The world puts a lot of emphasis on self and body-image. While there is a practical womanly and masculine wisdom in this, it does not need to be overly emphasized. Making an intention to attract others who love us for our depth and inner beauty is a healthy motivation, otherwise, our concern for self-image is a strategy to attract what we already possess inside and can be missing the point. We want to be seen as attractive until they see us for our depth when looks are no longer important. Be cautious, give it a little time, discern, and get to know someone on the soul level. Love requires time, patience, having a positive outlook, and knowing it’s worth it not to rush it.
An example of applying a strategy instead of creating true connection is selling ourselves by trying to impress someone with our idealized image of ourselves, instead of expressing our honest feelings. But we are selling ourselves short. We may cut off our vulnerabilities, which makes us the most lovable, to impress others with our knowledge, our looks, or our judgments and evaluations, which are conditional forms of love. These are strategies to protect ourselves from getting hurt, blocking us from the love we most want.
There is another way to approach life and love—through connection, ultimately what all humans want and most need. Ask yourself, do I want to judge (or be judged), or do I want to connect?
There is a way we go about fulfilling our needs—Strategies and Options or Going Towards Connection. Most of us are constantly in strategy mode. We are driven by our unconscious motivations. Our closest relations, especially our love objects, can sense that in us, or are consumed in their own strategizing, passing us by like two ships in the night. The motivation to connect rather than to strategize meeting our needs is met in the present, where the true gift is found.
Instead of “doing” and strategizing, let’s focus on Being. Being takes place in self-nurturing, first. Being in a state of knowing, knowing our inherent worth, inner beauty, attractiveness. From this place we are discerning what’s right for us, our thoughts are being adjusted to align with our higher good, shifting us for the better, making friends in a fun way, continually taking care of ourselves, and magnetically attracting from our center, instead of pushing against the stream. Being is like flowing and enjoying the natural unfolding process of developing a real relationship based on real love. Desperation, self-doubt, and fear of hurt melt away as we enjoy the flow and process and have fun. Love is fun.
Rejecting someone before they reject you is a defense against hurt, a form of self-preservation, and a way of sabotaging ourselves. We reject to protect and then we project. We end up hiding away and having conversations with our mothers and our fathers alone. That occurs when Love is perceived with the mind, and there is the stuck-ness because love is not rational or logical. Love perceived with the heart is always safe, and even if it does hurt, it is still love in that it is a spacious opening to healing what hurts.
In healing a relationship, it takes a lot of discipline to not speak and let the other person come to their own realizations. When speaking to someone we are close to, we can sometimes be misunderstood. Talking about the elephant in the room between us can make us retreat from each other internally, and we may hear them through the lens of rejection, or translate it to mean that my partner does not feel that I am good enough. All disagreements are created by the fear of losing each other. Most of us have had times when we’ve felt truly alone, and we cope with loneliness by retreating into ourselves because that is how we have learned to cope with not being loved the way we’ve needed to be. We numb ourselves from receiving love and don’t trust it. It feels like it is not safe, not deserved, will entail control and manipulation, or will eventually go away one day. Children of divorce go through this trauma in their intimate relationships especially.
We all truly want understanding, to be conscious, so we may create connection instead of judgment and alienation. Understanding brings peace. If we approach relationships with the idea to have fun and grow and learn how to be in relationship, we will remain open, and the willingness the two will have to love will remain intact, bonding you into a greater and greater level of engagement.
Empathy is Poetry 