Lately, I find myself contemplating the age-old question of 'What is love?' Listen to this full episode of The Living Through Heart Podcast where I discuss what I think love is, and thoughts on self-love and love for others.
Lately, I find myself contemplating the age-old question of 'What is love?' Listen to this full episode of The Living Through Heart Podcast where I discuss what I think love is, and thoughts on self-love and love for others.
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Hi, it's Donna Joy Usher from Living Through Heart and I'm over here in beautiful Queensland.
I'm visiting my parents.
So I've just been enjoying some time with them up there, and I'm out for a walk.
And I've just been contemplating several things, basically a conversation I've been having with a new friend that I met at a retreat.
And bringing that into some books I've been reading and just my journey itself and things I've been going through.
Basically, I've been contemplating what is love.
And I'm going to talk about it from three angles, what is love, in general, love for self, and then love for others, and just where I'm at and what I'm finding, and just where I'm at now.
And so at the moment, it's August 2023.
So where I am in August 2024, with this concept, could be the same or it could be wildly different,
I don't promise that my views on things are not going to change, because that's all part of the healing journey and the expansion is learning stuff about ourselves and digging in and getting a greater
a broader understanding of things and having less control over stuff, right.
And love is something that definitely,
we have to have a lot of control over in our lives to feel safe.
So what is love?
Well, what I've come to understand for myself, I'm not saying that this has to be right for you.
So feel free to, you know, anything that I say, see how it resonates with you,
see if it works for you or not.
And it doesn't have to because I mean, the whole beautiful thing about life is that we're allowed to have our own opinion, and we're allowed to have what's right for us.
So this is just what's right for me at this moment.
So love is an energy.
And it is the energy.
It's like the source energy.
And you know, and love is, you know, a lot of people think that you know, emotions that come when we feel love are love.
So like happiness, joy, peace.
But there are other emotions that come in when we are loved or were loving, or
we're just expanding beyond and touching in like in meditation or something when we drop into that energy of love.
And we feel these other emotions, willing within us at the beauty of this energy.
So to me love is the ultimate energy.
It's like what we are created from, it's basically the source that we came from the collective consciousness.
And, you know, when we weave in, in our lives, when we have our woundings, we get cut off from that love.
We cut ourselves off from their love, right through our trauma and through our beliefs within that.
So when we learn to believe that we're not lovable, we obviously cut ourselves off from love.
And that's not to say that we don't have moments where we can feel love,
like when we go into meditation, and we kind of like transcend our woundings.
And at that point in time, we're able to tap in to the energy of love and feel it within our body,
and how amazing it is.
And then when we come out of it,
we might be able to hold on to that for a little while before we snap back into that which we are in this creation that we've collapsed ourselves into
on a quantum physics level, right
of this,
of this,
who we are,
our beliefs and our energetic structure that we are at the moment.
So for me, love is an energy.
And we're cut off from it by the lessons we've learned to live in how we've learned to stay safe and the control that we have in our lives.
And what that means is that we start to in our desperate grasp and need for love, we start to become manipulative, controlling, and you know, in a bit, stay safe, because ultimately, if we are loved, and we can feel love, and we can love others and be a part of that connection, that intimacy, then we feel good, right?
And we feel safe.
And ultimately, it's all about safety.
It's how we stay safe.
So love is an energy.
And then within that we have the love for self.
So when we first are born, and we are whole, and that's not to say we're not still whole, right, but we're cut off from our wholeness by our beliefs.
And this has been a journey for people trying to become whole, but really, we are already whole, right.
And really what it is, is about unraveling those things that are stopping us from feeling our wholeness and from being whole.
But the irony is that we are whole and we're just not realizing it, we're just not feeling it. We're just not allowing it. We're just not believing it.
So when we're not feeling our wholeness when we're not able to tap into that love and then we're also not able to love ourselves fully.
And that leads to us wanting other people to come in and to heal our wound,
take that pain away.
And I've been in this myself the last few days
I've been in a bit of a funk.
Why I'm thinking about this stuff.
And desperately wanting someone to save me,
desperately wanting someone to sweep me up in their arms
and just to make the pain go away
Rather than traveling through it and learning what I needed to learn which I guess is this journey I'm on that I'm talking about at the moment is like realizing stuff within this pain that I've been in.
And what I've learned is
The purity of love is such a beautiful thing. And yet we really make it very complicated. And we, we manipulate it. And we think that things we think things are love when they're not.
So for us to be able to love others unconditionally, we need to be able to love ourselves unconditionally.
But instead, what we do is we don't love ourselves.
We don't take the time to really appreciate ourselves.
And instead, we want other people to love us because it's easier, right?
If somebody else loves us, than they can make the pain go away, then we don't have to do the hard work of going into the woundings and the trauma and dealing with it, right.
So we're desperately trying to get other people to love is to make us feel good about ourselves,
to make us feel worthy,
and to make us feel lovable.
But unfortunately, that's just a bandaid on the surface.
And as time goes by,
we stopped believing that because deep down inside,
we believe that we're not lovable.
And we believe the woundings that we have, right, and what we've learned to,
we believe what we've learned to believe about ourselves.
And unconsciously, we may not, but unconsciously we do.
And that's where the trick is, is that unconscious,
that actually rules us, right, which is really in control.
So we manipulate love, to try to feel good about ourselves.
And that's where problems come in.
So that's why some people are desperately needy for relationship, because when they're not in relationship, they're in so much pain.
Because they won't go inside and actually sit with the pain, they don't know how to observe the pain and allow it and to move through it and to process it.
And to realize that these things that are so painful, they're too scary to go, they're actually just not true.
They're just beliefs that they just need to journey through.
And to go into that, and I'm not saying the works easy, it's not it is hard, and it is painful, it is a journey.
But the freedom within as you start to release these energetic knots inside is definitely worth it.
So we manipulate love, to feel whole.
But we're not because the only way that we can feel hollow in any way we can become whole or to realize our wholeness, because we already are whole is to do the inner work.
And then within that space as we release this stuff within a sort of stopping us from seeing our own beauty and our divinity and our wholeness.
As we release that, then we become more and more able to love ourselves, which means if we can love ourselves unconditionally, we can then also love others unconditionally.
But what we do instead is we we love others conditionally, because we want them to love us.
And we don't realize that we're doing that.
And it's actually not fair and other people because we don't like it when it's done to us.
And this is something that I've been sitting with for the few days.
The feeling of being loved conditionally,
how if I'm not doing what is wanted or needed of me, then I'm a disappointment.
And I'm not allowed and I'm not respected.
When in reality, I'm doing what is right for me, and I'm living the life that I want to live.
But it this other person is not seeing that it's not respecting, that's not understanding it.
And it's not loving me unconditionally, and I'm sitting with that pain.
But also realizing within that, that I'm not loving myself unconditionally.
And I've realized too, is a subtle manipulation that we have within love of loving others.
So I've come to realize I have love for a person.
And I'm sitting with that and trying to allow it to be unconditional in that it doesn't have to come back to me, but I can just love them.
And not need anything,
not want anything.
And it's not someone I'm in a relationship with.
Which is more interesting, right?
So I can love them from afar.
And not need them to love me back,
to heal something within me or to make myself feel good.
And that's triggering up lots of stuff in for me to observe within myself, which is really interesting.
But yesterday I found myself choosing to want to energetically support somebody that I loved.
And then there was this whole dance of did I just do it?
Or did I let them know that I wanted to do it and then then why.
And I realized this subtle manipulation even within that.
And sometimes we think that we're loving people unconditionally, but we're subtly manipulating or maneuvering in a way that somehow we're getting something out of it.
And so for me, what I realized is that by wanting to let them know that I wanted to emotionally support them and energetically support them in something that they were going through, and I wanted to tell them that I was going to do that,
that what I was actually doing was somehow wanting some sort of reward if it worked out well for them,
or some sort of
like somehow it was
somehow my doing in a way right
that I was going to get some sort of benefit out of having done that and maybe that that might be affection, or maybe that might be attention,
which is really not the reason to do this sort of stuff, right.
And so that made me realize how even when I thought I was being loving that really I was trying to get something out of it for myself.
And I had to let that go and then just choose to do this thing without even letting them know that I was doing it but that I was just there to love them and support them.
And that's really what unconditional love is about right
just loving and supporting people without wanting anything in return without needing anything in return.
And without making anything that they do, or anything that they say, or anything that they don't do, or don't say mean anything about yourself,
and not interpreting things in such a way that it means that there's a lack in us or that we're not good enough if we're not getting what we want from them.
And as soon as we need to get something from someone,
as soon as that need
that need from them.
Then it's not unconditional love.
And in fact, it's not love at all.
It's a different name.
It's just us wanting to have our pain taken away.
And we call it love.
And there's many different forms of love that are not actually love.
Now, am I saying that you can't love somebody and also want your pain to go away?
No, of course, they can still be loved there.
But it's not unconditional love.
It's more like a Tainted Love.
Where, you know, that needy, that needy like that craving and then when you're with that person, and ah, oh, my god, the world feels right, and all the pain goes away.
And you just feel like you're in that love bubble, right?
That's not just about the love.
That's about them, stopping you, from having to love yourself,
from having to go in and do the work so that you can unravel stuff,
and you can love yourself.
I maybe going around in circles here.
Because as I'm talking about this, I'm actually processing it and realizing stuff, which is how I work, right?
I verbally talk about stuff, and I have realizations in the moments.
But I'm hoping that you're getting something out of this as well.
And maybe you can have start to have a think about it.
So one, there's just the love of the energy, then there's the love for ourself.
And then there's the love for others.
And within that, what are we getting out of loving others?
And what are we getting out of being loved by others?
And if we're getting something out of it, that is actually making us feel good about ourselves,
then it's not pure love.
And there's something there to be examined of the why do we need that.
And when we can use
I mean, like I was saying to someone this morning, you know, I'm at the point now where I'm like, it's like I'm learning to drive a car by sitting on the edge of my bed like I used to do when your kid ran you okay clutch in, and like change gears and this and that.
And you're practicing over and over yourself in your head how to drive a car, but I'm not actually in the car.
So I'm trying to learn about love and unconditional love while not being in relationship.
And there's only so far I can go within that.
Before I need to get into a relationship with someone so that I can then like, you know, walk the walk and talk the talk and actually trigger stuff and observe stuff within myself and actually go into it.
So if you are in a relationship with someone, and you find that there's like a split there being with them as like a self taught wound, and it's like, ah, then examine that go into that, what is there?
What is there to be observed about yourself?
What is there underneath that what is there when they're not there, that you need to take responsibility for,
or you need to heal, right,
you need to go in and work out what it is.
And when it was right going back to these moments in time,
when we learn to believe these things about ourselves.
And now we're creating the pain as adults.
And they do it's children to write
and then looking at how you are loving people?
And is there manipulation in there?
Very subtle manipulation?
Do they have to be a certain way for you to love them?
Do they have to act in a certain way?
Do they have to turn up in a certain way?
Can we not just allow them to be who they are?
Because the great and interesting thing about attraction and love is that the polarity,
like the ends of a magnet we attract to us,
or sometimes we attract to us what we need to heal, right?
And it's these half spins of this quantum energy within us that weren't healed, that created these wounds is samskaras in us that are attracting the same situations to us so that we can complete and heal on one hand.
But then what happens is that we end also we end up attracting to us the opposite polarity of that which we are at, but then we start trying to change them to be more like us to feel safer.
So can you observe this person that you love and allow them to be who they are in totality without needing to change them, without needing, wanting to make them more like you're wanting them to not have that hobby or wanting them to not do that thing?
To want not have that opinion?
Can you just love a person for who they are and not want to change them?
Because ultimately, what we do is we attract someone to us. And then we start trying to change them to be more like us because we don't feel safe.
And we don't like you know, if they have a different opinion to us, it makes us feel in a certain way.
So we try and get rid of that.
And then observing yourself within the manipulation, the fine dance for the manipulation of when you do something for somebody.
What are you trying to get out of that?
Is it purely just for them?
Is it just like I don't even care if they know that I've done it or not?
I'm just doing it for them? Or is it
Is it something in return?
Is it so they owe you a favor?
Or is it so that they'll be more loving towards you?
Or is it so that like you?
Is it so they'll love you?
Is it so they'll want you?
Is it so they desire you?
What is going on there?
What is your secondary intention?
Because they're the things that really drive us.
They're unconscious, right?
Our secondary intention.
And sometimes they keep us in situations that we don't want to be in because we're getting something out of it.
And for instance, for me when I was observing myself in that deep desire just to be held in someone's arms and to make the pain go away,
that would have had me giving up all that I am and all that I are,
and my own boundaries and my wants and needs,
I would have surrendered them just to have that in that moment.
And I was observing that within myself.
And it made me realize how far I am from unconditionally loving myself.
Because if I unconditionally love myself, there is no way
no way I would compromise myself,
there is no way I would give up something that was important to me as a want or a need,
or a boundary,
just to have somebody else make the pain go away.
Because that's my job.
It's my job to do that.
Not there's
just isn't it's not our job to be there to make their pain go away.
And that's a dance that we get into, especially with those attachment styles, the anxious and the avoidant, right, the anxious attacher, desperately needing not to be rejected,
not to be abandoned, need this person to love them no matter what.
That's their wounding, right?
And the avoidant, needing the freedom,
needing to get away,
needing this person to give them space.
That's the wounding and when we are in the dance of relationship, and we are able to observe our minds, and we are able to see the stuff coming triggered, and we are able to take responsibility for our emotions, go and process them get the lesson from within, go in deep inside and find what's causing that and work with it, then that's when relationships can be amazingly healing.
So unconditional love, how far does it go,
you know, the Osho books that I've been reading, on love have been about how if you truly love somebody, than if they were and you know how the healing that is to be had within lovemaking.
And how when you are making love to somebody, or that is not love comes up to be healed.
And that's why emotion can come up within lovemaking.
Not so much sex, right.
But that lovemaking, and then how can you truly love somebody, if they were to be attracted to somebody else and to want to golf and try that person for a while that you would be fine with that don't get me wrong,
I'm nowhere near that at the moment, right?
I just want to be loved, I want to be loved unconditionally, for who I am, right?
And work with that.
And to have that I need to have it for myself, I understand that.
And that is something I'm working on.
For me, that's the first step to be able to love myself unconditionally, than to be in love someone else unconditionally, and to get to accept unconditional love.
Because at the moment, I mean, if I can't love myself unconditionally, I can't accept it right?
Then the next phase on from there, I'm not saying I want to go there.
But it's interesting to reflect on it is that being able to love somebody in such a way that you would give them their freedom.
But then you would also have your own freedom to explore sexuality with other people in lovemaking with other people.
And it makes sense to me that if you had a deep true connection with someone where there was that mutual love and respect and intimacy and connection, and unconditional love, where you weren't judging, and you weren't blaming, anyd you weren't making anything mean something about you, and you could give them the freedom to explore and also have yourself the freedom to explore, that you would keep coming back to each other.
Because you wouldn't be finding that with other people, right?
So you would go off and explore then come back.
Now that threatens me terribly, because I'm still at the point where I just want someone to love me, right?
And then my inner feminine jumps up and down and throws a tantrum whenever I go there in my mind, because she just wants to be adored.
And she doesn't want the man who adores her to be adoring anybody else not, not on.
But you know, I can see that this could be possible.
But I also see that the people who get into this and think that are using this as an excuse, not actually love properly.
Because they're using this as a bypass of the free love to not commit and connect intimately with one person.
Because that's too scary.
And they're in their avoidant.
And they're using this like, Oh, but I should be able to love and be free to love and they're not actually going into themselves to see that the wounding is there and to heal that and to use intimacy and connection and love as a way to go into themselves and to trigger up what's there.
Instead, they're floating along on the surface using an bypassing is an excuse not to go there and staying in every point and patenting but calling it something else instead.
That's humans, right?
That's what we do.
Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking something because of that secondary intention of not going into the pain that's too scary to go there.
So yeah, that's where I'm at.
At this point in time.
I realized that really where I need to go is unconditional love for myself.
I need to keep working on that
and observing myself within loving somebody else who was not loving me in return.
And then the allowing of that and being okay with that.
And being able to love and not expect love back and not need love back.
And there definitely has been a shift there because, you know, eight months ago I was stuck in that fear of rejection, the abandonment, the pain that came from that and that has definitely moved.
So I'm happy about that.
But am I at the point where I can love myself unconditionally?
Well, no, obviously not.
Otherwise I wouldn't be trying to manipulate others to get love and I certainly wouldn't want to be diving into someone's arms just to have them take the pain away,
because that is there because I'm not loving myself unconditionally.
Anyway, I think that's enough for today.
I'm going to keep going on my beautiful walk here in this beautiful national park and I will see you soon