How You’ve Lost Touch with Self-Love
This is a chapter from my forthcoming book that I am particularly fond of.
It’s called Love Sweet Love and it describes the gradual conditioning away from your natural state as love towards developing an ego-personality that’s based on fear and survival.
It also goes into how this later affects your choice of a romantic partner and how you can stay true to your core no matter what.
Love Sweet Love
To understand the concept of love in the human experience, we have to go back to the moment of your birth. Imagine yourself safe and warm in a fluffy and welcoming environment, where your every need is tended to. You’re never cold, never hungry, and never in need for anything that is not available you. Love, safety, and happiness are given.
Your body feels pleasant and everything you do, you do for the joy of it. See yourself floating around in this state of happiness for a long time as your tiny body is changing. You’re growing organs, limbs, hair and skin. Everything is happening at a comfortable pace, so you can feel held and safe. Love is what’s driving this process.
At some point, you’re outgrowing your reality, and your space is becoming too narrow. You have to move. Your loving home starts to push you out into the world. Suddenly you’re moving towards the unknown. You have the sense that something is going on outside of your physical awareness, but you don’t know what is happening.
You feel the trembling in the space that’s been holding you
You feel the rush of energy and the close to violent emotions rushing through your mother’s body. The process is often driven by a confusing mixture of love and fear. Your mother might be closing her heart due to the stress of the experience. This feeling of fear will hit you stronger when the womb opens and you start your trip through the birth canal. You’re pushing your way through a narrow hole in the ground head first.
You’ve yet to open your eyes and see for the first time, but still, you contain all the wisdom and knowledge of the ancient mothers in your tiny body. You know that you are a ray of God. You also know that you have chosen to come into a human body to experience the contrast that comes with being an eternal being in a human form. The resistance at birth is your first meeting with the realm of earth.
You’re pushed into an environment so unfamiliar that you most often go into a state of shock. The different temperatures, sharp sounds, and loud voices that had been mellowed by the safe walls of the womb now hit your new ears like a freight train running on high-speed.
Your first meeting with the world may take place upside down. Someone hits your back to start your lungs breathing and you hear the unfamiliar sound of your own screaming voice. Your skin feels too sensitive for the rough cotton folds used to wrap up your tiny body to protect you from the cold. The cord that has connected you to all the nourishment of your mother’s body is cut by the sterile hands of the hospital personnel.
You’re laid on your mother’s chest and finally, you can hear the familiar sound of her beating heart. This relaxes some of the shocks in your nervous system. But still, the pure connection to unconditional love and safety in the body is broken for the first time.
Although you’re new, you are a resilient little creature
You still know that all is good and well in the world, despite this violent contrast. You still rightfully expect to have your needs met. You let the world know when you’re in pain, hungry, or cold, so the angels surrounding you can help you get comfortable in your new environment.
In the period to come, you’re growing at high speed. Your physical body is changing and you’re stretching in every way you can. Your brain and ability to understand and communicate with your surroundings is growing too. You’re developing a communication center that’s three times as big as in a male human being. You’re a mean, lean, communication machine. You’re intelligent, taking in every little detail in your environment and assessing what you like and dislike.
In the beginning, you don’t bother at all with the things you like or don’t like. If you’re presented with food you don’t enjoy, you spit it in your parents’ face to let them know that you don’t enjoy the taste and that it’s not right for you. In the meeting with this immediate and honest communication, most parents frown.
Instead of enjoying their newborn’s intelligence and humorous way of letting the world know what works for her, they act out of their conditioning. They’re taking on the role of teaching you that, “In this environment, you take what you’re given. You learn to accept that life is not about enjoying, but about survival and adapting to other people’s needs.”
This process of adaptation does not come easy in most newborn babies
They’re coming into the human experience knowing that they’re worthy and that they should be able to live a life that is satisfying. Of course, it feels unnatural to have to eat things you don’t like, wear things that itch, and sleep at times when you’re not tired (or be awake when you’d rather go to sleep). No wonder that you protest against this illogical treatment.
When you use all your ability to make the world around you understand that there’s something going on that you don’t enjoy, it is frustrating when people don’t understand these clear signals.
Everybody around you is using their voices to communicate their desires instead of feeling each other in a way that’s natural to you. In order to survive and to get a substitute for the safe and loving environment of the womb, you start to adapt to your parents’ and siblings’ needs and desires to fit into the family unit.
The creation of your personality has started
This is a process that takes years to complete. Your personality is shaped by your family, the culture you’re growing up in, your kindergarten and school system, and the general rules of your society.
This often comes with great amounts of confusion, as the rules for what is acceptable behavior or not keep changing with age. This often starts early with the building of a hierarchy. No two-year-old wants to be referred to as the ignorant baby anymore. You’re aspiring to the accomplishments and wisdom of older siblings.
The hierarchy in the family often reflects the value and influence you have with your parents. In the search for love and approval, siblings often develop different survival mechanisms and personality features that can play out against each other.
In order for one child to be the good one, she needs to portray one of her siblings as the bad one. This kind of ongoing sibling rivalry often creates deep and lasting patterns in her system.
The way other family members portrait her to keep the equilibrium in the family’s patterns alive becomes the filter through which she understands herself and her reality. She becomes the concept of her family’s perception of her.
If she’s told that she is good and receives attention for good behavior, she becomes the good girl who always does the right thing to receive love and approval from her parents. She may do every trick in the book to keep up the appearance of being the good girl.
Deep inside, the knowledge that she can experience love and freedom without having to perform this charade becomes painful to live with. Something is telling her that she is operating outside of her natural state of being. That she should return to the knowledge that she is light and that all is well and good and that she’s worthy of reaching her heart’s desire without accommodating everybody else’s standards of what is right.
If she, on the other hand, is portrayed as a bad girl who is hopeless and an annoyance, she will soon start looking for love and approval outside of the family. She’s looking for love from people who approve of her rebellion and self-destructive patterns. She has learned that she is not lovable in her rebellious ways.
These patterns run in almost every family with several siblings
Sometimes they are very visible, with one sibling taking on the role of the good one and the other takes on the role of the bad one. But often, they are more subtle, and the roles change during different situations in the family. One may be smart in school, while another is good at sports. One may get approval from one of the parents for certain behavior and disapproval for the same behavior from the other parent.
This can create a hide-and-seek game inside of the family. Sneaky behavior creeps in. It may seem cute and innocent in the early years. However, it teaches the child to create alliances and go behind people’s backs to achieve what she wants. When parents are rigid and square, a child either suppresses her emotions and obeys or sneaks behind their backs to do as she pleases.
This creates great pain inside of her. Neither the one who is obedient nor the one who resists gets what they really crave, which is their parent’s acceptance of who they are and knowing that they are unconditionally loved. This creates all kinds of strange patterns that follow a child into adulthood, making her more or less functional in her later relationship life.
When it comes to a child growing up without siblings, the situation looks different
An only child growing up in a two-parent household will often bear the burden of being the one who brings joy, love, and happiness into the family.
If the mother and father are kind and loving towards each other, the only child can have a huge advantage in her adult relationships. But if the intimacy between the parents is broken and they are functioning more as a working unit than a loving couple, they both seek love from the child. Then the child becomes the bearer of intimate connection in the family.
This can be extremely difficult for a child to bear. Even though she gets the loving attention of both (or at least one) of her parents, she becomes the single most important person in one or both of her parents’ lives.
Over time, it will feel suffocating to be the only object of this overwhelming attention and her parent’s need for love. A parent seeking loving, intimate communion with their child is often not aware of the damage they are causing. Constantly telling a child (either through words or by energy), “I love you, I need you, I miss you!” makes her feel smothered by the well-meaning but stuffy attention.
This child may show symptoms of apathy, boredom, and an unwillingness to leave her comfortable nest, where all her needs are tended to. She may experience a lack of independence, lack of creativity, and lack of focus on the world, as she is lavishly taken care of by her parents.
It doesn’t matter if her parents are rich or poor, the mechanism in the family tends to be the same. She may grow spoilt and expect the world to act as her parents, bringing her whatever she’s craving by showing signs of discomfort (which is how she’d been trained by her parents to inform them that the world is not exactly as she wants it to be).
Another disadvantage many single children experience is very high expectations from one or both parents. Often, parents of only children follow their child’s development and academic achievements so closely that it becomes another kind of suffocation. The only child might turn rebellious in her teenage years, or she continues to obey her parent’s rules.
Lack of connection to siblings when growing up may make her feel that the world around her is too difficult. She might turn introverted and withdraw into her comfort zone to escape what she thinks is a too harsh reality. Even though the only child often has a better chance of developing a sane and steady intimate relationship in her adult years, she is accustomed to being in a home where she is getting all the attention.
Thus, she will often choose a partner who is willing to give her all that attention. If she, however, has experienced rejection or abandonment from her father figure, she might choose to be in a relationship with a man where she has to prove that she is loving and kind enough to deserve his love.
All the patterns we’ve described here play out in many different ways, but they’re clear enough to see the pattern throughout history. Both in our core and our misconceptions are we more alike than different. Our shared human consciousness is becoming more alike across different cultures and continents.
The internet and popular culture take over more and more as the main influence on the coming generations. This can be both a blessing and a “curse.” It definitely makes it a lot easier to spread the message of love across borders, cultures, and great distances.
Those who aspire to find answers outside their programmed conditioning will easily do so with a few clicks on the internet. Large communities are coming together with newfound ideas of union, healing, and interconnectedness. This makes it possible for a child in Shanghai to connect with a teacher in the US teaching the specifics of what this child is looking for.
Unhealthy family patterns of the past are now falling into the light of a new understanding
More and more people are finding that they’re free to choose their own destiny, no matter where they come from. Still, the internet is packed with all kinds of information. And there are people who still believe in the old world, where fear runs the show in most cases. When we take a deeper look at this, it gives us a great variety of choices.
The benefit is that you can sample different kinds of belief systems and varieties of lifestyles without having to submerge yourself into a lifetime of study. Every little thing you encounter on your way makes up a little part of the puzzle which is leading you towards your unfolding.
When you are clear, calm, and at ease, it is easy to choose that which is beneficial to your growth and happiness. But if we’re not in contact with our own truth, it is easy to be drawn in every direction by the influences of the outside world.
When you’re centered in yourself, the world presents itself to you as a well of possibilities. When you’re out of balance, the world presents itself as a chaotic, overwhelming web of confusion that can draw you in any direction and leave you depleted and drained. It leaves you feeling like you have failed yourself. Then, at last, it’s drawing you to the perfect conclusion that the only way out of this confusion is turning towards your inner core.
Searching for love on the outside is one of the easiest ways to lose balance
When we look at the patterns operating in the background of your search for love and approval, it’s easy to see how you can be tricked and seduced by the superficial solutions of mass media and the sales pitch of the Romantic Dream.
Chasing love, satisfaction, approval, and safety on the outside leads you to be easy prey for mass consumption society. It feeds on people’s imbalanced psychology to sell them all kinds of unnecessary merchandise. This mass consumption is designed to give us convenience.
It also contains the shadow side of being the thing that most often fills the void of intimacy in romantic relationships. Take a look at the way people stream in hoards to the shopping centers on their days off work instead of spending quality time with their loved ones. The shopping arena has become our new medicine for heartache and pain.
When we buy into in the Romantic Dream and the image of the perfect girl or boy (a kind of happiness that is portrayed in commercials, on billboards, and in glossy magazines), we mindlessly follow the temporary dopamine high that a new item brings.
But these purchases often leave us sad and empty. Why? Because the reason for the sale was not that we fell in love with this new item. We did it to distract ourselves from the void on the inside.
With that said, purchasing a new item can be done from a pure space of love and happiness. In these cases, the item becomes a cherished possession that may stay with you throughout your whole life. This is a simple analogy that most women (and men) will recognize. Most of us know the difference between shopping for the fun of it or shopping to make yourself feel better.
It is the same as looking for a new partner. If you’re looking to be in any kind of relationship to gain some kind of emotional, spiritual, or financial gain, you’re off track. A healthy relationship is formed through coming together in clarity, happiness, and the attraction of intimacy.
If you’re able to look at your partner and say, “I want nothing from you, but I love having you around,” you’re on your way to deep communion with each other. For most people, this sounds too good to be true from where you are standing today. To be clear — nobody is demanding of you to give up your needs in an intimate relationship to be the perfect partner. If you have a partner (you may even have children) and you find yourself far from being able to look at him or her in this way, don’t worry.
Your partnership is a goldmine for your spiritual growth
By looking at your partner and being honest with what you see and want from them, you can unmask your own misconceptions about love and intimacy. When you’re willing to choose honesty without judging the misunderstandings from your conditioning, you’re willing to be your own best friend.
This honesty is your Big She leading you on your way towards your perfect unfolding. If you are in a partnership, we recommend that you start by bringing in your partner on the work you’re doing.
This journey is a transformational process, and you will forever be changed by the knowledge that you get from reading these words. It is not possible for you to go back and unlearn the things you’ve learned. You may try, but the seed has been planted, and change is inevitable.
When you embark on the journey of staying true to love and your own core, all your misconceptions must go.
Relationships built on falseness and manipulation from old conditioning will either transform or fade away. This process can be painful to the conditioned part of the self. But as your contact with your deepest Self grows, the process will feel more like another step towards greater love and freedom. You will welcome the release from the delusion as the warm embrace of a beloved friend.
When your mental concepts let go, a room opens up inside of you where your Big She can emerge. She will guide you with consistency on your way of awakening in your energetic and physical body.
She is shining Her loving light onto those parts of your life that are not serving you to the fullest. She brings you the wisdom to step out of those patterns which keep you from living your gift as love and eternal being. This is the constant unfolding of all there is. Learning to love this process is your true path towards living happily ever after.
Did you like this post? Then please share it with your friends. Also, make sure you join my tribe to receive regular updates such as these. It’s free and you can unsubscribe at any time. Click here to sign up.
