For quite some time now, I have been searching tirelessly for love. For the meaning of love, the feeling of love, people to love, and much more. Love was something I took for granted growing up. It was also the source of my deepest wounds, although that wouldn't be discovered until I was much older. Until now.
Love was something that I always believed in but never understood. I knew that I craved it, I also knew that I deserved more of it. I searched in each and every person I met for love that I might be able to fill myself with. I am a very loving and friendly person. I don't like to hurt others and my favorite thing about myself is the love that I can give. But with those positive parts of who I am also come the challenges: being slow to distinguish myself and my feelings from that of those around me, constantly feeling deprived of love compared to the love that I give so freely, feeling disappointed and short of the love and attention that I felt was so desperately needed.
Feeling deprived of love is such a lonely feeling. It leaves you with only yourself, which I always resisted, leading me to invest more of myself and my love in others in the hopes that I would feel whole one day. However giving love away without expecting anything specific (or anything at all) in return is not a bad thing. In fact that is the holiest, purest form of love. Unconditional. No, my problem didn't lie in my ability to give love away, it was the love that I wasn't giving myself that wounded me the most. The irony lies in the observation that the more love I gave, the emptier I felt. That is NOT how it is supposed to be, my people. The more love you give, the more love you receive. It's a law of the universe. It cannot fail. I gave so much love because I knew deep down in my soul, that's what would bring me into a higher state of being. A state of real love. But I never felt the love that I was receiving because it didn't feel like enough. I didn't feel like enough. I never felt like enough. I felt this way because I never took the time to truly, deeply, and honestly love myself. Therefore I cannot recognize or feel the love that I receive because I don't know what it truly feels like to feel love. My love to myself is the only thing that can cure this sad deficit. The only real and true love that can program me to feel all of the love for the rest of my existence.
My point here is this: I have known love, I have fallen in love, I have been loved, and I have lost love. But I have never given myself the love that I deserve and because of this, I have never truly felt love. See the key to figuring out love and how to fill your life with it is the love that you hold deep within yourself, for you. Take a deeper look at it, honestly and openly. Look at the wounds and the breaks, the parts that have healed and the parts that have festered. Don't be afraid or overwhelmed to examine how you feel about yourself as denial will do you know good in this journey. It will only delay you tremendously, from the clarity and the love that you deserve. Take a deep breath and see it all as it truly is. Only then can you begin to heal the shattered relationship you have with yourself.
For those of you reading this that have done this work, I commend you for your efforts and I ask for you to do this: never stop. Never stop bringing awareness and light to the fractured pieces that lie within, however far away from the surface they hide you can heal them. The light that you constantly shine on your shadow parts and the love that radiates back out from them once they are loved, will help others around you find their way into the deeper parts of their soul that they may have been too afraid or stuck to see. The more shadows we expose, the more love we give to them, the more love we are showing ourselves. The more love we will be shown by the world. This idea is bullet proof and eternal, as love will never cease to work in this way. The only thing you have to do is work with yourself compassionately to cultivate the love you have long been waiting, deserving, searching for. All you need for this task is conveniently located directly within you and will never fall away. Decide what it feels like to be loved, decide you are worth experiencing that feeling, knowing that feeling, and then allow yourself to witness it growing within you each and every day.
As I wrap this up, I ask for you to consider this metaphor as a way of understanding what it is you feel the world falls short on giving you. A man lost his key and was searching around for it under the street light in front of his home. A passerby stopped and asked if he remembered the last place he saw the key. The man searching replied that he had lost his key inside his home but inside it was dark and the streetlight was bright, so surely he could find the key underneath it. Obviously that is a ridiculous idea and we can all see that, but think of the love, the happiness, the answers that you spend so much time searching for outside of yourself (your dark home). Everything you have lost or cannot find can be found within you. All you need to do is move your attention to yourself, turn on some lights, put on a good song, and find what it is you need within yourself. I promise it is there.
