I know…it’s been a while! I thought I’d get back into the writing flow with a little musing on Love. Well it is coming up to Valentines Day! And last week I was asked to talk on a Self-Love Summit by the lovely Detox expert and author, Faith Canter, which will be aired this Saturday. I want to talk about Love, Self-Love and Romantic Love, as this Valentines business can be an “interesting” time for many people and a great opportunity to really let go of some unhelpful shizzle that your ego (energy gone outwards!) or as I like to call it, your e-gooo (energy gone off on one!), might throw at you.
Notice how, if you are in a relationship, there may already be some gooo-ey, sticky thoughts and expectations creeping in on how you “think” your perfect Valentines Day will be, on how your partner should behave in order to prove how much they love you…
This is all very well if your partner is a mind reader, but if not they are in for a big shock when their efforts don’t match your expectations. And the irony is, you will blame them for not playing the role you imagined for them when you never even gave them the script. “Oh no”, I here some of you cry, “If he/she is the one, they’ll know exactly what I need without asking!” We’ll come back to the “One” later…If you are to truly Love someone, you need to at least give them a chance to be real, not just a role.
If you’re single at Valentines Day there may be insidious thoughts starting to creep in of, “Will I ever meet someone”, which if not immediately let go of may turn into, “No one Loves me”. Jealousy may be arising for dinner, served up with a side order of judgements, about your friends who are in relationships but all they do is constantly moan about their partner, when from your perspective at least they are not alone.
Both of these scenarios have the potential to lead you away from Love, to lead you off the garden path full of Loves blooms and into the deep, dark forest of despairing thoughts, the very worst of which is,”I am not lovable”. If you happen to fall into this particular pit, do not despair. Remind yourself it’s only a thought, that thoughts are okay but they are not real. Even if you grab onto a thought so tightly that you think it’s you, it’s not and never could be (or who’s doing the grabbing?).
There are probably thousands of couples in relationships that “think” they don’t want to be in one right Now because their partners frequently don’t do the things they expect. There are also equally thousands of single people, dreading Valentines Day because it reminds them that they “think” they want to be in a relationship but aren’t. Either way, no one is being Love, yet everyone is looking for it everywhere other than where they are right Now.
The mind will always tell you that the grass is greener over there, especially if your grass appears to be dying. I urge you to become aware of this tendency as it is universal. In some instances the grass may well be greener, (as one friend said to me, because it’s got more manure!) and we certainly shouldn’t stay in situations that are harmful, or maybe our grass died because we were so busy looking over in the other field, that we forgot to water our own! My point is, until we can be happy in our own skin, know our own worth and value ourselves; until we stop using the outside world as a reflection of whether or not we are lovable; we will suffer unnecessarily, always looking on the outside for validation of our worthiness, always needing someone to play a part which we wrote and ending up bitterly disappointed because they didn’t quite get it right.
What if we just need to turn on our sprinklers? What if it’s our own ability to Be Love that determines how green our grass is? One thing is for sure…we cannot experience real Love in the mind. To experience real Love we need to shift our attention away from the limited imaginings and rantings of a mind (the e-gooo!) and into the fullness of who we are Now, the fullness of our own hearts. When we realise that we are already full, Love becomes about giving and sharing from a place that can never be depleted. Only Love in the mind runs out.
As we become more comfortable with who we are, we realise that the masks we thought we were wearing, were only thoughts. As we reveal our true nature we give others permission to do the same. As we awaken to the Love on the inside, our relationships, with ourselves and others may appear to be a delicate dance of Self-Love and Forgiveness. Fortunately, Forgiveness gives birth to Self-Love, which is far from selfish. Real Self-Love is our presence of Love shared. Everyone benefits.
So what would happen this Valentines Day if everybody tore up their script? If everybody let go of what this one day should look like and accepted it exactly as it arrives, with or without roses and chocolates? What if everyone stopped trying to be the “perfect” person or partner and instead just started being themselves in whatever Loving way they knew how? What if this Valentines Day we all stopped thinking about Love and actually started Being it. What if we became “The One” instead of searching for “The One?”
“The One”, is pure unconditional Love.
You are already, “The One”.
Once you have a direct realisation of this you can choose to experience Love all the time, whether in a romantic relationship or not.
One of my teachers, Robert Holden, asked me this question that really helped me shift towards Being Love. If you let go of all your thoughts and judgements about yourself, right Now, what remains?
I found that Love remained. But don’t take my word for it or it’ll be just another concept in your mind. Why not give it a try?
The Bendy Witch 