We feel love now as we first received it; we give love the way others gave it to us. Thus, since love is unique to each person, we read and write love, receive and give it, in the style designed by our past experience. Yet, like good handwriting, our unique signature can be read by others.

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

“I need someone” plus “You are desirable and available” can feel like: “I am in love with you.”

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!

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

The one thing to remember is that those who give us what was missing in our past also show us what was missing. That combination of fulfillment and grief can be hard to hold, so we have to be patient with ourselves.

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

In fact, all the psychological tools we have gathered from the self-help movement in recent years were for this: to become lovers who stand expectantly at every door, flowers in hand.

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.