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Real Love: What is Real Love?

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Real Love: What is Real Love?
How do you know when what you are experiencing is real love?

Most people would love to have "real love," yet often they have no idea what real love is. Take a moment to think about how you would define real love.

Defining love is like defining a particular color to a person who has never been able to see color - you have to feel it to know what it is. The reason it is hard to define real love is because you cannot experience it with your mind, and definitions are of the mind. Real love is of the heart, and is a feeling that is the result of your intention to BE LOVING.

This very different than the intention to BE LOVED. The desire to be loved comes from the ego wounded part of ourselves, the part that believes we need to get love from others in order to feel filled and worthy - that real love is something we get rather than something we are and something we share.

This is what creates the confusion regarding love.

Real love is what you are - what your soul is - a spark of the Divine within. Love is what God/Spirit is. When your deepest desire is to be loving to yourself and others, this desire opens your heart and you become filled with the love that is as ubiquitous as the air you breathe. This is real love - the experience of Spirit that fills the emptiness within and lets you know that you are never alone.

Real Love in a Relationship

What about real love with another person? How do you know when you are experiencing real love?

Real love is what we experience when two or more people come together with open hearts already filled with love, and the love from their hearts overflows as it is openly and joyously shared.

If you come to a relationship with a feeling of emptiness and unworthiness, you cannot experience real love. Real love is not the cake - it is the icing on the cake. The cake needs to be the love that comes through you from Spirit, and the icing is the love you share with another or others.

If you expect another's love to be the cake, then you will not experience real love, because you are coming from a closed heart and inner emptiness. REAL LOVE DOES NOT NEED ANYTHING FROM ANOTHER PERSON. It is like a waterfall flowing down inside from Spirit, filling the lake within and then flowing out in rivers and streams as it is shared with others. However, when the heart is closed, then the lake is empty and becomes like a bottomless sinkhole, desperately attempting to suck love, attention and approval from others.

If you want to experience real love within a relationship, then you need to open - through your desire to BE LOVING - to unconditional love coming through you. You need to invite God-which-is-Love into your heart and become filled with it.

Article contributed by
Advanced Member

Dr. Margaret Paul

Author, Counselor/Therapist, Marriage Educator, Relationship Coach, Sex Educator, Speaker/Presenter

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® process - featured on Oprah, and recommended by actress Lindsay Wagner and singer Alanis Morissette. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Take our FREE Inner Bonding course, and click here for a FREE CD/DVD relationship offer. Visit our website at innerbonding.com for more articles and help, as well as our Facebook Page. Phone and Skype sessions available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

Location: Los Angeles, CA
Credentials: PhD
Specialties: Anxiety Issues, Couples/Marital Issues, Depression
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