“I’m looking for love,” said Evelyne, as she moved around in her chair, trying to get comfortable. “How is it going?” I asked. “Not great,” she said. “How long have you been looking?” I asked. “About four years now,” she said, trying to smile. “But it feels a lot longer than that.” “How much longer?” “Too long,” she sighed, her eyes flitting around my office.

“That’s a long time to be searching for love.” “Yes.” “Evelyne, have you ever considered giving up the search?” “Oh, plenty of times,” she laughed.Conversations with Evelyne were full of jousting and play. She had a stoic sense of humor, which I enjoyed very much, but I chose not to laugh with her this time. What we were talking about was too precious to run away from. So I fixed my eyes on Evelyne’s eyes and very deliberately asked her again, “Evelyne, have you ever thought about giving up the search?” “What do you mean?” she asked.

“The way I see it,” I said, “looking for love is blocking you from finding love.” “Say that again,” she said. “Looking for love is stopping you from finding love.”

“So what do you suggest?” “Stop looking for love.” Evelyne normally had a fast answer for everything, but not this time. She didn’t say a word. She went deep inside herself. I waited for her.

Waves of emotion began to break across the surface of her face. I could see her frustration, her anger, and, beneath that, a submerged sadness.

“Aren’t you tired of looking for love?” I asked. “Yes, of course,” said Evelyne, reaching for a tissue. “My invitation to you is to stop looking.”

“What, and find a proper job?” she retorted, doing her best to inject some humor. “Just stop,” I said. “But then what?” I told Evelyne that the way I saw it, her “looking for love” was an attempt to strike a deal with God. I said, “It’s like your ego has given God an ultimatum, which is ‘I’ll only start to live again once I find love,’ or, rather, ‘once YOU (God) find me love.’ And while this might sound reasonable to your ego, it isn’t how God works, and it isn’t how life works either. Looking for love isn’t how you find love.” “So how do you find love?” asked Evelyne. “Well, first you have to recognize that you are what you’re looking for,” I said. Evelyne didn’t say anything, which was her way of saying, “Keep speaking.”

“You are still looking for love because you don’t feel loveable,” I went on. “You’ve forgotten how loveable you are, and it’s this forgetting that’s causing you to search for love and not find it.” “I don’t find me loveable,” said Evelyne softly. “Loveability starts with looking at yourself and finding love there,” I told her.

 Evelyne was sitting perfectly still in her chair. I could tell she was testing what I had said against her own logic. A verdict was imminent. In a few moments I would know if we could proceed or not. I could feel her resistance, but I could also see that her face had softened and that she looked younger, brighter, and clearer. Evelyne soon appeared from inside herself, flinging the doors of her mind wide open.

“All right, I’m going to stop looking for love,” she said, pausing ever so slightly. “But I still want to find love. So how do I do that?”

“Well, first you have to accept that you are made of love,” I explained. “This is important because like attracts like, and if you know that you are love, you’ll feel comfortable about attracting love into your life.” “Okay, I’ll work on that,” she said, “but can you give me something more practical to do in the meantime?”

 “Yes,” I said. “But only if you promise not to overlook what I just said.” “Okay, okay,” she replied, widening her eyes at me in an effort to move our conversation along.

“The way to find love is to be a more loving person,” I said. “I am a loving person,” she protested. “I’m asking you to be a more loving person,” I replied.

“How do I do that?” “Start by loving everyone more.” “Everyone!” she exclaimed. “Everyone.” “Are you sure?”

“I’m not asking you to date everyone,” I said. “Good.” “Loving everyone is true love,” I explained. “It’s also the key to being able to love someone.”

“So how do I start loving everyone?” Evelyne asked. “Step one is to offer a little willingness,” I said. “Okay, I can do that. And what is step two?”

“Step two is being open to let LOVE show you how to love everyone. LOVE, which is what you are made of, will show you the way, if you let it.”

Looking for love can be painful. You are looking for love because you have judged yourself to be unloveable. Until you change your mind about yourself, your only hope is to find someone who will overturn this judgment. So you try to create a pleasing image that hides the pain of feeling unloveable. This image knows how to be seductive, to attract attention, and to win admiration, but because it is not the real you, it does not attract real love. Therefore, you keep on looking, but because you won’t change your mind about yourself, all you find is your own lovelessness.

It’s difficult to believe in love when you are looking for love. The more you keep looking, the more unloveable you feel. Because you don’t believe you are loveable, you can’t believe it’s possible for someone to love you. Eventually, you begin to doubt if love even exists. This is the worst pain of all. To believe that and to keep on living is impossible. Now you are just a shadow of yourself. You have reached a dead end. Looking for love hasn’t worked. So now it’s time to try something else. And that’s a good thing.

The way out is not to seek for love, but to see how you are blocking love. You begin by examining what is causing you to seek for love in the first place. First, you must cast off all the loveless images of yourself that you have made. Looking for love, in its truest sense, isn’t about finding someone else; it’s about finding yourself again. You also have to be willing to drop your theories about love, to empty your mind of learned ideas, to let go of old stories, so as to let love appear as it really is. Love is an inner journey home. The way to get there is to start here, right where you are now. The goal of this journey is not to find love; it is to know love. This knowledge exists in you already. I call this knowledge loveability.