This book was given to me by a friend as we lay on a beach in Goa, while I was single and Project Love was in its infancy.
That same copy is now sitting by me as I write. It's now dog-eared with half of the corners turned down, paragraphs underlined throughout and notes in every margin.
It had a profound effect on me.
And since reading it I've recommended it to almost everyone I know.
And now I'm recommending it to you.
The book?
Zen and the Art of Falling in Love by Brenda Shoshana
So what makes this book so special?
Well for me it totally transformed my whole understanding and approach to love.
It offers a deep wisdom about love and the nature of it that I believe we all instinctively know, but have forgotten.
It showed me that I had been doing it all wrong: I had been looking for love on the outside to fill me, when what I actually had to do was to open up to the love that already existed within me, so that it filled me up with love and flowed outwards to connect me with other loving people. It was about opening up to love, not finding it.
It introduced me to so many subtle, gentle and profound new ways of looking at love that's it hard to really summarise it, but what I can say is that it shifted me into a whole new space when it came to love and I've remained there ever since. That is the power of the book.
Throughout the book Brenda Shoshana, a psychologist, relationship expert and Zen practitioner, draws on the principles of Zen practice in a way that offers new insights to love, relationships and communication. You don't have to know anything about Zen practice and she's not telling you to go on a silent retreat to change your love life (although by the sounds of it it does seem to help!). What it does is offers a totally fresh way of looking at love and relationships, grounded in the lessons of a wise and ancient practice, that sets you free from the limited and fear-led way we're brought up to approach love and relationships in modern society.
It's no exaggeration to say that this book set me free. And I have seen it do the same for numerous other people that I've recommended it to.
Here's a little quote from it to leave you with, but what I recommend is that you just order it right now and get stuck in. And if you've read the book, or once you have read it, please come back here and let us know what you think by leaving your comments below!
"Now with a little patience it's only a matter of time before the person who knows how to love starts emerging from within. This person knows how to discover the 'right relationship' and how to thrive in it completely. Isn't it time you let her free?"
x Selina
