The Mastery of Love summary

Think back to your childhood for a moment. You’re two or three years old, playing in your living room. You spot your dad’s guitar, so you pick it up and start playing with it. 

Then your dad gets home and sees you. He’s had a bad day at work and gets angry at you for touching the guitar. He even spanks you. 

There once was a man who didn’t believe in love. He went around preaching his idea that love is little more than a drug –⁠ it can make you feel amazing, but it’s also addictive. To secure your daily doses, you become controlling and possessive of the person who provides them.

One day, the man who didn’t believe in love was walking in the park. He came across a woman sitting and crying. She told him she was upset because love didn’t exist. The man understood her troubles perfectly and began to comfort her. They quickly became best friends.

Every relationship you have is between you and one other person. And each of you is responsible for one half of the relationship.

However, all too often, people act as if they’re responsible for the other person’s half in addition to their own. They try to control their partners’ behavior, telling them to do this or not do that. But if you’re participating in this war of control, you don’t actually love your partner. You’re just being selfish –⁠ and fear is dictating your actions.

Do you own a dog, a cat, or perhaps some other pet? If you do, consider your relationship with it. Your pet –⁠ say it’s a dog –⁠ might wait for you to come home each day. When you do, it barks or wags its tail.⁠ It manages its half of the relationship –⁠ just being a dog –⁠ perfectly. And you love your dog unconditionally. You believe it’s the perfect dog, and you feel no need to transform it into a different animal. 

So, then, when you’re in a relationship with another human, why do you try to turn him into someone he isn’t? Just like your dog, every person is already perfect. The only catch is that some people may not be perfect for you –⁠ and that’s OK.

Picture this: You’re on a date with the woman of your dreams, and you’re ready to tell her that you love her. You finally summon up the courage to do so. But she responds in what you feel is the worst possible way: “Well, I don’t love you.”

Her response probably causes you a lot of suffering. She’s rejected you, so you start to reject yourself too. But is that really a logical response?

The human body is a biological organism, and it’s designed for sex. Yet our minds have created a massive set of misguided and false beliefs around it. We have guidelines for men’s and women’s sexual behavior, how their bodies should look, and what they must do to be considered properly masculine or feminine. 

Because of all these lies, we’re unable to enjoy sex, we may feel it’s evil or a sin, or we become ashamed of our sexual desires. To understand how none of these beliefs is true, we need to acknowledge and accept the difference between our bodily needs and our mental needs – when these don’t match, internal conflicts about sex arise.

How does a doctor treat an infected wound? Most likely, she starts by using a scalpel to open it up. Then she cleans it, applies some kind of medication, and asks us to keep the wound clean while it heals.

When it comes to healing our emotional wounds, the process isn’t much different. In this case, the scalpel is truth, and we can use it to open our wounds and reveal lies. Then, we clean out the poison with forgiveness. And, finally, we keep the wound clean until it’s fully healed – using love.