As we mature, we cherish our uniqueness and offer it to those who can receive it. That is how disconnection begins to feel like connection.

Allowing means letting others have their own voice and being open to hearing them, no matter what their message to us may be. This takes mindful awareness of another person’s needs and feelings and a letting go of our own ego investments.

Our self-love now is a mirror of the love that identified us as lovable. It was and is being enriched by every person who loved or loves us.

Even in our infatuated state, we may realize that this is not the right relationship for us, that it has no future. Yet we often can’t let go. We may refer to this inability as our heart speaking, when it is actually our adrenals. We are under the influence of our own adrenaline, the hormone that keeps us attached whether or not our feelings are

In that sense, to accept that we can be like the best or worst human we know is a way of seeing our connection to all humanity.

Those who don’t love us for who we are deserve our compassion for missing a many-splendored thing.

Acceptance, appreciation, and allowing can come across to us as obsequiousness, arising from the untrustworthy motive of trying to manipulate us.

Affection can happen by a here-and-now, caring connection shown with physical closeness and touch but without clinging to summon the comfort we experienced in childhood embraces.

We remain because of allegiance, not because of mutual happiness and affection.