SPIRITUAL ROMANCE

Here are some of my favourite quotes from chapter eight of Conversations With God, Book I by Neale Donald Walsh. They are meant to stimulate more thought about bringing spiritual romance into our lives.

"Relationships are constantly challenging; constantly calling you to create, express, and experience higher and higher aspects of yourself, grander and grander visions of yourself..."

"Most people enter into relationships with an eye toward what they can get out of them, rather than what they can put into them."

"There can be only one purpose for relationships... and for all of life: to be and decide Who You Really Are."

"The purpose of a relationship is to decide what part of yourself you'd like to see 'show up,' not what part of another you can capture and hold."

"It is very romantic to say that you were nothing until that special other came along, but it is not true. Worse, it puts an incredible pressure on the other to be all sorts of things he or she is not."

"It is very romantic to say that now that your special other has entered your life, you feel complete. Yet the purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you might share your completeness."

"Let each person in relationship worry not about the other, but only, only, only about Self."

"Yet I tell you this: your focus upon the other - your obsession with the other is what causes relationships to fail."

"... You have to prove that you can love them. To do this, they may ask you to start altering your behavior... So, in order to hold onto your love, they start altering their behavior... Thus, two people literally lose themselves in a relationship... The losing of Self in a relationship is what causes most of the bitterness in such couplings."

"If you cannot love your Self, you cannot love another."

"Your first relationship, therefore, must be with your Self. You must first learn to honor and cherish and love your Self."

"The first question in any interactive process with another is: now Who Am I, and Who Do I Want To Be, in relationship to that?"