Kate: Elena says, "I appreciated reading the Weekly Key Lesson email, which this week included relationship advice. Unconditional love. Do you think there are exceptions? I'm in a relationship where addiction issues on my boyfriend's part are wearing me down. We have a three-year-old and I don't want him growing up around the weed, and excess alcohol, but I'm scared to leave and face the unknown. And reading that email, maybe I should just try to be more loving?"
Guy: You know, so many times, I think we all know exactly what needs to be done but we don't want to do it because it requires too much cost. So, as a result of refusing what we know is true and right for us to do, we wind up paying an inexpressible cost. Which isn't just the development of my own soul, but in this instance, that of my child. I would never -- and I never have, and I never will... 40 years... I don't give personal advice, I'm not about to do it. It's not my job, it would be stealing from you. But I can tell you that unconditional love doesn't mean unconditionally tolerating someone who has been asked to change their life and who refuses to. So unconditional love in this instance would be the true unconditional love of one's self, in the truest since of the word. Which is, I'm not going to compromise myself for the sake of the continuation of a relationship that is already on the rocks. I don't know, you know... I'm apparently lost for words. You have this image of yourself as being someone who [GF acts out marching towards something in a determined way] when you desire something... and when I don't want something, I'm going the other way. But it is always clear cut: "I know." You have to get to the point where you realize you don't know. What desire tells you that you know, you don't know. That's desire's knowledge ensuring that you reincarnate that consciousness. But I tell you -- and I know for a fact, but my knowledge in this instance isn't your experience, it's mine -- God is good. You can't be given an impression whose importance is to be delegated and pushed to the side. You have the impression all the time, "I need to stop being afraid. I need to stop lying to myself and everyone else. I need to stop practicing this appearance of being somebody who's beyond the pale." You've had a thousand impressions like that, and a thousand times you run into it and you're back, because desire says, "Well you know, next time... because if I go that far, God only knows what's going to happen to me." God does know what will happen to you if you do in fact discover what's beyond that. God also knows what's going to happen to you if you don't. And, then you will have the lesson again, and again, and again. Lessons do not always appear manifested in physicality at the moment where the teaching is there. Sometimes you have to go through, seeing that you refuse the lessons, and realize 10 years downstream, I'm still suffering for the fear of not being loved, because 10 years ago I refused to walk away from a relationship that had no love in it, for fear that I wouldn't be loved by life. You just have to go through it. Like I said, I can't do anything other than stand, if you will, and hold a little placard. It doesn't even say "this way"... it just says, "it's okay." Find out for yourself.