Making Space For Love To Bloom

Love at first sight? Yes it can happen, but then we close the door to allowing love to bloom and blossom. What has to happen to keep it alive? How do you need to be? How do you turn it into an adventure and a delight rather than a downward spiral, set in its ways? How do you nurture and expand the potential so it becomes a fully passionate and joyful journey of discovery, intimacy and truth?

All of us at some time or another have been in that special relationship – we are in love, it’s like the sparkling river of life, there’s joy, there’s laughter, there’s passion and desire, everything seems brighter, clearer and more vital. Above all there’s a feeling of being connected, a oneness with your beloved, a connection from heart to heart rather than from head to head. You look at that person and you see their true nature. You see all the good in them. There’s an openness, a trust, an honesty, a goodness – almost childlike – with nothing in the way. You feel at one with the Universe, as if no-one else in the world could possibly have experienced such a feeling. The world around you looks wonderful, you want to love everyone, and you feel that this could last forever. Everything seems so perfect you want such a love to come into and run the world.

Over time however it can be as if you lose sight of the person and the Life force within them which so attracted you in the first place. You no longer just see their good points; you begin to see bad points that you didn’t notice before. You begin to focus on your differences; your analytical mind comes in now. You focus even more on what’s wrong with the relationship -they have such annoying habits - you begin to hold things against them; resentments, grudges, even hostility can arise. You can whip up differences so much that it can end in war.

The barriers go up between the two of you and you begin to live once again in your individual world of separate realities. Once again you feel lonely, alienated, hurt, disappointed, misunderstood; your barriers of self-protection go up even more as you are constantly on guard against the possible onslaught, and you are defensive from the moment you wake up in the morning. Now you begin to spend a lot of time thinking about what’s wrong with the relationship, what’s wrong with the other person, and how you can fix it. You have these head to head discussions that end in emotional upsets and everyone feeling even worse, until finally you’re left with only one solution.

But hold on – let’s slow down and really see what’s happening. The truth is you have stopped having a relationship with the miracle of life that is in the person in front of you and are having a relationship with a set of thoughts about that person instead, which may be right or wrong, but it is still a relationship with your thoughts. Your collection of thoughts always comes from the past as we get triggered by things happening now which remind us of problems in our previous relationships, but actually have nothing to do with the person you are with right this moment.

When you first saw that person, you saw them without the contamination of your analytical mind – you probably saw them as they really are, with their true nature. So ask yourself: “Do I want to have a relationship with my negative thoughts, or do I want to have a relationship with the Life in that person so that we can evolve together?” That doesn’t mean change who you really are, but evolve and grow in the presence of the other, and with their energy to help you grow and expand your life.

So you see, the problems may not ultimately be to do with them. We don’t give the other person a chance as we’ve already judged them through our own programming of past experiences, our beliefs and limitations. We are literally a collection of thoughts and beliefs, whether they are right or wrong. We can choose to look through all sorts of things, loneliness, poverty, illness, being too old, being too fat, not being attractive enough, unfairness, lack of self-esteem. The list can go on and on, but what we choose to focus on totally affects our choices and direction in life. If you’re looking through negative thoughts then the relationship will be negative. It’s like putting on red glasses so the whole world looks red, but it’s all a matter of perception.

When you have a relationship with a collection of thoughts about the person rather than with the person in front of you, you will be saying to yourself “I bet he’s going to do this, I bet she’ll be in a bad mood, I know he’s going to come home and ….”.

When we look through these thoughts at another person, quite frankly, no-one is going to survive that. Our negative thoughts and experiences are our baggage, and people are often carrying around with them more baggage than you would find at a major airport. Problems are often not with the two people involved but it’s the baggage that doesn’t get on. Imagine what miracles could occur if you just agreed to throw your baggage in the bin and start afresh with no looking back as to what was wrong!

If you allow the negativity to fall away, you can have great fun and pleasure. Stop focusing on negative thoughts about the other person – they are just thoughts. Focus instead on being with them. When two people fall in love, they see each other with uncontaminated eyes, looking beyond their differences, beyond their behavior to the true nature within. You see the perfection in the other person.

Exercise

Find yourself a comfortable place to sit or lie down, and read through this exercise before you begin, and when you are ready gently shut your eyes.

Take a deep breath now and as you breathe out, breath out all the stress and tension, all the worries, fears and phobias and imagine them going from the top of your head all the way down your body and out through the soles of your feet.

Now take another deep breath in and as you let it go, imagine a wave of relaxation going from the top of your head all the way down and out through the soles of your feet.

And another deep breath as you sigh it out and allow yourself to sink deeper and deeper in the chair you are sitting on.

Now in your imagination bring up a picture of your partner as you saw them when you first fell in love – look at all the wonderful things you saw, how lovely their face, how attracted you were to them, how loving it felt, how good they were. Notice the colors around them and the sounds, maybe the tastes and smells and the magical touch between you. Remember the feelings of tenderness and care, that sexual attraction, that deep connection, the feeling of wanting it to stay like this forever. Bring that up now and make it stronger and start pouring love into that picture.

And when you feel that love force tingling through the cells in your body, squeeze your thumb and forefinger together on one hand.

Now gently release it and bring up the picture again and when it is really strong and you feel that energy coursing through your veins, squeeze that same thumb and forefinger together. Now repeat a few times, and gently open your eyes.

You may like to repeat this exercise until you find that when you squeeze that same thumb and forefinger together, lovely feelings and memories will come up for you, so that instead of looking at your partner through those old red glasses of fear and lack and misery, you can start to admire them again and experience those loving unconditional feelings where you are in a loving space, and can continually strive to see this perfection in the other person.

Growing Together

The thing is we grow when we love someone, even more than we grow by being loved! We expand our Beingness as we find ways of bringing out the potential in the other, making their happiness as important as our own, as we find ways of bringing a smile to their face and of fulfilling their individual needs and dreams too.

You can have a great relationship with someone who wants a great relationship with you, but you have to have the same goal of growth and adventure, and share the same idea of having fun together and exploring life. You are both then in an effortless flow which should increase your awareness and understanding of who you are and how you draw out the good in each other. The perfect relationship is a relationship with the Life in the person, as you actually connect to each other by that life-force. When two people put their loving energy together, you create a third force between you, which when you learn to trust and appreciate it, will guide you and support you. It’s amazing to feel it. It’s when two essences come together and flower to full participation with Life.

So loving someone is not by emphasizing the differences – it’s by being in awe and appreciation of the differences and using them as an adventure, while still enjoying the similarities and continuing to help them grow. Ignore what’s wrong and focus on what’s right between you – it makes an enormous difference.

Exploring the Universe

It is reckoned that 99% of us is hidden from other people – we can’t see someone else’s internal world, all we can see is how they respond to the external world, and we judge and come to conclusions about them which may or may not be true. That is the Unconscious part of us which is also hidden from ourselves, but how would it be if you draw out some of that potential from yourself and the other person? It helps them explore themselves too. We travel into outer space to explore the universe but fail to explore the universe in the person in front of us.

If I think I know all about you, there is no room whatsoever for growth. Imagine you don’t know your partner – take them out for dinner as if you have never met. Meet them afresh with new eyes, letting go of all the suppositions you have made, all the things you think you know, all the decisions and judgments you have made. Stop taking them for granted and get to know a little bit more about them. In another article, I suggest that you destroy and uncreate your relationship every day so that it always appears fresh and exciting as you never know who is in front of you – otherwise you will lose contact with that person.

Spending time with our thoughts and almost none with our partner, even when we are supposed to be with them, never allows for potential to emerge. We don’t wait to see the person grow before we jump in with our judgments. When you drop all the thoughts, you’ll find them as interesting as you did when you first fell in love with them. Help each other break down the thought walls that are protecting them, those that don’t serve. Find out how you can release each other from the shadow world of isolation, loneliness and unfulfilled dreams. Our fears and disappointments build strong walls around us and we fight against what we most need which is to be seen and understood, allowing love to become the focal point.

A relationship takes time and energy – we so often want to rush it without giving it the due care and attention it so desperately needs. Like a tender sapling, it needs nourishing and feeding, light, warmth and cherishing; it needs stamina and commitment to strengthen it so it becomes resilient in the path of outer circumstances which could blow it off course. It needs space and air and tender care, it needs understanding, and good and fertile ground in which to put its root down. And as it grows, we need to prune away the dead wood and keep the live wood where the buds are forming and developing.

When you stop making assumptions about the other and just allow the other person to unfold in all their magnificence, it is like witnessing a rose opening petal by petal as you encourage its vitality and beauty. Explore this miraculous being by asking inquisitive questions that are positive to draw out the best qualities in them and find out what lights them up. Our tendency is always to focus on the negative and talk about the darkest moments in life as if that will create a connection – it will of course, but not one that brings joy to the relationship.

• What did you like doing when you were a child?
• What are your happiest memories?
• What did you want to be when you grew up?
• What are your needs as a man/woman?
• What are your individual needs?
• If I were to give you a magic wand, what would you really like?
• What little things make you feel good?
• What makes you feel loved – is it by being told, being bought gifts, being given surprises, being held and made love to? Being left little notes? 

Find their needs and make them your needs, not by becoming a pleaser but by the sheer joy of lighting up someone else’s life – if they are doing it for you too, what a magnificent journey you can have together.

Does this mean that you will end up forever with this person? There is nothing guaranteed in love and life and it may just run its course, but at least you will enjoy the journey far more.

You see, we can never learn love. We can only remove the barriers that block love from coming in, and from us expressing it!



© copyright www.alovingspace.com 2008