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articles:
Happy Valentine's Day
Happy Valentines Day! Here in the month of love let's take look at love. We spend a large part of our lives focused on love. Songs are sung about it, movies played about it, plays acted about it. Dreams are dreamt about it, fantasies indulged in and all kinds of illusions spun about it. Of course there is the other side of love too - lies are spoken for it, contracts are made for it, lives are compromised for it. It takes a huge part of our lives and is it truly love?
If not, what is love? Firstly I wish there were another word I could use which didn't carry all the connotations of generations, the 'Hallmark' version of love. But l love is the only word I have in this contracted dimension so love is the word I shall use.
We carry love within us; our essential nascent state is love. We do not have to go anywhere, do anything or be with anyone to get love; to experience love. We already are love. love is who we are. When we forget, when the everyday stuff that rules our lives gets in the way is when we don't experience love.
If our essence is love how come so many people feel unloved or unlovable? Why is it that to some love seems such an unobtainable thing? Some expect others to give them love and only experience love when they do. Other create expectations of love and feel cheated and rejected when they don't materialise. On the other hand some feel trapped when someone says 'I love you' and put a whole load of non-spoken, non-written expectations and 'commitment' on this one sentence.
If some one truly expresses their heart without conditions and says, "I love you" what they are saying is I am connected to you and feel one with you. This may not be a conscious expression, the words come because something inside has been touched and in this world of words 'I love you' is the only way we know to express this connection.
The true love we can feel for each other can only be unconditional. By this I mean that it can have no caveats attached to it. No 'I love you if's….', just - 'I love you', period. I realise a few years ago that I was acting out a huge 'I love you if.." all the while thinking I was being incredibly unconditional. Ah the trickery of the ego! My version of unconditional love was "I love and you can do anything you want as long as you never leave me". This of course is the largest condition of all! It is also an insidious version of conditional love in that it is unspoken and thus although it rules all decisions and makes the relationship very dependent it is never seen for what it is. Once this is seen for what it is it helps set the scene for real unconditional love to flourish. The love of the soul saying, 'I see you, I am you and whatever you do in your life is ok'. 'If you choose to live your life with me that's great. If you choose to do something that challenges me I will deal with this and not try to change you. I will take responsibly both for my life and love in my life. I will share this experience of love with you.
I was watching a concert given by Barbra Streisand a while ago and she was talking about her past and singing her favourite songs. At one point she said that the only problem of becoming more aware of relationships and how real love works is that she can't honestly sing all those co-dependency songs any more!
Of course this type of love challenges many people as our society does not teach us this kind of love. If you live this type of love none of the 'payment' systems of our cultural system will work - you cannot tie needs to it. You cannot use love to be the rescuer; you cannot be the victim of love; you cannot be the prostitute for love, by this I mean that you cannot stay in a relationship because of financial security. Nor can you be the businessman/woman for love, negotiating deals of how love is equal for both- I'll give you this if you'll give me that. None of these old ways of being will work anymore.
True unconditional love has no rules, no contracts, no agreements and no payoffs. True unconditional love is totally free; it costs nothing to give and nothing to receive. It is limited to no one. You can love as many people as you want; you can feel that deep heart connection with one or a hundred people. The choice is yours.
This, of course, brings up the question of fidelity and jealousy. So often we are brought up to think that we can only love one person, that one special person, that soul mate. If we love more than one we are unfaithful and it threatens our primary relationship. I believe these are two completely different and separate situations.
I love my partner, deeply and as unconditional as I can from moment to moment. That doesn't mean that she doesn't do things that drive me nuts as much as I know that I do things that drive her nuts too. I just love to the best of my ability. I also love many many other people. Friends who I have known for years, people I meet for the first time and love instantly, those who I have known for lifetimes. I choose only one as my partner. I choose to give exclusivity - not of my love - but of my person, my focus, my commitment, my support, my desire to share of myself at a deep level, one to one. This is a constantly renewing choice. I cannot say I promise to be with you for the rest of my life but I can and do say that at this moment in time I would like to be with you for the rest of my life.
By making this level of commitment and constantly keep renewing that commitment then the love between two people is always fresh, new and never taken for granted. This love also demands very clear honest communication. It means that you cannot just say blithely 'I love you' when actually something else is going on. It means that sometimes you are going to say something that may not be what the other person wants to hear, it means that you may be in a space that you cannot truly say you feel that love right now. In these times know one thing - that love is always always present, it is just that right now something is shielding that love from you so you cannot see or feel it. Find the shield and deal with it and love will flow through your life again.
Life moves and changes and we can only be absolute about the present moment. This is not a way of non-commitment but a way of truthful commitment. We commit to be with someone in each renewing moment. We commit to communicate clearly our state of being in each moment. We commit to stay open and in the space of love to the best of our ability and by doing so allow them to be who they are. We can't give love; we can only be in our love and allow them a space to be in their love. In this way we are in love.
So, on this great day of love open your heart and be the love in the world. Take a moment to express the love that you are with whoever you choose. It might be with that one special person in your life, or with all those that touch the love within you. Speak your love and feel how love grows in you. We are all love, all connected by love - let it flow through you out into the world.
With much love
Jessica
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