Showing posts with label control. Show all posts
Showing posts with label control. Show all posts

loving without fear

Having fear for someone you love is a block to truly loving them.  Being afraid for the health, safety, well being or choices that another person is making leads to a response based not in their need but in yours.  Any action you take to 'help' them is really an unconscious attempt to manage your own fear by directing, managing or controlling them in a way that lessens your own conflict.  Looked at honestly it can be seen that this is not really about helping the other person at all but is really just a way of helping yourself.  

If you find a person resists your attempts to assist them ask yourself honestly what you are really trying to do.  Focusing on your own fear only reinforces theirs.  Focusing on trust and peace within yourself reinforces the possibility of them making the same choice for themselves.  What we believe is missing in any situation is always what we are not giving.  Love and fear cannot coexist in your mind.  If you're choosing one then you are rejecting the other. If they are afraid then they have already rejected love and so love is clearly what is needed.

Being willing to release fear, to release your own judgment about what they need or how they should be, frees your mind to simply love and be present. Your mind is freed to actually see THEM instead of only seeing your own need.  From this space, without the blinders of your own fear, it will be clear what they need from you in order to move towards healing.  Sometimes this need takes the form of specific action and any action you take will be TRULY loving, being an extension of the loving space you have already chosen for yourself.  And sometimes they may just simply need a loving, non-judgmental presence beside them. In truth all that someone needs in order to move towards healing themselves is to be given an already healed perception of what they are, to be shown the reflection of the truth they are still unable to see in themselves.  And in the process you will discover that it is really yourself that you are healing and learning to love without fear.

authentic self-love

Any happiness gained from being dependent on anything outside of yourself (a person, a situation, a thing) MUST be underpinned with fear, the fear of losing it or it changing or being taken from you. If you believe that something outside you makes you happy then you must also believe that losing it will make you miserable. This is not TRUE peace of mind, but a temporary, illusionary happiness where your underlying fear of loss, lack or loneliness is momentarily covered over by your focus on the external object. This focus is thus accompanied by the need to constantly control and possess the object, to ensure that it is not lost, to avoid the experience of loss, separation and rejection. This is the root of all jealousy and insecurity. The belief that without the 'other' the self alone is invalid. This is a relationship based in fear, not love. In need, not fullness.

This is why most relationships end in conflict. People don't like being controlled. No-one wants to be responsible for someone else's happiness. It's a HUGE and impossible burden to place on someone else and is an abdication of your own power of self-determination. It's a betrayal and a rejection of the intrinsic validity of the self. 

Your unwillingness to love yourself expresses your profound belief that you are not worthy of love. Even if someone else loves you unconditionally if you don't love yourself you cannot believe they love you because there's no space within you to receive that kind of love, you don't believe it's possible. And so you will seek for and find justifications for feeling unloved, for them not meeting your needs as you have set them up (nobody can 'check' all of our boxes all of the time), proof that they do not love you or love you enough. Think about what you are 'giving' in this relationship. You do not value yourself enough to truly love yourself unconditionally and so seek another outside yourself of 'greater' value to substitute or make up for for the apparent lack you see within. Is it really a fair exchange to give something you value so little (yourself) to gain something you value so much (the other)? In this situation you do not even value the other unconditionally but only for what you can take from them, for the perceived value they add to your own diminished self-concept. This is why so many relationships break down, you were never really loving, giving to each other but simply trying to 'get' from each other. What seemed like love quickly fades into hate once one stops upholding his end of the bargain. Is it really loving someone to enter into such an unbalanced, unfair bargain and aren't they really also doing the same thing to you? Are either of you truly giving anything then at all? 

To truly give is to know that that which you depend upon cannot be lost. In this world the only thing that cannot be lost or taken from you is your own love for yourself, your acceptance of your own worth. This is the ONLY foundation upon which a lasting joy and peace of mind can be built. Everything external is temporary, transitory. That's the nature of this world. People come and go, either by choice or simply the process of life. Without an inner core of self love you are buffeted about, up or down depending on where the fickle currents of life lead, falling from one love bargain to the next, seeking but never finding the permanence you crave.

When you are truly willing to love yourself you are not seeking another to GIVE you love because you've already filled yourself with self-love and so feel no lack, and so you are free to simply unconditionally SHARE that love with another (with everyone) without the need to control, possess or make demands of them. What need is there to 'take' from another when you have already met your ONLY true need yourself? This is TRULY loving someone. This is loving yourself. Do not feel that it is wrong to enter into relationships based in fear, we all do at the beginning because we do not see that we are afraid, we don't see ourselves clearly. It's not wrong, but understand that it's also not what you really want. Looking with honest, open eyes at their relationships and the self-concept they uphold, who would choose a pale imitation of love when the infinite, lasting ocean of authentic self-love awaits only their choice?