As more relationships open, I wanted to learn if this can be a spiritual practice for Growing Love.
Last New Year’s Eve, I decided to commit to accomplishing what I wanted most: to have a red-hot love affair—with Love itself. Love Actualized was the name of the game, love of self, love in relationship, love of community, and love of work. Rather than keep trying to better myself in one way or another to attract the mate I wanted, so I could experience the love I wanted, I decided to take the bull by the horns and live a life in love.
I had exhausted the Cinderella story (someday my Prince will come), had buried the Sleeping Beauty narrative (another version of the story that there is someone outside myself who can rescue me), and intentionally hunted down and killed every single paradigm that informed me that the only way I could experience true happiness, deep fulfillment, and physical pleasure was through a relationship. What I realized is that I had been living in a state of impoverished imagination, thinking that being in relationship was the only place where I could give and receive the love I wanted.
And it worked!
When I refocused my attention on experiencing love wherever I was and with whomever I was with, I was able to receive love from places I hadn’t before: in a deeper way from my family and friends and through my everyday interactions with strangers. And it even made me deal with the angst of my fellow drivers in a different way. But while I was living my life from a more empowered platform, there was no escaping the wisdom Rilke immortalized: “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks. . . the work for which all other work is but preparation.”
This story is from the September/October 2016 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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This story is from the September/October 2016 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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