Think for a moment about love. What is it? Is the source of love physical or mental? It initially appears that my feelings of love for someone ultimately depend on the person whom I love, her actions, her words and her intentions. In this regard, my love is conditional on the characteristics of my companion. I know that I feel feelings of love when my companion and I touch and kiss. Therefore, I might conclude, that love must come from outside me, from my external environment. I might deduce that I must perform certain physical actions to get love. Think again. If love is a real thing in my external environment, how do the loving feelings travel from my companion to my brain? Do loving feelings seep out of my companion’s lips? Do loving feelings leak out from under my companion’s fingernails, then creep up my arm and enter my ear and my brain to make me feel love?

Love is an emotion similar to happiness. Like happiness, love comes from within. Love is a consequence of thinking affectionate, kind and warm thoughts. Feelings of love are self-generated. Like happiness, feelings of love arise from a personal decision. Have you ever met a potential mate who seems perfect in every regard, except that you do not have loving feelings for them? For whatever reason, conscious or unconscious, you have not decided to love this person. Your feelings of love are solely dependant on the meaning that you give to the various characteristics of your mate. When your internal rules are satisfied, then you give yourself permission to feel love. This is partially why praise from people who you do not respect or admire goes unnoticed by you; these people have not satisfied your rules, and you have not given yourself permission to accept their praise.

You give yourself permission to feel love. How much love you have in your life is not dependant on your external situation. A huge, almost limitless ocean of love lies within you. The intense, almost surreal and insane love you felt for your high school sweetheart is an example of the amount love that you are capable of feeling. You are like the sun; you have the ability to shine out your love all over the world. Moreover, you can feel that intense love right now, all it takes is a decision.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 5:09 am and is filed under Happiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.