The Path to Love: Spiritual Strategies for Healing

by Deepak Chopra

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A remarkable fusion of Eastern wisdom and Western practicality that offers strategies for clearing away the obstacles to love your life, for restoring the boundless soul of love, and for finding romance that will last a lifetime.
 
Drawing on the Vedic texts of India and other great wisdom traditions, Dr. Deepak Chopra describes the seven stages of love, beginning and culminating in ecstasy. At each stage we hear stories like those of Clare, who only falls in love with unattainable men; of Frankie and Della, whose eight-year-old marriage has become a battleground of distrust; and of Gail and Jarrett, who near retirement without understanding how they will fit together into their new lives. As we see these couples overcome their obstacles, and as we work through a series of specific exercises, we anchor these lessons in our own experience.
 
We all know the only way to enjoy the ecstasy of true romance for a lifetime is first to discover love within ourselves, but this task has often proved too difficult. Until now. In The Path to Love, you will find an astonishing blueprint to the uncharted territory of your own heart. First, Dr. Chopra orients us with timeless wisdom and contemporary real-life examples, then guides us step by step on the path to love. And once we discover the love inside ourselves, we start to see it everywhere—in lovers, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends—until our own lives become self-sustaining acts of passion, romantic and fulling and miraculous.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780609801352
Publisher:	Harmony/Rodale
Publication date:	01/12/1998
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	221,634
Product dimensions:	5.26(w) x 7.94(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Deepak Chopra, a member of Oprah's SuperSoul 100, and educational director of The Chopra Center For Well Being in La Jolla, California, is a pioneer in helping individuals maximize their ability to achieve success and fulfillment through mind body techniques. A best-selling author of both nonfiction and fiction and a leading, internationally recognized motivational speaker, Dr. Chopra is expanding the concept of good health and self-knowledge through a blending of Western medicine with the ancient techniques of Ayurvedic health care. The basic tenet of Ayurveda is that one's physical health is the balanced integration of body, mind, and spirit.

Hometown:

La Jolla, California

Date of Birth:

October 22, 1946

Place of Birth:

New Delhi, India

Education:

All India Institute of Medical Sciences

Read an Excerpt

Falling in love feels like an accidental occurrence to many people, but in spiritual terms it is not—it is the entrance point to love's journey. Romance has several distinct phases of its own for us to explore—attraction, infatuation, courtship, and intimacy—each partaking of a special spiritual significance.

In the dawning of the next stage, falling in love turns into a committed relationship, usually marriage, and the path changes. Falling in love is over; being in love begins. Spiritually, the word being implies a state of the soul; it is this state that a couple learns to nurture through surrender, the key word in every spiritual relationship. Through surrender, the needs of the ego, which can be extremely selfish and unloving, are transformed into the true need of the spirit, which is always the same—the need to grow. As you grow, you exchange shallow, false feelings for deep, true emotions, and thus compassion, trust, devotion, and service become realities. Such a marriage is sacred; it can never falter because it is based on divine essence. Such a marriage is also innocent, because your only motive is to love and serve the other person. Surrender is the door one must pass through to find passion. Without surrender, passion is centered on a person's craving for pleasure and stimulation.

With surrender, passion is directed toward life itself—in spiritual terms, passion isthe same as letting yourself be swept away on the river of life, which is eternal and neverending in its flow. The final fruit of surrender is ecstasy: when you can let go of all selfish attachments, when you trust that love really is at the core of your nature,you feel complete peace. In this peace there is a seed of sweetness perceived in the very center of the heart, and from this seed, with patience and devotion, you nurture the supreme state of joy known as ecstasy. This, then, is the path to love described in much greater detail in my new book, although it isn't the only path. Some people do not fall in love and enter into relationships with a beloved.

But this does not mean that there is no path for them, only that the path has been internalized. For such people, the Beloved is entirely within themselves from the very outset. It is their soul or their image of God; it is a vision or a calling; it is a solitariness that blossoms into love for the One. In its own way, such a love story is also about relationship, because the final realizations are the same for all of us. To realize "I am love" is not reserved only for those who marry. It is a universal realization, cherished in every spiritual tradition. Or to put it most simply, all relationships are ultimately a relationship with God.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
1	Reviving a Love Story	1
2	The Path	29
3	The Spirit of Romance	62
	The Secret of Attraction	66
	Infatuation	87
	Tender Courtship	106
	Intimacy: The Innocence of Desire	131
4	How to Surrender	156
5	Is Attachment Really Love?	189
6	Why We Need Passion	225
7	Ecstasy	272
	In Conclusion: "You Are Loved"	322
	Index	329