Learning the lessons of love
I’ve been thinking a lot about love recently.
Especially the waiting period, the time in-between when the love we crave has no other choice but to come from within.
It’s a brave thing to be alone, whether through choice or not. I’ve spent most of my adult life out of relationships, rather than in them, so have had plenty of time to explore this feeling.
Unless people ask, I don’t share how I discovered Kinesiology or how I came to study it, but I’ll share with you now. It was my second treatment with a wonderful Kinesiologist where we released a block around being worthy of love.
The feeling came out of me in a rush of tears, laughter and a bubbling sense of lightness and release. And it was a matter of weeks after that I met someone I ended up falling in love with.
This is how I fell in love, not only with a wonderful man, but with Kinesiology and its power in helping to release the deep subconscious beliefs that keep us from truly living to our utmost potential.
Why we self-sabotage love
We all have fears, insecurities and blocks that sabotage our ability to love and be loved. It’s just part of being human.
A lot is learned from childhood; from our parents and popular culture, cemented into our beliefs that mould our lives without us even realising it.
There’s also other factors at play such as the expectations of traditions and culture that herd us into following a certain path of life and love, feelings of comparison, thinking ourselves lacking because we don’t fit in with what’s expected of us, as well as the deepest parts within us that yearn for love but still have to heal our broken hearts.
There’s no shame in being alone. It is a courageous thing to be self-reliant. It teaches us to rely on our strength within, rather than without.
Of course, there is always the danger that our desire for independence hides the fear we really feel at opening ourselves up to love. We can easily fall into the trap of thinking that no one would love us so it’s better to be alone than to risk the pain of abandonment or rejection.
I know this because this is how I was. On the surface I appeared to be managing just fine, yet underneath I felt so unworthy and afraid. Love felt terrifing, unfamiliar and something that I would never get to experience.
But living this way only breeds a way of life that is barbed from the inside out.
We don’t let anyone get close under the guise of being independent. Yet really, it’s just masking our fear that we’re not really lovable. It’s also a way to protect ourselves from further pain if we’ve experienced the sting of abandonment or rejection before.
Though, the longer we erect the barbed wire to keep others out, the harder it is for anyone to get close, which only serves to prove ourselves right, that we are indeed unlovable.
Don’t cage yourself in. Everyone is lovable. I am. You are. Everyone is.
The quicksands of toxic love
We also push love away through fear of losing ourselves in that love.
This could be the aftershock of an emotionally or physically abusive relationship where the toxicity of it left us scarred, broken and hardened to letting anyone use us in this way again.
Of course we don’t want to risk love again, why would we when we sunk in the quicksands of it and nearly lost ourselves completely? To risk love again with someone who might manipulate us feels like dangerous, risky behaviour. We might have also lost the ability to trust ourselves and our judgement.
So, we avoid love completely.
If we’ve lost ourselves in love before, it becomes easy to rebuild that same fear, thinking that we’ll fade away if it happens again. Yet, true love won’t take anything away from us, it will only fill us up. With that person we won’t need to hide any parts of who we are. We’ll have free reign to express ourselves and fulfil our dreams and desires.
True love will embolden us, raise us up and allow us to conquer. If we haven’t felt that power, maybe we haven’t been truly in love.
The easy option for some is to fall in love. The harder option for others is to learn to love ourselves first. When we can give ourselves the love we thirst for, we never need to run into the arms of a love that isn’t worthy of us.
Falling into the arms of countless loves
The other side of the coin is that we miss the feeling of being in love so much that we can’t bear being alone and fall into another relationship rather than face up to the healing that we need to embark on to piece ourselves back together.
No wonder, being in love feels amazing. It’s also a potent drug for our ego; we feel seen, desired, accepted, understood and comforted. It’s a wonderful feeling which is why the loss of it feels so crushingly devastating.
Losing love is a deeply painful process, whether you’re the one being left or the one letting go.
But, finding comfort in the arms of another, rather than facing up to the void of life without the heady side-effects of this drug, is merely a diversion tactic and one that plays out like whack-a-mole: we keep hitting it on the head but it will always keep popping up.
If we end up going from relationship to relationship, avoiding any time alone to process, heal and self-reflect, then it’s highly likely we’ll sacrifice ourselves for a love that isn’t true, rather than face up to the fear of being alone.
In basic terms, we end up settling for someone that our soul cannot be content with.
Our ego wants us to be safe, so it will encourage us to pick a safe option, yet our soul wants us to be loved. Not just because we deserve it but to experience soul-soaring love is to experience life itself.
After all, how can we recognise the truth of our existence if we don’t know true love? This is what our soul wants for us.
Embodying the love of self
I don’t believe the saying that we aren’t capable of love if we don’t love ourselves.
I love so many people yet I’m still in the process of learning to love myself and that’s ok. One of my favourite understandings is that ‘I can be a work in progress and still help others at the same time’. Likewise with love; I can still love others as I learn to love myself.
Perhaps though, my capacity to truly love others is stunted when I don’t fully accept and love myself. Time will tell.
We all throw about the term ‘self-love’ with ease but it’s far too easy for our superficial masks to slip over our eyes. Many of us talk the talk but rarely walk the walk. I show off a version of myself, like we all do, that gives the illusion that I love myself, yet I’m learning to take that mask off.
Just because we understand a concept, it doesn’t mean that we can embody it. Just because I know I’m worthy of love, it doesn’t mean I feel it. Just because I know that everyone I meet is a reflection of the Divine, it doesn’t mean I recognise it.
I think it will take my entire life to truly learn to love who I am. Just like it will take me a lifetime to know God. Earth is really a big school so I’m ok that it might take me some time to learn the lessons.
I’m so happy for everyone who is in love and has found their person and I’m also happy to learn to harmess love within myself, rather than wait to feel it externally.
What I also know is that the longer I spend unravelling myself and teasing out the knots, the deeper the love will be when it’s finally ready to reveal itself.
What we seek only stays at a distance when we long for it. So, don’t go looking for love, learn to embrace the feeling and vulnerability of being alone, the good parts as well as the more uncomfortable ones, and trust that in Divine timing, it will arrive.
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