“I was the flower and the flower was me,” Arleen told me at her kitchen table, barefoot in white shorts and a flower-patterned tank top. “I entered the energy world of what was the flower, and I immediately realized that I was one with everything. I said to my husband at the time, ‘Something just happened,’ but there was no way to explain it. All I knew is that I felt completely transformed.” From that moment on, she no longer dreamed of becoming an actress. Nor, to her husband’s displeasure, did she want to have sex. “The ecstasy I felt every day going forward couldn’t be matched by anything I’d experienced before.”
Arleen returned to her teaching job at Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, a place that was no source of ecstasy. After breaking up yet another fight between students, she retreated to her office, where, she claims, a ray of light came through her wall, followed by a life-altering epiphany: Instead of trying to change other people, she would focus on further changing herself and accept everyone—even people she disliked; especially people she disliked—exactly as they were. She would lead with love.
Arleen launched a school program called the Love Project, animated by six love principles.
Be the change you want to see happen, instead of trying to change anyone else.
Receive all people as beautiful exactly as they are.
Create your own reality consciously.
Provide others with opportunities to give.
Have no expectations, but rather abundant expectancy.
Problems are opportunities.
Many of Arleen’s chain-smoking colleagues thought she’d lost her mind; they called her Alice in Wonderland. This was an urban high school, after all, not a gathering of crystal enthusiasts. But even the cynics couldn’t deny something shifted that year when six teachers and thirty students calling themselves “the seekers” baked cookies, handed out free books, and promoted unconditional love at every turn.
The principal called it “a kind of human relations club” that created “better students.” The Love Project’s success even surprised a school superintendent who came to hear Arleen give a talk. “I must count myself among those who came to scoff and remained to praise,” he told her.
If love could revitalize a battered public school, Arleen wondered, what else might it do? Change a neighborhood? A city? The world?