How To Find True Love

This morning, I only got about a page and ½ before I had to start writing. In order to experience your essential self, Eckhart Tolle says In A New Earth you have to disentangle your sense of I from all the things it has become identified with. Yes, to find your essential definition of true love, your irresistible definition of true love, you have to disentangle from all your second-hand learning about love and look inside of yourself. If you haven’t heard it before, let me say that finding total true love is first an inside job.

How To Attract Your Soul Mate

Tolle says of A New Earth “That disentanglement is what this book is about.” I’m spellbound because that is what my professional (and personal) life is all about.

We, that is our egoic mind, by its very nature identifies us with our jobs, our cars, our cloths, our gender, our body size, etc. Just last week, I was talking with a psychologist who asked me “Who is Colleen?” My mind went blank. I knew I was not my car, but I do drive a Lexis. I knew I was not my job, but I’m called The True Love Coach.

“Who is Colleen?”

I sat there with a blank look on my face because I knew I wasn’t my car or my job, but I’d never put into words who I was. The only answer I have ever come up with is ME. And, by me I mean a unique individuation of the Universe, God, The Force, or whatever you might call it.

I thought I should be squirming, but I couldn’t squirm. I was just me. All my life, I’ve wanted to be accepted for just being me. Now was my chance to accept myself as that ME. (Find that true love within myself.) I took a breath and shrugged my shoulders and said “That’s it. Just ME.” He said okay, but didn’t pursue it any farther. I wonder what he was thinking “She’s pretty shallow or She’s pretty deep or She’s clueless or ????? You know what. I don’t care. Okay, sometimes it might be better said “I don’t want to care. But at that moment I really didn’t care. All I cared about was what I thought about me. What a step forward.

But, let me take a step back. You know the one step forward two steps back thing. In 1994, I decided to change careers. I sold my technical writing business and went on a sailing trip to clear my mind. After nearly a month of “aloneness” I realized that I wanted to learn about human dynamics. I was a charismatic leader in my business, but my employees will vouch that I wasn’t the best manager.

I want back for a second graduate degree in Applied Behavioral Science, Leadership in Human Systems. I came out of that 2-year intensive and very experiential program more disillusioned than ever. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t have a focus. I tried this and that, but nothing worked out. My bank account started to slowly dwindle, and I started to feel like a failure. (By the way, making money was a huge measure of self-worth in my family.)

Well, like Tolle says, “life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.” Well, my ego was tied up in being the boss, having a lot of disposable cash available to me, sometimes flaunting my position and my cash. Guess what my lesson was? You guessed it - going into the red on a cash flow basis.

As my feelings of failure grew, I hid out more and more in my home office. I grasped at straws. I threw money at every scheme that came my way. I spiraled downward and downward. Then, I guess I hit bottom. I finally said to myself “Colleen if you want to sell tools for finding true love on the internet, then you better start loving the internet.”

But here is the key. My ego mind had identified internet sales with sleazy promises – buy this and you’ll get the world delivered to you on a silver platter. Well, I bought a few of those things and now I can’t afford the silver polish. I needed to dissociate my negative thinking about those long internet sales letters if I was ever going to be successful writing my own sales letter, making my own promises. I didn’t know who to do this and keep my self-respect.

My acceptance of the possibility that a long sales letter could be honest and informative opened the door for me to see past my predjudices and judgments and find a mentor.

You know that saying “When the student is ready, the teacher will come.” I’ve seen this happen more than once in my life, and it happened now. I was introduced to a training program that worked for my learning style. I was an extroverted, mid-50’s woman with ADD trying to be successful in an internet business in isolation.

Then, I was able to see the new direction of the web – web 2.0. I love this environment. I get to write about finding real love - the kind of love that starts by loving yourself. And, then I write about how to find your soul mate in the world. I’m having a love affair with the internet! It fits my personality – provide content and information. Web 2.0 has been around for awhile, but my egoic thoughts and judgments blinded me.

I do believe that our ego itself is not wrong, but I do believe that the definition of love that most of us unconsciously have is wrong because our ego is holding onto old belief patterns. And, discovering your irresistible definition of true love is one small step into the mystery that is you.