I have never really believed that you fall in love instantly. You could conceivable fall into lust, or trip mindlessly into passion — but love, real love, takes time — like cooking the perfect soufflé.

• Love creeps gently into your insides when you glance her way and see the sun gently reflecting off locks of red hair cascading haphazardly over her shoulder.

• Love is behind his eyes that seem to see forever.

• Love wells up in your throat when you flip play on the answer machine and hear his sultry voice telling you to “come straight home!”

• Love smiles through lathered up faces, tucked in towels and hangs gently mid-air in tunes that are hummed early in the morning.

• Love grabs you like gentle thunder in the middle of an orgasm, in the middle of laughter, in the middle of dinner.

• Love walks into the room definitively beside you, not searching, roving or seeking something fantasized, but not yet found.

• Love is being present, profoundly here, solid and alive.

• Love is the connection, the commitment, the ecstasy and relief of right union.

• Love creates a direct path to Spirit parts, head parts, heart parts and girl parts and boy parts.

• When I was very young, I thought I’d fall into love repeatedly. Really, I was only practicing to be in love once.

• When you are older you become the love, and then give that to each other. When you become the love, there is no separation between who you are and what you feel and no way to give less than your best.

• If you still feel you are looking for the best, you have not yet found love.

• Love is a surprise because it’s never what you thought it was and it never comes when you wish it would.

• Love can take a break when the words seem hard to find, but love never goes very far away and always comes back to resolve the issue.

• Love believes there will always be a resolve and love chooses not to sleep until we find it.

• Love reaches across the distance either we create, when we feel a need to protect ourselves and persistently, ever so gently pulls us toward each other.

• Real love demands integrity. It tests each of our ability to stay present, aware and truthful.

• When we are both being love, we are able to cradle the child in each of us, respect the adult in each of us and encourage the Spirit in each of us.

• Love is only able to flourish in truth. True love is about being really present, authentic and willing to risk honesty, solidity, sanctuary and grace.

• Love is in anything real. You can hear love in Chopin, Beethoven, Puccini, Grobin, Streisand and Brightman.

• Love is about taking care of yourself and committing to your own growth so that your partner is not grieved, or required to spend time cleaning up the mess from your lack of awareness.

• Love is about embracing weaknesses together, talking together; tearing up together and trying to do it better together.

• Love is about believing not just enduring.

• It’s about devotion, not just affinity.

• It’s about passion, not just fondness.

• It’s about soul deep connecting, not just sex.

• It’s about Beingness, not just bodies.

• It’s about wanting those you love to be the best they can be for themselves, not just for you.

• Mature love is a sacred thing. Some think it only comes once in one’s lifetime. I believe it can come to anyone who wants it badly enough, with anyone they choose. Real love can be in the middle of every relationship we have, with everyone we know.

• Real love never just happens. It is created, moment-by-moment, day-by-day, year-by-year.

• Love is about your willingness to discover your own capacity for forgiveness, compassion and integrity.

• It is created with respect for each other’s beliefs, with support for each other’s goals and with inspiration for each other’s dreams.

• When you have love, there is nothing else you need.

•  When you are really in love, the grass is never greener and the questions disappear.

• When you become love you have done what you came here to do.

• Love is not an instantly falling into thing. Love is a feeling fully, failing and forgiving, filling up and flowing over, finding you and finding