Positive Health Online

Love is an incredibly deep emotion which penetrates through our being and moves us in a way that is unlike any other experience. Love provides us with the opportunity to unite with ourselves; to learn, grow and know ourselves more fully through another person.

Most people think that sexuality is love. At the most earthly, primal level, love is sparked by a sexual attraction. This attraction ‘may’ have the potential to grow into love, yet love has a much more inherent spiritual component.

Many people get caught up in the lure of ‘love as sexuality’ and miss the deeper meaning behind the experience. In ancient times Cupid was used as a symbol of love, but the arrow also symbolized the repercussions to the decisions we make in our relationships. The power of attraction has been exploited in the media, greatly influencing our desire for meaningful relationships. Because of this, we are developing a distorted and unhealthy preference for flawless fantasies over a deeper connection with someone. These lurking temptations lure people in, initially beginning with an innocent curiosity or flirtation, but can quickly spin out of control and become an irresistible force of desire. Without self-awareness of the delusion, we can suddenly become consumed by sexuality and raw passion.

There has always been an enticing nature about ‘the forbidden’, the repressed desires that lurk within us. Yet when acting on this desire alone, without consciously being aware of the deception at its core, we are often times caught in our own state of self-delusion, which leads to regret later on. Once the walls of illusion come tumbling down, we are faced with the negative repurcussions, and are forced to deal with the cold, hard truth within ourselves. It takes a lot of strength to look at ourselves with a clear and honest conscience, to admit our wrongs and take responsibility for our actions. Yet it is the only way to true and long-lasting freedom. When we deny our own contribution to any deception and place blame elsewhere, it delays the process of healing, and prolongs any chance for a rooted foundation and peace of mind within ourselves. We can use all the delay tactics we wish, but the tactics are a temporary fix. We were given these opportunities to heal as a heavenly gift, to recognize our fundamental truths and reshape ourselves for the betterment of all beings. There is no  bypassing this lesson; however, we may choose to delay the inevitable, which will only lead to our own emotional, physical and spiritual haunting, to the point where we become prisoners of ourselves, living in our own haunted house through our habitual behaviors and dishonest practices. ‘To become masters of love, we have to practise love’ but first we must master ourselves.

The Patterns

When we are in love, we are actually feeling the divine in sensual form. These loving relationships were sent to us directly from spirit so we can enjoy life more fully, but later so that we can recognize and heal the parts of ourselves that have been denied or repressed. Through another, we are able to look in the mirror at our own dysfunctions, allowing for an opportunity for integration of the parts of ourselves that are not working synergistically. We all have certain aspects of our personalities which are dark, and when love shines into our life, it allows us to see these aspects that need attention and light.

It is a great opportunity for us to learn about ourselves. Very strong connections are referred to as ‘soul-mate interactions’ because within these relationships, there are many spiritual lessons, and many choices to be made which can be quite challenging. Often times we are fighting polarities such as choosing between a spiritual path vs. sexual passion, following the heart vs. the mind, truth vs untruth, responsibility vs. denial, and humility vs. ego. The mind of a human being is toxic because of fear, which feeds our wounds and keeps love at a distance. Love for many people is frightening because of the fear of being hurt.

Yet the key to having a free experience in life is to surrender to fear and allow the truth that lies within the heart to expand. When we allow our heart to open fully to experience every aspect of life; joy, sadness, growth, pain, etc. we are allowing ourselves to live a true human experience and we are in sync with our whole being. Far too often, the insight of the heart is dismissed, and overtaken by the mind’s attempt to control emotions to prolong pleasure and avoid pain.

It becomes a habitual response, to avoid disappointment and sadness associated with opening the heart from a memory of past pain when the heart was open and was burned. This protective method forces us to live in denial of our own truth to ourselves and others. We lie to ourselves constantly as a protective method and these lies act as a barrier to keep us from the truth, because the truth can hurt. This leads to a constant search for pleasurable experiences, yet the pleasure will be short-lived and only experienced on a superficial level. Each new relationship is only briefly satisfying because the healthy expression of love occurs only when we are acting out of the deep truth which lies in our own heart. When we come from a place of truth, the heart and the mind work together harmoniously with the physical body, and there is a true interconnection between mind, body, and spirit.

With this connection, love then flourishes. The mind can work as an important asset to our being, using logic and reasoning to reflect the truth found in the heart. The mind cannot will something on the heart, because the heart speaks from a place of truth which is unchanging. Spirit speaks through the heart by intuitively guiding us to the actions that allow us to fulfill our destiny. Because of the fears that exist within the mind, the heart is constantly being overridden by the mind’s ego, as it tries to avoid discomfort. If we allow the mind to take control, and we act out of this insecurity, it leads us to a path of further pain as we stray from our true self.

The first true intimate experience exists within ourselves, coming from the heart which houses our conscious connection to the divine. Intimacy is not sexuality. Intimacy is open, honest communication with another person with love at the root. Many people’s relationships are built on a fantasy of ‘romantic love’ that is seen in the movies, but this is not love. If the connection is not intact from a foundational level based on truth, love will not survive, nor will it grow. Both partners must be willing to give to each other, and if one or both people are not ready and willing, it cannot happen. It takes a committed effort for the partnership to be functional, and it must be grounded in a heart’s willingness to give and receive love. If this essential truth is not there, the lying and the illusion became far too painful and the relationship will fall apart, because fear and love cannot work together, nor can lies with truth. A relationship may look good on the surface, but can still be empty underneath.

Commitment

People are often afraid of commitment because they believe that to be ‘committed’ to another they must endure the relationship long-term, regardless of circumstances. However, this is a false sense of what true commitment entails. True commitment is the “ability to be 100 percent present while we are engaged in a particular activity” (Jarret 2004). By being committed, it first and foremost means that we are committed to ourselves, and we take responsibility for our own actions and behaviours and act with integrity, while being truthful and honest to another. Often people are unable to commit because they are not being truthful to themselves and they do not feel a responsibility in relationships, yet they are dealing with someone else’s emotions. When making the conscious decision to bring someone else into our lives, we should be the best self that we can be.

When you lie to yourself, you consequently lie to others, and it is unfair to involve ourselves with someone else if we are operating at a level of dishonesty. The idea of commitment is a threat to the mind, because the person who cannot be present for themselves cannot be present to another. This is the disconnection between the heart and the mind that is so common in our society. When the mind attempts to control, the heart and life of an individual always suffers. This constraint imposed by the mind prevents the heart from ever connecting to the self and others in a meaningful way and unfulfillment prevails. Allowing the heart gate to open is the only way to experience true intimacy.

Avoiding Pain

Those who are ‘protecting themselves’ with a shield over the heart to avoid pain are actually creating more pain, because when the heart is confined it creates an inner turmoil, producing heat in the body. Without a healthy outlet, this heat can turn into such dysfunctions as mania, anxiety, hypersexuality and narcissism. Emotions become extremely confused as the person releases the pent-up energy, often creating an inner temper-tantrum, as emotions are recklessly projected onto others, resulting in pain, injury and further damage. People who cannot own their personal responsibility will engage in all sorts of escapist behaviors and will try to ‘cover it up’ with every dysfunction, often becoming very extreme, as attempts are made to back-pedal out of self-created predicaments. The heart overpowered by the mind becomes like a runaway horse, without direction or focus. “As the horse charges too fast and out of control, it will indiscriminately and unconsciously create discord as a repressed truth seethes and simmers beneath the surface. Passions become either faked or flash-in-the-pan and sex can become a recreational or competitive sport.” (Greer 2002), because a person with this dilemma is not capable of experiencing love on a deep level and rides off as soon as passion threatens, due to the fear of rejection. The underlying belief that intimacy is not ‘safe’ holds us back from true happiness, because as the mind is committed to avoiding pain, it avoids everything that resembles an intimate relationship. When this internal alarm system is activated and the person feels threatened, they run and the heart is again closed.

The problem with this approach is that although this shield on the heart may protect the self from future pain, the pain that was experienced in the past is trapped within and unresolved, so it is always projected onto the new relationship. Small problems become huge catastrophes because there are far more than two people involved, since the heart can be full of issues from past relationships. Quite often, people engage in this pattern of behavior until life forces them to make a change. A certain point is reached where nothing flows in or out until eventually the pain expands and the person experiences ‘a great heartbreak’ where they cannot withhold the pain or the joy any longer and there is an emotional breakdown. This personality will display outwardly emotions such as anger, hatred and violence, yet feel inwardly empty, frustrated and depressed. This leads to a listless, lifeless existence, an emptiness that cannot be filled until one turns around and faces the inner reality and learns to follow the heart. “The point will be reached where no longer can we feel this way.”5 First and foremost, “we have to be true to ourselves” (Marley Z 2003).

Relationships

As human beings we all naturally want love. Because of this essential need for oneness, we continue to search for it, unconsciously aware that it is we who are inhibiting the love from entering. A person with this constitution will continuously seek constant contact with others. They may feel compelled to ‘trust’ again with the notion that there must be a partner out there who is ‘safe.’ People will have the habit of running headfirst into a relationship, chasing illusions, not realizing that it is they who are unsafe to themselves and others. They often try to overcompensate for the previous disaster by throwing open the heart gate in a hasty manner until the same patterns of fear arise and the person again closes off. It becomes very confusing because they want it, but they won’t let themselves have it. Because the heart is no longer involved, the person becomes addicted to the ego’s high at the new stage of a relationship. But it’s like a pendulum swinging from overindulgence to instant detachment, as they run from relationship to relationship. Try as they may, this person can never reach a deeper level of intimacy and may lethargically drift from one relationship to another feeling completely and totally unfulfilled because they are in fact afraid of love. This pattern often results in inappropriate sexuality, unrequited love, and cheating and deception as a way of actually avoiding intimacy.

Often times, a person will subconsciously choose a relationship in which there is no chance for intimacy. For this type of person the true feelings are suppressed, repressed and compartmentalized, so in seeking another, they avoid doing their inner work, for it is much easier (so they think) to enact something that is fake vs. being in a relationship that is real. But the promiscuous behavior, diving in and out of meaningless relationships and engaging in an unhealthy lifestyle that may manifest as pornographic acts, alcohol, drugs, etc. leads to disastrous results. Being fake can only last so long until the truth finally surfaces, because not being with someone in the way of truth, is pretending to be something you are not, and neither you nor the other person can possibly get anything out of it because the relationship is based on lies. When this approach does not work, people may throw themselves into a world of materialism consumed by financial gain, status symbols, cars, houses, etc. But it will never be enough, because these are acts of the ego, whose job it is to keep us forever dissatisfied and stuck in a state of desire and longing.

Interestingly, people try to pretend they are something very important, yet deep down believe they are nothing. As one creates this egotistical fake image, it is in conflict with the real image and the person experiences a separation from the self. It may be common to hear the words, “I don’t know who you are” because if you don’t know yourself, no one else will know you either. By the laws of the universe there is no by-passing the essential steps of healing that are inherent in all human beings. The ego is the downfall, and one simply cannot get away with running around irresponsibly with a me, me attitude, and hurting others who step into their path. If we are energetically closed off, and the messages are not coming through, the universe does not give up, so it will throw another bigger lesson in our path, and destiny will ensure the lesson is finally learned. If we keep trying to bypass the lesson, life will beat the heck out of us until we learn it. Life follows the laws of karma and for every action there is a reaction.

The Cause

There are many reasons that people close themselves off from love. It is always due to some past unhealed emotional pain, where fear is the underlying root. When people feel they are ‘not enough’ within themselves, they often times fear that their partner will leave them and they sabotage the relationship. It’s an emotional and spiritual sickness, to be driven by insecurity and lose the connection to the flow of life. An immature spirit who has never grown up emotionally fails to transcend from childhood to adulthood, still stuck in old hurts and pains that occurred in childhood. With a sense of unworthiness, they constantly need to seek validation from others to feel that they are loved. When the love for the self is lacking, a false notion arises that through the dependence on another, we will feel better about ourselves. When broken souls try to fix themselves through another, this is an attempt to avoid being alone because that space forces the person to look at themselves. When an empty soul finds another soul to fill that void, it allows that person to avoid themselves for a little while, but it will consequently leave the other person feeling empty and drained, because the relationship is based on insecurity and the recipient only got part of them. With low self-esteem being the driving force, the other person may end up stripped of their own self-esteem. People with ‘hidden baggage’ hide the parts of themselves that they feel may be rejected by another, so they withhold information. If insecurity is at the root of one’s personality, the ego grows larger and larger to try to cover up for this.

Our family structures are often out of balance, and have not supplied the love that we needed to develop confidence and strength within to carry us through life in a truthful, open and loving way. This can be from emotional superficiality where the parents display a false sense of love to their family members. Many couples never learned how to have a healthy relationship with themselves and to each other and therefore emanate these same behavioral patterns to their children. Parents who are emotionally closed off, who have difficulties showing their love, will produce children who never feel good enough. The child will constantly seek approval and acceptance and will say and do things that are not following their own truth, in an effort to please the parents. Parents who tell their children they will love them if they make As on their report card or if they follow their father’s footsteps in business, are setting a bad example. This child learns that love is conditional and love will only be given if these conditions are met. In other family structures, the insecurity may stem from neglect where the child doesn’t get enough attention and love, or perhaps there was an absent parental figure. Many times, there is verbal and emotional abuse between parents and children, and sibling rivalries. Some children are eccentric, and don’t fit into the common mainstream of society, and are therefore ostracized because of their differences. It’s like being the black sheep (of insecurity) that is never accepted by the family. Other children were abandoned. The bottom line is, if a child doesn’t feel loved, appreciated and respected, these patterns of dysfunction and closing off are the natural reaction to feeling unsafe. Children by nature express the way they feel and are not afraid of love, that is, until they get hurt. Once they feel the pain, they learn how to close off. For a time, this defense mechanism worked because they had to close themselves off to the pain that the family was causing them. In essence, the experience that one had shapes the development of the emotional pattern, because children learn to defend themselves and adapt to familial circumstances. What we absorb is what was modelled to us. If we have enough love during childhood, we learn to carry ourselves strongly through life and allow the heart gate to open and close appropriately. We will have the confidence to make healthy decisions in relationships, and act with integrity. It is usually those with deep, long-term hurts from childhood who have real difficulties with intimacy, and what grows out of this is a need to have control over life and situations to protect oneself. This furthers allows for the development of the ego-self, and because the ego is fueled by insecurity, the God complex evolves where a person has a false perception of confidence and a lack of awareness for others in an effort to save face. From this, one is riding through life on fear, distrust and doubt.

Transcending Beyond

In order to overcome such emotional frailty and superficiality, we must be willing to look at the truth within ourselves squarely in the eye. There is a rite of passage that must be taken as the dark side of the mind and the ego is transcended. There is no ‘quick fix’ remedy. The only way to penetrate this level is to invest energy into the self. Many people don’t realize that the truth may be hard to face initially, but in the long term it will set us free. Owning up to wrong-doings and insecurities will guide us through the door to serenity. Lies keep us in bondage, and the truth sets us free. Deep karmic relationships are tricky because they force us to look in the mirror as our partner mirrors all of our remaining dysfunctions that still need to be worked out. However, this is not a real act of trickery. As Bob Marley (2002) says, “Love would never leave us alone, in the darkness there must come out to light.” Instead of running from the mirror, we need to face it with courage and humility and walk the path to righteousness. The catch is, if you resist the necessary transformation, life just becomes more difficult. “If you don’t deal with it, it keeps killing you a little by little” (Marley Z 2003). When allowing this deeper pain to come to the surface, we will feel vulnerable and the ego feels terrified as the fears are being exposed, but this is the space where growth occurs. Without truth, the ego wins and the trickster within tricks itself with its own black magic. This is the true opening to the light, and it often occurs when a partner pushes at that door. The terror exists because people get used to living in a dark state of consciousness. Change suddenly feels threatening as the ego tries to cling onto old worn-out patterns of behaviour. Two souls meet because they both have to make changes. It’s the nature of the interaction. If we don’t progress, we regress. We do have choices but they are within the parameters of the universal plan. We can temporarily box up our emotions, yet the box eventually falls apart. These soul-mate experiences are delivered to us to force people to open up, to balance the scales and heal from past traumas. By working out our karma, and facing the inner darkness, we transcend to higher levels of consciousness. Once we come to realize this is in our best interest and that we cannot provide for someone else a state or place of being that we are not in ourselves, we can dive in courageously. We cannot give what we are not. Our gift to each other is our best self, not our broken self. Once we have the awareness of the problem we can begin the process of healing the emotional mind, alter the behaviours which are no longer working, and stop suffering. We can start being true to ourselves and stop creating an ‘image’ to please others, and realize that we all have imperfections and it is okay to be humble and stand proud in our own humility.

A true partnership occurs when both people respect each other, are supportive of each other, speak openly and honestly and allow love to flow freely. Love first stems from within and as we gain responsibility for ourselves and our own actions, we can then provide warmth and generosity to another. Love then has no resistance. When we respect ourselves, we tell the truth and communicate clearly and effectively. “Communication through respect and love is the whole key to keeping the love alive and never getting bored in a relationship. If you treat you partner with love and respect, you actually benefit greatly” (Ruiz 1999). As honesty grows in ourselves, we will expect the same of others, because we become more confident in our own truth. Integrity is then at the root of the relationship, and there is no worry because lies do not exist on any level. Why would we want it any other way? Once we accept ourselves and love ourselves based on our truth, we are capable of letting love in and loving another. Sexual acts then transform and become a spiritual union of two balanced souls who share an expression of heavenly beauty. Oneness is telling the truth to yourself about yourself. The universe doesn’t always deliver what we want, it delivers what we need to learn a lesson from. But, the harder the lesson and the more one transcends, the better the reward. As it has been said, “Life is the school and Love is the Lesson.”

Bibliography and Further Reading

1.    Greer, Mary K. The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals. Llewellyn Publications. St. Paul, MN. ISBN 1-56718-285-2. 2002.
2.    Jarret, Lonny S. Nourishing Destiny. Spirit Path Press. Stockbridge, MA. ISBN 0-9669916-0-5. 2004.
3.    Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth. Death Is Of Vital Importance. Station Hill Press, Inc. Tarrytown, NY. ISBN 0-88268-186-9. 1995.
4.    Lionnet, Annie. The Tarot Directory. Chartwell Books, Inc. Edison, NJ. ISBN 0-7858-1457-4. 2002.
5.    Marley, Ziggy. Dragonfly Album. .True To Myself’. RCA Victor Group. Beverly Hills, CA. 2003
6.    Marley, Bob. Legend Album. ‘Could You Be Loved.’ Island Records. New York, NY. 2002
7.    Padma, Deva. Osho Zen Tarot. St. Martin’s Press. New York, NY. ISBN 0-312-11733-7. 1994.
8.    Padma, Deva. Tao Oracle. St. Martin’s Press. New York, NY. ISBN 0-312-26998-6. 2002.
9.    Ruiz, Don Miguel. The Mastery of Love. Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc. San Rafael, CA. ISBN I-878424-42-4. 1999.

Dedicated To:

Adam P Kushner, with love.

Inspired By:

Adam P Kushner, Adyashanti, Steve Gunn, Dr A, Clarissa Guggenheim, Ziggy and Bob Marley, Tina Maria, and my Dad (my guru).