I don’t get to tell people how to love me
I get to see how they love
and then choose if I want to participate.
~Iyanla Vanzant
I feel this is one of the most important lessons on boundaries and choices I have been learning in the past years through contrast and divine discontentment.
My long years of investment in emotional maturation enables me to be ruthlessly and radically honest as to how emotionally content and fulfilled I am in any given relationship. The practice of self love, which has become second nature, strengthens and heals wounded parts enough to let go of their ‘healing fantasies’ and hopes for change through leaning into behavioral patterns of old that have proved their ineptitude for decades. Self love also changed the way I take responsibility and care for my being, and deepened my self compassion enough that I no longer mindlessly foist avoidable pain, suffering, disappointment, etc. upon my experience and being.
The last pieces to this learning are based in love of All That Is, which of course includes the other. No longer does my mind have to follow the conditioned pattern of pathologizing the other in order to release myself, instead with eyes of love I perceive with compassion the struggles and pattern playing out in them and have a knowing of them as ‘perfect as they are’ as I am too. With that I can accept the incompatibility with graciousness and ever more lighthearted humor.
I have the deepest reverence for the connections that move through this challenging experience to rebirth themselves into a new form, which can not only be ‘effortlessly’ sustained but also delighted in. Love relationships that can transition into loving friendships with deep emotional intimacy and a playful knowing of each other are incredibly soul nourishing and delicious to me.
The older I get the less I am willing to abuse myself by entertaining unfulfilling relationships falling short of what makes my heart happy, nourishes my soul, my body-mind system feels safe, and keeps me mentally engaged.
Anything that is stereotypical, superficial, unconscious, and strictly controlled by fear or trauma is no longer of value to me, unless called to it by spirit. I empathize with and remember having made such choices or lived in such states, when I hadn’t put in self work and lived more unconsciously. I no longer desire to spend time engaging in those dimensions of relating as I have explored them more than I like and find no joy in them, only sadness. I still am called from time to time to engage in those dimensions, when in a growth cycle, in order to integrate layers of unconscious distortions and misperceptions. And I will do so gladly and willingly as long as growth and change happen. Once it gets stagnant, or everything that could be learned has been learned, I will want to return to a healthier and more fluid form of relating. Should it become apparent then that the other is not willing or ready to journey there with me, I will respect their choice and gratefully move on.
Having the privilege of sharing magical connections that are deeply intimate and fulfilling is not only healing but also entices me to lean into trust and courage to keep stretching and expanding into the juiciness of the relational unknown. This is my most exciting and delicious growth edge I choose and am committed to keep exploring and playing at now.
I choose to keep a circle of friends who inspire and invite growth, who share the journey towards more embodiment of love, whose sharing expand my horizons and gives me tools for my own journey, whose essence is more and more embodied and not willfully blocked by conditioned ideas of self and woundings, friends, who no matter of their age, are becoming and unbecoming, living from the knowing of being an ‘energy being in flux’, exploring this human experience with curiosity, humor, appreciation, and playfulness.
My heart is open to love, hold, connect, relate, know, play, tinker, and grow in various kinds of relationships.
And my heart has clear preferences as to how it wants to be met, as has yours too, so let us choose to honor their choices with love and compassion to infuse our experience and the field with infinite love.
Let us keep exploring with glee, loving better, and playing joyfully at this thing called human, journeying together as long as we are in alignment. Should our vibrations fall out of harmony let us be grateful for the beauty we shared, bless each other, and, if need be, part in the knowing of our eternal oneness.
