How to Be an Adult in Love: Letting Love in Safely and Showing It Recklessly

In fact, a crush is painful, so in spiritual consciousness, we may feel compassion for the person who obsesses about us in that way.

We sometimes confuse making assessments and being judgmental. To assess is to critique, or to comment on the value of something in an objective and disinterested way, such as reviewing a movie. We evaluate its acting, script, and direction. This is not personal but informational. Mindfulness shows the legitimacy of assessing; it requires constant a

Love is a connection that is caring, intended for good, respectful of freedom, and genuinely sensitive to another’s needs, even making those needs as important as our own. This shift in attention to the needs of others deflates our own sense of self-importance. What power love has to help us let go of ego!

Some specific ways of practicing love are by showing what I call the “five A’s”: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing.

To say that love is our essence has a consoling ring. But it can fill us with terror when we feel unloved. Not to be loved or responded to as lovable then becomes the equivalent of having no essence, being all alone in the world.

Practice is about surrendering to the way things are inside us. Our success is in noticing how our mind works and in coming back to our breath whenever we become aware of our distractions. Our success is in continuing to show up, not in being utterly free of distracting mind-sets.

Giving and receiving love can become our primary life focus. Focusing on this combination is a way to become fully human, to fulfill ourselves psychologically. If love comes our way, it is welcome and enriching. But in spiritual practice, our focus is on giving love rather than finding someone from whom to receive it. We feel fulfilled spiritually

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

It is, of course, true that discrimination in trusting others is necessary if we are to have quality relationships. Selectivity is important for our safety and security, because it means trusting only those who have proven their dependability. This makes sense but only in how we love, not that we love. Thus, our ways of showing love differ accordin

LOVE IS TOO ELUSIVE and individualized to permit a definition. However, we can ask, “What can love be?” This is not a definition but a request for an ever-renewed invitation, something we can keep daring to enter, like Alice persevering in her adventures in Wonderland.