I started water fasting and meditating pretty heavily this week. It feels like progress is actually being made again which honestly is a pretty big relief after feeling like I have been plateaued for nearly 2 years in the realm of spiritual and self development. To be clear, I'm not deluded enough to believe there's some point where "we get there" and then we're done, but everything is as it should be and things happen when they need to happen.
So what have we learned now? Diving deeper into the childhood patterns of love and the lack thereof, I began to uncover many instances of transactional love. You do a thing, you get a reward. You don't do a thing, you get punished or that love gets withheld. You become a disappointment. Essentially there was a lot of "be what we want you to be how we want you to be it or you aren't good enough."
Self acceptance and learning how to manage my own thoughts and beliefs while breaking down a lot of the attention and validation seeking behaviors has resolved many things in that department. I suppose the issue here was assuming that was all their was to learn from this particular 'wound.' There was still something else there though and it's been nagging at me for the last couple of days trying to figure out what it was, but it finally clicked when reading a quote from one of my favorite philosophers, Ram Dass.
To be clear, I've learned and accepted that love is not transactional and that keeping score in relationships is a great way to breed entitlement and resentment of the target of your affections. Since discovering this, I'm very mindful to do things for others simply by choice and I do my best to manage my expectations of what I think, if anything, will result from doing so. Generally my belief is that we should do things because we want to and not with the expectation that anything will be received in return. Giving is receiving after all.
The hang up when it comes to the concept of love seems to be that somewhere ingrained in my psyche from a young age was the idea that you have to earn it. Love is not something freely given to you by others or the world around you. If you don't work hard enough, if you aren't nice enough, if you don't put in all the effort, then the love is never earned. If you receive love, guilt manifests from the sense of not doing enough to earn it. That guilt breeds self-doubt and perpetuates more guilt and a stronger compelling urge to do more and be more to deserve the thing you want and ultimately never being enough.
Now this whole concept seems completely ridiculous when we flip it on its head. Why do I love someone? Is it because of a laundry list of boxes they checked and nice things they did for me? No. If they stop doing those things or do something bad or hurt me, does the love go away? No. We don't need a reason. We love someone because we do. That love just exists and if we love them completely for who they are, we don't stop loving them and appreciate them for who they are and respect that we all have our own journey. There is no on and off switch.
We may choose to not be around people we love anymore because we've learned the lessons we needed to learn there and grown apart or maybe realized that the relationship was unhealthy and enabled toxic behaviors in our self or the other, but deep down if we ever truly loved them, that isn't a feeling that goes away or evaporates and that's okay. They didn't earn it and we don't need to 'take it away' when they un-earn it. It just is. It always was. It always will be.
I'm grateful to have finally managed to breakdown that nagging feeling that I was missing something here. As always, I'm sure there will be more to learn that will reveal itself in time, but I do feel some good progress was made on why I've been feeling that loving someone was a burden either to myself or them throughout my life. Appreciate the journey for what it is, we all get where we're going when we need to be there. Much love. Peace.