Loving Relationships

"Do you love enough to really let go of the object of your love?"

Adyashanti

We can spend most of our lives thinking that if we just had the 'right' partner, then everything would be endlessly happy and joyful. As we listen to songs about romantic love and watch Hollywood movies that portray the ideal happily-ever-after, we can find ourselves longing for someone to share our lives with and to 'rescue' us from the loneliness of our days. And then it happens; through some cosmic alignment with the stars, you meet 'the one' at a party, or an on-line dating service, or through a friend (does it really matter?), and suddenly, as if by magic, all is right with the world and your heart is full of a mushy substance that you swear is love or something close to it.

After 3 weeks (or 3 months) of swooning in this sea of romantic bliss, there comes a day when your partner does something, or says something, that disturbs you greatly. Before you know it, you are arguing over the smallest things and it's not to long before you say 'adios' and convince yourself that next time it will be different; that you just haven't found the 'right person'. But what if, as all the spiritual masters have told us, the Love we are looking for isn't outside of us at all? What if it's right within our own hearts just waiting to be recognized and embraced? Wouldn't this free us of all the exhaustion and despair that we feel as we go about looking for 'the one?'

What we may discover is that truly loving relationships are possible only when we live from the Love that is already fully within our own hearts. In this Love, we let others off the hook by giving up the expectation that they should, or even can, make us happy. We take responsibility for our own internal space and in the process begin to radiate the Love that is our true nature, out to all beings who cross our path. As we do this, we make the wonderful discovery that ALL relationships can be loving relationships when we simply remember that WE are the one we have always been looking for.