I have been having a lot of insights about love lately. In fact for almost a year now, I have been contemplating what it means to be in relationship. What is real and what is projection? What is authentic and what is a social construct? Over the past week, my contemplations have reached a tipping point of insight.
Two weekends ago, I had an insight that I was trying to heal broken relationships from the past by projecting the fantasy of the ideal relationship onto other people throughout my life. I would project this ideal image onto another person and then sit back and wait for them to live up to it. I did all of this in the hopes that it would heal the wounds created from past relationships.
What I came to realize is that these qualities of love that I continually projected onto others were really inside me all along, and that I didn’t need to find the “ideal” person in order to experience them. I could just be myself and experience those qualities as a part of me. I integrated this lost part of myself that had split off as a result of some past emotional wound. This was only the beginning of the insight.
This past weekend, I was feeling lonely, bored and restless; and I was struggling with finding a reason for my melancholy. I resisted being alone, but why? I closed my eyes and reflected. I realized that I perceived being alone as meaning I wasn’t lovable. Once I shined the light on that faulty belief, I came to understand that being alone is the time I need to reflect and clear out the negative energy buildup that comes from normal every day living (kind of like an oil change on a car.)
Now, an interesting thing has been happening over the last two days. Even though I’ve been working, the insights have still been flowing even during the work day. Today was my day to learn about love. You see, I had still been slightly depressed over the last couple of days, as I thought in order to let go of any expectations in relationships, that I also had to withhold myself and my love from others in order not to create any expectations that could in turn lead to disappointment.
Then, it happened, right in the middle of the day. A question popped into my mind:
So, you can let go of expectations when you withhold yourself from others….but can truly love others and still have no expectation? Can you love freely without expectation? That is the true challenge. Are you up to it?
I could only be up for the challenge if I understood what it really means to love. So, I turned the question back to the universe - how is it done? How do you love others without expectation? What does it mean to truly love?
Here is message the universe returned to me:
Do you love yourself?
The quality of love around you reflects the quality of your self love.
You may think that putting up defenses will protect you from the disappointment of unmet expectations.
However, what you really need is to learn to love without expectation.
Loving yourself is the only way to love without expectation.
At the center of everything and everyone is love;
If you truly love yourself without condition, you will always have what you need.
Your outer world will reflect the inner.
If you feel alone or sad or empty, don’t look outside yourself for love.
Look within and affirm yourself.
It is here you will find your center and the core of love.
When you send out love in the hope of receiving love in return, this is codependency.
A codependent thinks that love can only come from the outside, and doesn’t know how to love herself.
Love yourself first.
True love overflows from a place of self love, which is a love that has no expectation for anything in return.
We are conditioned to believe that there is one mate in the world that will provide us with a continual supply of the vital love we need to survive.
What we don’t learn is that this vital love first needs to come from within, and the overflow can be shared with another in a joint blissful self expression.
What you see in healthy relationships isn’t the total fulfillment of needs by the other, but a shared love of self and the pure joy of shared self expression.
You have nothing more to do than to love yourself.
Is life not going your way? Then look inside and see what it is about yourself that you don’t love.
There you will find the source of your dissatisfaction with the outside world.
Love yourself, and when you overflow, share that authentic expression of who you really are with another.
Because who you are is love,
and in loving yourself, you become whole again.
Namaste.
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