The second law of love is You Are the Source of Love. You! Not your husband or your wife, not your lover, not your parents, not your guru, not your child, not your dog or cat, not anyone but you. Love is within each of us and radiates outward. If you really knew the truth of this law, your whole reality would change instantaneously.

All of the time and energy spent anxiously seeking love and approval from others would be immediately liberated for more creative pursuits. All of the misery generated by disappointment about not being loved by family, friends, or romantic partners would fade into oblivion. The struggle to find love and keep love would be transformed into the pleasure of lavishing love on others. The battle to avoid or deny the perceived emptiness inside would be over. The fear of not being loved and all the stories about not deserving love would dissolve, leaving peace and contentment in their wake.

Imagine for a moment that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your very nature is pure love. Imagine that you can make a choice at any moment simply to love, without any cause, without any target, without any conditions. Imagine this is known to you through your own direct experience, not as a theory, not as wishful thinking. The very idea may sound intolerably corny to you, but just for the moment, put aside any cynical thoughts you may be having and see if you can make contact with the love that you are.

A sacred text from India, The Changogya Upanishad puts it this way:

“As vast as this space without is the tiny space within your heart: heaven and earth are found in it, fire and air, sun and moon, lightening and the constellations, whatever belongs to you here below and all that doesn’t, all this is gathered in that tiny space within your heart.”

Exercise: Deep inside you, in the very core of your being, in the innermost chamber of your heart, is an everlasting reservoir of love. This is the well that never runs dry, the secret lamp that never runs out of oil. Its flame glows steadily no matter what happens. If you put your complete attention on this inner flame of love, you will be filled with a sense of peace, well being, and total acceptance. Remember that your true nature is love. Place your awareness on your own center point and allow the love to flow, to fill you to overflowing.

Are you able to sense this presence? Do you feel the truth of this possibility that love resides in your own heart? Stop reading for a minute and see if you can experience this reality for yourself. What happens inside when you remind yourself that your whole being is nothing but love? What happens inside when you decide to love for no reason? If you’re not there yet, don’t worry. Years and years of brainwashing may take a little time and energy to undo. Try it again as you finish each chapter of this book.


The Great Mistake

When the infant’s caretakers do not embody the knowledge that they are their own source of love, but instead believe that love comes from outside, in the sphere of their influence, the baby soon forgets that his or her very essence is love. So many of us were not born into loving environments or were later surrounded by people who were disconnected from their own inner source, it’s not surprising we have difficulty realizing the source is not out there.

When a child is taught to seek love from others and to make herself conform to their desires in order to earn or keep this love, she learns to abandon her own intuitive knowing. Before long the child becomes desperate to find and keep loving contact with others. Just as we need food and water to survive, as infants our very survival depends upon receiving affection and nurturing touch.

If we do not receive a bare minimum of loving contact, in addition to food and shelter, the absence of tender touch can be life threatening. Health care professionals first observed this phenomenon in orphanages where babies failed to thrive even though their physical needs were being met.

When children become fearful of depending upon parents or caretakers who seem cold, distant, self-absorbed, or violent they naturally retreat to another realm. At the same time, in an effort to protect themselves from the pain of feeling unloved, they may develop protective habits and chronic muscular contractions that end up blocking awareness of the love inside.

Eventually these defensive maneuvers become so familiar it’s hard to imagine life without them. These defenses also function to keep the loving vibration of others from getting in. As adults, we no longer depend upon physical contact with others to meet our survival needs, though it’s still very pleasurable and health enhancing! Nevertheless, this habit of seeking love outside ourselves remains, along with the barriers to allowing ourselves to be loved by others. Sometimes we end up confusing love with sex and so our search for love becomes a never ending search for more and better sex.

The quest for love is doomed from the outset for those of us who were actively taught from an early age that love comes from outside. It doesn’t matter whether we believe the source of love is God-in-heaven, a romantic partner, Mom and Dad, or chocolate ice cream. If we think love is separate from who we are, we’re in trouble of one kind or another. You are probably better off believing that love comes from God than from Mom, Dad, or a romantic partner, unless your God tells you you’re a sinner who doesn’t deserve love. Chocolate ice cream will never judge you or reject you, but it is fattening! In the end, you’ll be much better off if you simply acknowledge that you are love!

The great mystery is the enormous resistance we have to shifting our attention from the outer world of people and objects to the source of love inside. As we shall see in the next chapter, love flows toward you naturally once you access the love that you are!


Body Armor

When life experiences cause you to lose touch with the love inside, you’re likely to develop protective habits and chronic muscular contractions that prevent you from feeling the love inside and that block the energy of love from penetrating your fearful being. They can also result in a wide variety of physical problems. Your chest caves in or puffs out, your shoulders hunch forward or your belly grows tight, your lips become stiff or turn downward, your chin juts out, your forehead wrinkles or your jaw clenches. Over time, these uncomfortable and unhealthy postures become second nature. They are called body armor. If you completely forget you assumed the body armor to avoid the pain of feeling unloved, you’re in big trouble because you’ve also forgotten that you can choose to release it.

Worse yet, you may take on responsibility for the absence of parental love. “I must be bad or wrong or they would love me. There is something defective in me. I am not enough.” Or maybe, “I am too much.” Again, these thoughts become unconscious background noise. You forget you are thinking them, but each time you do, they become a bigger barrier to love.

Meanwhile, these undermining thoughts and feelings become entwined with the body armor you’ve unconsciously created to avoid them. The body armor and the thoughts and feelings reinforce each other, keeping the pattern of feeling unloved firmly in place.

Exercise: Pay close attention to what happens in your body when you tell yourself that you are unlovable or that you will never be loved. Notice your breathing and how you hold your body. Notice any movements you make. Notice your facial expression. Exaggerate all of this. Now see if you can relax completely and deepen your breath. If any emotions come to the surface, allow them to be expressed. Now tell yourself that love is abundant. Imagine yourself floating in a vast warm ocean of love. With each breath, focus on breathing in more love, more energy, more vitality. Put one hand on the center of your chest and one on the center of your belly. Again, pay close attention to what happens in your body. Notice how your posture changes or how you move your body.


The Pitfalls of Falling In Love

The strongest conditioning most of us get is to expect a romantic partner to be the ultimate source of love. Women in particular are led to believe that finding the right man delivers the keys to the kingdom of Love. Hundreds of love songs of the “I need your love, can’t live without you baby” variety constantly fill the airwaves. Put this together with the nature of sexual interactions that briefly bring to the surface your core self, leading you to mistake your own core of love for a gift that comes from the embodied lover beside you, and it’s no wonder that so many of us are confused.

I remember the first time I experienced the euphoric state commonly known as “falling in love.” I was twenty-three years old and thought I’d been in love several times already, but one doesn’t know what one doesn’t know. I thought that the songs and poetry about this mysterious state of romantic love were fantasy or myth – something made up. It was only after several romances and one marriage that my previous tastes of this condition were revealed to be relatively superficial.

This overwhelming feeling crept up on me over a period of several days leaving me happy but dazed. The earth itself seemed alive and literally moved beneath my feet each time my beloved touched me. When I looked into his eyes I heard bells ring and my heart expanded so wide it felt as if it were cracking open. Everything I laid eyes on shimmered with a beauty so intense I could hardly bear it. I lost my appetite. Food seemed unnecessary when each breath I took nourished my soul. I felt a sense of peace, calm, and joy I had never known. Fear, a familiar companion, disappeared.

What I’d called love before, seemed bland and uninspiring in comparison. In retrospect I realized that my beloved ignited this experience of transcendent love in me at least in part because his own heart had been blown wide open. He later described to me a spiritual awakening several years before we met which had radically changed his self awareness. I now know that mystics throughout the ages have described their encounters with the Divine in language which echoes that of romantic and erotic love. At the time I only knew that something huge had happened to me and I thought it was all about him.

From the first time he touched me, gently stroking my bare arm in an attentive but undemanding way, I realized I’d stumbled on undiscovered territory. Up until then, I’d only been touched by people who wanted something. There were men who wanted to seduce me, or impress me, or marry me. Some were lost in pornographic fantasy, others worried about whether they knew what they were doing or if they were performing well. Women, starting with Mommy, had yearnings too. They communicated their needs to be loved and appreciated as well as their insecurities and craving for reassurance through touch. I’m sure I was not alone in having rarely if ever experienced touch that was not agenda driven!

This new love transformed my sexuality. Sex had always been a spiritual experience for me, but I’d never known it could be like this. We flowed together effortlessly on many dimensions, becoming one being, but that was only the beginning. For without saying a word about it, he somehow communicated to me that he was worshipping the Divine and that I was She. At that time, nearly thirty years ago, the idea that I was a goddess was a completely new concept for me. Fortunately, this knowledge came in through my body, not my mind, and felt very, very good.

It totally bypassed the resistance I would certainly have had to mentally acknowledging what I now know to be true.

Instead, and quite predictably, my mind decided that I had found my soul mate and immediately began planning a future of blissful togetherness. But it was not to be. I was already committed to attending graduate school a thousand miles away. Even if I’d been willing to change my plans, which I was not, he wasn’t exactly begging me not to go. Our bodies and souls fit together beautifully but our personalities did not.

Our deep friendship has lasted to this day, but when we physically parted ways several months after first meeting, I felt completely bereft. At the same time, my beloved’s absence propelled me into a lifelong search for the source of the love I’d first discovered through our encounter. For this I am eternally grateful. Had we stayed together it would have undoubtedly taken many more years for me to find the impetus to look within.


Longing for Love

It’s totally human to long for love. Often this longing first appears as a tremendous desire to connect with a particular romantic partner. If this longing is fulfilled you may be content for a time and look no further. If you are frustrated in your efforts to attract, or keep, the affection of the man or woman of your dreams, you may be more motivated to investigate the source of this longing. Either way, you will eventually come face to face with this mystery. What is this longing for love? Why is it so powerful? Where does it come from? And how can it be satisfied?

Spiritual teachers from every tradition have always told us that you can only long for that which you already are. It appears that the love is in someone else, but this is only an illusion. Sooner or later, you will discover this for yourself. The love that you feel is inside, it can’t be felt any other way. If you didn’t already know love intimately, you would not long for it. You wouldn’t even suspect its existence. If you have never tasted chocolate, you do not crave it. Once you have sampled its delights, you want more. And once you’ve had fine chocolate, nothing less will satisfy you.

Somehow, most of us have forgotten that we are pure love and so we seek it outside ourselves. This longing is very useful in that it serves to activate your quest for love. Ultimately this search for the beloved leads you to the realization that you feel love when you are being loving, not when you are being loved by another.

Exercise: This simple but powerful exercise was suggested by one of my favorite teachers who goes by the name of Adyashanti.[ii] Try it yourself and see what happens. The next time you feel that yearning for love, feel backwards into it. Feel it going in, even as it’s going out. Feel back, trace it back to its root and see if you don’t already possess what you seek. Take it as a question. Is it true that love is absent? Maybe love is abundantly here inside you, or maybe it’s just a little bit. Each time the longing for love arises, do this practice with great diligence.


Loving Yourself

One day, a client called me in tears. As she put it, her latest Prince had turned out to be a Frog. Linda despairingly expressed the fear that there are no good men, out there. Instead of reassuring her that the world is full of fabulous men eager to be loved by her, I suggested that she would do well to immerse herself in the love inside herself rather than pursuing romance. “I do great at loving myself,” Linda replied, “but I want a man to hold me.”

“I’m not talking about loving yourself,” I responded, “I’m talking about finding the source of love inside of you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, clearly puzzled. Like many women, Linda had been paying lip service to this new idea while continuing to believe that love comes from a romantic partner.

“When you find the love within you, it will also manifest in loving relationships,” I told her. “You can’t fake it, and until you become your own source of love your neediness will repel instead of attract love into your life.”

Treating yourself with kindness and compassion is certainly a positive step. Eating well, exercising, appreciating yourself, indulging in special treats and self-care rituals will definitely improve your well being. But doing these things is not the same as finding the source of love inside. Acting from a mental conviction that nurturing oneself is good for you is not equivalent to a heart-felt outpouring of self love.

Exercise: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. I’ve used this exercise for many years to help people get access to the love inside. Find a warm, quiet and comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed while you close your eyes, relax your body, and listen to this classic love song recorded by Roberta Flack. As you listen to the recording, bring to mind someone you have loved very deeply. Allow yourself to feel all the passion and adoration and devotion you have for this person. Feel the gratitude and vulnerability and excitement of being together. Totally enjoy this feeling of being in love. Now turn this big love around and shine it on yourself. Give yourself the same intensity of love you feel for the “love of your life.” If you find this difficult or impossible to do, notice what’s in the way.


Scarcity vs. Abundance

When you believe that there is not enough love to go around and that you will not get the love you need, your body reacts with fear or anxiety as it would if you were in danger. You shrink into yourself in an effort to get away from this alien, unfriendly and threatening world. If a little love should happen to flow your way, you attempt to cling to it and defend your claim to it with ferocious zeal. Like a miser hoarding his stash of valuables, you are careful to keep others away from the treasure you depend upon for survival.

When you cultivate a sense of abundant love, drinking in the comfort and security of knowing you are held to the bosom of the Divine Mother, your body feels more expansive and open. You know there is plenty of love for everyone, so you can freely give it away. You have a sense of being at home and provided for where ever you find yourself so you become more outgoing and friendly. You want to share your sense of abundance with others who also feel this abundance. You have a choice. Which feels better to you? Which reality do you prefer?

The Course in Miracles defines sin as “lack of love.”[iii] When we look at the behaviors and attitudes which stem from a belief in the scarcity of love, this definition makes a lot of sense. Depression, anxiety, jealousy, envy, addiction, greed, and selfishness can all be seen to have their roots in the experience of not having enough love. Instead of viewing the sin of perceiving scarcity as an evil to be punished, the Course sees sin as a mistaken perception which can be changed by seeing more clearly that you have an endless supply of love in your very own heart.


Addiction and the Need for Approval

The mistaken belief that love comes from someone or some place outside and the perception that inside there is only emptiness often leads to addiction. In order to avoid the disappointment of feeling unloved and the agonizing emptiness inside, many people turn to substances or activities which make them feel good temporarily, or at least dull their awareness of what they imagine they are lacking. Occasional use may be a pleasant distraction from suffering, but whether one turns to alcohol, drugs, work, drama, control, sex or relationships, if you depend on your chosen addiction to mask the feeling of being unloved, you deprive yourself of the motivation to find the source of love inside. Relying on a substance or activity to avoid the feeling of being unloved keeps you stuck. It’s virtually impossible to extricate yourself from a trap you don’t know that you’re in. It’s as if your pockets were filled with rocks. You wonder why each step that you take requires so much effort. You complain about how stuck you feel. Meanwhile these heavy rocks begin to wear holes in your pockets, but instead of letting the rocks fall out, you expend even more energy trying to keep the holes mended.

Perhaps the most common addiction of all is the addiction to approval. This addiction to approval is so prevalent in our society that it seems quite normal, but this is only because we’ve forgotten the Law of Source. When you believe that love comes from outside, and that in order to receive this love you must meet certain conditions, you are at risk for becoming addicted to approval. This need for approval keeps you in a childlike state of dependency.

Instead of teaching our children to cultivate the ability to validate themselves, we train them to seek validation from others. When it isn’t forthcoming, panic ensues. The giving and receiving of validation is even put forth by many marriage counselors as a strategy for healthy relationships.

It’s certainly pleasant to receive validation from your partner, just as a glass of wine with dinner can be pleasant. If you are able to skip the wine, or the approval, when it’s not available, you can choose to enjoy it when it’s offered. Otherwise you have no choice. You must have it. Like all addictions, the need for approval limits your freedom to act with total integrity. If you’re addicted to approval, you will sell your soul for it. You’re incapable of making a choice which might prove unpopular.


Control

Much of the conflict in love relationships arises from one person attempting to control another. Individual differences are inevitable. People have different desires, different needs, different tastes, different opinions, different beliefs, different values, different priorities, and different points of view. Differences do not have to mean conflict. If you approach differences as valid and intriguing signifiers to be creatively blended or separately enjoyed and expressed, harmony can prevail.

What often happens instead is that we see differences as threats that may prevent access, or continued access, to our perceived source of love. We counter this danger by taking action to control the other. We may do it indirectly through manipulation, sulking, or threatening to withdraw our own love and support. We may do it directly by issuing orders, ultimatums, or polite requests which are really demands. Or we may keep ourselves separate and alone in an effort to avoid the whole issue.

A simple request, if it can be declined without adverse reaction, may not carry the intent to control. But a request may also be a demand, cloaked in the costume of choice. One man I knew was so wary of being controlled that he would routinely decline requests just to see what the reaction would be to his refusal to comply. If his “no” was not met with gracious acceptance, he immediately prepared for battle. If the battle was not won instantaneously, he bolted from the relationship.

Many people have an automatic unconscious resistance to demands. If you’re intent upon getting love from your partner, he will probably experience this as a demand. Without even being conscious of it, he may resist giving you what you want. Or he may give it grudgingly, resentful that he couldn’t give it freely because of your insistence.

When two people engage with the conscious or unconscious intent to control one another, a power struggle ensues. How sad! How futile! We’ve all done this enough to know that it doesn’t work. As we shall see in the next chapter, the reality is that the power struggle very effectively prevents both parties from coming together and staying together in a loving way.

Instead, remember that the urge to control the other is a misguided attempt to get more love, or to control the imagined source of your love. Fortunately, this struggle is completely unnecessary. The love resides in your own heart. It is freely available to you at all times and does not depend upon controlling your partner.