In many relationships, the honeymoon is expected to last little more than a few months, some less. But in a relationship, built on the principles of sacred love, the honeymoon lasts forever. Honeymoon really, means honey mood. A mood of gratitude and great affection, appreciation and devotion, a sacrifice of lower priority life choices to that of love.
In my book Sacred Love, the honeymoon that lasts forever I share these five universal laws of love. These principles stand the tests of time, and if followed means that a couple will celebrate love in its highest form, forever.
The first principle.
Falling in love for most people is an accident of fate. One minute they are standing waiting for the train, the next moment they are in love. Their mind stopped just long enough for love to appear through the haze of everyday life. Bewildered, the ego cannot function, there are no expectations, they literally fall to truth, a sacred magnificent experience. From then, the details are left to chance. That moment becomes the memory on which their relationship is build. As if they are lost in a jungle having once glimpsed the treasure, they search and search and waist their precious life looking for the love they felt in those first moments.
The first principle of Sacred Love is the road map back to that first exquisite sacred experience of falling in love. No longer will it be an accident, or something to search for. A couple will know how, at will, to experience the very reason for their relationship. They will fall in love at will.
They key is stillness. The ability to separate mind noise, expectations, doing, chasing, wanting, desiring, emotionalizing and all the distractions from love. The ability to separate the external world of the ego, to the internal world of emptiness and truth is really important for love. There are many paths to this place of stillness and most of them come under the umbrella of spirituality. But there is a problem with this. Any spirituality that holds a philosophy is imparting mind noise. Replacing one noise with another, one should with another should.
Real Stillness can only come from nature. Sitting in nature, the quiet of the forest, the calm of the ocean, the magnitude of the mountains, soft breeze against your skin, cool icy snow; all this, brings the human heart to peace, and therefore awakens the spirit of love. This is the temple for life. Nature's temple. A park, a garden, a riverbank, a beachside walk. Swim in the pool, or sit. The key is to forget yourself. Loose the self obsession of "I want" and surrender to nothing, emptiness. Then, in this time, the love that is the real purpose of any relationship will surface, and you will be renewed.
The second principle.
Romance, for most people is what they do when they want something. But sacred love is a function of giving not taking. Romance is a sacred way of giving love. The conditionality of most love is that romance stops if the response we get is not what we expect. But sacred love is about giving, not giving to get, giving to love.
For the vast majority of lovers romance fluctuates. Sacred Love simply means appreciation. We know that there are two sides to every coin and with sacred love we see both but focus on the positive. This way, we are treating people as we wish them to become rather than focusing on the negative and wishing them to change.
Foolish love thrives on emotion and therefore runs when there is challenge. It is unsustainable and a very western perspective of relationship. But wise love knows that challenge is an opportunity for depth. The victims who run to empathetic ears to groan about how they were mistreated, only gather more aggression. The victim mindset is supported by so many new age philosophies which subsequently disempowered the individual. True power in life comes only when we can honestly repeat the mantra, "nobody does to me more than I do to myself"
The second principle of sacred love is the principle of appreciation. It is an easy principle in the first months of love but then expectations and old baggage can create negative mindsets, which subsequently create what they fear. Better in love to force your hand, to reach deeper and to greater consciousness by asking "how can I appreciate that?" or "what is the benefit of that?" this is the second principle of sacred love, the power of appreciation.
Remembering that what you appreciate grows, appreciation, gratitude is the path from emotion to love. Feel the emotion and ask, "how can I appreciate that" - search for the other side and you will have romance of a sacred nature in your heart and in the heart of your lover. It is magnetic.
The third principle
To err is human, yet, in love, forgiveness is a promise few people can truly sustain. Accidents happen, stupidity takes only a second, a word misplaced, an act of unconsciousness, a fear revealed can destroy the sanctuary of love if we cannot grow from our mistakes.
The height of your love is determined by the depth of its roots. To judge, be righteous or to smother your lover in your fears is to kill the most precious gift you can be given. Love grows at the border of chaos and order.
What stops growth? The ego stops growth. What drives the ego? Fear drives the ego. What drives fear? Knowledge. So learning more does not cause growth. No, this is the wrong path. Learning less, unlearning causes growth. With learning we learn to judge, this is right and this is wrong. But this is the ego. An illusion. With unlearning, we see that there is no right or wrong, just our own fears and beliefs. With unlearning we can rise above myth and beliefs which keep us in an internal war. We can only find peace by growing through challenges. We can only sustain love by growing through unlearning.
The key here is sustainable happiness. Many believe that the love they first experience is the love they will sustain in relationship. But this is not the case. Love is not a fixed thing. Love that does not grow deteriorates because emotion and noise crowd it and darken it. Emotion and life itself crowds love out and replaces it with materials, and expectations and emotions. To sustain love you must become vigilant against righteousness and emotion. You must be prepared to change and grow, evolve and expand. You must be prepared to acknowledge that it is your mind that kills love, not the other persons behavior.
The forth Principle
What binds the stars in their seemingly eternal orbit? Why don't the planets fly into oblivion? What holds every molecule and every atom in a state of harmony? Why do water droplets hang together and how do we explain the synthesis between mind, body and soul of humanity? The answers are in the powers of attraction and repulsion.
Forces bind molecules and stars and humans. Those forces are universal, they are known by many names, gravity, magnetism, desire, and centrifuge. But they are united by one of the most potent powers know throughout the mysteries of time as, thought.
Thought in its purest form is light. Thought spun into the emotion of the ego is material. Two people can fall in love, but if their thoughts hold no magnetism, no attractive force, then, like comets in the sky, they will, with time, pass by each other. Thus, short term, highly potent, emotionally charged love affairs fade into the night, if no power of thought underpins the experience.
The thoughts that hold lovers together are dreams. This may seem trite, but the potency of a human dream is beyond any measure. Dreams have driven all action worthy of remembering in human existence. The scientist or the poet all dreamed before they acted. And so, this forth key is the glue that binds love forever.
Dreams can be short, like I dream of happiness. This will hold no power. Dreams can be material, "I dream of a new house on the hill" this will fade and leave lovers wondering why they ever struggled with love at all. Dreams can be fantasy, like "I dream of a lover who does not confront my beliefs" this will be a cold hard, loveless and violent life. And dreams can be real.
The dreams that bind lovers are dreams shared 33%. Individuality accounts for 66% of our motive and 33% must be a common ground. That common ground must be real, there is no forgiveness in mythical dreams that end in disappointment, or escapist dreams that will end in blame. No, the dream of potency is real and speaks to the contribution a couple can make to the world outside of their love. What they can do as a couple that they could not do as individuals to make the world around them a grander place.
Dreams built on myth will fail, and the resentment of unfulfilled promises will flow into all aspects of a sacred relationship. Body mind and spirit will loose its attraction, the love that united the couple will become damp. The key, is shared dreams, the dream of intent rather than content.
A FOOTNOTE TO THE 4TH PRINCIPLE
Beware the dream that comes from myth. If you hear yourself speaking in half truth shake your consciousness violently. Too many people gravitate to teachers whose motive is to collect their money and therefore cannot confront the darkness of half thoughts (emotion) - if you hear yourself speak of happiness without challenge, love without sadness, pleasure without pain, shake yourself hard as a good teacher would. Because such trivial thinking, even if it is endorsed by your so called guru, is sure to kill the sacredness of any relationship you create in your life.
The fifth Principe
I walked into a home decorated with amazing paintings. The lady was divorced and she accused her ex husband of being a cruel and vindictive man. All the goods that decorated her home we gifts from him and were bought with stolen money, including the jewelry on her fingers. The diamonds that glistened on her everyday hands came from what she had labeled as a very dark place. Although she admired the rings and paintings, and claimed them as her "share" of the marriage break up, she was truly unconscious of the affect these affirmations was having on her life.
Although, in good faith, she was seeking spiritual support, nothing could overpower the toxin that surrounded her everyday life. Her attachment to the goods and victories of her relationship, kept her bound to the ever present resentment and negativity of that past. She could neither heal the past with love and appreciation nor create the relationship she deserved.
Every word we say, every thought we have, every possession and every wall in our home carries with it a story far beyond what we see. A second layer of life exists and, with our busy lives fixed on the future and accumulation, we are often oblivious to the affect this other layer can have.
Illness's are often traced to environments. Emotions are very much environmentally caused. And most significant for this article, relationships can be highly vulnerable to the environment, the artifacts, the paintings and circumstances in which it lives.
In one home of a broken marriage there were paintings on the wall of dark scenes of torture and death from a well known movie. Dark hate and pain emanated from these expensive works of art.
In another home, where a relationship was failing, there were no visible signs of toxic mix but when I explored further I found that the neighbors often fell into violent rage and physical abuse. Even a cat would shy away from such a place to groom its fur and soothe its nerves. But this couple were invested in the property and had not seen the affect.
Everything we do, think, say, feel, own, want, and wish to get rid of affects our relationship. Most toxic are our thoughts, and in particular the thoughts we have of the past. Any person who carries anger, hate, resentment, blame or victim hood from the past into their future relationships (usually by saying "I'm over it now") guarantees the pollution and toxin that they left in the last place will sabotage the present one. Unfinished business, as I put it in Sacred Love, must be dealt with in order to arrive available for a Sacred Relationship.
Love is a lifestyle. You cannot be a loving partner and a cruel employer. You cannot be a loving friend and a miserable lover. No, we are one person, and the expression can only be disguised by gifts and materials. We are one person, work, life and play. We cannot fake it. And we are highly affected by our environment.
Love is cumulative, it's a lifestyle. Love builds in great environments and dies in bad ones. As negative thoughts during meals can affect the food and our assimilation of it, so, negative environments affect our love. Phone calls from past partners that are negative cast shadows on our relationships, anger at past lovers kill the joy and spirit of laughter that is natural in a healthy relationship. Expectations created from wounds or infatuations with role models and guru worship kill spontaneity. Love is affected by environments and environments are affected by sound, sight, feel, taste and smell.
I hope this article has stimulated your mind, challenged your beliefs, inspired some new ideas for you in your days and years ahead. How to make the honeymoon - honey mood last forever? Begin by acknowledging that you, and only you need to make the commitment to it, by accepting that nobody does more to you than you do to yourself. This is spirituality at its highest truth and the pathway to causing sacred love in your life.
Live with Spirit
