Do You Have the Magical Kitchen?

I have been reading this book The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz. There was an excellent excerpt called "The Magical Kitchen," which explains a lot about how people approach relationships when one person in the relationship becomes overwhelmed by the other partner.

Imagine that you have a Magical Kitchen in your home. In that magical kitchen you can have any food you want from any place in the world in any quantity. You never worry about what to eat; whatever you wish for, you can have at your table. You are very generous with your food; you give your food unconditionally to others, not because you want something in return from them. Whoever comes to your home, you feed just for the pleasure of sharing your food, and your house is always full of people who come to eat the food from your magical kitchen.

Then one day someone knocks at your door, and it's a person with a pizza. You open the door, and the person looks at you and says, "Hey, do you see this pizza? I'll give this pizza if you let me control your life, if you just do whatever I want you to do. You are never going to starve because I can bring pizza every day. You just have to be good to me."

Can you imagine your reaction? In your kitchen you can have the same pizza - even better. Yet this person comes to you and and offers you food. You are going to laugh and say, "No, thank you! I don't need your food; I have plenty of food..No one will manipulate me with food.

Now think of the same scenario in a different way. It's several weeks later, and you haven't eaten. You are starving and you have no money in your pocket to buy food. The same person comes with the pizza and says, "Hey, there's food here. You can have this food if you just do what I want you to do." You can smell the food, and you are starving. You decide to accept the food and do whatever that person asks of you. You eat some food, and he says, "If you want more, you can have more, but you keep doing what I want you to do."

You can become a slave because of food, because you need food, because you don't have it. Then after a certain time you have doubts. You say, "What am I going to do without my pizza? I cannot live without my pizza. What if my partner decides to give the pizza to someone else- MY PIZZA?"

Now imagine that instead of food, we are talking about LOVE.

As you read this, say to yourself, you have an abundance of love in your heart. You heart is like a magical kitchen. If you open your heart, you already have all the love you need. There's no need to go around the world begging for love: "Please someone love me. I'm so lonely, I'm not good enough for love; I need somone to love me, to prove that I'm worthy of love." We have love right here inside of us, but we don't see this love.