Love is Within
From "Slowing Down to the Speed of Love"
“The Wizard of Oz” was my favorite movie as a child, yet I didn’t realize till later in life why I was so drawn to it. The film of Dorothy and her three companions is a story we all have in common -- our search for what we think we need to be happy and complete. For Dorothy, it was to return home. For the Tin Man, it was a heart. For the Lion, it was courage. And for the Scarecrow, it was a brain. After lots of battles with witches and flying monkeys, these four friends ultimately discovered that courage, intelligence, and a heart were already within them and that home was just a click of the heels away. The Wizard couldn’t give them anything they sought; they had to find it for themselves.
So it is with us. We search in so many ways outside ourselves for happiness and love -- in possessions, in fame, in power, in addictions, in success and achievements, and most often, in relationships. One of the prize myths of our culture is that if only we could find the "right person" we would be happy. Of course, it sounds like the truth. After all, most of us have been told that the job of our mate is to make us happy, and our job is to make our mate happy. I remember hearing this as a child, but I found out much later in life that it is not the truth.
The truth is quite different: As long as we search outside of ourselves for what can only be found within, we are doomed to disappointment, fear, and despair. When we search for happiness from another person because we believe it is lacking in ourselves, we immediately put tension into that relationship. That tension is a pressure, spoken or unspoken, that puts across the message, "If you behave just the right way, I’ll be happy. If you don’t, I’ll be unhappy, and it’s all your fault." This message sets up defensiveness in the other person, because we all intuitively know we can’t really make anyone else feel loved or happy, and we resist trying to do so. On the other hand, we may have the arrogance to think we can make someone else happy! “If I love him enough he will finally be happy.” If we believe in this illusion, we are usually disappointed that our beloved doesn’t feel grateful for our efforts. In fact, we may discover that he or she feels obligated in some way and resents us for it.
What if we decided to give up this myth of making one another happy and feel loved? What if we realized that love and happiness are already there within us? Think of it for a moment. Love is like the jewel on the bottom of the pond, obscured by the murky water. All of our flailing about clouds the water more and more as we search for the jewel. It is only when we let go, have faith in our innate health, and become still that the silt settles and the clarity of the water emerges in our consciousness. We see the jewel of love that has been there all along.
Most of us, myself included, have spent much of our lives thrashing around in the water, looking for the right person, the perfect job, the best house, or whatever we believe will make us happy. However, if we truly let go of our belief that there must be the one magical person out there (like Dorothy’s wizard) who can make us feel loved and happy, we will discover what we already possess.
