“Do not fall in love with people like me.
I will take you to museums, parks
and monuments;
And kiss you in every beautiful place,
So that you never go back to them,
without tasting me
like blood in your mouth.
I will destroy you
in the most beautiful way possible.
And when I leave
you will finally understand
Why storms are named after people”.
-Caitlyn Siehl
Love is what I sought out to find through my very first past life regression. But it would take me very long to understand love that is part of everything and yet has nothing to do with what I think it is.
My first real glimpse was surprisingly sitting in a Crossword bookstore, silently bawling my eyes out because I couldn’t understand for the life of me what was wrong with me and how I could fix it. I wanted to find something, anything that would heal my emotional pain. This pain came from being in constant conflict with my mother. And this was after having had amazing third eye visions, viscerally channeling my higher self as an enlightened consciousness, seeing the creation of my Soul in my inner eye. As I moved through the self help section of Crossword, I gravitated towards a book whose cover appealed to me. It was a lady with silver hair and the kindest of piercing blue eyes. Byron Katie. She was part of our recommended reading list for our regression therapy training. I’d never read her. I pulled that book out and started reading it. Slowly as I went through one question that she answered in the book to another, I could see and feel her transition from being an “ordinary” person full of complaints, to a person whose mind has turned into Light. Some questions resonated so strongly that I cried more at finally having found someone who understood me. As I continued reading for the next couple of hours, it seemed my mind opened, just a crack, but it was enough to let the light in.
Halfway through the book, I had absorbed enough and the light had come in enough for me to see what was creating constant conflict in me towards my mother –
She doesn’t understand me.
The moment the words appeared in the messy waters of my thoughts, the chaos fell into an inner silence.
I had made direct contact with my own suffering. That was transcendence.
Byron Katie’s technique called ‘The Work‘ comprises of 4 questions –
Is it true?
Do you absolutely know that to be true?
How do you feel / who are you when you believe this thought?
How would you feel / who would you be without this thought?
In that moment of inner silence I knew without a doubt that my mother was under no obligation to understand me. In fact, she couldn’t possibly understand me. As I asked myself the third and fourth question, I saw myself being happy and carefree being around my mother and the love flowing effortlessly and unabashedly towards her. This is who I was without that belief – I was Love, draped in a body.
In that moment, I was calm for the first time in months, perhaps even decades. There was a deep peace, an inner settling. I no longer saw her as the ‘enemy’. In doing so I no longer saw myself as the child crying to be saved.
Couple of years ago I left my job with one of the reasons being that I wanted to spend more time with my mother. I realised I had missed her through my childhood since she was a very busy, working mother. I knew I wanted to be around her, and just ‘hang out’. In these last two years a lot of blocks sprung up every now and then and my mind went to war with her ever so often. Interspersed between them though were moments of love flowing effortlessly towards her. Inspite of these waves, there was an eternal sense of awareness that our only real bond was love. Everything else was just confetti that came and fell as and when. It was only about practicing the lesson that she was just a mirror when she triggered me, a mouthpiece for anything unresolved within me. Beyond that, I could see her for the wounded child she was.
You see, after the four questions, a part of The Work is to turn the belief around and examine how that is true. She doesn’t understand me turned around to I didn’t understand her. The truth was I had indeed ‘missed’ her not as a mother, but as a person. I had missed seeing her beyond her role of a mother, beyond the obligation my mind had imposed upon her, that she should understand me, as a part of fulfilling her duty towards me. Having acknowledged this belief and seeing it for what it is, being around her at worst I felt sympathy towards her, and at best, I contacted her suffering directly in my body and cried out of her pain with deep gratitude. I was no longer at war with reality being the way it is.
Yes, this vision that I had seen about 7 years ago sitting in the bookstore had finally manifested. I was open to receiving her love, without the guilt that I had to do something in return to deserve it. One of my core beliefs, I realised was also that her love was conditional. That she loved me only when I was a good, obedient child. Being with her with an open mind I realised that even she believed that she had not loved me enough! That broke this wall of belief and I realised in turn that for me her love was enough. This broke one of the biggest myths I had learnt – that love in this human world cannot be unconditional. The truth is all love is unconditional. Few of us dare to challenge our own thoughts and dare to challenge our self image to actually peer into the love that flows beneath, regardless.
This has immeasurably altered my relationships. I’ve been in a love relationship that is as unsteady as my mind can be. I am on my tiptoes often because my biggest beliefs are brought up for questioning. It is as challenging as any relationship can be! All my ‘should’s’ and ‘should not’s’ rise up like icebergs in front of a speeding ship. Yet what is clearer than ever before is the love that seeks to flow effortlessly regardless of how ‘right’ it is for me to withhold love. It feels like a violence to myself if I try to withhold love. It is such a touchstone, that even if I say I should be loving, the flow of love abates. It has made me wonder…
Is love different from awareness?
I’ve found the answer to be a laughter and a smile. Perhaps love is just the maturing of awareness from its teenager-like, alert state.
I meet a lot of people seeking love in their relationships when they come for root cause therapy, inner child healing, etc. It is almost like people are ready to walk into the temple with a list of what they want. But few are ready to walk into the temple ready to question, examine and surrender that which is stopping them from receiving it. Few are ready to offer their ego up to the divine.
Unconditional love is real, possible and very much eternal. It is however walking into a fire and burning what you think of yourself to be. It is death. Yet there is no end. There won’t ever be a day when you are ‘done’ or that process is over. One has to show up everyday, incessantly. Until of course, this kind of death becomes a way of life. One must be mad I guess to be able to go to any lengths for keeping this kind of love alive! 🙂 The action that this love demands is fierce and radical. If I cringe from this action however, fearing heartbreak, fearing my own loss of identity as a result, then ruthlessly my partner and I are pulled apart. It is magnetic and fascinating, unpredictable, dancing on one foot and magical! And yet it still retains its primal force.
Happy Valentine’s Day! 😉
May you dissolve your stories of conditional love to see that the love was always there.
~ Thank you BK <3 xoxo
Beautiful piece, Deepti. I love how we find just what we need in bookstores from time to time. A book or two that have changed my life were also “found” staring back at me from the shelf. Bookstores are like synchronicity outlets. It does take work to sustain this type of clear loving, but I am finding that after years of practice, you start to sustain a quiet flame. It’s like trying to build a fire in a rain storm at first, and then eventually you get enough heat built up to sustain something. I still fall down and witness my emotions collapse into despair or boil up into a storm from time to time, but that little flame is there, waiting for my return… 🙂
Peace
Michael
Dear Michael,
That’s one of the most beautiful comments on my blog… Ever. Thank you for sharing this experience. Very few truly understand that after all the work, the quiet fire is worth every bit of effort. I love your analogy though… Especially about the rainstorm. 🙂 Incidentally, if one can build this sort of fire in even one relationship, it can be lit in all the other relationships.
I wish you warmth of your fire eternally as I bask in mine.
Take care. Love. 🙂
Cultivating Awareness is love unconditional! Flowering in Eternity eternally!
Yes absolutely Gayatri 🙂
Totally loaded on so many fronts!
Every step taken then pause,breathe
time for next step!
… And you did it and won my heart a second time! Thanks so much n a big hug dear fragrant one for dropping by and commenting 🙂 much love to you.
Dear Deepti, Thank you so much for your authentic sharing . I resonated with many parts of what you shared. Here are some more viewpoints that may be of service on the “Journey” to Here,Now,This:
When you say, “There won’t ever be a day when you are ‘done’ or that process is over. One has to show up everyday, incessantly. Until of course, this kind of death becomes a way of life.”
The Unconditional Love that we all are at our Core is always there. The process is over the day you understand that there is no real “I ” anywhere. Yes, the play will go on for sure. But beneath the play will be the deep and silent Presence of Unconditional Love.
You say:
” One must be mad I guess to be able to go to any lengths for keeping this kind of love alive! 🙂 The action that this love demands is fierce and radical. If I cringe from this action however, fearing heartbreak, fearing my own loss of identity as a result, then ruthlessly my partner and I are pulled apart. It is magnetic and fascinating, unpredictable, dancing on one foot and magical! ”
When you relax into Unconditional Love, there is no doing, no effort. Just a letting go of all doing. Just accepting what is and witnessing the bodymind do what it needs to do. All forms of identity dissolve into Infinite Peace. So do “Relationships”.
Unconditional Love has nothing to do with a particular person. (That would make it conditional!).May you dissolve your stories of conditional love to see that the love was always there.
I echo with you prayer : “May you dissolve your stories of conditional love to see that the love was always there.” May we all awaken to the Unconditional Love that we all already are.
Thank you Deepti <3
Dear Arun, Thanks for the elaborate reply. Yes all your points make a lot of sense. Of course even trying to dissolve the doing, the effort is pointless and I trust it shall happen as a ripening. 🙂 it’s just cycles of the mind that dissolve when they aren’t given much importance. Take care. Love.