that they made us angry. We make it quite clear—with our

words, sighs, rolling eyes, tone of voice, and so on—that they are

responsible for how we feel. In order to remove all doubt about that,

in fact, we often say, “You make me so mad.”

In so doing, we are teaching our children a terrible lie, that other

people can make us angry. This lie has enslaved most of us all our

lives, as illustrated in the following story.

One day I heard two of my children, Joseph and Rachel,

quarreling in the next room. Walking into that room, I said to

Joseph—randomly choosing one of them—“You look pretty mad.”

“Yeah,” he said, “who wouldn’t be? She borrowed my shirt

again, and she didn’t put it back. So I had to look all over the house

for it until I figured out that she had it.”

“So she made you angry, right?”

“Yes,” he said emphatically, and surprised that I would question

such an obvious conclusion.

“So let’s do this,” I suggested. “Let’s go down to the hardware

store, get a large brass ring, and fasten it through the hole we’ll drill

through your nose. Then we’ll attach a big chain to the ring and

hand it to Rachel.”

“What?” he said, obviously confused.

“You wouldn’t like being Rachel’s slave?”

“No.”

“But you already are her slave, Joseph. Any time she wants to,

she can do something to make you mad. So, effectively, she owns

you. Do you want to keep being her slave?”

“No.”

In our society, it is almost universally accepted that other

people make us angry, and we pass this belief on to our children.

Regrettably, this belief makes our children captive to the behavior of

every person around them, which is far from a desirable condition.

Later in this chapter, we’ll prove that other people never make

us angry, and in Chapters Six and Eight we’ll discuss how to handle

arguments between our children.

BECAUSE OF ITS CONSISTENTLY DESTRUCTIVE

EFFECTS, ANGER IS ALWAYS WRONG

In Chapter One, I said:

Since happiness is the central goal of life, a behavior is right

when it contributes to that goal—in other words, when it leads

to being unconditionally loved, loving, and responsible. Any

behavior which interferes with those conditions is therefore

wrong.

Because anger always interferes with our feeling unconditionally

loved, loving, and happy, anger is always wrong. I am not saying that

when you’re angry, you’re evil, nor am I saying that you shouldn’t

be angry—in a given moment, anger may be the best you can do. I

am saying that because anger detracts from our primary purpose for

being alive—because it is uniformly destructive, and keeps us from

being happy—it is wrong. It just doesn’t work. Anger is wrong in

the same sense that saying 2 + 2 = 5 is wrong, or that when you get

a flat tire on your car, replacing the tire with a kitchen sink would be

wrong.

We also established in Chapter One that our primary goals are

to love our children and teach them to love others. In the presence of

anger, our children cannot feel loved by us, and so, for yet another

reason, anger is wrong. When we’re angry, we cannot be loving,

effective parents.

Take a moment and tattoo these words on the inside of your right

upper eyelid, where you’ll always remember them: When I’m angry,

I’m wrong. Everything else we give our children—entertainment,

money, a great house, the best education, and so on—will not make

them happy if they don’t feel unconditionally loved by us, and they

cannot feel loved when we’re angry at them.

Because anger always interferes with our greatest purposes

in life—to feel loved, to be loving, and to be happy—anger

is always wrong.

You might be tempted to think, “But what am I supposed to do

when they misbehave? I have to correct them, don’t I? Sometimes

they only pay attention when I’m mad. When I speak calmly, they

just ignore me. Sometimes I have to get angry, for their own good—

so they’ll listen.”

That reasoning is seductive, but we must never forget that when

we’re angry, our children don’t feel loved, and Real Love is the

most important gift we’ll ever give them. When we’re angry, we’re

wrong. Period. It’s true that when we get angry, they do sometimes

move more quickly and accomplish the individual tasks we demand

of them, but the long-term effects are devastating:

• First, if they consistently respond to our anger with obedience,

we’ll have children with clean rooms and good grades but

who—without Real Love, the one element most important to

genuine happiness—will be deeply unfulfilled and miserable

in the long term.

• A second outcome, however, is even more likely. Eventually,

most children resent the constant whip of anger as a motivation,

and then they quit responding to it with fear and compliance.

Instead, they protect themselves by withdrawing, acting like

victims, and getting angry in return, as George’s son, Dan,

did.

Anger is always wrong, and it’s never effective in the long

term. That does not mean we should be permissive, which is an

equally terrible mistake in parenting. Throughout the book, we’ll

be discussing the most effective ways we can teach and love our

children, avoiding both anger and indulgence.

WHY WE GET ANGRY

If anger is so destructive—to us personally, to our children, and to

our relationships with them—why do we continue to get angry?

Why do we continue to use a behavior that never gives us the results

we really want? We continue to get angry at our children because:

• we’re empty and afraid ourselves.

• our children don’t fill our enormous expectations for their

love.

• anger is a response we’ve learned from our parents and others

throughout our lives.

We’re Empty and Afraid

As we described in Chapter Two, anger is a Getting and Protecting

Behavior. We get angry only to fill our emptiness and to protect

ourselves from fear, conditions that exist because we do not have

sufficient Real Love. Anger is absolute proof that we are empty and

afraid.

When we’re already empty and afraid from not feeling enough

Real Love, we become much more afraid when confronted with

angry or disobedient children. What are we afraid of?

• We’re afraid of losing control over them. Without sufficient

Real Love, we enjoy the sense of power we get from

influencing or determining what our children do. That’s not

a pretty thing to see about ourselves, but it’s still true. When

they behave badly, we feel helpless and weak.

• We’re afraid of losing their respect (another form of power,

and also praise).

• We’re afraid of losing their approval and affection (praise).

• We’re afraid of looking like bad parents—to our children and

others (loss of praise).

• We’re afraid of losing the peace and quiet we enjoy (pleasure

and safety). We hate the simple inconvenience that always

accompanies an angry child—we have to deal with his or her

anger, which usually isn’t easy or fun.

In other words, when children are angry we’re afraid of losing

the Imitation Love we get from them, a “love” we have no right to

demand. And then we respond with our own Getting and Protecting

Behaviors, one of which is anger. With anger we feel better in

several ways:

• We feel stronger, more in control, less helpless.

• We often succeed in commanding their respect.

• If we consistently manipulate our children to do what we

want, we feel competent (praiseworthy).

• We create the illusion of being disciplined and strong parents,

earning the praise of other parents.

• We achieve the peace and quiet we crave (pleasure and safety).

Of course, all these effects are superficial and transient—as are

the effects of all forms of Imitation Love—and when they wear off,

we have to work to get them again. No amount of Imitation Love

can ever make us truly happy.

They Fail to Fill Our Expectations for Love

Another explanation for our anger is the expectations we have of others.

If we don’t feel sufficient Real Love—as most of us don’t—we’re

empty and afraid, a condition we cannot tolerate. It’s only natural that

we then expect the people around us to soothe our pain and fill our

emptiness, and when they don’t, we can become quite irritated. How,

we reason, could other people—especially those close to us—just stand

by and fail to relieve our obvious discomfort? Without meaning to, we

heap some of these expectations for love—Real and Imitation—on

our children, and when they don’t fill them, we resent it.

Anger is always preceded by an expectation of some kind. We

get angry at people only when they fail to fulfill our expectations.

You never become angry at your neighbor, for example, for not

taking out your garbage, while it’s easy to conceive of getting angry

at your son or daughter for not doing the same task. The difference?

Expectations. You don’t expect your neighbor to take out your

garbage, so when he doesn’t do it, there’s no disappointment or

irritation.

We get angry at our children because we have expectations of

them. What do we expect?

• Obedience (power, safety)

• Gratitude (praise)

• Respect (praise, power, safety)

• Cooperation (power, safety)

• Affection (praise)

Certainly these are qualities children need to have if they want

to be happy, but rarely do we insist on these qualities in our children

solely for their benefit. When we don’t have enough Real Love in

our own lives, we demand obedience, for example, to feed our own

need for praise, power, and safety. We need gratitude to confirm our

own worth (praise). We demand respect to confirm our position of

power over our children.

The Powerful Need for Our Children’s Love

On many occasions, I have asked adults, “Does anyone love you

unconditionally?” and a common answer is this: “Yes, my children

do.” That belief, however, is almost always inaccurate, inappropriate,

and dangerous. Our children are not responsible for loving us, and

with rare exceptions they’re also incapable of doing so.

Most of us place considerable responsibility on our children to

make us feel good. We prove this every time we’re disappointed in

them or angry at them, because on these occasions we’re declaring

that they are responsible for our happiness or unhappiness—and

we’re mostly unaware of how often we do that.

Our happiness is not determined by the behavior of our children.

Our happiness is a result of how much unconditional love we’ve

received over a lifetime of experiences with parents, teachers,

friends, and spouses—and by how loving we are toward others.

Most of us, however, were not unconditionally loved, and without

Real Love we have become unhappy as adults and parents.

But now it is not our children’s responsibility to give us the Real

Love we need. Children need to be loved by us. They need to be

filled up with the unconditional love required for their happiness.

Children become whole only when love is initially a one-way

flow, from us to them. That can’t happen while we’re demanding

something from them in return.

Our Children Can’t Love Us Unconditionally

We want to believe that our children love us unconditionally, but if

they haven’t received enough Real Love from us—as few of them

have—how can they give it to anyone else? In most cases, when

we expect love from our children, we’re asking them to give us

what they’ve never received sufficiently themselves. Their task is

impossible, and the burden is crushing.

Love can be unconditional only when it’s freely given. The

giver of unconditional love can’t be empty or afraid. When people

are empty or afraid, they can only manipulate other people to get

what they want or protect themselves from being hurt. Almost

without exception, our children are both empty and afraid: They

badly need us to love them, and they’re scared to death of losing our

love. These are natural conditions for a child, but they make it very

difficult for children to give us Real Love.

We tend to love our children more when they’re good—when

they do what we want. They can feel that our approval is not

unconditional, but it feels better than nothing, so they do their best—

in the beginning, at least—to earn more of it by giving us what we

want: gratitude, respect, obedience, affection, and so on. We feel

good when we get those things, and understandably we then believe

that our children are “loving” us. But they need our approval and

love far too much to give us anything without expecting something

in return. They give us what we want so we’ll give them the “love”

they desperately need. Although it’s unconscious, our children trade

Imitation Love with us, and we gladly participate in the exchange,

all of us just doing our best to survive in the absence of Real Love.

Is it ever possible for a child to unconditionally love his parents?

Yes, but only after that child has been consistently and unconditionally

loved himself for a long time. Few children have been loved in that

way, and no loving parent would expect such love from a child. When

a child can love his or her parents, it’s just a delightful bonus for those

parents, not something they have a right to expect.

How We Manipulate Them for Imitation Love

If we don’t have enough Real Love in our own lives, we will make

attempts to get Imitation Love from the people around us, and we

will tend to do that most with the people who are closest to us. Later

in this chapter we’ll talk about the various ways we manipulate our

children for Imitation Love.

Failure to See the Expectations We Have of Our Children

Most of us have expectations every day that our children will love

us and make us happy. Often we express them in subtle ways.

We don’t say to a child directly, for example, “I need you to love

me.” Instead we say, “Give Mommy (or Daddy) a kiss.” Without

thinking about it, we thus place an enormous burden on children

to give us affection so we won’t be disappointed, and they feel that

obligation. As they sense that we have any expectations for them to

make us happy, they can’t feel unconditionally loved—even if our

expectations are unconscious.

How can we know whether we have selfish expectations of our

children? Again, disappointment and anger. These feelings mean

that we didn’t get something we wanted. Our disappointment and

anger prove that we’re being selfish, and we experience these

feelings in response to the behavior of our children so often that

we’ve come to accept them as normal. We justify ourselves,

claiming that disappointment is acceptable—even unavoidable—

when a child makes certain kinds of mistakes, or is disobedient, or

is disrespectful, and so on. When our children behave badly, it is

our responsibility to correct them, but disappointment and anger are

never a part of loving and effective teaching.

I’m not saying that children shouldn’t be respectful, obedient,

and grateful—far from it. They need these qualities in order to be

happy, but they acquire these characteristics far more easily when

we just love and teach them. Children don’t learn real respect—and

certainly don’t feel Real Love—when we expect and demand it

from them. We’ll talk more about how to love and teach children in

Chapters Five and Six.

We become angry at our children when they don’t fill our

huge expectations for them to love us. Those expectations

are inappropriate and harmful.

Why We Have Children

Without Real Love, we try to fill our emptiness with all the praise,

power, and pleasure we can find. We lie, attack, act like victims, and

cling in order to earn the attention of other adults, but we soon find

those efforts exhausting, and we discover that the Imitation Love

we get is unpredictable. Because children are so dependent on us—

because they desperately need us, and because they feel obligated

to us by all we give them—we learn that we can use them more

easily and consistently than other people as a source of Imitation

Love. Adults resist our manipulations and require more from us

than children do. And we feel safer around children: They don’t

ask us why we don’t get a better job; they don’t tell us to be more

responsible; they don’t suggest that we lose some weight; they don’t

make us feel unattractive; they don’t see our fears or intimidate us

in as many ways as adults do.

We don’t like seeing this, but a significant part of the motivation

for many of us to have children is that we feel alone, and we hope

children will love us and make us happier. That’s understandable,

but we are often selfishly using our children to make us feel better.

Elise and Chris had lived together for two years. Both came to

the relationship without experiencing much Real Love, and each

expected the other to make him or her happy. Naturally, the result

was disappointment and bitterness. As their relationship began to

fail, Elise thought a baby might bring them together again. Without

telling Chris, she stopped using her contraceptive and became

pregnant. Soon after that Chris left the relationship completely and

moved away. After he left Elise said to a friend, “Well, at least when

the baby comes, I won’t be alone.”

What a fate! Even before his birth, this child was given the

responsibility to make his mother feel loved. That’s a burden no

child can carry and be happy, but that’s the job most children are

given, and it destroys them.

We Get Angry at Our Children

Because We Learned That Response from Others

In a given situation, we have a natural inclination not to do what’s

most effective but to do what we’ve learned. Most of us can easily

recall how our parents and others responded to us when we were

quiet, clean, responsible, and cooperative as children. They smiled

at us, spoke gently, and in other ways indicated how pleased they

were with us. But we also remember what happened when we made

too much noise in the car, fought with our sister, and dragged dog

poop across the living room carpet. The smiles and kind words were

instantly replaced with frowns, sighs of exasperation, and words

spoken in a harsh tone. It certainly wasn’t intentional, but we were

clearly and repeatedly taught that when people make mistakes, the

natural consequences are disappointment, irritation, and disapproval.

It’s little wonder that we learned to repeat the same pattern with our

friends, classmates, co-workers, spouses, and children.

NO ONE EVER MAKES US ANGRY

Earlier in the chapter, I mentioned that in our society it’s almost

universally accepted that other people are responsible for making us

angry. When we’re mad, we’re usually blaming someone for causing

that feeling. All that blaming and anger never make us happy, but

we keep doing it. Why? Because other people—being flawed

human beings, and having their own needs to fill—unavoidably and

regularly inconvenience us, which we believe is the same thing as

causing our anger. Our reasoning might go something like this:

• All was well in my world. I was fine.

• Then that bone-headed, inconsiderate, selfish fool _____

(whatever he or she did to “make” you angry).

• Immediately I became angry.

• Because I would not have become angry if he had not behaved

in that way, and because my reaction immediately followed

his behavior, it’s obvious that he caused my anger.

Because anger is so destructive, and because blaming others

only makes the continuation of anger a certainty, I will present here

several proofs that other people are never the cause of our anger.

These will also stand as proofs that our children never make us

angry. Take your time with these. As you absorb them and allow

them to change your thinking, your world will change, and you will

gain the ability to give your children great personal power.

Proof 1

The Self-evident Proof:

We Always Have a Choice

As human beings, we have a position unique in the universe.

Although there is certainly much in this world that is beautiful and

awe-inspiring—the stars, planets, oceans, mountains, trees, birds,

fish, sub-molecular intricacies, and so on—we alone have the ability

to determine our own course. The behavior of everything else is

determined by gravity, instinct, the weather, training, and DNA, but

we human beings can actually comprehend our condition, ponder

it, and make decisions that will change our course. In fact, we’re

quite jealous of that ability and will defend to the death our right

to exercise it. We have fought many wars against those who would

claim to tell any of us what we can or cannot do.

As proud as we are of our ability to make our own decisions

about everything else, why is it that we are so quick to claim that

other people can make us angry? Whenever we think or say “You

make me so mad”—a common expression indeed—we are giving

up our right to determine how we feel, and we do this quite often.

We claim that we can make our own decisions about everything

else but not about how we feel. Why is that? Because we claim

the ability to make choices only when it suits us. We like being

responsible for choosing what we eat, and what we wear, and

where we live, and whom we’ll marry, because we like the

consequences—the rewards—of those choices. But we don’t like

being held responsible for our anger. We’d rather blame that choice

on someone else.

Rain makes the ground wet. The sun makes the grass warm. The

ground and the grass have no choice in the matter. But we human

beings are not dirt or grass. We do have choices—about many things,

including about how we feel. When people treat us badly, we make

decisions about how we will respond. In the absence of Real Love,

our ability to respond is certainly impaired—sometimes severely—

but we can still choose to limit our Getting and Protecting Behaviors

(including anger) to some degree. The more we understand about

the behavior of other people, and the more loved we feel, the more

able we become to make wise and loving choices. Self-control and

Real Love enjoy a powerful synergy, which we’ll discuss in Chapter

Four.

Proof 2

It’s Your Emptiness and Fear That Lead to Anger,

Not What Someone Else Does to You

(Two Dollars vs. Twenty Million)

In Chapter One I asked you to consider what it would feel like if you

were starving and I took your last two dollars, the money you hoped

to exchange for a loaf of bread. You were angry, and understandably

you blamed your anger on me. But then we imagined a different

scene. Again I took two dollars from you, but this time you had

twenty million dollars in the next room. Your anger was either

eliminated or greatly reduced, proving that your anger in the first

scene was caused not by me but by your lack of twenty million

dollars.

As I said in Chapter One:

When we have enough Real Love in our lives, we feel as though

we have twenty million emotional dollars with us all the time.

With that greatest of all treasures, the little inconvenient things

people do become relatively unimportant. With Real Love, we

have everything that matters. Without it, we become afraid and

protect ourselves with anger. Our anger is caused by a lack of

Real Love in our own lives, not by what our children or anyone

else does in a given moment.

Proof 3

You Can’t Claim That Someone Makes You Angry

If Anyone Else Does Not Become Angry

When That Person Does the Same Thing

I once went with some friends on a canoe trip down a stretch of

river that included some challenging white-water rapids. My friend

Gene was less experienced than the rest of the group and nervous

about the adventure, so I invited him to go with me in my canoe

and assured him that he’d have a great time. During our passage

through one of the more difficult rapids, two of the men in another

canoe were goofing around and intentionally bumped their canoe

into mine. Gene was startled, lost his balance, and fell out of the

canoe. Of course, that tipped the canoe over and threw me into the

water, too.

Gene was already anxious about this outing. He’d never canoed

a river this rugged, and now he found himself bouncing between

large rocks while gasping for air in the cold, churning water.

Understandably, this had become a terrifying experience for him. I

hurried to make sure that Gene was all right, and when he reached

the calmer waters I found that he was fine physically, but he was

furious at the two men who had bumped into our canoe. Clearly, he

blamed them for his anger.

Unwittingly, he had proved that other people don’t make

us angry. The exact same thing happened to both Gene and me:

We were both bumped by the other canoe, dumped into the cold

water, and forced to swim through the rapids down the river. Our

reactions, however, were strikingly different: Gene was enraged at

the men who had run into us, while I found the whole incident rather

humorous and invigorating.

What was the difference? Gene was simply unprepared for what

happened, in at least two ways. First, he was physically unprepared.

He had no experience with such situations—through no fault of

his own—so when he was bumped by the other canoe, he didn’t

know what to do, lost his balance, and fell into the water. He was

also emotionally unprepared. He had not felt sufficient Real Love

in his life, so he was already unhappy, and the slightest mishap was

enough to push him over the edge. When he became frightened,

he immediately reached for the Protecting Behavior he had always

used—anger. It was the only thing he knew to do.

Because I was physically prepared for canoeing, being bumped

by the other men was not overwhelming to me, although I was

still thrown in the water because of Gene’s reaction. Because of

that inconvenience, I could then have reacted with anger to all

three men, but I had been prepared emotionally by years of being

unconditionally loved. Because of that love, I didn’t feel empty

or afraid and therefore had no need to use any of the Getting and

Protecting Behaviors, including anger. I was not a better man than

Gene, just better prepared to react to that incident.

We see examples all around us of people reacting differently to

the same events. In World War II, for example, millions of people

were imprisoned and killed in concentrations camps, by the Germans

and by the Japanese. From the many oral and written accounts made

by survivors of those camps, we have learned that many of those

people understandably became very angry and bitter because of the

unspeakably hateful treatment they received at the hands of their

captors. Some of those inmates, however, chose not to become

angry. Instead, they forgave their tormentors and even learned to

love them. They saw the terrible effects of anger and hate—on

both perpetrators and victims—and they refused to give in to those

feelings. Victor Frankl spoke of such people in Man’s Search for

Meaning, as did Corrie ten Boom in her book, The Hiding Place.

Some of us get angry when other people are inconsiderate toward

us, but others of us do not. Clearly, the problem is not the people

who are inconsiderate. If that were so, everyone would become

angry when he or she were treated badly, but that does not happen.

In fact, if you get angry when I do something, and we can find even

one person in the world who does not get angry when I do that same

thing, then I did not make you angry. You made a choice. Anger

is always a choice. In any given situation, some people choose to

become angry and others do not.

Proof 4

When Imitation Love Makes Your Anger Go Away,

You Can’t Claim Someone Else Caused Your Anger

One day I was having lunch with my friend Larry, and he mentioned

an incident with his son Jordan. Larry had clearly told Jordan never

to use Larry’s expensive video camera, but Jordan ignored his

warning, and while Larry was out of the house, Jordan used the

camera, dropped it, and damaged it. Larry was furious at his son,

and during our conversation he used the phrase, “Sometimes that

kid makes me so mad.”

Me: If I gave you a million dollars in cash right now—and a new

car—would you be less irritated with him?

Larry: (smiling) Yes, I guess I would.

Me: Then Jordan didn’t make you angry.

Larry: I don’t understand.

Me: If a million dollars would make your anger go away, then

obviously the real cause of your anger is the lack of a million

dollars, not Jordan—right?

Other people never make us angry. Anger is always a

choice.

In our society, we commonly greet people by asking some

variation on “How are you?” A frequent reply to that query is

“Fine” or “Good.” What we almost always mean by that response

is that things are going well. We mean that our supply of Imitation

Love is adequate for the moment, and that is what keeps us from

being angry. But if we’re running low on praise, power, pleasure,

and safety, watch out! That’s when we become irritable. When we

don’t have enough Imitation Love, people who would ordinarily not

bother us suddenly become enormously irritating.

Once again, it’s not the individual behaviors of the people

around us that make us angry. Anger is our reaction to the emptiness

and fear that always accompany the lack of Real Love. When we

have sufficient Imitation Love, we can often temporarily ignore the

emptiness of not feeling loved. When we run out of Imitation Love

and get angry, a new supply of Imitation Love usually makes our

anger go away.

Proof 5

When Real Love Makes Your Anger Go Away,

Then It’s Obvious That the Lack of it Was the Real Cause.

Earlier in this chapter, George was irritated with his son, Dan, and

he was certain that Dan had made him angry. Over the following

months, however, he learned to tell the truth about himself—

which we’ll discuss in the next chapter—and he began to feel

unconditionally accepted by wise and loving friends. As George felt

loved and happy, he no longer had a need to demand respect and

obedience from his son. When compared with Real Love, Imitation

Love soon loses its appeal.

As George felt unconditionally loved, he lost his need for anger,

which is a Getting and Protecting Behavior. He quit being angry

even though Dan’s behavior remained the same for quite some time.

And thus he proved that Dan had never been the cause for his anger.

If Dan had really been the cause, George would have continued to

be angry when Dan’s behavior didn’t immediately change.

I have observed the effect of Real Love on the lives of hundreds

of people, and I can tell you that George’s story isn’t the least bit

unusual. As we feel unconditionally loved, we lose our anger—

perhaps not all at once, but it does go away eventually.

THE FREEDOM OF BEING RESPONSIBLE

FOR OUR ANGER

We blame people for our anger because it seems easier than taking

the responsibility ourselves, a technique we learned from birth.

When I blame you for my anger, however, I’m stuck. I’ll be angry

forever unless you change. That’s unfortunate for two reasons: It’s

very impractical to have my happiness chained to your decisions,

and it’s simply untrue that you cause my anger.

When I realize that my anger is a reaction to the emptiness and

fear caused by a lack of Real Love in my own life, I can now do

something about it. I can tell the truth about myself and get the

unconditional love I need. I can quit being angry at my children and

instead be a loving parent to them—an infinitely better choice.

After understanding that other people don’t cause our anger,

we can take the next crucial step of teaching this principle to our

children. And then they too can experience the freedom that comes

from take responsibility for their own anger. I suggest that you

become familiar with two or more of the above proofs and use them

in teaching your children in family meetings and in situations where

they become angry.

2009-12-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

January 2009

Well, I have truly been the success story. I was getting divorced the first time I went to a Real Love Seminar some four years ago at New Vision (2005) Everything in my life was falling apart. I lost a bunch, especially being a Realtor. I went through the Real Love host training way back when with Reverend Michelle, went to another intensive weekend, continued to grow and now have a thriving, growing, rockin’ out Real Love co-ed group. I still want and yearn to do something with the teen kids. I now find myself 1-2 nights a week visiting with couples, having one on ones talking about the principals. They grow and find happiness……………..WOW……..I am so thankful. During the rough times, I almost lost my son. Ready to put him on a plane to his dad’s, I instead called and got a real love coach. It saved our lives. 2 months with Daphne Rocked!

So now today, I live in a loving relationship, married to a man that firmly believes and practices real love principles. I joke with him and say, “oh, I know you are in love with me” . And to my joy, he always answers, “No, I see you and still love you”. I am filled with joy and the journey has been the most fulfilling ride of my life. Sometimes it’s hard to articulate joy that comes from real love compared to the drama and elation of imitation love to someone who has never experienced the difference. But I know once achieved, one can never feel right going backwards. It glares at you like a freight train coming to run you over……..
We got married Jan 10th at New Vision. I live in peace, I live in harmony and I live in joy. I have real love. AND I am good with that!!!!!!!!!!!! I am living a wonderful dream.

I continue to grow. It’s leaps and bounds in REAL LOVE!
Thank you for it all.
Thank you………………………..to all who come, to all who share, to all who have supported me on this journey!

I feel so lucky to know you all! Sharon

September 2009

I since, am the community organizer for all the Real Love Groups at New Vision Center. I have gotten my certification to be a Real Love Coach. We have scheduled our first Real Love cruise for March 2010. Life is good!

WHAT IS ADDICTION?—A New Defintion of Addiction

2009-12-03T13:25:00.000-07:00

WHAT IS ADDICTION?—A New Defintion of Addiction

Most people associate the word addiction with alcohol or drugs, but that association severely and inappropriately limits the extent of addiction in our society. A new definition of addiction is needed, one which will give us a better grasp of the nature of addiction and will enable us to approach its treatment in a far more productive way.

Addiction is the compulsive use of any substance, person, feeling, or behavior with a relative disregard of the potentially negative social, psychological, and physical consequences.

This definition of addiction creates a much broader—and more accurate—picture of addiction, which we will demonstrate in much greater detail throughout the remainder of this article. Before we can meaningfully continue our discussion of addiction, however, we must first consider its causes in a new way.

WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF DRUG ADDICTION AND OTHER TYPES OF ADDICTION?
Despite all the research done on this subject, there is no consensus on the cause of addiction. Some theories have been proposed, however:

•Genetic: We are born with a genetic predisposition to addiction.

•Bio-chemical: There is a chemical imbalance in the nervous system that makes us more susceptible to addiction.

•Mental illness: Addicts have a kind of mental illness.

Regardless of the specific cause espoused, most experts regard addiction as a disease, and many believe it’s inherited. They believe that people inherit the tendency to addiction, even if they never actually become addicted to a specific substance.

A New and Powerful Explanation for Addiction

Dr. Baer has now worked intimately with thousands of addicts, and he proposes a cause for addiction that is radically different from those generally discussed. This proposal explains the overall data of addiction better than other theories do, and this proposed cause has allowed the development of a treatment plan that has proven to be very effective with thousands of addicts.

Addiction is not a disease. Addiction is a response to pain.

“After extensive interviews with thousands of addicts,” says Dr. Baer, “less than one percent of them fail to respond enthusiastically to this definition of addiction and the clarification of the causes of drug addiction, whereas most of them have had serious problems with the usual definitions and explanations.”

In order to understand the cause of drug addiction, we must first understand what is required for human beings to be happy, a subject sorely neglected in mental health research and literature. We tend to usually focus our attention to an inappropriate degree on illness and on the treatment of disease. We all understand that physical health requires more than simply the elimination of disease. In order to be physically healthy, we must also attend to positive qualities and behaviors—nutrition, exercise, shelter, and so on. In a similar way, mental health requires that we attend to the acquisition and maintenance of positive required elements, not just the elimination of negative factors, or disease.

The most important requirement for our emotional health and happiness is to feel loved. Our souls require feeling loved in just as real a way as our bodies require air and food. We need to feel cared for and to feel connected to other human beings. There’s a reason that such a huge portion of our novels and movies take love as a theme. Love is a basic human need.
Real Love

But not just any kind of love will do. The only kind of love that can fill us up and make us whole emotionally is Real Love.

Real Love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves.

It’s also Real Love when other people care about our happiness unconditionally. With Real Love, people are not disappointed or angry when we make our foolish mistakes, when we don’t do what they want, or even when we inconvenience them personally.

When I use the word happiness, I do not mean the brief and superficial pleasure that comes from money, sex, power, and the conditional approval we earn from others when we behave as they want. Nor do I mean the temporary feeling of satisfaction we experience in the absence of immediate conflict or disaster. Real happiness is not the feeling we get from being entertained or making people do what we want. It’s a profound and lasting sense of peace and fulfillment that deeply satisfies and enlarges the soul. It doesn’t go away when circumstances are difficult. It survives and even grows during hardship and struggle. True happiness is our entire reason to live, and it can only be obtained as we find Real Love and share it with others. With Real Love, nothing else matters; without it, nothing else is enough.

Conditional Love

Sadly, few of us have sufficiently received or given Real Love. From the time we were small children, we observed that when we didn’t fight with our sisters, didn’t make too much noise in the car, got good grades, and were otherwise obedient and cooperative, our parents and others smiled at us, patted our heads, and spoke kindly. With their words and behavior, they told us what good boys and girls we were, and we felt loved.
But what happened when we did fight with our sisters, made too much noise, got bad grades, and dragged mud across the clean living room carpet? Did people smile at us then or speak gentle, loving words? No—they frowned, sighed with disappointment, and often spoke in harsh tones. Just as the positive behaviors of other people communicated to us that we were loved, we could interpret the withdrawal of those behaviors only as an indication that we were not being loved. Although it was unintentional, our parents and others taught us this terrible message: “When you’re good, I love you, but when you’re not, I don’t—or certainly I love you a great deal less.”

This conditional love can give us brief moments of satisfaction, but we’re still left with a huge hole in our souls, because only Real Love can make us genuinely happy. When someone is genuinely concerned about our happiness, we feel connected to that person. We feel included in his or her life, and in that instant we are no longer alone. Each moment of unconditional acceptance creates a living thread to the person who accepts us, and these threads weave a powerful bond that fills us with a gRevenuine and lasting happiness. Nothing but Real Love can do that. In addition, when we know that even one person loves us unconditionally, we feel a connection to everyone else. We feel included in the family of all mankind, of which that one person is a part.
Without sufficient Real Love, we can only feel empty and alone, which is our greatest fear and source of pain.

ADDICTION: WHAT WE DO IN THE ABSENCE OF REAL LOVE
In the last section we discussed a new defintion of addiction and learned that without sufficient Real Love in our lives, the pain and emptiness are intolerable. In order to eliminate or reduce these feelings, we’re willing to do almost anything. This desire to eliminate pain is the key to understanding the causes of addiction. When we find something that temporarily reduces the emptiness and pain of not having enough of that one element essential to our emotional health (Real Love), we pursue that temporary source of relief—that substance, person, feeling, or behavior—with great zeal, even desperation, and when that desperation leads us to regularly disregard the potentially negative social, psychological, and physical consequences of our pursuit, we have satisfied the definition of addiction.

Everything we use as a substitute for Real Love—to temporarily make us feel better in the absence of what we really need—becomes a form of Imitation Love, and all those substitutes fall into one or more of four categories: praise, power, pleasure, and safety.

Praise

In the absence of Real Love, we very much enjoy the acceptance and praise of others, and we’re generally willing to do a great deal to earn it. But therein lies the problem. We have to earn praise. We have to do what other people want us to do, so the approval they subsequently give us cannot feel as though it were given unconditionally. In short, the instant we do anything to get other people to like us in any way, we can’t feel genuinely loved.

In addition to praise being an ineffective substitute for Real Love, its effects are also annoyingly temporary. We’ve all had the experience of working hard to purchase a moment of acceptance, only to discover that the effects wear off with astonishing speed. Then we have to earn it again, and again, and again. In fact, the more we rely on praise, the faster the effects wear off.

We also have to work harder and harder for the same amount of praise. When you were four years old, for example, you could simply tie your shoes correctly and be rewarded with “Wow, you are so clever.” But you have to do a lot more than that to hear those same words now, don’t you? This continual earning of praise is exhausting.

We have also learned that greater quantities of praise are required to give us the same feelings of satisfaction. Where once the slightest nod of approval may have been fulfilling, eventually we require greater displays of acceptance, then applause, then printed notices in the newspaper. Ask most professional performers about their growing and often insatiable need for praise. Eventually, no amount of praise yields satisfaction.

It shouldn’t be difficult to see that the pattern we’ve described here for praise is exactly the same as for any addictive drug. Let’s make that comparison here. Any narcotics addict, for example, knows that when using his drug

•the initial effects are exciting.

•there is a sense of relief or excitement, but the feeling is never one of genuine fulfillment or peace or joy.

•the effects wear off, and with time they wear off more quickly.

greater and greater quantities are required to achieve the same effect.

•he doesn’t care much about the social, physical, and emotional consequences of his drug use.

The addictions to praise and drugs share another important characteristic. While people are addicted to either “substance,” the intoxication and other effects are so distracting that the users cannot feel the effects of Real Love. They can’t feel loved, and that effect alone is deadly.

With the possible exception of the physical withdrawal seen in drug addiction, there is little to no difference between the addiction to drugs and the addiction to praise. It should also be emphasized—originally stated in the new definition of addiction—that the addictions to all other forms of Imitation Love follow the same patterns as those for drugs and praise, as described above. All addictions—to praise, power, pleasure, and safety—are essentially the same. They have the same characteristics, and in the end, they’re all capable of destroying our lives, because they destroy our ability to benefit from the Real Love that is essential to our emotional well-being.

In order for people to smile at us, compliment us, and want to spend time with us—all signs that they accept or “love” us—we’ve learned that we usually have to be talented, beautiful, wealthy, witty, cooperative, grateful, successful, or otherwise worthy of acceptance. That kind of acceptance is conditional, because all the signs of it—the smiles and kind words, for example—disappear when we make mistakes, inconvenience people, and fail to live up to the expectations of others.

Because the absence of Real Love is painful, however, we’re willing to do a lot to earn the approval that temporarily makes us feel good, even if it’s conditional. We make ourselves look good physically, for example, with exercise, clothing, makeup, starvation, and plastic surgery, all in the hope that someone will say, “You’re looking good.” We work hard to succeed at school and in our jobs in order to be complimented for our intelligence, creativity, and diligence.

Power

Although it’s mostly unintentional, any time we successfully manipulate or control someone, we’re enjoying a sensation of power over that person. We use money, authority, sex, flattery, and personal persuasion to influence, control, and even hurt people. When we control someone, we actually feel more connected to him or her in a brief, shallow way. It’s not Real Love, but when we control the people around us, we feel less powerless; we feel less of the emptiness and helplessness that are always associated with a lack of Real Love.

Pleasure

When we don’t feel unconditionally loved, we often use pleasure—food, sex, drugs, shopping, gambling, driving fast, and many forms of entertainment and excitement—to feel better temporarily. Certainly there’s nothing inherently wrong with pleasure, but when we compulsively seek it, we’re using it to fill a deep emptiness, and that pursuit easily becomes an addiction.

Safety

Without sufficient Real Love, we’re already experiencing an insufferable pain, and we’ll go to great lengths to keep ourselves safe from anything that might prolong or worsen our pain. To minimize painful disapproval, we stay away from unfamiliar situations, tasks, and relationships, and then we confuse that feeling of relative safety with real happiness. People who are chronically shy, for example, are addicted to safety. Alcohol and drugs are common avenues to diminish pain, yet another way to achieve safety.

The Broad Face of Addiction

We can become addicted to anything that diminishes the pain of not feeling loved, and that includes a broad range of “substances, people, feelings, and behaviors.” We can become addicted to

•alcohol, which gives us an obvious sensation of pleasure. More importantly, alcohol is a depressant that dulls the pain in our lives, most prominently the pain of not feeling loved. Dr. Baer relates that virtually every alcoholic he has known has resonated with the suggestion that relief of pain (safety) is the primary reason for his or her drinking. Many people also get a sensation of power from alcohol, because when intoxicated they feel a measure of freedom from their fears.

•drugs (same pleasure, power, and safety as from alcohol).

•sex (pleasure, praise, power).

•food (pleasure).

•gambling (pleasure, praise, power).

•approval (praise, power, safety).

•the “love” compulsively derived from a single person (praise, power, pleasure, safety). Falling in love usually exemplifies this.

•controlling others (power, praise, safety).

•anger (power, safety).

•lying (safety).

•shopping (praise, power).

•running from relationships (safety).

•money (praise, power, pleasure, safety).

And this is an incomplete list. When we understand addiction in light of the insights above, the incidence of addiction in our society rises to well over 90%.

HOW CAN I TREAT DRUG ADDICTION AND OTHER TYPES OF ADDICTION?

When we understand that addiction is a pathologic pursuit of anything that will reduce the pain in our lives, usually the pain of not feeling loved, the treatment of drug addiction becomes apparent.

As people learn to find Real Love—the single ingredient most important for happiness—their wounds begin to heal. They begin to find wholeness and genuine health. As the pain in their lives diminishes—and it uniformly does in the presence of Real Love—they simply lose the need to fill their emptiness with Imitation Love, which includes all the objects of addiction. People most effectively let go of their addictions not by willpower but because they have no need for them anymore.

This is far more than a theory. Thousands of people have now experienced the healing power of Real Love in their lives and have then experienced the freedom of being released from the chains of their addictions.

Controlled studies are being planned to demonstrate the effects of Real Love on addictions.

In order to learn much more about how to find Real Love—unconditional love or true love—and with it genuine happiness and richly fulfilling relationships:

•Regularly learn and use the many educational benefits available to you online at www.RealLove.com, at live events, and in person through the Video Chats and Coaching services, etc . . .

•View the six DVDs of The Essentials of Real Love

•Read Real Love—The Truth About Finding Unconditional Love and Fulfilling Relationships

•take advantage of the many other Real Love educational materials available by visiting the online store.

With literally hundreds of hours of Real Love online education at your fingertips on RealLove.com, we provide new content and instruction on finding happiness in your life. Learn to look at life through the clarifying lens of Real Love and eliminate the confusion and frustration in your life.

Trick or Treat!

2009-10-31T07:40:00.001-07:00

Will you get tricked or treated?

The dictionary defines trick as an act or a procedure intended to achieve an end by deceptive or fraudulent means. One of the definitions of treat is to give (someone or oneself) something pleasurable.

Often pleasure is considered the treat and the denial of pleasure the trick. The truth is often the reverse. Short term pleasure often results in long term pain.

A bag full of instant pleasure often rots out teeth, promotes diabetes and adds unhealthy weight.

A bed full of pleasure can ruin marriages, cause unwanted pregnancy and disease.

A bottle or syringe full of pleasure can cost you your job, reputation and freedom.

Trick or treat was not the original nor current deception.

The real trick is Trick AND Treat.

Falling in Love

2009-10-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

Falling in Love Educational Resources

The Real Reasons We Do, and Why It Doesn’t Last

On this page:

•A new definition of love: Real Love

•What we do without Real Love: Imitation Love

•Falling in love: the nature and effect of Imitation Love

•The real reason relationships fail

•Freedom

There are few conditions to which more books and movies have been devoted—and few subjects that fascinate us more—than falling in love. We think about it, talk about it, hope for it, fantasize about it, go to great lengths to achieve it, and feel that our lives are incomplete without it. But we really don’t understand it. Research has revealed which parts of the brain are stimulated when we’re “in love.” Most of us know how it feels to fall in love. But we don’t understand why we fall in love or—perhaps more importantly—why we seem to fall out of love with distressing regularity.

In order to understand falling in love, we must first understand the most important human need. The most important requirement for our emotional health and happiness is to feel loved. Our souls require feeling loved in just as real a way as our bodies require air and food.

A NEW DEFINITION OF LOVE: REAL LOVE

But not just any kind of love will do. The only kind of love that can fill us up and make us whole emotionally is Real Love.

Real Love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves.

It’s also Real Love when other people care about our happiness unconditionally. With Real Love, people are not disappointed or angry when we make our foolish mistakes, when we don’t do what they want, or even when we inconvenience them personally.

When I use the word happiness, I do not mean the brief and superficial pleasure that comes from money, sex, power, and the conditional approval we earn from others when we behave as they want. Nor do I mean the temporary feeling of satisfaction we experience in the absence of immediate conflict or disaster. Real happiness is not the feeling we get from being entertained or making people do what we want. It’s a profound and lasting sense of peace and fulfillment that deeply satisfies and enlarges the soul. It doesn’t go away when circumstances are difficult. It survives and even grows during hardship and struggle. True happiness is our entire reason to live, and it can only be obtained as we find Real Love and share it with others. With Real Love, nothing else matters; without it, nothing else is enough.

Conditional Love

Sadly, few of us have sufficiently received or given Real Love. From the time we were small children, we observed that when we didn’t fight with our sisters, didn’t make too much noise in the car, got good grades, and were otherwise obedient and cooperative, our parents and others smiled at us, patted our heads, and spoke kindly. With their words and behavior, they told us what good boys and girls we were, and we felt loved.

But what happened when we did fight with our sisters, made too much noise, got bad grades, and dragged mud across the clean living room carpet? Did people smile at us then or speak gentle, loving words? No—they frowned, sighed with disappointment, and often spoke in harsh tones. Just as the positive behaviors of other people communicated to us that we were loved, we could interpret the withdrawal of those behaviors only as an indication that we were not being loved. Although it was unintentional, our parents and others taught us this terrible message: “When you’re good, I love you, but when you’re not, I don’t—or certainly I love you a great deal less.”

This conditional love can give us brief moments of satisfaction, but we’re still left with a huge hole in our souls, because only Real Love can make us genuinely happy. When someone is genuinely concerned about our happiness, we feel connected to that person. We feel included in his or her life, and in that instant we are no longer alone. Each moment of unconditional acceptance creates a living thread to the person who accepts us, and these threads weave a powerful bond that fills us with a genuine and lasting happiness. Nothing but Real Love can do that. In addition, when we know that even one person loves us unconditionally, we feel a connection to everyone else. We feel included in the family of all mankind, of which that one person is a part.

WHAT WE DO WITHOUT REAL LOVE: IMITATION LOVE

If we don’t have enough Real Love in our lives, the resulting emptiness is unbearable. We then compulsively try to fill our emptiness with whatever feels good in the moment—money, anger, sex, alcohol, drugs, violence, and the conditional approval of others. Anything we use as a substitute for Real Love becomes a form of Imitation Love, and they all fall into one or more of four categories:

•Praise

•Power

•Pleasure

•Safety

Let’s discuss how we use these forms of Imitation Love, how they affect our individual happiness, how they affect our ability to participate in relationships, and what they have to do with falling in love.

Praise

In the absence of sufficient Real Love, praise feels pretty good. From the time we were small children, we all experienced the exhilaration of hearing, “Good boy,” or “Good girl,” or “Nice job” when we behaved in the ways other people liked, and most of us have devoted the remainder of our lives to duplicating that feeling.

The pursuit of praise is so widespread that it’s accepted as normal, even desirable. We’ve all heard, for example, the expressions “Put your best foot forward” and “Always make a good first impression.” Without realizing it, our parents, teachers, and others taught us that earning praise was a good thing, and we accepted their counsel.

Putting your best foot forward, however, has significant drawbacks. After two people successfully establish a relationship based on their best foot, they eventually discover that their partner is a lot more than his or her best foot—that, metaphorically, there is also the other foot, bad breath, and numerous other imperfections—and the resultant disappointment can be overwhelming. Both partners feel deceived, cheated, and betrayed, and it’s understandable that they vent their frustration on their partner.

Relationships fail because we create them on a foundation lacking the one ingredient—Real Love—most essential to happiness and fulfilling relationships. Without sufficient Real Love, neither partner has the tools to create a healthy and mutually rewarding relationship. Without enough Real Love, the foundation of any relationship will be fatally flawed, and no amount of time, effort, and worry spent on the windows, doors, and carpets will ever create a healthy relationship. With Real Love, nothing else matters; without it, nothing else is enough.

Tragically, although Real Love is essential to happiness, most of us have never had consistent experiences with it, as we discussed earlier. In our emptiness and pain, we’re only too eager to reach out for anything that makes us feel better, however superficial and fleeting that relief might be. We use Imitation Love—praise being just one form—because it does feel good for a moment, even though it never really fills our emptiness.

As we vigorously engage in the pursuit of praise, however, we come to the terrible realization that the satisfaction it provides never lasts for any significant period. After you’ve worked for an hour, or a day, or a week, for example, to complete a project at work or elsewhere, it’s quite satisfying to hear the approving words, “Nice job,” but that feeling soon wears off, and then you have to work all over again to get another dose of it. The effects of praise are always short-lived, leaving us empty and desperate for more.

People who consistently use addictive drugs soon discover that the effect becomes increasingly brief, and more of the drug is required in order to achieve the same outcome. All the forms of Imitation Love are like addictive drugs. Despite all the effort required to earn Imitation Love, the beneficial effects of praise, power, money, and sex become increasingly brief. We also have to work harder to get the desired effect, and eventually we become exhausted and frustrated. Moreover, no matter how successful we are in obtaining Imitation Love, we never get the feeling of connection to other people that comes with Real Love, so we’re still painfully alone.

Power

When we don’t have enough Real Love, we feel empty, alone, helpless, weak, and afraid. We get some measure of relief from these intolerable feelings, however, when we can control the behavior of other people. That sense of power feels much better than the helplessness we often endure. As we control people—as we convince them to agree with us, or to do what we want—we also get a sensation of connection to them, which relieves our loneliness.

In the absence of sufficient Real Love, power can be quite satisfying, and we get it in so many ways: with money, authority, physical and verbal intimidation, anger, violence, and sex.

Pleasure

When we don’t feel loved unconditionally, we use physical and emotional pleasures—sex, food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, driving fast, and so on—as welcome distractions, and we often pursue them with great devotion. The enjoyable effects of pleasure, however, are fleeting, and they can never make us genuinely happy in the absence of Real Love. If pleasure could produce the kind of happiness we all want, sex addicts, for example, would be the happiest people on the planet—but they’re not. As with all the forms of Imitation Love, pleasure wears off, and eventually no amount of it will give us even a brief relief from our emptiness and pain.

Safety

Without Real Love, we’re already in the worst kind of pain, and we’ll go to great lengths to keep ourselves safe from experiencing more pain. If we can’t have genuine acceptance, we can at least do everything in our power to avoid more disapproval. Toward that end, we avoid doing anything unfamiliar. We stay in the same boring, dead-end jobs, attempt to learn nothing new, and continue in stagnant, unrewarding—but predictable—relationships. If we’ve been hurt consistently by all our past relationships, but finally we’re with someone who simply hurts us less, we can confuse that relative safety with love. Or we might avoid dating and relationships altogether.

FALLING IN LOVE: THE NATURE AND EFFECT OF IMITATION LOVE

Even though Imitation Love cannot give us genuine, lasting happiness, it does feel good, and if Real Love is either unknown to us or unavailable, we’ll go to great lengths to get enough Imitation Love to feel good temporarily. In the absence of sufficient Real Love, we’re strongly attracted to anyone who gives us Imitation Love, and it is therefore the pursuit of Imitation Love that governs how most relationships begin and end.

We’ve all observed that if we give enough praise, power, pleasure, and safety to another person, he or she will be more likely to return some of the same to us. In order to get the Imitation Love that can feel so good, therefore, we buy it from others with whatever forms of Imitation Love we have to offer. We trade Imitation Love with those around us. If I praise you enough, for example, you will be more likely to say something kind to me in return, or to do something else I want.

Without thinking about it, almost all of us tend to establish relationships based on the trading of Imitation Love. Let’s arbitrarily measure Imitation Love in dollars, and we’ll suppose that when you give a dollar of Imitation Love to someone, that person gives you twenty cents in return. To a second person you also give a dollar, but this time you receive fifty cents in return. Without being aware of the reason, you naturally prefer the company of the person who gives you a fifty percent return on your investment—it’s that better rate of return that determines why we “like” some people more than others.

Eventually, you give a dollar’s worth of Imitation Love to someone who gives you a full dollar in return. Excited about this dramatic improvement in the return on your investment, you give him or her two dollars, then three, then more, and to your delight, you are rewarded equally each time. This is so exciting that you are now “in love.”

Falling in love is rarely anything more than the relatively equal and abundant exchange of Imitation Love. That may not be romantic, but it’s nonetheless true. When a guy sees a girl across a crowded room and says to his friends, “I think I’m in love,” is there anyone on the planet who believe that his true meaning is, “I’ve fallen into a sudden unconditional concern for her happiness”? No, he’s expressing a belief that he’ll get more Imitation Love from her than he would from anyone else he can think of. We tend to start our relationships on the basis of how much Imitation Love we anticipate we’ll receive from that partner, and that’s a disastrous foundation for a relationship. We can see the effects of Imitation Love in the following account of the relationship between Michael and Susan.

Falling in love is rarely anything more than the relatively equal and abundant exchange of Imitation Love—a formula for disaster.

Michael had said complimentary things to other people all his life, but when he gave them a dollar’s worth of praise, he rarely got a dollar of praise, power, pleasure, or safety in return. Then he met Susan. When he gave her a dollar of praise—verbal and non-verbal—she immediately responded by accepting him (praise), expressing a willingness to do what he wanted (power), and physically touching him (pleasure)—at least a dollar’s worth all together. So he gave her even more Imitation Love—the best he had to offer—and when she responded generously, he was so thrilled with the exchange that he called the feeling “falling in love.”

Susan was attracted to Michael because he was good-looking, funny, smart, and kind to her, and because he had a good job—all of which gave her a sense of praise, pleasure, and safety. They fell in love because the exchange of Imitation Love was abundant and relatively equal.

Susan and Michael began their relationship because they found in their partner the qualities that would entertain them, make them feel worthwhile, and give them safety, not because they unconditionally loved one another. Most of us pick our partners for the same reasons—we look for someone who has qualities that will temporarily make us feel good, and in return we’re quite willing to do the same for that person.

As I’ve said before, however, the effect of Imitation Love always fades, as Michael and Susan discovered. They really enjoyed the initial exchange of Imitation Love, but it wasn’t long before that level of praise, power, and pleasure wasn’t as rewarding as it once had been. When people say the “excitement has worn off” in a relationship, they’re just describing the fleeting effects of Imitation Love. As we experience less “happiness” with Imitation Love, we naturally turn to the people closest to us to supply what we’re missing, and understandably our partners feel resentful of our increased demands. Most of our relationships begin based on an unspoken understanding of how much Imitation Love our partners will give us, and how much we’ll give them in return, and when we change the rules—when we give less or demand more—our partners don’t like that one bit.

As couples discover the transient effect of Imitation Love, they also invariably find that the exchange of Imitation Love becomes unfair. We can roughly quantify the trading—and fading—of Imitation Love over the course of Michael and Susan’s relationship. In the beginning, they exchanged Imitation Love as summarized below:

Imitation Love (in dollars) Received in the Relationship by Michael and Susan

Type of Imitation Love Michael Susan

Praise 5 5

Power 5 5

Pleasure 6 2

Safety 1 5

Total Imitation Love 17 17

In the beginning of their relationship, they both received five dollars of praise as each of them complimented the other for a variety of qualities, including sexual desirability. They were equally successful in getting the other to do the things they wanted (five dollars of power each). Michael got more physical pleasure from the relationship (mostly from sex) than Susan (six dollars versus two), but Susan got a greater sense of security (safety) from the relationship than Michael did (five dollars versus one). Because they experienced more Imitation Love from one another than with anyone else they had known, they were in love. After several months, however, the trading had changed:

Imitation Love (in dollars) Received in the Relationship by Michael and Susan

Type of Imitation Love Michael Susan

Praise 1 1

Power 3 1

Pleasure3 4 1

Safety 0 1

Total Imitation Love 8 4

They both discovered that the effects of flattery had quickly worn off, and that constantly earning it was exhausting, so neither of them was willing to continue their initial efforts to praise one another (down from five dollars to a dollar apiece). Susan discovered she could hardly get Michael to do anything she wanted (one dollar of power vs. the five dollars she got in the beginning of their relationship), so she tended to reward him with nagging instead of praise. Without sufficient praise and appreciation, Michael had even less motivation to keep doing what Susan wanted. Susan, however, still did errands and other acts of kindness for Michael, so he got three dollars of power from getting her to do what he wanted (compared to the five dollars he once got). He still got four dollars of pleasure from the relationship (mostly from sex), while she got only one dollar (virtually nothing from sex but some from other forms of entertainment they enjoyed together). Susan’s sense of safety had been reduced to a single dollar, because he often criticized her (attacking) and because she wasn’t sure of his fidelity when he looked at other women. Michael felt no safety at all as Susan nagged him about everything.

What a miserable state of affairs. When they first met, what Michael and Susan both needed was Real Love, but neither of them had ever felt much unconditional love, so there was no way they could have loved one another as they needed. We simply can’t give what we don’t have. In the absence of Real Love, they offered one another what they did have—Imitation Love in its various forms—and they gave all they had. Imitation Love does feel good, and because they were both giving it with all their hearts, they were satisfied with their relationship in the beginning. When the effects wore off, however, and they each gave one another less of the various forms of Imitation Love, they felt like the rules of exchange had been violated. They were both faced with the horror that they were not going to get the happiness they’d hoped for all their lives.

Later in their relationship, Susan experienced more disappointment than Michael did. Not only was she disillusioned with the decline in her overall happiness (four dollars of Imitation Love versus seventeen in the beginning), but she sensed that their relationship was unfair (four dollars for her versus eight for Michael). It’s common for one partner to believe the relationship is worse than the other partner does, because although both partners are far from genuinely happy, one of them—in this case, Michael—is getting more Imitation Love than the other. In addition, although Michael wasn’t ecstatic about their relationship, he was relatively satisfied, because even though his total was down from seventeen dollars to eight, it was still better than what he enjoyed before finding Susan.

Sex as a form of Imitation Love deserves special attention, and that is addressed in detail in Chapter Seven of the book Real Love in Dating.

THE REAL REASON RELATIONSHIPS FAIL

I have counseled with thousands of couples, most of them married. Remember that people usually get married only after they have sifted through many potential partners, finally choosing the one they believe will provide them with the fulfillment of their dreams. Ideally, marriages should be the cream of all relationships, the best of the best.

And yet 60% of these dream relationships end in divorce, and the vast majority of those who remain married are settling for far less than they had once hoped for. When troubled couples come to me for counseling, invariably they ask some variation on the question, “What happened?” Both partners are absolutely befuddled, wondering how they could possibly have moved from being soulmates to being combatants.

In their attempts to understand what happened, it’s unavoidable that each partner would blame the other. After all, they reason, their partner once “made them happy,” and now that happiness is gone. The inescapable conclusion is that their partner has somehow failed them, somehow withdrawn the joy they once magically dispensed at the beginning of the relationship.

But you understand the real reason relationships fail. When two people enter into a relationship without sufficient Real Love, their relationship is virtually doomed from the beginning. Most relationships are guaranteed to fail from the word “Hello”—no matter how wonderfully they get along in the beginning—because both parties lack the one ingredient most essential to genuine happiness and fulfilling relationships. In the beginning of their association they achieve the illusion of happiness only because they give one another enough Imitation Love. It’s better than anything they’ve had before, so it seems real. Then, when the effects of Imitation Love begin to wear off—as they always do—they’re left with the horrifying realization that their dreams have turned into so much dust.

Relationships fail not because of what each partner does or does not do. Relationships fail because they are not built on a foundation of Real Love, but instead are based on a counterfeit currency—Imitation Love—that can never buy happiness.

FREEDOM

In order to learn much more about Imitation Love and falling in love, read the book Real Love in Dating.

In order to learn much more about how to find Real Love—unconditional love or true love—and with it genuine happiness and richly fulfilling relationships:

•Regularly learn and use the many educational benefits available to you online at www.RealLove.com, at live events, and in person through the Video Chats and Coaching services, etc . . .

•View the six DVDs of The Essentials of Real Love

•Read Real Love—The Truth About Finding Unconditional Love and Fulfilling Relationships

•Take advantage of the many other Real Love educational materials available by visiting the online store.

With literally hundreds of hours of Real Love online education at your fingertips on RealLove.com, we provide new content and instruction on finding happiness in your life. Learn to look at life through the clarifying lens of Real Love and eliminate the confusion and frustration in your life.

2009-10-27T17:29:00.001-07:00

September 21, 2009

Walking with Two Legs

I received the following letter from a member of the Real Love community, and I offer it to you without comment:
In its simplest form the path to Real Love—and the lasting peace and happiness it produces—can be summarized as follows:

Tell the truth (about yourself).

Be seen.

Feel accepted.

Feel loved.

Start over with telling the truth and repeat for the rest of your life.

When we step into the Real Love process we usually enter it because we are in pain, and because we have been in and out of pain so many times in our lives that we’re confused. We’re looking for solutions, and although we’ve received partial answers from many sources, we still haven’t found what we’re looking for. Real Love provides those answers.

We’re in pain because we are empty, alone, and afraid. In order to eliminate this pain, we then chase the only things that have ever made us feel better, even though the results are temporary: praise, power, pleasure, safety, and the conditional love of others. From birth we have also learned to use the Getting and Protecting Behaviors that help us acquire as much Imitation Love as possible. We become addicted to these behaviors and to Imitation Love, just as surely as a heroin addict is addicted to heroin. Unfortunately, we return to our drugs of choice again and again, because their appeal is all we know. We haven’t even seen Real Love, so how would we ever pursue it?

The initial steps in Real Love can be difficult, because we must have faith in something we’ve never seen. We have to tell the truth about our addictions, and few of us enjoy that experience.

I see Real Love as a path we walk, and in order to walk effectively, we need two legs. Sure, you can bounce around on one leg, like I have for a long time, or you can learn to use both of your legs and begin to walk and maybe even run down the path of Real Love, which will lead you to lasting happiness and peace.

Let me describe the two legs we walk on. The first leg is an understanding of the Real Love principles, as spelled out in numerous books, CDs, and DVDs: the power of telling the truth, the Law of Choice, the Law of Responsibility, the Law of Expectations, Event-Judgment-Feeling-Reaction, and so on. With this first leg I learned to tell the truth about myself to myself. I was able to see my Getting and Protecting Behaviors. I saw my need to control, to be right, to limit other people’s choice, and to expect others to make me happy, and I was able to see how much conditional love there was in the world. I saw that I was addicted to Imitation Love. As I told these truths to myself—and occasionally in emails to others—I began to feel a happiness I had never felt before. It was amazing and so freeing.

So I was hopping on one leg down the path of Real Love, but in time I discovered that without a second leg I couldn’t really go any farther. With only the principles and myself, I ran out of energy. My sight was limited.

I needed a second leg, which I discovered involved the use of the Real Love community. There are very few people out there in the world of Imitation Love that can actually accept us for who we are, because they are users just as we are. But the people in the Real Love community offer love that often we can’t even comprehend initially, much less feel. They have the ability not only to accept us, but to help us tell the truth about ourselves. Without their unconditional love I could not have seen more of my getting and protecting behaviors, which I needed to do in order to feel even more loved and to make different choices.

Loving people throw us a rope or show us the way to the side of the pool, so we can stop drowning in the pool of Imitation Love. They give us choices we’ve never had and actually help us to make them. They can’t make the choices for us. They can’t keep pulling us out of the pool—because then we wouldn’t learn anything—but they can teach us to swim.

What I have come to treasure is that when I do get lose—when I jump back into the pool—I can simply make a call to someone in the Real Love community, who will give me some support and sometimes directions to the side of the pool, so I can pull myself out of the water. I need that help, because my addictions are strong. The lure of Imitation Love is always with us. We are not perfect. Telling the truth about ourselves is a life long continual process. You can always discover more truth.

I’m glad I have two legs—the principles of Real Love and the people who live them—and I encourage all of us to get out there and use both of them.

Telling the truth

2009-10-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

Why is it so important to tell the truth about ourselves?

As I travel and share real love with folks, I realize that the toughest thing we can do is tell the truth. We have become so ritualized and formatted to protect ourselves that we live in the lies. We cannot see them at all. The world has told us (failed us) that if we tell the truth we will be shunned, turned away, unliked or worse unloved. The world has taught us to KNOW this on a very deep level. Almost intuitively we know that we cannot be loved for who we are.

So we sit with a dilemma. We are addicted to a facade. We don't even know that survival has become the order of the day. We have these behaviors that guarantee our own demise.

What is it that we are doing?

When we don't tell the truth about who we really are we cannot find those gold nuggets, those people who can love us for the good, bad and ugly of who we are.

If the 3 things we need to be happy are: be loved, be loving and be responsible, then how can we ever be loved and feel loved if we know no one really knows us. REALLY? Really.

We must take a risk. Line up a million people and tell it like it is and let those who can love us step forward. I love the saying that we should not avoid rejection but get to it quickly, move through it more quickly to find those who can love us.

I am flawed and still walk around with an armor on. I have so much from a lifetime that has hurt. But I have learned to spot people without behaviors therefore having capacity and lack of drama in their own life that can love me. And that has made all the difference in the world.

If you think you want more love = Happiness, then take a chance. Tell as many people as possible who you really are. If you don't you are cheating yourself. You are cheating the world by never living to your potential. I love. I am loved. I am loving. I am responsible for all of it!

And so it is. Sharon

Finding Real Love

2009-10-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

Finding Real Love
As people learn the principles of Real Love, they almost uniformly ask how they can find and feel the real thing. They want to feel the actual power of Real Love.
Fortunately, there are so many course of actions we can take to find Real Love and experience its healing power.
1. Study. Read the book Real Love. Watch the Essentials of Real Love online or on the six-DVD set. The more we study these true, lifegiving principles, the more we tend to feel the power that emanates from them.
2. Participate in the chat rooms and forums offered here on RealLove.com. There you can tell the truth about yourself and feel the acceptance from those who can see, accept and love you. At pre-specified times during the week you will have free access to trained Real Love Coaches in the chat rooms. This service can cost over $100 on other websites, while we provide it to you, FREE. We want everyone to experience the life-changing benefits of Real Love Coaching. This unique benefit will help you find the answers to the important questions in your life and relationships.
3. Participate in the weekly Live Video Chat with Greg every Tuesday night at 9 PM EST for one hour, and every Thursday night at 9 PM EST for one hour with a Certified Real Love Coach.
4. Hire a Real Love Coach. Many people have found the guidance of a professional coach indispensable as they learn and apply the principles of Real Love. You can learn more about coaching at RealLoveCoaching.net.
5. Join a Real Love Group. If one is not available, take the steps to form one. Share the Real Love book or the Essentials DVDs with friends, and as you do that, you will naturally find people who express an interest in the principles of Real Love. Gradually, you can ask these people if they have an interest in joining you in a Real Love study group.
6. Gradually accumulate a group of people that you can communicate with by phone or in person every day. Make a habit of communicating with at least one person every day who is capable of loving you unconditionally. You will find these people as you take the steps described above.
7. Attend the Real Love seminars you find listed on the website under Events and Seminars .
As you take these steps, and tell the truth about yourself to other people—especially about your mistakes, flaws, and fears—they can finally see you as you really are. They can accept you and give you unconditional love, as indicated in this simple diagram:
Truth Seen Accepted Loved
When you feel enough of the unconditional love of others, you'll have the most important treasure in life. The wounds of the past will heal—wounds caused by insufficient Real Love—and you'll feel whole and happy. As your emptiness and fear are eliminated by Real Love, you'll simply have no need to use Getting and Protecting Behaviors. Without those behaviors, you'll find relationships with others relatively effortless and will begin finding the happiness you've always wanted.
We have now seen the powerfully healing effects of Real Love in the lives of tens of thousands of individuals. Impossibly unhappy marriages now thrive, angry and rebellious children now turn to their parents for love and guidance, singles are finding partners interested in a relationship based on Real Love instead of trading in the sure disappointment of Imitation Love, and divisive and unproductive corporate cultures are become nurturing and supportive. Visit RealLove.com daily to get the relationship advice and tools that will help you replace your anger, confusion and addictions with peace, confidence, and happiness.