The Greatest Love

over 10 years ago
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The Love Messenger (relationshipalchemy)

20 posts

It may sound like a cliche but the greatest love you will ever have is the love you have for yourself.

You are probably well aware of this, you have no doubt heard it many times before but what does it really mean?

The universe often teaches us the greatest lessons in an indirect way. It starts with you having total free will. You are the author of your own destiny. Nothing is written in stone, there is no ‘meant to be’ no such thing as ‘the one’ and no pre-destined path mapped out for us to follow.

This means that we get to choose exactly what we do, where we go and how we respond to our environment. We also live with the consequences of those choices and in doing so we learn some vitally important life lessons. In the case of self love we learn by seeing just how bad things can get when we fail to love ourselves FIRST.

This is not about getting a few early nights a week, having a good vacation once a year and pampering ourselves with clothes, perfume, and regular visits to the hairdresser. Those things are about taking care of yourself, but really LOVING yourself goes MUCH deeper than what is visible.

Imagine you accidentally touching something very hot. You immediately pull away from the source of the heat and you make a mental note of where it came from, how much it hurt and how you intend to avoid making that mistake again.

You exercised free will when you touched it. The consequence of touching it was pain.

You learned that touching this object will hurt and is best avoided. However you still have free will. If you want to, you can touch that object again, as many times as you like. You may seriously injure yourself, you may end up with permanent scars, but, at all times, you have free will and if you want to keep doing the same thing over and over you can. In doing so you will live with the consequences of the choices you make..

In the case of this scenario the lesson was very simple. In relationships it is often way more complicated, but comes down to pretty much the same thing. There are some people who come into our lives to teach us self love and they do so by reminding us how bad things can be if we fail to love and protect ourselves. We can continue to interact with them, we can go back to them over and over – thats the free will aspect – but the consequences of doing so can often be destructive, painful and even put us in grave danger. There is of course another aspect to this that is not as simple as touching something hot, and that is how we FEEL about this person. Love, or at least what we PERCEIVE to be love, is something that can leave us feeling unable to break away from the worst possible interactions.

“I can’t leave him, I love him” “I know he can change” “I know he loves me really” “If I leave him he will find someone else and I will be alone”

Question: What is wrong with all of the above statements? Answer: They focus on HIM and not YOU. There is the lesson right there. SELF LOVE is about YOU not HIM.

You CAN leave him, because love isn’t about anything but love. It isn’t need, it isn’t conditional, it isn’t about hoping someone will change. It is about loving them for whoever and whatever they are RIGHT NOW, even if they do not love you, even if they are not with you and even if they treat you so badly that they are just not worthy of you. Loving someone does not mean that you are bound to them. It just means that you love them. Period. Nothing more. Maybe he can change, but does it look like he is even trying? Have you considered that as long as you hang in here and accept things as they are then he doesn’t NEED to change? Maybe you are the one ENABLING him to abuse you.

Maybe he does love you, in his own way, based on his idea of love. But the main problem there is that when people refer to love, many of them are really speaking of lust, need, and control coming from a place of dysfunction and insecurity. Love isn’t about anything but love. Remember this. Its important.

Maybe he will find someone else if you leave him, and maybe that will give you an indication of his REAL intentions. Love is about communication, compromise, caring and doing the best for others because you want the very best for them. Love is not control, lying, cheating, manipulation and need. When your sense of self love and self worth are intact you will also form solid boundaries when it comes to your interaction with others. If we go back to the hot object scenario, once you know it hurts you will avoid it. You will protect yourself from it. It doesn’t mean that you hate it or you are rejecting it, it means that you learn how to handle it in a way that doesn’t hurt YOU.

This is how the universe teaches you self love. By allowing you to do whatever you like, for as long as you like, and living with the consequences.