Friendship

(C. Jardin) #1

not choose, in order that another may live a life that they do. Yet granting full freedom does
mean placing no limitations of any kind upon another.


Wait a minute. How can you stop another from walking all over you if you don’t place any
limitations on them?


You do not place limitations on them, you place limitations on yourself You limit what you
choose to experience, not what another is allowed to experience.


This limitation is voluntary, and so, in a very real sense, it is not a limitation at all. It is a
declaration of Who You Are. It is a creation. A definition.


No one, and nothing, is limited in God’s kingdom. And love knows nothing but freedom. Nor
does the soul. Nor does God. And these words are all interchangeable. Love.


Freedom. Soul. God. All carry aspects of the other. All are the other.


You are free to announce and declare Who You Are in every moment of Now. Indeed, you
are doing so, without even knowing it. You are not free, however, to declare who someone
else is, or who they must be. This, love would never do. Nor would God, who is the essence
of love itself.


If you wish to announce and declare that you are a person who needs and requires the
exclusive love of another in order to be happy, in order to feel comfortable and appropriate
and secure, you are free to announce that. You will show it with your actions in any event;
they will be your announcement.


If you wish to announce and declare that you are a person who needs and requires the
largest portion of the time and energy and focus of another in order to be happy, in order to
feel comfortable and appropriate and secure, you are free to announce that, too. Yet I will tell
you this: if you allow your declaration of Self to translate into jealousy of another, or of
another’s friends or job or hobby and outside interests, your jealousy will end your love, and
may very well end that other’s love for you.


The good news is that defining who you are, and who you choose to be, does not have to
translate into jealousy of another, nor into control over them. It simply and lovingly states who
you are, and how you choose Life to be for you. Your love for another goes on, even as you
lovingly and compassionately work through whatever differences may exist between you, and
however you change the nature of your relationship as a result of those differences.


You do not have to end a relationship in order to change it. Indeed, you cannot end a
relationship, but can only alter it. You always have a relationship with everyone. The question
is not whether you have a relationship, but what kind of relationship do you have?


Your answer to this question will affect your life forever—and, indeed, could truly change the
world.


(9)

Nine
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