Welcome back. It’s 6:43 p.m. Felt a little light-headed today from the lack of food. It felt good to be so hungry.

I wanted to post that excerpt from Mastery of Love that I find so compelling. Every time I read it, I think about a different relationship or experience in my life that is based on fear. I believe that once I am aware of it, though, I suddenly have the opportunity to change that fear to love.

Awareness is an amazing and powerful thing to help you live a life of love.

Here’s the excerpt (pp. 63-66). I would love to know your thoughts about what Toltec wisdom says about love and fear.

Love is unconditional. Fear is full of conditions. In the track of fear, I love you if you let me control you, if you are good to me, if you fit into the image I make for you. I create an image of the way you should be, and because you are not and never will be the image, I judge you because of that, and find you guilty. Many times I even feel ashamed of you because you are not what I want you to be. If you don’t fit that image I create, you embarrass me, you annoy me, I have no patience at all with you. I am just pretending kindness. In the track of love, there is no if; there are no conditions. I love you for no reason, with no justification. I love you the way you are, and you are free to be the way you are. . . .We don’t have the right to change anyone else, and no one has the right to change us. If we are going to change, it is because we want to change, because we don’t want to suffer any longer.

Most people live their entire lives in the track of fear. They are in a relationship because they feel they have to be. They are in a relationship where they have all those expectations about their partner and about themselves. All that drama and suffering is because we are using the channels of communication that existed before we were born. People judge and are victimized, they gossip about each other, they gossip with their friends, they gossip in a bar. They make their family members hate each other. They accumulate emotional poison, and they send it to their children. “Look at your father, what he did to me. Don’t be like your father. All men are like this; all women are like that.” This is what we do with the people we love so much — with our own children, with our own friends, with our partners.

In the track of fear we have so many conditions, expectations, and obligations that we create a lot of rules just to protect ourselves against emotional pain, when the truth is that there shouldn’t be any rules. These rules affect the quality of the channels of communication between us, because when we are afraid, we lie. If you have the expectation that I have to be a certain way, then I feel the obligation to be that way. The truth is I am not what you want me to be. When I am honest and I am what I am, you are already hurt, you are mad. Then I lie to you, because I am afraid of your judgment. I am afraid you are going to blame me, find me guilty, and punish me. And every time you remember, you punish me again and again and again for the same mistake.

I know it’s not the most upbeat excerpt; however, it really brings to light how unhealthy relationships can be when they are built on a foundation of fear and control. I should have no desire at all to change you, to make you into somebody different. Yet, it’s all I have ever known, all I have ever been taught. It’s all around us, every day. We can’t open a paper, walk down a street, enter a business without witnessing this control. And yet, we continue along, blindly, and participate.

Phew. That’s enough for one day. Yeah? Much to ponder. . . .