This is going to be really bold and perhaps inexplicable, but maybe not. Plus everyone’s life experiences are different. And I expect this will evolve for me as well. But I had an extraordinary almost out of body experience that seems to be touching a lot of things in my life.

Disclaimer Check with your doctor first LOL. For me I am putting together a lifetime of a way of being combined with a relatively silly experience and a lot of different teachers and teachings that combined to form my thesis. Well its not really all mine because many especially Eastern philosophies have echoed a similar almost identical sentiment for thousands of years but it finally clicked for me. And I want to record it here in my defacto diary.

All my life I have been the golden retriever. Always rushing up to friends, family and loved ones, wagging my tail and waiting to be petted. Dont get me wrong, that is who I was and everyone loves me for who I am.

Underneath it all was a “wanting to be loved” Know anyone like that? You cant help but love them but just like with the dog its work. There is also a huge “lack” there. I also really love people and cant wait to share my most recent discovery. Duh no big secret there, just check out my blog I do love people and want to share whatever I learn. In fact I know certain supplements are literally life saving. Look no further than vitamin D and the number of people’s lives that would have been saved in just the past few years. How could anyone not want to share that? Isnt that love?

But here in lies the rub. Real love is listening. Period. And loving. Listening is loving. And loving is loving, not wanting to be loved. That is something altogether different. It is a huge “lack” or wanting. Read that three times. Actually read that ten times.

If this resonates in the slightest congratulations. Because it has taken me a lifetime of learning studying to “get” this. And get this I did. In fact I felt nausea in my stomach when it hit me.

I have read whole books on listening. I took a half a dozen Tony Robbins courses and events. I learned NLP, matching and mirroring. But doing it is impossible if you are wanting or lacking even wanting love.

So let me try to explain the past year and the confluence of events that helped me to viscerally “get it” Last year, literally and ironically Easter Sunday we took in a baby kitten abandoned by its mother. We bottle fed it every two hours. That included throughout the night midnight, 2am, 4am 6am. I had my alerts set every 2 hours for a whole month.

Sadly the kitten passed exactly four weeks later. I inexplicably cried for two days. I didnt cry like that when my parents passed. Granted they were in their mid 90’s and had a perfect life. But I started questioning if I was a misanthrope or something.

One great healer, Kenneth Klee, explained to me that true love is selfless and the “giving” of love with nothing to “get”. My taking care of a helpless soul with no expectations of love in return is true love and that was why it was actually more painful. I acknowledged that but I did not incorporate it into my life.

My other great friend and teacher David Ellzey explained to me that is literally the cornerstone of the Sedona Method. The Sedona Method. (“The Sedona Method, examined by a Harvard Medical School study and results from more than 100,000 people throughout the world, has a proven track record of performance for over 30 years in over 80 countries.”) But David integrates that with so much more.

The founder of the Sedona Method founder was sent home to die and literally came up with loving others as the foundation of the Method. It also incorporate letting go of the four fundamental human “wants”. But of course its way too extensive to get into.

I acknowledged that as well a year ago. But yesterday During a session I literally “let go of wanting”that kind of approval. This is going to get a bit complicated trying to explain decades of studying

But “wanting” is lacking. I literally felt pain in my stomach and nauseous. Probably because my whole life I was trying to “give” love but it is literally the exact opposite of what people want.

If I truly “got it” I would show my love by genuine interest. Now I am not talking Tony Robbins matching and mirroring which I learned decades ago. The people I genuinely care about its easy to ask questions and learn more about everything in their lives especially what is important to them.

It was like a lightening bolt. My conversations that day all I did was effortlessly and genuinely inquire more about them. The results were a stunning heart felt connection. Now these were people that I already had a wonderful connection and relationship with but it simply was on another level.

And that level was love. Its like the story of the psychological experiment where the shrink gets on a plane sits in first class and engages the passenger from NY to LA and asks questions the whole time without revealing a single thing about himself, not his name where he lives, nothing.

They interviewed his seat mate in LA and asked that person about the person they sat next to. They replied the most interesting person they ever met even though they knew nothing that person. You may have heard that one. Of course I learned that many decades ago as well.

It is so natural yet has eluded me for a lifetime. How hard is it to listen to someone you care about? For me it was, I guess impossible. I know this doesnt apply to any of you. None of you are thinking about what you want to say nor does your brain immediately think of a similar experience. Nor do you have any urge to blurt out the brilliant fix you know. Nor do you want to share what you just did. Nor do you want to tell your friend about your kids. Nor do you ever interrupt anyone because what you have to say is 100% relevant. Nor are you thinking about anything else when your friend, lover, spouse is talking. You are all just Sigmund Freud reincarnated.

Dont get me wrong. My motivation was to help the persons I love and or care about. But it hit me like a ton of bricks. Its just one of those things that turns out to be the exact opposite of what our natural inclination is.

Going back to NLP. It is neurolinguistic programming. So you are literally trying to program the other person by using the techniques of matching and mirroring.

When you love another person, no matter what the relationship, you put your ego aside and listen. The conversation will go wherever they take it. All of your urges, thoughts, wanting to be heard, seen acknowledged simply melt away.

That is probably why psychotherapists are constantly going to their own psychotherapy. Because you can not fully listen/love another person, while your brain is going a mile a minute in response to everything that their conversation is triggering inside of you.

And that is why Sedona based therapy works. Because we all have heaps of shit we need to let go of in order to be that much at peace.

Sure we can all learn a little NLP and try to manipulate the other person into buying something. But at a recent seminar I saw someone brag that he managed to hit someone in a very emotional spot within a few seconds. But only a few minutes later he asked a question that she had already answered minutes earlier. I was actually shocked that it was obvious he actually wasnt listening.

Dont get me wrong. He was extremely skilled and donated more money to charity then I might make in my lifetime. But that is not what I am interested in. Just check out my blog on happiness. There is nothing worse than achieving your financial goals and still be lonely. Its piercing.

What we all really want is love.