So what if someone was related to you in the past? What is the need that they should be in the future too? So what if you were together in the past? When things are nice and fine, you think your relationship has always been that way, you have always been in love. When things go wrong, even after many years, you think you must have been mistaken and you were never together in a past life.

Why then do so many people stay for all those years together? Just look at this. If our relationship is based on the need, personal need, it is not going to last very long. Once the need is fulfilled on a physical level, emotional level, the mind will look for something else, somewhere else. If the relationship is from the level of sharing, then it can last longer.

If you know how to row a boat, you can row any boat. If you don’t know how to row a boat, changing the boat won’t help (Laughter). Changing the relationship does not solve the issue of relationship.

Sooner or later you will be in the same situation in any relationship. We have to look somewhere else, deep within us from where we start relating. What is our relationship to us, first of all, lets us ponder on that. Who are you to yourself? Often we think,  ”Oh I’m single I’m so bored being by myself so I need a companion, I need a relationship”. If you are so bored by your own company, how much boring you must be for someone else? (Mad laughs) And two people bored with themselves, getting together, they bore each other.

Often, you will have seen in college/hostels, when someone is in love with someone, they write their name all over the place, books, walls everywhere.  And their rooms and homes is not sufficient enough, they go write in the trains, metro, bus stops. Repetition. And spiritual practice is also a repetition. You know having a rosary, chanting the name of God, doing something.

First it creates such boredom. It brings the boredom in you. When you sustain that boredom, not just drop it and run away, the spring of love gets opened. When you realize you are source of love, you the giving end not the receiving end. Only and only then can your relationship blossom.

When you’re looking for security, love, comfort from your partner, you become weak. You are in the receiving end and when you are weak, then all the negative emotions come up in you.  Demand comes up in you. Demand destroys love. If we just know this one thing, we would save our love from getting rotten. The common expression is “I fell in love”. (Guruji laughs) I say, don’t fall in love; rise in love.

Having a limited awareness of ourselves and a limited experience of love capsules us in a tiny, tight compartment where we start suffocating. And we want freedom in life. Love could be suffocating if there is no depth. And that’s what we see today, so many people fall in love and then they fall apart. Isn’t it? We cant even handle what we are asking for, what we desire, what we want, because we have never probed into the depth of our own psyche, our own mind, our own consciousness.

In love you want to merge in the other, you cannot bear the separated-ness. That’s why often lovers want to know everything about the one whom they love. They cant tolerate any secrets because secrets means distance. Isn’t it? Love cannot tolerate the distance.

There are 3 aspects in relationship. One is attraction on the physical level, the second is love on the mental level, and the third is connection or devotion on the spiritual level. See our feelings and emotions change all the time. Doesn’t it? You feel good about something and then a little later you feel bad about the same thing. What’s the big deal about our feelings. People often say follow your feelings, I tell you never follow your feelings! (Laughter) You’ll be ruined if you follow your feelings. Feelings change all the time, you feel good and bad about the same thing. Follow your commitment, your wisdom, you’ll be much better off. See what I’m saying?

Any student who goes to a medical college. The first year or second years, they really feel so frustrated, they want to just quit medicine and go to something else maybe arts music or something else. Often you feel like that, don’t you? You take a long career or studies. But if they simply follow their feelings they would not get into any profession. Because nothing can maintain the charm for a long time.

Often for those who are very sharp, nothing stays charming. That is one of the signs of intelligence. A person who is dull can get on with anything, but if you are very alert everything seems to lose it’s charm very fast - except when the charm is coming from one’s very depth, from the core of their being. Then the mind is totally in the present moment and one has deep roots and broad vision of life. Then every moment is full of charm, everything is beautiful in the world. That’s when you never get bored of yourself.

This is the ultimate relationship, when you could relate to yourself 100%. Then any face you look, there is love, there is charm, there is beauty. Then you come from the space of contributing, “What I can do for you? How I can make your life better?” And if each partner comes from this space of “what I can do for you?”, that becomes the  ultimate relationship between two people.

We don’t have to sit and wait for some soul mate to come for us. You know people often ask me, “When will I meet my soul mate?” You can dial and ask psychics and they’ll say “Oh your soul mate is coming.” Soul mate? I tell you, you can never meet your soul mate unless you meet your soul. You haven’t met your own soul how can you meet your soul mate? (Laughter)

When we see who we are, you know? We are not our emotions, we are not our feelings, we are not our thoughts, we are not our concepts. Then who are we? This very inquiry, is very awakening within us, takes us away from all the shackles of conditioning.

Meditation is the process of dwelling deep into that area of yourself that is love. You are an ocean, there is so muh wealth deep inside you, so much beauty. You have so much love that you can offer and your mind is so much more powerful. You can create the situation that you would like to have around you. That is the ultimate relationship possible.

The ultimate relationship is beyond time because you are timeless. Time and mind are synonymous. Time is nothing but the distance between two events, two happenings. Love is not happening, love is being. Love is not an act, it is existence. Love is not emotion, it’s your very nature. Feelings change, thoughts change, ideas change, bodies undergoing changes all the time. But the thirst deep within us is for something that is not changing, that is eternal, that is always, that is the same. That’s why these phrases or expressions we use when we are in love, “I want to be like this forever.” Because love takes you beyond time. When you are in love you don’t notice time. You feel its only 5 minutes you might have spent 5 hours.

There is just one thing you can start doing right from today which will start your relationship flourishing immediately, that is to come from a space of contributing, from a space of giving.  Giving what? Given what is needed. Giving time, giving attention, giving money, giving whatever. Just liveing with an awareness of wanting to give, and keeping patient will uplift the relationship. Then you can row any boat. Of course if the boat has a hole you need to change the boat (Laughter), but that is for an entirely different reason.