From Acceptance To Serenity

Often, when you love someone who has imperfections, you see the imperfections but you accept them.  With love, can come the gift of acceptance.  If you are always trying to correct someone, to fix them, make them into what "you" want them to be, is that really love?  Acceptance is not the last step in this process of love.  You next begin to see yourself and your own imperfections.  Then you no longer seem to see or focus on the imperfections of the other.  This the doorway to serenity.  This is the spiritual path of love.  Love, puppy love, falling in love, is the first step.  We do not control it.  But then the deeper journey can begin.  After the initial stages of this falling in love, if the relationship is to be sustained and deepened, we have to love the person after our eyes are open to their imperfections, faults, shortcomings, or else we split.  Accept or split.  As the spiritual journey of love deepens, we spend more time working on ourselves and our shortcomings and imperfections, to the extent we can.  A deep union with the other person develops as we no longer seem to notice or focus on their imperfections.  Union is not two perfect people admiring one another.  Union comes when you see with new eyes.  What changed? Certainly yourself, and most likely the other person, given your example of love, has begun to change as well.