Category Archives: Love

The Internal Need For Noble Ideals

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The Internal Need For Noble Ideals

In modern American culture, even the idea of noble ideals seems hopelessly old fashioned and out-of-date. Today, the world we live in is a consumers paradise, so our purposes are focused on consuming all we can get our hands on—material, physical, financial, and emotional. As a result, we anxiously try to get a good education, so we can create financial security, acquire a mate who provides pleasure and approval, and have children to give us a feeling of fulfillment and value. We also want entertainment to create stimulating distractions, so we rarely feel the pain of our internal emptiness.

What more could anyone want, or need? If curious, how could we identify what, if anything, is missing? We could imagine getting everything we want, then see ourselves becoming old, getting sick, and dying. Next, we could imagine a life of consuming—approval, sex, travel, food, friends, children, a mate (or two or three!), houses, cars, clothes and a career—and then ask: What does it mean? To ourselves, or other people? In the end, what have we understood, cared about, mastered, created, and contributed?

For nearly all of the hundreds of people I have spoken with over forty-plus years of counseling and teaching, the common answer to this question is that few people can identify a single internal need or potential they fully understood, or thoroughly mastered. Nor is it common for us to be creative in contributing enhancements to even external life. The sad result is our lives often have little or no meaning—to ourselves, or other people. If we don’t care about creating a meaningful life—then no problem!

Most people never consciously think about the topic of meaning, in spite of the fact that everyone suffers some degree of emptiness, anxiety, depression, or nagging pain from internal hungers that never go away. Instead, our hungers only become more intense as we age and forever fail to create the lasting satisfaction and genuine meaning that is a natural consequence of understanding and mastering our internal needs and potentials. A critical source for lasting satisfaction and genuine meaning are the four noble ideals, which if understood and mastered, lead us to feeding and fulfilling our internal and external needs and potentials. The four noble ideals are: expressing love, pursuing truth, experiencing and creating beauty, and developing wisdom.    

If we listen to our personal and cultural conversations it is soon obvious these ideals are nowhere to be found in modern minds and emotions. There are simply no files in our minds, and no place in our everyday conversations, to even bring up these topics. Not with our mates, children, friends or business associates do we discuss, define, or explore the four noble ideals that are necessary to make our lives meaningful.

 It is important to notice these four noble ideals are defined here not as concepts, but as activities that require objective information and specific skills to understand and master.  Most people just assume that love, truth, beauty and wisdom are defined by feelings or ideas that are subjective, and based on vague concepts or sentimental intentions that require no significant effort, time, energy, concentration, or the willingness to suffer.

The nearly universal assumption that love, truth, beauty and wisdom are subjective, and based on ideas and feelings, has made us internally ignorant, so we don’t even attempt to define love, truth, beauty or wisdom, much less understand and master the ability to express love, pursue truth, experience and create beauty, and develop wisdom.

One consequence is that we often believe love is defined by our impotent intentions, not competent behaviors—and that truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. We also believe wisdom is something that happens automatically with the passage of time and growing old. A sad result of these common beliefs is that love is rarely expressed, truth is rarely seen, and even more rarely agreed upon. Beauty is something we consume for pleasure, and wisdom is a flickering light we sometimes imagine exists on a far-distant shore, but something that we never understand or master, and as a result, we sail our ship through life moving in futile circles without a map or star to steer by.

CMED training thru books, videos, workshops, and individual sessions is necessary to acquire the objective definitions necessary to understand internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks, and acquire the specific skills necessary to master expressing love, pursuing truth, experiencing and creating beauty, and developing wisdom.

There are no shortcuts to internal, mental and emotional development, and it never happens automatically, even though people have sometimes taught themselves. What never has happened is for someone to experientially define love, truth, beauty and wisdom, as well as the precise path to understanding and mastering all four ideals. This brand new, observation-based, and precisely defined path can be learned, and then tested against everyday experience by anyone who wants to create a meaningful life.

While the information and skills provided by CMED training are objective and universal, the applications are open to a nearly infinite variety of unique, subjective, and creative expressions. Without knowing it, we have always wanted and needed a solid foundation of understanding and mastery upon which we can create a unique experience and expression of life that is authentic, original, satisfying, complete, and meaningful.

Being The Source of Love Requires Objective Information & Specific Skills

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Being The Source of Love Requires
Objective Information & Specific Skills

After we decide to be the source rather than the recipient of love, we need to acquire the internal development—objective information and specific skills—necessary to pull it off!  In normal life, we assume love is a feeling, and because we have feelings we call love, we also assume we can become a source of love with no training, objective information, or specific skills required.  A hopeful normal sentiment, but quite inaccurate.

One reason it is rare to see a mutually satisfying expression of real love in everyday life and relationships is because of the degree of focused effort, specialized training, objective information and specific skills that love requires.  We all want love to be easier and require less effort than it demands.  Our fantasy is that love and happiness should be like ripe berries growing wild, so without cost or effort, we can just help ourselves!

The reality is that life, love, and lasting happiness are all complex, and to an untrained mind and emotions are as elusive as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Looking at a rainbow it seems at first glance it should be easy to find the end of it, and so, the pot of gold.  If you ever chase a rainbow, however, you will soon discover that the more you pursue it, the more the rainbow recedes into the distance, so the pot of gold (love and happiness), remains forever beyond your grasp.

Choosing to be the source, rather than the needy recipient of love is the first step toward internal development.  The next step is to observe that you need to give effort and get training, information, and skill.  Until you arrive at understanding both realities—one, you need to be a source of love—not a needy recipient—and two, this requires effort, information, and skill, you can never understand and master the full experience and innocent expression of real love.  Now, it is time to get to work, and truly learn.

What do we need to understand?  We need to first understand our own perspectives, and then the perspectives of the people close to us.  We also need to understand and master internal needs—our own first, and then learn how to feed the internal hungers of the people close to us.  These two categories—perspectives and internal needs—require both objective information and specific skills to first understand, and then master.

In normal life, there is no education for defining perspectives, or understanding internal needs, so the information and skill you will learn is new, and may feel difficult, or alien.  Never-mind how it feels; instead, just observe your experience to determine if the information seems to contain a common-sense level of truth, and if the skills actually work to enhance understanding, satisfaction, and meaning in everyday interactions.

Each person’s perspective can be defined in terms of six categories: motivations, purposes, needs, wants, choices and behaviors. To understand ourselves and another person requires that we accurately observe the specific details that define both ourselves and another person in each of the six categories.  Of course, for most people this is an impossible task because they cannot define the six categories of perspective, and have never been taught how to accurately observe life, themselves, and other people.

Instead of learning how to accurately observe, a normal education (cultural and formal), teaches us to draw conclusions and make judgments, which we often use to evaluate our own, or another person’s value.  Understanding for the purpose of nurturing is not something we normally pursue.  Nor is it something we normally have the information, skill, or training to pursue, even if we wanted to.

The most significant and universal internal need everyone experiences is the hunger to be seen, understood, and valued.  To experience and express real love—first for ourselves and life, and then for our mate, children, friends and strangers—requires we learn how to accurately observe for the innocent purpose of understanding and nurturing.

CMED training provides the detailed definitions for understanding perspectives and internal needs, as well as specific instruction in how to concentrate, accurately observe ourselves, life, and other people, and put it all together to understand and nurture.

All the critical information is available in my books and videos, as well as offered thru individual sessions and workshops. Internal development is complex, but CMED training is based on accurate observations and reason-based cause and effect connections that anyone can learn, and then verify through personal experience.

Life’s Most Critical Choice—Whether To be a Recipient—Or the Source of Love

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Life’s Most Critical Choice:
Whether To be a Recipient—Or the Source of Love

A common and invisible tragedy is that our most critical choice is usually unconscious.  This critical and primal choice is whether to be a recipient of love, or the source of love.  Most people never consciously think about love.  Instead, we just assume that love is defined by how we feel, and since we have feelings we call love, in our minds this means we are loving.

The normal process, where we assume we understand love when in fact, we have never actually thought-about it, is one reason that we humans have made little progress in learning how to define, experience, or express love in our daily lives.  Instead, we relentlessly pursue being the recipients of love, without ever clearly defining precisely what it is we are so avidly trying to get from life, animals, and other people.

The problem begins when as children our parents do not understand internal needs.  This means that no matter how well our parents feed our external needs for food, clothing, shelter, etc., our internal needs for acknowledgment and understanding are rarely fed.  We are also rarely taught how to create self-worth and emotional safety, or how to define and master our internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks, so in normal life, we learn nothing about internal development.

Growing-up without internal education or nurturing, we are mentally and emotionally starved for warmth and acknowledgment, and to be seen, understood and valued—or in other words—to be internally fed and fully loved.  With this hunger driving our choices, most people try to be the recipient of love, and never know there is a choice.

What makes this tragic is that we often spend our lives searching for fulfillments we cannot define, and do not understand.  As a result, we often choose a career for security, financial reward, approval or self-image, and never understand our need for work that provides challenge, internal growth and fulfillment, and permanent meaning.

We also often choose a mate to compensate for our inability to make ourselves happy.  This places a heavy and often impossible burden on a romantic relationship because we expect our mate to nurture us when we have not learned how to nurture ourselves, or our mate.  As a result, we cannot give what we want to receive, and conflict is inevitable.

Have you noticed how rarely couples create and maintain long-term intimacy based on a genuine emotional bond?  Did you ever think about this fact with the purpose of first defining the negative of what is missing—and next, the positive of what is needed, and finally, how to master the skills necessary to feed the needs?

With the normal choice to be a recipient of love, we have no use for understanding.  We simply cannot see the reward for all the work necessary to understand.  Instead, we want simple answers and quick fixes that will create immediate good feelings, and relief from the pain caused by a lifetime of unfed internal needs.

While we all want to feel good, we need the understanding necessary to first nurture and fulfill ourselves, and then our mates, children, and friends.  The critical prerequisite for finally growing-up and wanting internal development is to change our choice—so we want to master the information, skills, and consciousness necessary to become the source of love.

Once we consciously want to be a source of love, then we will immediately see that a genuine experience and expression of real love requires that we understand and master internal and external needs, potentials, and developmental tasks.  For the first time, we experience a whole-hearted desire to be an emotionally independent adult, competent to nurture ourselves and other people—mentally and emotionally (internally)—as well as physically and materially (externally).

Understanding and mastery require the objective information, specific skills, conscious purposes, and mindful awareness that CMED training provides.  With CMED training people learn how to nurture and fulfill themselves, as well as their mates, children and friends.  Internal development is the artesian source for fulfilling our uniquely human potentials, and taking the critically needed next step up our own evolutionary ladder.

Without this evolutionary step, the demands, problems, conflicts, and responsibilities of modern life will remain beyond our developmental capacity to understand or resolve.  This means that to create happiness for ourselves and our loved ones, and to preserve Nature and the integrity of Planet Earth, we must become sources of love, and in the process must master all our internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks.

How One Sentence Can Change Not Only Every Individual Life: But the Whole World!

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How One Sentence Can Change
Not Only Every Individual Life:
But the Whole World!

The one sentence critical to each person’s individual internal development and lasting happiness is an objective and experience-based definition of the word LOVE.

Real Love is giving energy, interest and attention for the innocent purpose of first understanding, and then nurturing all that we love.

There are six dimensions of complex life experiences identified in this one sentence.

The first dimension is Giving.
Most people do not understand how to give internal experiences like energy, interest and attention.

Normally, we want to get external things like security, sex, money, and pleasantly stimulating or exciting and pleasurable experiences.  We also want to just “feel good” about ourselves, and usually assume that if we get everything we want we will be happy, but then fail to observe people who have everything, and yet never seem to get enough, and always want more.

The problem with getting what we want is that we are focused on external gratifications, while what we need are internal fulfillments—like the competence to understand and nurture, and the ability to pursue truth, experience beauty, and develop wisdom.  Even after a lifetime of getting everything we want, there is always an emptiness inside that pathetically wonders, “Is this all there is?”

By contrast, after a lifetime of giving interest, energy and attention, we are filled-up with conscious and meaningful experiences that have taught, touched and changed us.  In the process, we have made ourselves internally complete by mastering the ability to express love, pursue truth, experience beauty and develop wisdom.

Now, at the end of our lifespan we are fulfilled, and while we may leave life reluctantly, we are at peace knowing we have lived as fully and completely as humanly possible.

The second dimension is giving Energy, Interest and Attention.
In normal life we are so busy getting approval, security, success, pleasure and distraction, we never possess a drop of understanding, love, or wisdom. Often, we are not even aware of our own experience.

We must learn how to give energy, interest, and attention to just be aware of our own experience—which is defined in part by the facts of each moment, what the facts mean, how we respond, and the consequences we create.

One reward for giving energy, interest and attention is that we come to understand ourselves, life, and other people.  We also learn how to absorb every part of the mysterious experience of just being alive, and become competent to nurture all that we love.

The third and fourth dimensions are defined by “Innocent” and “Purpose.
Modern life is often so manipulative and outcome oriented that most people do not think “innocence” still exists.  It is also true that innocence has never been popular with human beings, and in today’s internet and business dominated world, innocence has all but disappeared.

Nonetheless, we all need to give energy, interest and attention delivered with an innocent purpose, which means that we give freely, with no outcome in mind, and no expectation of reciprocity.  This means we offer a real, no strings attached, genuine gift.

In addition to being innocent, we all need to give energy, interest and attention that is purposeful—only our purpose needs to be defined by an innocent desire to understand.

What are selfish reasons for giving energy, interest and attention for the innocent purpose of wanting to understand?  For one, in mastering these basic skills we learn how to feed all real needs: and two, we fulfill our uniquely human potentials to Understand, Care, Master, Create and Contribute.

Another lasting reward for giving energy, interest and attention is that we develop a deep consciousness, caring, and internal competence we get to keep inside ourselves forever.

There is little more pathetic and sad than passing through an entire lifetime and never develop even a small portion of love and wisdom—consciousness and caring.

The fifth dimension is Understanding.
We often confuse understanding with explanations, judgments, conclusions, beliefs, ideas, or feelings.

Real understanding requires that we focus on one topic, observe facts, ask intelligent questions, and develop a desire to see what is true–no matter how painful: like when the truth contradicts our beliefs and feelings, or adds extra tasks and responsibilities we need to acknowledge and accept.

Understanding by itself is useless unless we use it to nurture ourselves, other people, and Nature.  Insight without application is always just an impotent intention that serves only to frustrate, never nurture.

The sixth dimension is Nurturing.
Nurturing requires that we first understand internal needs, potentials and developmental tasks.  Only after we acquire a detailed understanding can we competently nurture ourselves, the people around us, and Nature.

Nurturing, which begins with giving energy, interest and attention, must always be a gift, we can never expect to get anything back or it ceases to be nurturing, and instead, becomes a quid pro quo business deal—no longer satisfying for anyone.

The seventh dimension is putting it all together in one seamless expression of real love!

Self-Worth—The Critical Key to All Real Learning, Romantic Intimacy, Internal Fulfillment and Lasting Happiness

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Self-Worth—The Critical Key to All Real Learning,
Romantic Intimacy, Internal Fulfillment and Lasting Happiness

When we develop self-worth, we want to understand the mystery of being alive, other people, and Nature.  With a complete self-worth, we also whole-heartedly care-about our own lives, the life in other people, and all the life expressed everywhere in Nature.

In stark contrast, when our self-worth is incomplete, as it is with nearly everyone, then we care about how we feel and what we want, and we see little reward in understanding.  Instead, our minds focus on manipulating outcomes with specific rewards in mind—like getting approval, security, success and entertainment.  The value of these rewards is recognized by everyone, so we pursue them without question, hesitation, or thought.

One consequence of an incomplete self-worth is that we become terminally self-absorbed, but fail to develop self-awareness.  As a result of being self-absorbed, we fail to learn how to learn, and this in turn leads to being developmentally incapable of creating romantic intimacy with a mate, or internal fulfillment and lasting happiness for ourselves.

Perhaps surprisingly, a lack of self-worth is the bedrock source for everyone’s lifetime issues with romantic intimacy, competent parenting, clear thinking, whole-hearted caring, and mastering the ability to live, learn, and love for the innocent purpose of creating internal fulfillment and lasting happiness.

This last insight is astonishingly significant because it pinpoints the reason so many smart and well-intentioned people do their very best, and still fail, often for a lifetime, to create emotionally bonded romantic relationships and internally satisfying and genuinely meaningful personal lives.

Another common tragedy is that adults who have not completed their own self-worth are developmentally incapable of creating self-worth in their children.  Most parents do their best, but are pre-destined to pass on to their children their own lack of self-worth and failure to understand life, love, intimate relationships, and internal fulfillment.

All self-worth is built on becoming competent to feed needs and fulfill potentials.  For our value to be complete, we must master external and internal needs and potentials.

We normally recognize external needs—like the need for food, clothing, shelter, money and transportation.  We also understand external potentials for education, professional development, sports, hobbies and recreation.  In normal life, the only path to self-worth is to become competent to feed and fulfill our external needs and potentials.

This means few people ever learn to feed and fulfill their internal needs and potentials.  As a result, few people ever develop a complete self-worth.  Instead, we try to control our external needs and potentials, and remain forever clueless about all things internal.

Learning how to learn, understand, nurture, and love are internal activities, so if we fail to master our internal needs and potentials, then we will also be inadequate to fulfill our internal responsibilities as a person, parent, mate and friend.

If our self-worth becomes complete, we want to confront every inadequacy, and we want to master the necessary skills and awareness.  However, when our self-worth is incomplete, we fear our inadequacies and try to hide them, because any imperfection feels like proof we have no value, which most of us consider too painful to bear.

In relationships with a mate, parent, friend or child, our fear of inadequacy results in being defensive or argumentative, and generally refusing to understand any criticism. This hypersensitivity results in failing to learn about ourselves, life, and other people—in part, because we cannot acknowledge the critical information.

For instance, most males have zero awareness of internal needs, so when a woman wants a personal experience—like conversation, emotional warmth, genuine interest or a conscious touch, the male has no clue as to what she needs, but rather than admit his ignorance, ask questions and learn, he will respond with criticism, or by withdrawing.  When the circumstances are turned around—females are just as likely to be defensive.

The universal hypersensitivity to criticism, and the inability to learn is the primary reason most people never create long-term intimacy with another person, or internal fulfillment and lasting happiness for themselves.  This is the dark side of the American Dream—that is, the other side of being successful at getting every external thing we want—is the tragedy of missing every internal thing we need!

All too often, the American Dream turns into a Nightmare.  First, we fall in love, only to become disappointed and unhappy.  Then we produce children who grow up without self-worth, and developmentally incapable of emotional bonding.  Finally, we try again with someone else, and still, we never become internally fulfilled or truly happy.

Resolving the Nightmare side of the American Dream requires we develop self-worth, so we can first understand and then nurture ourselves, other people, and Nature.  When we commit to developing self-worth, in part, because we see for ourselves the inevitable internal rewards, then we want to make the effort necessary to learn, grow, and change.

This is a crucial first step, but on its own still leaves us ignorant and inadequate.  We must also acquire the information necessary to become self-aware and internally developed—competent to feed and fulfill all our external and internal needs and potentials.

 

Applying the Definition of Love to Everyday Life

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Applying the Definition of Love to Everyday Life

There is an ancient piece of wisdom that says: “If we fully understand one thing, we can understand everything.”  I would like to re-state this wisdom in the negative to offer a contrast, in the hope of making the meaning even more clear.  So I would add:  “If we fail to fully understand one internal need, potential or developmental task—then we will never understand a single significant thing about internal human life.”

The fate of most people is to move through an entire lifespan and never understand even one internal dimension of human life.  Instead, people float thru existence relying on vaguely defined good intentions and fragile feelings trying to get success, security, approval and entertainment, and never understand one internally significant thing about life, themselves, or other people.

This is one reason that real love and genuine wisdom are so rare.  It is also why in a previous blog, I defined love in objective and experiential terms: that is, it was my purpose to create a working definition necessary to explore the experience of real love. 

Previously, I defined Real Love as giving energy, interest and attention for the innocent purpose of first understanding, and then nurturing all that we love.

It is not my intent to hold myself out as an authority on love.  All I have done is to observe and ask questions with the innocent purpose of wanting to understand whether or not there are universal human needs that make it possible to define love in clearly objective and experiential terms everyone can understand and apply. 

What I have found is that most people agree that if someone gave them energy, interest, and attention motivated by an innocent purpose to understand and nurture, then they would confirm this as a bona fide experience of real Love.  How about you, if someone consistently offered you energy, interest and attention, with an innocent purpose to understand and nurture, would you feel loved?

If we accept that while not perfect, my description of love does provide a working definition that we can use to explore experience, then we can move on and define the experience of understanding.

The two most significant internal potentials, and critical to fulfilling all other human potentials, is the capacity to Understand and Love.  Of the two, Understanding is the most important, simply because without Understanding, Love can’t exist.  I can almost hear the howls of indignation objecting to this last sentence. 

For most people, love is assumed to be based on feelings, while understanding can be viewed as an empty explanation or simplistic conclusion with no emotional warmth or real-world effectiveness.

Also, sacred beliefs are often challenged when we discover that real love requires enough internal development to give our whole-hearted energy, interest and attention with an innocent purpose to understand and nurture. Without understanding we cannot nurture, and as a result, cannot love.

True understanding requires we build a detailed mental, emotional and sensual picture of reality, ourselves, and other people that we use to feed needs—internal and external—first in ourselves, then other people and Nature.  

All understanding begins with learning how to accurately observe and vulnerably receive the information ordinary life is always offering.  So to understand my definition of love, we must paint a complete picture of six dimensions of ordinary experience. (See the blog titled: How One Sentence Can Change Not Only Every Individual Life—But  the Whole World!  www.paulhatherley.com)

One way to learn about love is to memorize my definition, study the six dimensions of experience contained in that one sentence, and then measure to what extent you can accurately observe and clearly define your own experience with love. 

I put the last sentence in bold italics because it serves to also describe the process for learning how to learn.  One thing I discovered from a lifetime of observing people is that our education does not teach us the process for how to learn.  Instead, even the best education primarily teaches us how to memorize and regurgitate external facts or ideas that reveal nothing about our internal needs and potentials, or developmental tasks.  

Even in science, when we want understanding our purpose is often to exploit to acquire advantage or entertainment, rather than feed real needs.   Essentially, we adopt the same purposes for learning—as we do for living and loving.

Learning how to learn is required if we want to master internal needs, potentials and developmental tasks, beginning with our internal potential to understand and love. Learning how to learn is required not only for our individual happiness, but also for the internal evolution now essential to the survival of our species.

It is not often that we have an opportunity to work on our own individual happiness, and at the same time make a contribution to the evolution and long-term survival of the human species. Becoming competent to understand and love offers a rare opportunity to combine selfish personal fulfillment with a meaningful and loving gift.  This is the best life has to offer—it would be a tragic shame to let it pass you by!

The Need for Real Love In Long-term Romantic Relationships

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The Need for Real Love
In Long-term Romantic Relationships

We are all familiar with the standard beliefs and feelings about romantic love.  For instance, we think we are in love when we feel “chemistry”, or “…have never before felt this way about anyone!”

The Eskimos have nearly 180 words for “snow”, while we have only one word for the complex experience we call “love.”  I think it is time to expand our understanding by identifying a few of the many different experiences that fall under the auspices of one overused word: Love.

To begin, “chemistry” is just a euphemism for a combination of lust, trust, and comfort.  If we feel comfortable with someone, and believe we can trust them, at least a little, and are physically attracted, then voila! we are in love!

This level of love can be renamed lust-based love. We are lusting after sexual pleasure, as well as feeling emotionally safe.  This version of love is often expressed in romantic novels and movies: i.e., chick flicks.

Another version of “love” is when a woman decides it’s time to find a mate and start a family, and she chooses a man who can provide external security.  Often, she is willing to forego chemistry for reliability and ambition.  This can be called security-based love.

For a man, love is usually lust-based accompanied by a desire that the woman also take care of him physically and emotionally.  While they are rarely aware of it, most men are looking for a sexy mom—and if they find one, tend to cling to her like a new-born baby!

There are more variations in the experience of romantic love, but these three provide a foundation for understanding normal love.  What all the normal variations of romantic love share in common is they are externally-based, and motivated by what men and women want to Get from each other.  Normal love is an external quid-pro-quo contract.

For contrast, Real Love is internally-based and motivated by a conscious purpose to Grow in understanding life, each other and Nature—Share purposes, accomplishments and experiences—and Give energy, interest and attention.  Real love is also innocent, and internally-based on what couples want to Give and Share, rather than Get.

Take a moment, and think about the long-term romantic couples you know, have seen in the news, or in books and movies, and how many even seem to have a conscious, emotionally connected, internally growing, and passionate response to life and each other? 

Make it less complicated, and ask how many individuals do you see whose path through life fits the above description?  How about you?  Does either your individual life or romantic relationship fit the above description—or do they look like something else?

In twenty-five years as a psychologist, and the last ten teaching internal development, my experience is that the best normal relationships are defined by couples who like each other, agree on the external terms of their contract, and accept that without internal development their lives and romantic relationships will be dramatically limited.

However, the most common story is a couple will acquire every external success and luxury, but still feel incomplete, or unhappy.  The problem is that lasting happiness requires internal nurturing provided in part, by genuine understanding.

Since no culture has ever had the information necessary to train people in how to understand and truly love each other—it is normal for people to be internally unhappy.

Typically, we react to being unhappy by pursuing approval, security and pleasure, which leaves no room in our schedules, hearts, or minds to pursue a deep understanding of anything internal—and as we have seen in the last two blogs, without understanding we cannot offer real love.

So why would anyone want to work for the experience of understanding and love?  One reason is because in learning how to express love and develop wisdom, we connect to life in the most intensely satisfying and genuinely meaningful way possible.

On the other hand, one reason we are prone to destructive habits and romantic fantasies, is because we get bored by ordinary life and seek intensity.  The easiest ways to create intensity are through destructive behavior, or sexual encounters and romantic fantasies.  In normal life, we are not trained in how to engage the most intensely satisfying activities life offers—expressing love and developing wisdom.

Developing the ability to understand, which is the pre-requisite for love and wisdom, takes us into an open-ended adventure exploring new avenues of thought and caring that push the edge of the developmental envelope, and often takes us where no human has ever gone before.

The pursuit of understanding is exhilarating beyond imagination, raises the low ceiling of expectations that restricts our lives, and provides internal fulfillment above and beyond what we normally even hope is possible for human life. 

The journey toward internal development takes work and courage.  Work is needed because there is so much to learn, and courage is required because many assumptions, beliefs and feelings are replaced with accurate observations.

One undeniable joy in this sometimes difficult process is that the information CMED provides is objective and experiential, and is easily verified by each interested student.

Another joy of CMED training is that couples share a conscious purpose to develop their minds and emotions, which in turn creates an intense experience of life and love they could not duplicate through any other pursuit.

Internal development creates a lifetime adventure where every day couples can bring the energy of discovery and newness into their individual lives, and their relationship.

This is how long-term romantic relationships can retain not only the initial passion, but build lasting intimacy and a genuine emotional bond.

If you want to experience truly significant adventures that take you to new places in yourself with someone you love, and where you travel through new avenues of thought, caring, understanding, love and wisdom—then you will want to check out the training in internal development provided by CMED.