Love
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
~Rumi
Last week at a fundraiser I gave a talk on love, the theme was Valentine’s Day and the topic was romantic love – how to sustain it, nurture it and keep it whole. One of the critical pieces of this love is to love ourselves, to value and respect ourselves because as you’ve heard me say before (not my original thought), we teach others to love us by the way we love ourselves.
Fear is the primary barrier to love, it builds defenses which are designed to protect us, yet they leave us isolated and alienated from others as well as from self. Often our defenses kick in to protect us from something which may be too powerful for us to handle, there may be psychic material there which is too intense to process or to feel. These defenses keep us removed from our feelings and keep us in our heads – perpetuating that distance and separation of body, mind and spirit.
Think about ways that you distance yourself from others, do you intellectualize, project negativity or criticism, have such high standards that no one can meet them, experience severe jealousy, are you angry? Do you keep yourself so busy both physically and mentally there is no room for anything else, live in the drama or crisis du jour??
Examine ways in which you put up walls today, walls between you and others which also impact your ability to love yourself – what keeps you at a distance? Observe, discuss, challenge and take them down one brick at a time. Get professional help, confide in a loved one you trust and ask for support in this – maybe, just maybe, you won’t feel so alone.
