How To Love Like You Will Never Be Hurt

How To Love Like You Will Never Get Hurt
20 Jun 2003
Hi!

Well, Christmas sped by and, in the blink of an eye, the grocery store has been converted from a wonderland of red and green to the sweet combination of red and pink. Valentine's Day is dawning and we will soon be inundated with commercial messages of undying eternal love.

Personally, I hate Valentines Day. It is one of those female holidays where what women want and men deliver is quite different. I have watched many women bite the dust on Valentine's Day, a 24-hour reminder that we haven't been loved the way we think we want to be loved.

I am a deeply sentimental fool. I hate that our expression of love for each other is limited to one day a year. I would like every day to be Valentine's Day. Why wait for a special day to live out love? Love is a frequency of energy that is available for us to dip into at each and every moment, if we choose.


LOVE IS A VERB
Even though according to the dictionary "love" can be used as a noun, I believe that love is a verb. Certainly love is a feeling. But living love requires action, courage, commitment and letting go of attachment.

We all struggle to love unconditionally. Unconditional love requires that we love like we are never going to get hurt. Whether we are parents, friends, or romantic partners, life is an ongoing lesson of learning how to love without attachment to the outcome.

Being a parent, for example, offers us a great opportunity to experience unconditional love. The best parents I know love their children for who they are. Parenting with unconditional love requires the strength to set clear limits and boundaries, while still accepting children for who they are and acting as if they are capable of living their own lives.

Parenting with unconditional love also requires that we trust that our children can deal with their emotions and the truth. And that our children will deal with difficult lessons that we can't always save them from. We can only offer love and sanctuary. Love isn't about rescuing. It is about trusting that a person can handle what has been thrown their way.

When it comes to friendship and romantic partnership, love must become deeply selfish. Real love is not sacrifice. Whenever you think you are sacrificing yourself to "love", you are actually expressing the expectation that what you really deserve and desire from love won't find you. How many of us compromise in the name of love? How many of us accept less than what we desire because we feel that we don't deserve or can't have all that we want.

I am a champion for love. I believe that we can have love in the form that we want if we allow for space for love to find us. When we fill our lives with compromise in the name of "love", we don't leave a space for true love.


THE COURAGE TO LOVE
In friendships and romance, how many of us are in relationships that are less than fulfilling? How many of us have the courage to ask for what we want from our partners? How many of us have accepted a level of love that hurts us or forces us to live out our lives based on someone else's expectations? How many of us hold on to this distorted love because of society's rules or out of guilt?

Great acts of love require great acts of courage. It requires vulnerability, honesty and receiving.

How many of us hide from real love because we don't believe that we deserve it? Love can be delivered to us magically and unexpectedly, wrapped in beautiful paper with a lovely bow. I have watched real love slip away so many times because the recipient of this gift has been afraid to open it because the timing is "wrong" or the circumstances don't allow for it.


LOVING YOURSELF FIRST
When we feel hurt by what we think is "love", it is because we are looking to others to validate our own self worth. When we feel unworthy of love, it is difficult for others to love us the way we think we should be loved. And when we hang on to unsatisfying love just because we feel a desperate need to be loved, we leave ourselves open to heartbreak and disappointment. How can others make us feel loved when we don't love ourselves first?

The greatest act of love is to love ourselves first. It is in loving ourselves unconditionally that we set a standard for how we want to be loved by others. Do you love yourself enough to demand the love you deserve from friends and partners? Do you love yourself enough to receive the love you deserve?

Now, don't get me wrong here. I know this "loving yourself" thing presents a challenge for most of us. During our lives we have internalized many beliefs and patterns of self-sacrifice that discourage unconditional love from finding us.

I can attest to the power of these beliefs. Out of a fear of getting hurt, I used to see myself as the Stone Queen living in the Castle of Anti-Love. If anyone tried to love me, they had to swim across a moat filled with monsters (no drawbridge here), and then they had to bust through the portcullis while my guards poured boiling oil on them. Then, if they actually made it that far, my pursuer would then have to run down an alley filled with flying arrows to make it to the tower where they would find me, the Stone Queen, glaring at them with scorn. Their next challenge would then be figuring out how to bring the Stone Queen back to life. Have you ever locked yourself away from love like this? Many people do.

Needless to say, when people failed to enter my Anti-Love castle I saw that failure as proof, once again, that I was fundamentally unlovable. I wonder sometimes how many people gave up trying to enter my castle. How many times did I turn away real love while I sat feeling so sorry for myself? Have you ever done this in your life? Is there ANYONE on this planet who hasn't done this at one time or another?

I am still learning how to love. Everyday I have to confront the Stone Queen in the mirror and remind her that WHEN SHE LOVES HERSELF she becomes the Queen of Hearts. When the Queen of Hearts flashes her beautiful smile to me in the mirror, I know that I am love and all that I deserve will find me, if I choose to let it in.


LIVING YOUR TRUTH
Real love demands Truth and Integrity. In order to live love we have to live in truth. Many times, for example, we feel that we love people in our lives, but we relate to them in ways that do not serve the highest good for either person in the relationship. To really love means not only to feel the love, but also to act in the best interests of ourselves and those persons involved. In a parenting relationship, a romantic relationship, or a friendship, there are ways of relating that honor each individual's needs and ways of relating that are not correct for those involved. Again, understand that I am not talking about sacrifice here, but truth.

If you love someone, but you feel compromised in the way you are relating to that person, do you have the courage to release him or her from the relationship? Even if it "hurts" that person in the short term?

A courageous friend of mine asked me one day if I could look at the people in my life with the Eyes of Love. She pointed out to me that if we can't see our children, our partners and our friends through the Eyes of Love we may continue to hold on to them or to our current way of relating to them, but we will simultaneously be blocking Real Love from finding them. How cruel is that?

Are you holding love hostage by living out a love that is a lie? When we pretend to love someone in a way that doesn't feel correct to us we are not honoring our truth, and probably we are not honoring the other person's truth either. Furthermore, by holding love hostage we may be keeping more appropriate forms of love from finding our partners, friends, or children. In many cases we fail to express our truth in relationships because of guilt, fear of the judgement of others or because of our fear that we will hurt someone. If you are holding on to a particular way of relating to someone you love because you don't want to hurt them, what are you holding them back from experiencing?

Can you look at your partners and friends with the Eyes of Love? If your relationship with them is not serving your highest good or their highest good, can you set them free to find Real Love? Setting someone free is sometimes the greatest act of courage and love, even if the other person doesn't see it that way in the present moment. Sometimes great acts of love can be the catalyst for profound personal growth. In time, your partner may even thank you, because what you are really doing when you let go of an incorrect way of relating to someone is this: you are living your truth and you are allowing the other person to live their truth. You are living love.


LETTING GO OF ATTACHMENT TO THE OUTCOME
Lastly, Real Love requires letting go. When you really love, you love without knowing how the story will end. It is about loving for the sake of loving. Listen, I know how hard this is! I can't even read a mystery novel without reading the last page first. I don't like entering into things when I don't know how they are going to turn out. Don't you always want to know that the story will have a "happy" ending?

But, in the name of love, I am learning to let go. When I look at my children, I realize that no matter how they "turn out," I will always love them. This is the closest I have come to experiencing unconditional love at this point in my life.

When I get lost in wanting a specific outcome from a relationship, I think about God. Does God stop loving us when we goof up? God doesn't care if we are artists, if we don't go to college, or if leave our suburban lives to become psychics in Sedona. He doesn't even stop loving us if we hurt others. The love of the Divine is unconditional.

If we can accept that we are a holographic representation of the Divine, then I have to believe that can we learn to love without attachment. Perhaps this is the greatest spiritual challenge of being incarnated.

So, as Valentine's Day approaches, take the chance to love like you will never get hurt. Love without conditions and attachments. Love yourself first. Have the courage to take loving action.

Live Love!

Love to you!

Karen
(The Queen of Hearts)

http://www.joyfulmission.com/articles/
article/1975190/26308.htm