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The Psychology of Enlightenment
bage. From that moment, I gave up smoking.” Then, as an afterthought, he asked me why I had not been more forceful with him. Why had I not demanded that he stop smoking?
"If," I said, “I had ordered you to stop smoking, you may have followed my advice, but the desire would have remained. You would always have believed that I had compelled you not to smoke and eventually you would have resented me. Now you have given it up freely of your own will because of your personal experience.”
In life, there is no need for us to be upset because others do not do what we think is best for them. We must accept them as they are; we must watch and wait and love. The time will come when they will learn directly from their own experience. · Love is acceptance, and acceptance means giving the people around us room in which to live, to ponder, to learn. Acceptance allows for the natural blossoming of understanding. We must be careful not to suffocate our partner or our friend with the bondage of a conditional love. That kind of love stifles growth, and the relationship becomes stagnant and unrewarding.
What is the nature of real love and what happens to us and to our lives when we are touched by it? First, consider breath. We cannot live without it; yet if we try to hold on to it, we die of suffocation. Love is our spiritual breath. We cannot live and thrive without it; but if we try to grasp it, it withers and so do we. As we inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale, we are receiving and giving not only air, but the breath of love from the universe. Therefore, when you meditate on the fourth center, the heart, first take time to
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