With Valentines Day fast approaching and the subject of Love had me thinking what is means to me in my experience. I often ask people what their definition of Love is and the most people repeated answer is a "Hollywood" version of it. The words "unconditional" and "loves me no matter what" seem to be a favorite.
I look back to where I formulated my experience of Love. It was demonstrated to me by my parents in acts of powerlessness, guilt, shame and came from their own worthlessness of sexual abuse. They simply had nothing else to offer each other or to me. My first experience of sex and intimacy (his version of it) was sexual abuse by my Uncle. I equated this to mean Love. Abuse equals Love.
Imprints such as these qualities then become an unconscious barometer to the body and mind. Nothing else is recognized and will not "match" any other definition.
Their words and actions matched this definition of love.
I have reacted poorly to people in my past relationships that have tried to "mirror" this back to me. They were showing me over and over what I believed to be "Love".
And is was Love, damn it.
David Hawkins writes of this: “Love is misunderstood to be an emotion; actually, it is a state of awareness, a way of being in the world, a way of seeing oneself and others.”
Awareness is available only at certain levels of consciousness. I was operating from the same level of consciousness I was born into and had been taught to "believe". This would include their definition of love.
Love as the say is truly blind. We can only get an accurate reading on this by the way our partners treat us. Not when we are "getting along" but the way and the manner we fight with each other. That is what we most want to hide.
Our defintion of Love.
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