Now imagine exactly the opposite. Several weeks have gone by, and you haven't eaten. You are starving, and you have no money in your pocket to buy food. The person comes with the pizza and says, "Hey, there's food here. You can have this food if you just do what I want you to do." You can smell the food, and you are starving. You decide to accept the food and do whatever that person asks of you. You eat some food, and he says, "If you want more, you can have more, but you have to keep doing what I want you to do."
You have food today, but tomorrow you may not have food, so you agree to do whatever you can for food. You can become a slave because of food, because you need food, because you don't have it. Then after a certain time you have doubts. You say, "What am I going to do without my pizza? I cannot live without my pizza. What if my partner decides to give the pizza to someone else – my pizza?" Now imagine that instead of food, we are talking about love. You have an abundance of love in your heart. You have love not just for yourself, but for the whole world. You love so much that you don't need anyone's love. You share your love without condition; you don't love if. You are a millionaire in love, and someone knocks on your door and says, "Hey, I have love for you here. You can have my love, if you just do whatever I want you to do."
When you are full of love, what is going to be your reaction? You will laugh and say, "Thank you, but I don't need your love. I have the same love here in my heart, even bigger and better, and I share my love without condition."
But what is going to happen if you are starving for love, if you don't have that love in your heart, and someone comes and says, "You want a little love? You can have my love if you just do what I want you to do." If you are starving for love, and you taste that love, you are going to do whatever you can for that love. You can even be so needy that you give your whole soul just for a little attention.
Your heart is like that magical kitchen. If you open your heart, you already have all the love you need. There's no need to go around the world begging for love: "Please, someone love me. I'm so lonely, I'm not good enough for love; I need someone to love me, to prove that I'm worthy of love." We have love right here inside us, but we don't see this love.
Can you see the drama humans create when they believe they don't have love? They are starving for love, and when they taste a little love from someone else, that creates a big need. They become needy and obsessive about that love. Then comes the big drama: "What am I going to do if he leaves me?" "How can I live without her?" They cannot live without the provider, the one who provides them with the everyday doses. And for that little piece of love, because they are starving, they allow other people to control their lives. They let others tell them what to do, what not to do, how to dress, how not to dress, how to behave, how not to behave, what to believe, what not to believe. "I love you if you behave in this way. I love you if you let me control your life. I love you only if you are good to me. If not, then forget it."
The problem with humans is that they don't know they have a magical kitchen in their heart. All this suffering begins because long ago we closed our hearts and we no longer feel the love that is there. At some point in our life, we became afraid to love, because we believed love isn't fair. Love hurts. We tried to be good enough for someone else, we tried to be accepted by someone else, and we failed. We have already had two or three lovers and a few broken hearts. To love again is to risk too much.
Of course, we have so many self-judgments that we can't possibly have any self-love. And if there's no love for ourselves, how can we even pretend that we share love with someone else?
When we go into a relationship, we become selfish because we are needy. It's all about me. We are so selfish that we want the person with whom we are sharing our life to be as needy as we are. We want "someone who needs me" in order to justify our existence, in order to feel that we have a reason to be alive. We think we are searching for love, but we are searching for someone who needs me, someone we can control and manipulate.
There is a war of control in human relationships because we were domesticated to compete for the control of the attention. What we call love – someone who needs me, someone who cares about me – isn't love; it is selfishness. How can that work? Selfishness doesn't work because there is no love there. Both people are starving for love. In the sex they have, they taste a little love and it becomes addictive because they are starving for love. But then all the judgments are there. All the fear. All the blame. All the drama.
Then we search for advice on love and sex. So many books are written about it, and just about all these books could be called "How to Be Sexually Selfish." The intent is good, but where is love? They are not about learning to love; there is nothing to learn about love. Everything is already there in our genes, in our nature. We don't have to learn anything, except what we invent in this world of illusion. We search for love outside ourselves when love is all around us. Love is everywhere, but we don't have the eyes to see. Our emotional body is no longer tuned to love.
We are so afraid to love because it isn't safe to love. The fear of rejection frightens us. We have to pretend to be what we are not; we try to be accepted by our partner when we don't accept ourselves. But the problem is not that our partner rejects us. The problem is that we reject ourselves, because we are not good enough, because that is what we believe.
Self-rejection is the main problem. You are never going to be good enough for yourself when the idea of perfection is completely wrong. It's a false concept; it's not even real. But you believe it. Not being perfect, you reject yourself, and the level of self-rejection depends upon how strong the adults were in breaking your integrity.
After domestication, it is no longer about being good enough for anyone else. You are no longer good enough for yourself, because the big judge is always there, reminding you that you are not perfect. As I said before, you can never forgive yourself for not being what you wish to be, and that's the real problem. If you can change that, you take care of your half of the relationship. The other half is not your problem.
If you tell someone you love him, and that person says, "Well, I don't love you," is that a reason for you to suffer? Just because someone rejects you doesn't mean you have to reject yourself. If one person doesn't love you, someone else will love you. There is always someone else. And it's better to be with someone who wants to be with you than to be with someone who has to be with you.
You have to focus on the most wonderful relationship you can have: the relationship with yourself. It is not about being selfish; it is about self-love. These are not the same. You are selfish with yourself because there ' is no love there. You need to love yourself, and the love will grow more and more. Then, when you enter a relationship, you don't go into it because you need to be loved. It becomes a choice. You can choose someone if you want to, and you can see who he really is. When you don't need his love, you don't have to lie to yourself.
You are complete. When love is coming out of you, you are not searching for love because you are afraid to be alone. When you have all that love for yourself, you can be alone and there's no problem. You are happy to be alone, and to share is also fun.
If I like you and we go out together, is it because we want to be jealous, because I have a need to control you, or you have a need to control me? If it's going to be that way, it isn't fun. If I'm going to be criticized or judged, if I am going to feel bad, then no thank you. If I am going to suffer, maybe it's better to be alone. Do people get together to have a drama, to possess each other, to punish each other, to be saved? Is that really why they get together? Of course, we have all those choices. But what are we really looking for?