{*Did you know you can write on Elephant? Here’s how—big changes: How to Write & Make Money or at least Be of Benefit on Elephant. ~ Waylon}

The first time I read The Power of Now, I knew I would come back to it again.

And I did—many, many times—especially when I was in love.

When I read Chapter 8: Enlightened Relationships, something shifted inside of me.

To this day, I can’t forget Eckhart Tolle’s words. In his book, he explains that we can never cultivate healthy, enlightened relationships if we live most of our lives in our minds.

The path to a happy relationship lies in presence and self-awareness, and for love to thrive, we need to break up with our ego and its endless, negative patterns.

After reading The Power of Now, I knew instantly that my romantic relationships would never be the same ever again.

It’s not too late to transform yours now:

“The reason why the romantic love relationship is such an intense and universally sought-after experience is that it seems to offer liberation from a deep-seated state of fear, need, lack, and incompleteness that is part of the human condition in its unredeemed and unenlightened state.”

“True love has no opposite. If your ‘love’ has an opposite, then it is not love but a strong ego-need for a more complete and deeper sense of self, a need that the other person temporarily meets.”

“Learn to give expression to what you feel without blaming. Learn to listen to your partner in an open, nondefensive way.”

“How wonderful to go beyond wanting and fearing in your relationships. Love does not want or fear anything.”

“If you both agree that the relationship will be your spiritual practice, so much the better. You can then express your thoughts and feelings to each other as soon as they occur, or as soon as a reaction comes up, so that you do not create a time gap in which an unexpressed or unacknowledged emotion or grievance can fester and grow.”

“The relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy.”

“Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.”

“If spacious stillness is missing, the relationship will be dominated by the mind and can easily be taken over by problems and conflict. If stillness is there, it can contain anything.”

“Real love doesn’t make you suffer. How could it? It doesn’t suddenly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn into pain.”

“You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next.”

“For love to flourish, the light of your presence needs to be strong enough so that you no longer get taken over by the thinker or the pain-body and mistake them for who you are.”

“A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.”

~