Do you ever notice how people who don’t have a clear direction and purpose in life latch on for dear life to those who do? Albert Einstein says, “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”

There is a friend of mine, who literally starts leaning into me when we are walking side-by-side. To avoid falling over, I have to speed up my pace and lead the way. She is totally unconscious of this behavior and what it tells me is that she ties herself to people, not her goals. In fact, the other day I did a little experiment. We made plans to go out to eat at a local restaurant, a few blocks away from our place of work. Knowing perfectly well that she could have easily made it on her own, I decided that I would give her the opportunity to lead the way. As we strolled along side each other, we engaged in conversation, but I did however notice that she was taking us in the opposite direction, farther and farther away from our destination. We ended up walking around in circles, until it dawned on her that she had lost her way.

And now, take this scenario and apply it to intimate relationships. Two people’s eyes meet. They are filled with a fuzzy warm feeling inside. They haven’t even negotiated the boundaries and direction of the relationship. Yet, what keeps them together is the tireless pursuit of recreating that initial positive experience. Their lover triggers a chemical response in them that temporarily fulfills an emotional need. It’s kind of like the relationship that a junkie has to heroine. The initial high is always the best and from that point on, their entire lives become centered on reliving that primary experience. So many relationships are founded on this addiction mentality. There is no movement, no growth. There are no goals and the stagnant waters of love grow polluted over time. It is like waltzing on one spot, until even that slows to a halt and the only thing left to do is separate.

Suppose your partner does have a goal that he/she wants to explore polyamorous relationships. Suppose you’re not sure of what you want. You accept his/her decision to be with other partners, but you’re not convinced this is the life for you. Yet, you choose to passively follow along, because “He who holds the strongest frame, controls that environment”, says Steve P (White Tiger Tantra). In other words, the one who’s goal is set, leads the way, if the other chooses to follow. If that person has become a source to feed your emotional addictions you may go wherever they go, no matter where they take you. As long as they can trigger that warm and fuzzy feeling inside you once in a while. This to me is called emotional and spiritual starvation. It’s someone who chooses to live off crumbs, because they are too incompetent or lazy to turn their attention away from what is happening on the “outside” and start digging for the nourishing abundance, that lies within.

There are many people who settle for what doesn’t make them happy, because they lack a sense of abundance in their lives. You might think, well if I had more money, success and love, I would feel abundant. And that’s where you’re wrong. It’s the other way around. You will have more money, success and love, IF and only IF you feel abundant. So, how does one go about feeling abundant, especially within the boundaries of a relationship? First, I believe it requires that you break the emotional addiction behavior that causes you to constantly “extract happiness” from the other person. It means, working on yourself, by purifying and grounding your energies. I talk about grounding energies in the Tantric Energy Balancing Exercise, because when we are not anchored within ourselves, through our root chakra, we are like free-floating bubbles, vulnerable to being popped with the lightest of pressure. When our root chakra is balanced, we are centered, grounded, energetic, but most importantly, we can manifest a sense of abundance.

Abundance is an energy that I’ve discovered can be generated through the power of imagination. If you have the energy of a slug in a puddle, you can use sexual energy, as described in the White Tiger Tantra Heart Meditation, to charge up and launch a new wave of thought patterns. You may start by visualizing or imagining all the things that you are grateful for in your life, until you create a feeling. The feeling of abundance. It may be almost imperceptible at first and that is because you’ve trained yourself for so long to feel bad, that you body and your emotions are pretty much now on auto-pilot. So breaking the habit of negativity may seem like it’s a tedious task, but hey isn’t it better than always depending on the outside world to provide your emotional needs for you? To me, that’s being a slave to circumstances, because at any moment in time, your source of emotional satisfaction can be taken away from you and then what are you left with?Actually, you are left with everything. You just don’t recognize it yet.

If you are having a hard time generating the “feeling” of abundance. A quick route would be to practice mantras. Mantras are energy-based sounds that stimulate the chakras of our bodies. In Hindu philosophy, the names of deities can also be called upon and each one has a different role. Lakshmi,  is the Goddess of wealth and abundance, both material and spiritual. The word ‘Lakshmi’ comes from the Sanskrit word Laksme, which means “goal.” Lakshmi, therefore, represents the goal of life, which includes material and spiritual abundance. Her mantra is “Om Maha Lakshmiyei Swaha”. She is also represented by the seed mantra “Shreem”, which by repeating it can give you a better ability to manifest reality. So choose your thoughts carefully. And know that you have successfully created abundance, when you feel you have so much, with so little.