A young man, undecided about marriage, decided to ask a great sage for advice.

"Master, " he began, "You know both my girlfriend and me." "Not so!" replied the sage. "I know aspects only of yourselves. Which aspect do you wish to discuss? "Well , er... the aspect of our relationship. Do you think I should get married?" "No." replied the sage without the slightest hesitation. "Why not?" asked the young man, somewhat offended by the unequivocal response. "Because you had to ask me. I your love were strong enough you wouldn't need a second opinion."

One of the many difficult lessons we have to learn in our expansions of spiritual understanding id that we should do what we want to do in our hearts rather than what we have been conditioned to been conditioned to believe we should, ought, must, or have to do. One the surface you may think that is self-indulgence, but in reality it is self respect.

Unless you put up separations that do not exist, self denial is God denial .

We are conditioned to believe that self sacrifice is noble, but when you follow the love in your heart where is the sacrifice? Whenever we make a sacrifice for someone else, and there is no love involved, the act is worthless. In fact, charity without love is destructive. At the collective unconscious level we communicate our lack of affection and the recipient of our phoney 'goodness' will feel resentment rather than gratitude.

Far too often we act out of false sense of duty. If love is not present, such duty is mere hypocrisy. Sometimes we hide our own fears behind the label of duty.

I know of a woman who 'sacrificed' her own happiness to take care of her ailing parent. The parent ailed for more than twenty years. The woman had give up all hope of marriage, had little contact with the outside world and grew daily in bitterness and resentment. She could not afford to keep the parent in a home for the elderly but was eventually persuade to seek help from her church.

The church took care of the situation and the woman was suddenly free to get on with her own life. Too late, as it turned out. Now she had no one to blame for her misery. No way to justify her loneliness.

Within two weeks she had removed her parent from the care of the church and the two continued to live in bitter silence.

"And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity (loving kindness) I am nothing."

St. Paul.