Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

be truncated. We must be willing to love and lose
rather than to not love, or only love in secure
situations, otherwise there is so much held back, and
though we may feel open, we have only opened 80% or
so, and then we close down so quickly at the slightest
sign of potential abandonment.
My life until maybe 1980 was one love affair after
another, but only a rare one stayed. There would be
great love, but then the lover would go away. Part of it
was who I chose to love. It was so easy for me to fall in
love with a woman or an animal, but I found such
mutual openness very rare in humans. I also heard
from my therapist of seven years, a great genius of the
mind and emotions, Eric Reitz that when there is such
wide emotional openness, the relationships usually
explode and dissipate in an excess of emotional
intensity. The more usual relationship is where one
lover loves the other more completely and intensely,
and the successful relationships are where the roles of
most loved change every so often and a balance is
achieved.
I have been really lucky in the last few years to
have found people who are capable of going deeper
into love and openness without so much running, and I
invite all of you to try to do the same within our
Sangha and among yourselves with the loved ones in
your life.