By Marla Sanderson
If you love something set it free. If it does not come back, it was never meant to be yours…
Last month I wrote about the freedom we experience when we let go of some of our material stuff. This month, let’s take a look at the mutual benefits that come when we set others free.
It takes two things really–Love and Support.
Many people treat love as a commodity. Something to trade, measure, and maybe even withhold. There’s a risk, though, when you keep score: how much love I’ve given you compared to how much you’ve given me, and I might even start measuring how much love you’re giving someone else.
I like to define Love as pure emotional acceptance—my complete and total good feelings about you, about others, about myself. In other words, “I love who you are and who I am.” Notice that my unconditional acceptance doesn’t require anything of you. It supports you.
I try to make this the foundation of all my relationships. Though I’m not always 100 percent successful, it’s a worthy goal with plenty of fringe benefits.
To the exact degree that I give up my concept of how another must be, an inexhaustible supply of Love from the Source rushes in to fill the space. My happiness no longer depends on someone else’s behavior, and I gain true power and emotional independence. I feel peace and freedom within myself and express my Love more generously and more often.
When I let go of my judgments about how others should be, it liberates them as well.
When they are able to think and feel and behave and create in their own natural way, they have more options and can be happier.
Often, another person is more apt to change when I don’t try to control his/her every move. And, without imposing these conditions, how do you think that individual will respond to me? Will he appreciate me? Will she want to spend more time with me?
I think there’d be a lot more love in the world if everyone adopted the attitude, “You don’t have to give me anything or change for me.”
Add to that any amount of sweetness or passion, compatibility or respect, and we have amazing diversity in all our relationships—all of it based on Love.
The greatest act of Love and Support truly is to free someone to be or to become more of who they really are in this world.
Marla Sanderson has been a student of spiritual practice for more than 35 years. She began as Assistant Director of The Next Step, a psychic and spiritual community in a New Mexico ghost town. As workshop leader, teacher, practitioner, and minister, she has led relationship and personal growth workshops, taught psychic development and meditation, Living Love, and the Science of Mind. Marla is available for workshops and speaking engagements. She recently founded the New Thought Center for Creative Living. www.newthoughtctr.org