“I saw him across a crowded room and I knew he was the one!”

“As soon as I saw her, I knew I had to have her!”

Love at first sight is one of our most cherished myths, but can it actually occur?

And more important to most people, can it last?

Gary Douglas, founder of Access Consciousness^® and best-selling author, and his business partner Dr. Dain Heer, have a different point of view on relationships. They are the co-authors of Sex Is Not A Four Letter Word But Relationship Often Times Is, and Douglas has also written another book on relationships, Divorceless Relationship.

That surge of attraction you feel when you see someone across a crowded room may not be the harbinger of the relationship you’ve always dreamt of, they say. It may turn out to be the stuff of nightmares instead.

How so? That instant surge of attraction, the irresistible pulling towards someone when you first see them, is actually an indication of someone you have indeed known in a past life. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the soul mate you’ve been looking for.

That energetic pull is an indication of past commitments to that person. “The difficulty is that we make these promises ‘til death do us part,’” says Douglas, “But does an infinite being ever die? Oops!” The result is all those commitments float around the universe just waiting to be re-activated when you meet that person again. When you see the person in a new body this lifetime, all those past commitments turn back on. You may have been married to them in a past lifetime, but does that mean it’s your best or even a good choice to be with them this lifetime? That past life marriage might have been a hell you longed to escape.

It’s not just marriage vows that you made to each other in past lifetimes. It may be a promise to fight to the death for your lord or king. Douglas has worked with couples in which the woman was completely convinced that her husband should be willing to lay down his life for her. Is that an appropriate promise for this lifetime? Is that one you wish to keep, or to hold your loved one to? It wouldn’t appear to be a good predictor of longevity in relationship, if that’s what you’re seeking.

How do you get out of being stuck by past commitments? You can ask a question, for one thing. When you feel that intense attraction to someone, you can ask, “This lifetime, or another lifetime?” As always, whatever feels lighter, however unlikely or illogical, is actually true.

You can also destroy those past commitments by using some clearing statements from Access Consciousness^®. That would look like this: “All the oaths, vows, swearings, fealties, comealties, commitments and promises I made to you in any lifetime, I now rescind, revoke, reclaim, recant, renounce, denounce, destroy and uncreate all that!” For more oomph, you can of course follow it with the Access Consciousness^® clearing statement: “right and wrong, good and bad, all 9, POD, POC, shorts, boys and beyonds®.” Each of those phrases asks the universe to destroy a particular kind of energy that’s keeping you and your potential beloved stuck in the past.

(This tool is explained in the Access Consciousness^® Core Classes. If you haven’t yet taken one, you can still use the tool. Just read it as it’s written and it will work whether you understand it or not. It’s sort of like magic….)

Does undoing past commitments mean you can’t rediscover a soul mate or beloved lover from the past? No, of course you can. What undoing your commitments and using the clearing statement does is erase all the sticky past promises you’ve made so you can be fully present in creating a relationship that’s as great as it can be here and now. Isn’t that more interesting than longing for the one lifetime when your relationship really worked, while suffering through the limitations of what you’re creating now?

Another way to keep your relationship fresh is to destroy and uncreate the one you have every day. One man Douglas and Heer have worked with asked his wife of 27 years what she wanted as an anniversary present. “I’d like to destroy and uncreate our relationship every day,” she answered.

“Does that mean you want a divorce?” the husband asked.

“No,” said the wife. “I just want to destroy and uncreate our relationship every day.”

The husband agreed, and now the couple has created a very successful and profitable business in which they travel the world working together doing what they love and making lots of money.

Uncreating is a word that describes the energetic opposite of creating. It has a slightly different energy than destroy, and using both words together creates a more thorough erasing of the old gunk you’re looking to erase.

As the wife said, destroying and uncreating your relationship daily does not mean you end up with a divorce. On the contrary, it actually means your relationship can stay fresh and alive. What you destroy is only your own judgments, decisions, and points of view about what the relationship has been up until the present time. When you destroy all the old stuff, then your relationship has the dust bunnies cleared out of the corners, so to speak, so it can show up as something greater than it was yesterday.

Are you still hanging onto that belief in love at first sight? You can still have it. But wouldn’t it be more fun if you cleared some of the old garbage out of the way so it could be as fresh and exciting as the first time you met? You can use the simple tools above to make this happen for you.