I had a couple of conversations today about love. Whether We get a return of love and why love is painful. All about the absence of love. And how much that can hurt a human heart.
If fact, how it’s said we might die for or of love. So love, that most inspiring and precious of feelings, is also toxic in some way. Later in the afternoon I was thinking about those conversations. I’m always one to bounce difficult questions to my Guides. So we have had many chats about the purpose and nature of love. I’ve written about some of them before. But this little thought train refused to go away. In fact I kept hearing the lyrics from an Elvis song. “ Return to sender, address unknown. No such number, no such zone. We had a quarrel, a lover’s spat, I write I’m sorry but my letter keeps coming back.” How many times have I rejected love? Or had my love rejected?
Not only romantic love either. Family love. Friendship love. All sorts of situations I’ve found myself in when I’ve wanted to make a connection to another’s human being. And all sorts of situations where what I did was return the opposite of love to the person or people involved. Putting myself through pain. Ignoring that others might be feeling pain too. All my little acts that showed I actually didn’t love the person who was busy loving me. Like a constant trade. Loving someone who didn’t love me. Demanding from but not loving the people who loved me. A swirling circle of energy spiralling lower and lower. Until I was in a place where there seemed to be no love left at all. Least of all for myself.
Today I asked my Guides why it was so easy to discover the absence of love and to sink into the pain of love not returned. Why was that a part of my life?
As always they approached this in a very loving way. They have told me many times that this experience of human life is so that the Spirit can learn about the absence of love. In the Afterlife unconditional love is the guiding force holding the whole of the community together. To experience anything else the Spirit has to take a trip to a place where love is conditional. That’s our human reality right now. Being here actually helps my Spirit to keep choosing unconditional love in the Spirit World. But here the choice is different. I can experience love or it’s absence. It’s up to my free will to decide what I have. And to sort out how much or how little pain I feel.
That’s because I can look at love as something to give and receive in equal measure amongst all the people I connect to. Or I can view love as something that is in limited supply so it has to be earned, collected, hoarded and returned. If others don’t return the love I can shut down giving or getting love. I can stop loving myself. And that can become painful. But my Guides are keen to point out the fatal flaw I sometimes trip up over. I can’t give love to anyone unless I know how to give it to myself. Because, they say, it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. And I have to consider all those times I’ve thrown the opportunity for love away. Fearing to get hurt. Thinking I’m stopping myself from feeling pain.
They keep reminding me to learn to love myself. All that I am. Not to return to the pain of the past. But to keep an open heart so any love energy passing through will fill me up too.
That can feel difficult. I know that this tricky energy called love takes many forms. So I have to love the child and teenager still within me as much as the adult me tryping these words. I have to love the irritating me who always likes to be right. And the me who gets in a flap when a deadline is looming. Or the me who wants to shout at the TV when men are telling me how it feels to be a woman or to experience life as a woman. The ignorant, intolerant, angry, judgemental me who shouts out from a corner of my mind that she hasn’t really gone away. Until I can embrace all of myself, surround myself in unconditional love then I’m not ready for the bigger challenge.
The greatest test of love. Loving all those people who don’t return my love. And all the people who want me to be something I’m not. Plus those who want me to give endlessly as a sign of my love for them but who resist giving anything back to me. All the people who returned to sender and let a quarrel end the relationship. Those who judged me and decided not to find any love for me. And those who knew I loved them but decided not to love back. They may all have had their reasons. I have to look carefully at any pain I might feel from the lack of their love. The pain I feel is showing me the gap in my loving of me. The bit of me I’m not embracing and loving enough.
A return of love is a boost. I also see that the absence of love is a gift to show me where I have to love me more. Because that will help me to send loving, positive energy to those who don’t love themselves enough to share the love we can all have. My Guides tell me that when we have all learned how to return love to ourselves and others in any circumstances we will have made a heaven here on Earth.
Day 706 of my blogging challenge