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  4. Know that you do not have to understand. What a great lesson this is in learning how to make all relationships work at a magical level. You simply do not have to understand why someone else would want to do and think the way they do. The fact that you are willing to say, “I do not understand, and it is fine,” is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

  Each of my seven children has a totally unique and separate personality and set of interests. Moreover, what interests them often holds no interest for me at all, and vice versa. I have learned to get past the belief that they should think like I do, and go through this world as I have, and instead I stand back and say to myself, “This is their journey, they have come through me, not for me. Keep them safe, guide them away from destructive self-defeating behaviors, and allow them to travel their own path.” I rarely understand why they like the things they do, but I have gone past needing to understand it, and this is what makes our relationships magical.

  In your love relationship relinquish your need to understand why your partner likes the television programs he watches, goes to bed at the time he does, eats the things he eats, reads the things he reads, enjoys the company of the people he is with, likes the movies he likes, and everything else. You are together not to understand each other, but to aid each other in living a life at purpose. Gary Zukav in The Seat of the Soul sums it up beautifully:

  The underlying premise of a spiritual partnership is a sacred commitment between the partners to assist each other’s spiritual growth. Spiritual partners recognize their equality. Spiritual partners are able to distinguish personality from soul … because spiritual partners are able to see clearly that there is indeed a deeper reason why they are together, and that that reason has a great deal to do with the evolution of their souls.

  This definition implies that one need not understand the other. Loving sacredly means loving what is, even if you don’t comprehend the deeper meaning behind it. When you give up the need to understand everything about each other, you open up the gate to a garden of delights in your relationship. You can accept that person and say to yourself, “I don’t think that way, but she does, and I can honor that. It is why I love her so much, not because she is like me, but because she provides me with what I am not. If she were just like me so that I could understand her, then why would I need her? It would be redundant to have someone with me who is just like me. I honor that part of her that is incomprehensible to me. I love her not for what I understand but for that invisible soul that is in back of that body and all those actions.”

  These are the qualities that make for a purposeful relationship. They all orbit around the planet of unconditional love. Get to this place and you will begin to see results in all of your relationships. You will begin to see the miracle of living your life on purpose.

  HOW MAGICAL RELATIONSHIPS WORK

  The miracle that you envision for yourself in all of your relationships very likely centers around being blissfully happy and content with all of the people in your life without any painful conflict. And maybe you even wish for the wonderful feeling of bliss that you experienced when you fell in love for the first time early in your life.

  It is in your mind that you must go to work to create real magic for yourself in all of your dealings with all other people. To reach the stage of real magic, you must decide to go beyond suffering and outcome and literally live your life on purpose. When you do, your relationships will of course reflect this shift.

  Furthermore, as you work on creating spiritual partnerships with all others, you will see the beginnings of miracles in other areas of your life. You will discover that you have miraculous abilities that you once ascribed only to coincidence or lucky breaks. You will begin to reach into the thoughts of others and connect with them in ways that are inaccessible when you live with doubt and fear. You will begin to know what the other person is thinking, and find yourself saying these kinds of things aloud with regularity: “I was thinking the exact same thing.” “I was just going to suggest the same thing to you.” “You must be able to read my thoughts, that is exactly what I was centered on in my mind.” These kinds of sentiments are not haphazard or weird, they are the result of living at a higher level of consciousness.

  This higher state of consciousness that begins to develop between you and others is the full-scale use of that intuition I have been writing about. You develop a sense of knowing through your connectedness to others and you relate to them on a completely different level than the mere physical one. You begin to recognize that the same infinite invisible intelligence that runs through you, runs through others as well. There is only one infinite intelligence. It is in every one of us. You now can literally connect to it in those you love deeply and experience a new connection, a new relationship.

  This new way of relating does not require your physical presence with each other. You will learn to know what the other person needs and is thinking when you are miles apart. This is a connection of the spirit; you truly are one. You will telephone someone who is in a spiritual partnership with you, and they will know before picking up the telephone that it is you calling. You will find yourselves having more and more of these kinds of encounters. This kind of miraculous awareness with others will originate within you. In your mind. In your meditations you will receive guidance on what to give others, and when you go out into the “real world” and provide that which you recognized in a moment of spiritual enlightenment, the recipients may in fact be surprised at your knowing. But it won’t surprise you any longer. You will begin to see this as normal. You are connecting on a higher level, a new level of awareness that you will come to call real magic.

  You will find yourself capable of new and exciting feats with your mind, and you won’t be dissuaded by the doubts of others. The anecdote that follows is one example of such knowing. At one time I wouldn’t have written it because of a concern about how others might perceive it. No longer do I feel that way. I know it, and I share it with you. If you are a knower, then it will not surprise you. If you are not a knower or are a person who lives with doubt, you will reject it. So be it.

  One morning during a powerful meditation I was able to see my wife in bed even though she was several miles away. I had left her side and gone for an early, long walk and decided to meditate before returning to our rented condominium on Maui. I felt I was with her that morning, hovering above her body in my meditation, and then suddenly I could feel her thoughts. To me it seemed I was actually able to enter her dream and experience with her what she was dreaming about.

  I was absolutely certain of this, since in my meditation I could see her physical body there on the bed, and then I could feel her thoughts and images. It was a spectacular moment of connectedness at a level I had never experienced before.

  When I returned to our summer home she was just getting out of bed and I began to tell her about the dream she was having a few moments before. She was flabbergasted. It was precisely what she had experienced in her mind. (Richard Bach wrote a novel based upon this idea called The Bridge Across Forever, in which he discussed having such an experience with his wife.) This happened two years ago, and this kind of thing has become much more commonplace for us. In fact, as I write these words I do not feel as incredulous as I did when it occurred.

  Why is it so difficult for so many of us to accept such things as possible? We know there is an invisible connection between all members of the human species. We know there is only one source or one energy that flows through us all. There are not millions of Gods, only one and it is in all living things, and the source of all. We call it God, yet it is called by many names. The Tao is another name given to this oneness that is in each of us. As Lao-tzu said:

  There is something obscure which is complete

  before heaven and earth arose;

  tranquil, quiet,

  standing alone without change,

  moving around without peril.

  It could be the mother of everything.
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  I don’t know its name,

  and call it Tao.

  It’s in every one of us, and yet we still hold fast to our belief in our separateness. We think the invisible force that runs through our partners is somehow distinct from that which runs through us. The ability to wiggle your finger as a result of an invisible thought is a connection that mystifies us in the physical world. Something allows that thought to get to the finger. And the same invisible force that allows me to wiggle my finger allows my wife to wiggle hers. So why can’t I wiggle her finger? Here is Einstein on this subject: “He [human beings] experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness…. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison….”

  As you reach higher and higher levels of spiritual awareness, you will discover what once was viewed as a miracle in your relationships is now your way of relating to all others. You reach a place within yourself where you truly know there are no limits. You truly do free yourself from the prison of your body and those delusions Einstein mentions, and you enter the world of real magic.

  This new way of being in relationships extends up and down the spectrum of your contacts with all others. It even extends to your relationship to animals and all life on the planet and in the universe. With friends and acquaintances you begin to connect to their thoughts and have a knowing about what to give and what they need. With business associates you begin to trust your intuition. Instead of focusing on your own quotas and what others can do for you, you shift to a new position that puts their needs first. You become a giver, a person on purpose, and you focus on their quotas first, and trust the universe to provide for you. You have surrendered in those relationships and you see each person as a soul with a body and you reach out to that soul.

  Miracles flow from this approach to business and you feel peaceful, purposeful and serene knowing that you are reaching others on a new level. Paradoxically, more flows back to you than ever before. But you are not centered on what flows back to you, and you give even more away, and so it goes. You have created miraculous relationships by connecting to all others through the Tao, or the God that suffuses their physical form. You are provided for and able to see the thoughts and visions of others. You have shattered the illusion of your separateness, and created a way to be connected instead.

  This new approach to relationships incorporates a sacredness toward all living things. Animals that bark furiously at others are peaceful toward you when you do not feel fear or hostility. You sense some kind of invisible presence in all living beings. You begin to develop a tenderness toward everything and everyone and you see that wasteful, senseless destruction is impossible for you. Krishnamurti, talking about the simplicity of love, observed:

  Another day I watched some young boys picking flowers. They were not going to offer the flowers to any god, they were talking and thoughtlessly tearing off the flowers, and throwing them away. The grown up people do it too, they have their own way of expressing their inner brutality, this appalling disrespect for living things…. One can understand your picking a flower or two to put in your hair, or to give to somebody with love; but do you just tear at the flowers?

  At a recent speaking engagement, I was invited to a luncheon reception. A young girl who was the aunt of the baby she was holding was having a bit of trouble with the child. I had been away from my babies for a week and ached to hold a beautiful baby girl. When I saw that beautiful little soul, I reached out to her and held her throughout the luncheon. She was peaceful and loving. I took her to the fish pond in the lobby and we talked to the “little fishies,” making fishlike sounds. It was a special encounter. A mutual loving and giving relationship, although it only lasted for an hour or so.

  Later that evening, after my presentation, I met the mother of that child and she told me something that I have become accustomed to hearing. “You are the very first person that my daughter has ever gone to outside the immediate family. She is so fearful of strangers, and has never, but never, let anyone else hold her. I was shocked that she stayed with you, and I am still in shock.”

  Babies know! Animals know! Strangers know! Young children know! That invisible intelligence, the Tao, flows through all of us.

  When you come to another with love in your heart, asking nothing, only offering that love, you create miraculous relationships. And when you come to someone wanting something from them, not trusting them, doubting them, exploiting them, the level of your invisibleness is apparent, and the opportunity for miracles and real magic is decimated. Creating miracles in all of your relationships can be accomplished, but it is not done by memorizing techniques. It is accomplished by reorienting what is inside, which is where all your relationships are located.

  APPLYING THE MIRACLE MIND-SET IN ALL YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

  It is important for you to know that the willingness to encounter miracles must be located within you. You cannot wait for others to change in order for you to discover the real magic of purposeful relationships. The power, and joy, of purposeful relationships begin and end with your own mind-set.

  As you read through the guidelines on the following pages, do not be full of doubt about what may seem to be impossible given the specific people in your own personal life drama. It is an inner game. Those around you do not have to understand or even agree, and it may very well be that specific persons (who are on their own path) may soon be out of your life on a physical level. What I am writing about here are your relationships with everyone in your life, more so than specific individuals. If you know within, after acquainting yourself with your own spiritual journey and finding your purpose, that certain people are no longer going to be sharing your physical space, then you can just as purposefully and just as lovingly make that choice. The relationship is not located in them, it is yours in your own invisible self to experience. Ending any relationship on the physical level is not a failing, any more than someone dying represents a failure, although it certainly ends the physical relationship.

  This is you I am talking about here. A you who deserves to be treated with dignity and respect because that is what you are made of, and is what you are giving away. Those who do not yet understand this will move away from your physical life, and you will find it easy to allow that if it is necessary. The duration of material relationships is not on my agenda in this book. That is for each soul to determine, and I make no judgment about choosing to move on when it is time. There will be many you will leave behind in the physical sense. That does not make you or them failures; it is the relationship itself that has ended, not the person. In fact, in one grand divine way, you will ultimately leave all physical relationships behind.

  But the soul never leaves. The soul is not in the material dimension. There will be many with whom you will stay in close physical contact and with whom you will choose to create spiritual relationships. So be it. Individuals will enter and exit your life much like the characters in a play. Some will have minor roles to play, and others will have starring roles for a while, and still others will help you to codirect and coproduce your life. Always they will be important to the overall play itself. Always they deserve your inner love. You will learn not to judge those who move in and out of your play, only to honor their appearance, even if they play their roles badly.

  Ultimately you will get to the place where you can look back at all of the people who have been in your life, and realize you encountered them because they all had something to teach you. You will learn to love all of them, even those whom you cannot yet understand what it was they had to teach you.

  With this in mind, free yourself of any nagging doubt about the specifics of your relationships. Move ahead, beyond the names and faces, to that place of real magic that has no name, no face, and no Social Security number.

  • Affirm your ability to create happy, fulfilling relationships. This is the most important thing you can do. Know within that if anyone else is capable
of being happy and fulfilled in their relationships, that capacity is available to you as well. Send away the doubt that you cannot do this thing because of others. It has nothing to do with others. It is all located within you. Removal of doubt is an exercise you can practice each and every day. Affirm aloud that you are entitled to be happy with everyone in your life. When doubt creeps in, as it will, remind yourself you have been hypnotized to believe this is impossible. Send the doubt away with mental images indicating your readiness to create fulfilling, magical relationships.

  • Once you have removed the doubt, enter your real-magic zone. Within your mind, and your mind only, is your corner of freedom to think as you like. Think about images of happiness and fulfillment with others. See yourself sending out love, even in the face of anger, envy or dislike. Practice visualization and positive imagery, hourly at first. Think of the person who is the most difficult for you to relate to. Perhaps it is an aging, inconsiderate parent, or a co-worker who is absolutely impossible, or a tyrannical spouse. Now, in your mind only, overcome your inclination to respond with anger and hostility. Visualize yourself sending out love and paying no attention to how the person responds. Remember, you are not doing this for what you will receive. In a magical relationship, each person suspends their wants and gives of themselves from a sense of purpose. This mental practice will ultimately become your reality in the physical world. But it all begins with a disciplined effort to think magically. The universe will provide everything else that you need.