The Power of the Heart: Finding Your True Purpose in Life (28 page)

 DEEPAK CHOPRA

You want to be attractive? Then be natural. Radiate your simple unaffected humanity. Don’t be judgmental on yourself and others. Respond to gestures of love and don’t put on a social mask. Just be natural. Recognize that you have weaknesses and defects and even shadows. It is not to be incomplete, it is to be complete. It is not to be flawed, it is to be full. So that is the secret really to successful relationships, to see every relationship as a mirror.

Always be yourself; resist the temptation to wear different masks. When you pretend to be anyone other than yourself, you become disconnected from your heart and from other people.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Once you have found love, it remains important to communicate from the heart, with mutual trust and respect.

 JOHN GRAY

To communicate more from the heart, from authenticity in a relationship, we first have to set that as our goal and we have to be able to remind each other to do that. My wife is very clear about this. Bonnie will say to me, “John, I don’t want to listen to you until you’re talking to me from your heart.” And I’ll say, “No, I’m talking, I’m making sense.” “No, I want to hear your feeling, I want to hear your love in the tone of your voice. And when you can find it, we can talk again.”

What a simple message she gives me. She refuses to have a conversation when I’m just in my head and not in my heart. It would be a mistake for her to say something is wrong with being in my head, because that would make a very important part of me wrong. But what she’ll say at times when my heart is closed, when I sound mean or focused on being right, is “Right now, I can’t hear this. I need to hear a little bit more of your heart. When you’re ready to talk from your heart, I’m ready to talk with you.”

Always have the intention to communicate from the heart. If things have been said that were upsetting, see this friction as a challenge to start afresh, to return to your soul, and to share your feelings in a gentle way. Handled with loving-kindness, friction can help your relationship grow.

When you struggle with your partner, you are struggling with yourself. Every fault you see in them touches a denied weakness in yourself.

—DEEPAK CHOPRA,
THE PATH TO LOVE

 JOHN GRAY

This is growing in the wisdom of the heart, because each time you’ve come back to love, you grow in that wisdom. It’s the key to access your inner potential to love, to connect with your soul, because your soul’s purpose is to love. And every time you come back and love again, you grow in that wisdom.

 MAYA ANGELOU

Many years ago, I was married, and the marriage was touch-and-go. My husband made me very angry one day and I didn’t know what to do. And so, I cursed him. When my mother came, he reported me to my mother. He said, “Mother, she used language which would embarrass me if I heard sailors use it on the waterfront.” And my mother asked, “My daughter?” and he said, “Yes, she used vulgarity to me.”

So she said, “I have to hear that from her.” She asked me, “Did you?” I said, “Yes.” Then she turned to my husband and said, “People use profanity because they don’t know what words will do, and sometimes they can’t find a word which will convey their meaning, so they use the thing most that has the least value, which is profanity.”

“It is the ashes, that which is thrown away.” So anytime you hear profanity, realize that this has been chosen by someone who doesn’t
know what to say and can’t find the words, and so is just throwing this away.

One way of communicating with your partner from the heart is by replacing complaints with requests. If you always complain to your partner, he or she will stop listening or become defensive. Ask yourself how you can convey your grievance in such a way that the other will understand. One way of doing this is to turn your complaint into a request. Just ask! Form the intention and make the request with love. When you make a conscious decision to communicate with your loved one from the heart, you can expect a comparable response.

 DEEPAK CHOPRA

Anytime you suffer, ask yourself one question: who am I thinking about? And you’ll find you’re thinking only about yourself. If you want to alleviate your suffering, stop thinking about yourself! Think about other people, and you’ll see that you will stop suffering. Because when you think about other people, you establish a connection with them and you start to find that you are happier. In fact, there are many studies that now show the best way to be happy is to make somebody else happy. The best way to be successful is to make somebody else successful.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.

—MARCUS AURELIUS

Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.

—DEEPAK CHOPRA,
THE SEVEN SPIRITUAL LAWS OF SUCCESS

As you communicate from the heart, you create Authentic Power, exercising courage and discipline in consciously experiencing your emotions, including the negative ones. For instance, when you feel judgmental about someone, you look within and see what in yourself is triggering you to be judgmental; then, you replace it with understanding. A spiritual partner can help you with this self-reflection.

 LINDA FRANCIS

Spiritual partnership is such a different way of looking at relationships. A spiritual partnership is a partnership between equals, for the purpose of spiritual growth.

A spiritual partner is effectively a buddy who supports you in your efforts to create Authentic Power. And not just any kind of buddy, but an equal. As equals, you know that nothing or nobody in the universe is more important than you are and that nothing or nobody in the universe is less important than you are. You feel neither superior nor inferior toward others.

 LINDA FRANCIS

Creating Authentic Power is the most important thing to me. In other words, my ability to change myself, rather than trying to change other people. When I find people who feel the same way, then we can create a spiritual partnership. For instance, with my partner, Gary Zukav, we have created a spiritual partnership. That means my spiritual growth is the most important to me, but I support him in his spiritual growth and he supports me in mine.

 GARY ZUKAV