Let's make a deal

You had decided that your brother is your enemy. Sometimes a friend, perhaps, provided that your separate interests made your friendship possible a little while. But not without a gap perceived between you and him, lest he turn again into an enemy. Let him come close to you, and you jumped back; as you approached did he instantly withdraw.

I was reading the above passage the other day, and I thought how sad and scary and difficult it is to live out the ego's idea of love, which is described pretty well above. The ego is always looking to get, and is constantly bargaining for favours and services from other egos, and this is what the world calls love. Of course, sooner or later, I start to feel resentful because I think that I'm putting a lot more into this relationship, job, class, or course, than I'm getting out of it. And then the ego starts to look around for someone else, or some other situation, that it can strike a better deal with.

That is, where can I give less, and get more of the goodies I am believing that I need? In this way, the ego uses all relationships and situations to try to get its illusory needs met, and when it fails to see these needs met, moves on the the next person, or the next situation, or the next any other thing that it believes will fill the lack it experiences.

Loving from the truth of me means that I don't need to make bargains to try to make a facsimile of the experience of truly loving, or withdraw my love when things aren't going my way. When I love truly, everything that I give to another, I am receiving simultaneously. Only what I am not giving in any situation can be missing, so when I am feeling a scarcity of love, or in a state of fear, I look into my own mind and heart to see where I am witholding the love that I am. When I reconnect with the truth of who I am, I am also reconnected with an abundance of love, and there is nothing missing at all!