I was able to help Veronica open to her love and her Guidance, yet as long as control and not being controlled was more important to her than loving, I knew she would succumb to her rage again and again. Only when loving and being guided by Spirit becomes her highest priority will she move beyond her rage. The problem is, Veronica is resistant to loving because her very controlling father always wanted her to be loving. Not being controlled by her father has always been more important to Veronica than loving herself and others. Veronica is caught between not wanting to be controlled by her father and wanting control over her son. Until whether or not her father thinks he is in control becomes irrelevant to Veronica, she will be stuck in darkness of her wounded self.

Malcolm is a man with everything - a lovely wife and family, plenty of money, his health - yet he is rarely happy. Malcolm is devoted to having control over people liking him, approving of him, and paying attention to him. When he comes home from work, he doesn’t think about giving love to his wife and family. Instead, he wants to be filled up by them. When he goes to a social event, he doesn’t think about what he can offer to others. Instead, he wants control over how they feel about him. At work, he doesn’t think about how he can support his employees. Instead, he wants control over how they treat him.

Malcolm’s highest priority is having control and not being controlled. Until being a loving human being has a higher priority, Malcolm will continue to experience emptiness and unhappiness he has had most of his life.

Ted is in a new relationship with Kathy. They are deeply in love and blissfully happy when they are connected. However, when Kathy doesn’t do things way Ted thinks they should be done, Ted becomes a critical parent, telling Kathy in a harsh way what she has done wrong. Kathy goes into denial and resistance to being controlled by Ted, Ted then withdraws, and suddenly love is gone. Both start fantasizing about leaving relationship, when just moments before they were so in love. The last time this happened, Ted stayed shut down for days, feeling miserable but unwilling to open to loving.

In our phone session, I ask Ted to take Kathy’s hands, look into her eyes, and remember his love for her. "I don’t want to," he said. :"I know," I said, "but do it anyway, even though you don’t want to." He did. Then I said, "Now give her a hug." "I don’t want to," he said. "Do it anyway," I said, and he did. Then I asked him how he felt. "Much better!," he said. "This was a breakthrough!"

The breakthrough was that he stopped allowing his wounded self to be in charge. The last thing his wounded self wanted was to give in and open. Yet by resisting loving, he was keeping himself in misery.

If we want to have peace, love and joy in our lives, our devotion to loving needs to be stronger than our devotion to control. We need to see our wounded self as a child who needs to be disciplined, rather than part of us that needs to be in charge. We need to decide to love even when it feel so very hard to do, even when our wounded self desperately wants control. This means that whether or not we are controlled by ourselves, others or God becomes irrelevant. When we make control and being controlled irrelevant and when love becomes more important than control, we will move into our personal power. Control loses its appeal when we experience, over and over, joy of loving. And, of course, we will never end up feeling controlled when we speak our truth and set limits as a loving adult, rather than as a wounded self just going into resistance.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?", "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By My Kids?", "Healing Your Aloneness","Inner Bonding", and "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By God?" Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com

How much of your thinking time is spent being upset or unhappy about something? What if all that time was spent in gratitude for what you have and for beauty around you? What if you were present enough in this moment to revel in fact that you can turn on a faucet and have hot water come out? That you have food to eat and a bed to sleep on? If you are reading this, it is likely that you have a computer, which means you have more than most of people on this planet.

Try this little experiment: find something of beauty - it can be as simple as a leaf, a flower, a photograph, a small work of art or top of a tree out your window. Now let yourself completely open to thing of beauty. Let yourself feel beauty in your body - in your heart, your solar plexus, in your stomach, arms and legs, in your forehead. Let beauty enliven your body and fill it with vitality. Breathe in beauty and feel your body’s reaction to it. Open to gratitude, thanking God for this experience of beauty.

Notice peace and joy it gives you to be in this moment with this simple object of beauty. What would life be like if you spent more moments like this, in present with beauty and with all you have? How much of your waking time is spent in this way?

Beauty and gratitude are soul foods. When you choose to open to them, you extend an invitation to love, peace and joy. This raises your frequency and opens door to your spiritual Guidance. Your Guidance is always here for you, helping you on your soul’s journey. Opening to beauty and gratitude, with a deep intent to learn about what is loving to you and others, will open you to your spiritual Guidance.