Be the love

Every person we meet we greet with love or fear. When I look at you, I confirm your deepest guilt and shame, or I see you as innocent and free. Any gesture of love that I make is the essence of my vocation. My life work is to love, and so is yours. Only the forms of our work are different.

Paul Ferrini

Easier said that done when fear and disappointment get their hooks into us. I listened to a great talk by Marianne Williamson on You Tube in bed last night on relationships and the Course in Miracles. I truly love this stuff as what she says is it our relationship to love or God or our healed inner self that should be our true foundation in life and only from that place of unconditional acceptance can we find, embrace, express and accept love into our lives.

The simple truth is this : love often vaporises the minute we try to control outcomes or are invested in selfish purposes. Not that is selfish to long for love, acceptance and approval from others but adults accept these are not givens in life, we just cannot expect to get them from everyone and there are times we have to stand alone and validate ourselves while recognising the inherent right of others to act as they do, even if that clashes with what we don’t want.

Listening to the talk last night I did a thorough review of a few past relationships (not just romantic ones) and began to see where I was at fault in the demands made, or the times I longed for connections which could not come simply because others had certain things going on. But then was I at ‘fault’ really or was this all coming out of a deep unhealed childhood wound that was not just mine? The Course in Miracles says we are all innocent (even if unconscious) and we do the best at that time but sometimes we project our loss or sense of guilt or the failures of our parents onto others, making them responsible, expecting them to heal it or fill it up when that is not their job. Others may recognise and be kind to us for sure and help us to grow in love but we have to be that love if we want to find love and express love.

It made me so sad that on the last encounter of seeing my friend who unexpectedly passed away a few short months later I was over come with a huge anger she had not fulfilled promises she made to contact me when returning to my home town. I remember crying all the way home after I had those feelings and sensing she was a long way off from me, gone to another world (did my inner self sense somewhere deep inside she was preparing to die?) I don’t know I only remember being horrified at the level of rage I had silently felt and projected. It was only about 6 weeks later the call came that she was terminally ill and I was so sad, but it was a wake up call in may ways to my own lovelessness that came out of a deep wound.

In the talk Marianne reminds us that each and every contact with have with a single human being is an opportunity to practice love or fear, it is what she calls “an assignment”. She reminds us that we all carry wounds and fears and blind spots, that isn’t the problem, the problems come when they drive our reactions over and over and over and limit us in our capacity to love ourselves and others where we are at, even in our woundedness.

According the ACIM The purpose of a holy relationship is one in which we come together to trigger each others wounds in order to grow in love. I guess this ties in with the concept of the Twin Flame journey in that when we look for that ‘special’ someone what we often get is a whole lot of triggers and inner work which are opportunities to see just how truly ‘loving’ we are, both of ourselves and others. This does not mean that we stick around to be abused or hurt by someone acting out of their wounds but it does involve seeing where that acting out is coming from and then tending to the wounds that generate it.

Maybe I am ready for this right approach right now as the events of the past week have brought to light my own trust issues and also how often I get stuck in or caught up in others ‘dramas’ or stuff thinking its my responsibility when really its a needy part of myself driving it that needs attention, not that the need is wrong, per se, but its intensity often comes from the wounded inner child part of me that longs for love but acts in fear so often. Acting out on our healing journey is all a part of life but as adults we have responsibilities to that needy self, to recognise and love and contain it. Also to know when it is triggered in others and react not from guilt, blame and shame but from love.

I will provide the link to the talk below for anyone who is interested. I felt critical incidents and insights from past relationships pass through me last night in bed while listening to this and then I fell into a peaceful sleep which lasted 6 hours. I really needed that after the three difficult nights I had last week dealing with the highly confusing Scott/scammer issue. Its not an accident that transiting Mercury in Scorpio hit my natal Neptune in the third house on Thursday, at the moment Venus in Scorpio is a behind it by a few degrees, so intense issues around abandonment, fear and humiliation were bound to come up.

I just got back from collecting my sister from hospital after her three months stay. I sat with the pain of past things my inner child felt and struggled with not being seen knowing my sister is in her own space. We did talk about how difficult it is to grieve without loving support. At some level we manage to touch on things but at times its me working so so hard to make sense of it. As I sat there tuning deep within I realised how much I had to struggle as a child to be noticed in my family, replaying that pain and feeling that wound colour so many other relationships, trapped almost in a starving inner child. I also realised how much that wound often drives me now in so many of my behaviours. Its time to give love to myself and bring back demands within. Also to recognise who is more engaged with the waking up authentic part of myself I sense within lately.