When you are hurt by someone you’ve loved, do you guard your heart to keep yourself from getting hurt again? Although it’s a natural response to safeguard your heart, ultimately it blocks the flow of love in both directions. It also puts a burden on your ability to love yourself. Fear then has full rein to conjure up a plethora of stories to support you in keeping your heart caged.
What if you were to take the approach that Loving Fully prevents you from getting hurt? What if you loved for the aesthetics of feeling what it’s like to love at your full capacity? That your heart is big enough and strong enough to love in this most profound, unconditional way.
What if you believed that you could never get hurt by loving this much?
This type of love has the power and potential to wipe out fear. In order to love at this level, there has to be a distinction between unconditionally loving the whole of someone and whether or not we find their response, behavior, or treatment of us acceptable.
What I have learned in my deepening heart journey is that I don’t need the other to love or like me in order for me to love and like them. It’s grand when it works out that way, but not a necessity.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been hurt plenty. The times I’ve spent mending a broken heart are too numerous to mention. But I’m a pretty good seamstress in that area as a result.
In coming home to myself in the purest of self-love, I realize that by fully loving myself without fear, I’m able to do that for another. Even if the other doesn’t love me back or chooses not to stay in my life, my ability to love fully without fear is not dependant on his or her response.
There’s a sweet simplicity in loving at this level. We get to experience our capacity for loving in a way that emulates Divine Love. Fully loving out loud with everything inside our heart ignites the law of circulation in a most delicious way. The abundance of love we receive mirrors our capacity to give because in giving to others of our sacred heart, we are giving to ourselves.
It’s the most beautiful love story when our heart sings because it wants to sing.
This doesn’t mean the relationships in our lives are going to turn out the way we want. But our loving isn’t dependant on that. Yes, it hurts when the one we love leaves. However, the hurt isn’t because we loved. It’s because we have an unmet expectation.
By delineating the difference between loving someone and having an expectation, we can recognize the disappointment for what it is. Realizing our desired outcome isn’t going to happen, we are now at choice to change direction and create a new destination for ourselves in relationship with the One. But we don’t have to stop loving! I think the pain is far too great to stop loving because we’re disappointed.
I love because I love how it feels to love.
I get hurt because my heart is wide open. I get disappointed because my heart is wide open. I get healed because my heart is wide open. And I love again in a richer, deeper, fuller expression of myself because of the experience.
I invite you to allow your heart its full capacity to love – yourself first then others. Let go of need for reciprocation of any kind in order for you to love. Set your boundaries for what is and what is not acceptable behavior, then open and relish the journey of Loving Fully Without Fear
photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aarmono/393642616/sizes/z/
RSS
