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Marlise Karlin

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What Love Means To Me

Posted: 02/11/10 12:25 PM ET

Delicious, tantalizing, mesmerizing, absolutely stimulating in every way. Love. Everyone wants it, few know how to find it -- and know it's real if they do. We aren't taught to want love, it's a natural instinct, and from the moment we are born, if we don't get it, we spend an enormous amount of time in our lives searching for it.

In a recent interview I gave on 'Opening to Love', the questions that poured in from Greece to Tanzania, Australia to the United States, were eye opening, revealing a conversation that is truly global - our need for feeling loved.

Many people wanted to discover how to let go of deep hurts that were not allowing them to find a reconnection to love, to all kinds of love, from lovers to business and family relationships, to just caring about their work, while others wanted to know how to simply recognize love and be able to trust that it's real.


Valentines Day


Romantic love is hopelessly glamorized everywhere we turn, movies, magazines, celebrities and novels speak of a love that exists only in the fantasies of the minds of those creating them.
I wanted that love. Who wouldn't, especially if you think it can give you that indefinable feeling? I would have been happy with just a tiny piece of it, as I never knew any of the loving affection a father can offer his child, and so after leaving my alcoholic dad and home at 16, I began to search for the love that never dies.

Is there such a thing, a love that never leaves you? Is there a love that gives you the strength to know you can find it in all the areas of your life? What have all those poets, mystics and philosophers been writing about for centuries, is there any truth in it?

When a 19 year-old experienced Stillness for the first time, she said she heard "all these angry voices" in her head, and then they began to dissolve, and suddenly she felt indescribably happy. An 87 year-old woman slowly opened her eyes and spoke of losing her fear of dying, that where she'd been could only be described as, 'heaven'. A 42 year-old CEO said he realized the last years he'd spent in depression, made sense to him now, as it was what guided him to find this well of peace inside.

Everything melts in the presence of love. All hurts, all questions, all doubt. Maybe that love we are all searching for is not so impossible to find after all, and if tapping into a place of Stillness can guide the way, it could be the game-changer we've all been waiting for.
Unforgettable, beyond compare. Love ... Love ... Love.

Valentines Day

 

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Delicious, tantalizing, mesmerizing, absolutely stimulating in every way. Love. Everyone wants it, few know how to find it -- and know it's real if they do. We aren't taught to want love, it's a nat...
Delicious, tantalizing, mesmerizing, absolutely stimulating in every way. Love. Everyone wants it, few know how to find it -- and know it's real if they do. We aren't taught to want love, it's a nat...
 
 
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11:43 AM on 02/12/2010
You think about yourself, you build yourself up to be so strong that you are confident that you can handle your own life, that you don’t need anyone, that no one can hurt you without your permission. Then, you meet someone unexpectedly who makes you want to surrender all of yourself, without hesitation. You become ready to lay yourself totally open in front of her; all your vulnerabilities, your fears, your dreams, your weaknesses, your wishes, ambitions and principles; all the things that make you think, feel, wonder, laugh and cry, when the tiniest of her unhappiness pierces straight inside your heart. When you feel like bringing the whole world at her feet, just to make her happy, when you are ready to give her all the freedom and right over your life, comfortable in the knowing that the other person is so strong that she will honour you respect you…and will never take advantage of your openness…When she will care for you because she wants to, not because it’s supposed to be that way, when adjustment doesn’t feel like adjustment, when you willingly make yourself flexible and compromise for her sake and the freedom between you makes your relationship stronger, when you both start feeling that you need each other, not because you lack something, but because of how much both of you enjoy being part of one another’s lives and both of you want to take it forward.
That’s what real love means to me.