I am Loved. You are Loved
Do you really understand what that means?
The amazing Kris sent me an email a while ago, talking about how she processed becoming a single woman again, and how, when she fully accepted that status, things just became easier for her. Now I have to tell you, I really don’t want to be single forever. It was not In The Plan.
But you know what? It might just be how things pan out. Who knows what the future holds? I just managed to feel, properly, this week, was the ok-ness of this moment. Because if I spend this moment lamenting my single-ness, I haven’t lived it in full celebration of Life, have I?
Here is the rub: on a deep level, I believe that without a lover, I am neither loved nor lovable. This clearly a ridiculous notion: I look around me and I see many many faces, the faces of those I love, and who love me. Sure, none of them are my lover, but that’s just one kind of love. There are many.
So, just as I am, I am loved. Just as you are, you are loved. No external circumstances need to change. Right now you are loved, I am loved. We are cared for, by the fact that we draw breath. We are special and perfect, because we draw breath. Like grains of sand on the ocean floor, each one necessary and perfect, each one an ineluctable part of the Whole.
What would change if we could really know this, in our bodies and hearts? I would like to be able to hold this knowledge all the time, but it slips and slithers away sometimes. That’s ok, I know where to find it.
On my yoga mat
Walking in the sun
Behind my eyelids
In the skip of a child
It’s always there, waiting for me to wake up to it again. Waiting for you to wake up to it again.
The soham, the I Am, that moves each one of us, beats our hearts, breathes us.
On the way to work yesterday I was thinking about how things could be better if they were different in my life, and yes, partly to not be single. My ruminating thoughts were startled back to the moment by the fragrant blossums of a jasmine tree. A smile started on my face and it’s warmth gushed through my whole body, and I was overjoyed with a spirit of nowness. Then in that instant gazing up and walking under the branches containing a cloud of soft white petals, drawing deeply the sweet spicey jasmine. Content in that moment, realizing that it’s ok to be me.
So, yes, it’s good to remember to cherish each moment, enveloped by love, for who knows what the next breath will bring?
I was with my Ex for a very long time. When we split up I felt that I would never be loved or capable of loving again. Even yoga didn’t really help me (gasp) – I would have moments when I was teaching when I felt unbelievable love in the room but I could never sustain those moments. I was single (and rather angsty) for four years.
Then I met Himself. And oddly it wasn’t until I met him that I realised that I was loved in a way that far transgressed his love for me.
It was a hard four years but honestly I would not be who I am without it.
It sounds like you are doing wonderfully – and if it’s any consolation in my experience The Plan never ever goes to plan, but very often the outcomes far surpass one’s wildest dreams!
Love and Oms x
I’ve had very similar thoughts to these, and as you know from my recent posts, I’m working towards a way of viewing love as a source energy, available any time and in spades.
Same as you, I had and have no plans to be single forever. But for the past few years it has been 200% necessary. Now, it is less so. But I have to find my relationship with myself, and my own ability to generate love before I can find the right person to connect with.
I think its natural that our knowledge of love slips from time to time. But what is important is the knowledge that we are loved, there is plenty of love and we know what to do to tap back into that.
In different philosophies and contemplative ideologies there is a belief that “romantic love”, the love we crave and are taught societal defines us, is just a sort of beginner form of love that can be lovely but really is just a primer to learn how to love so that we can find the deeper and more complex levels of love like unconditional love, universal love, and other loves that are less based on romance and more on a deeper, collectively felt love.
Now, that said, that was of course little to no consolation to me when I found myself single again after my first long term relationship at age 23. I felt alone in a way that was new and palpably more solitary than ever before. I felt, as you said, unlovable and unloved–even though there were friends and family that stood in contradiction to that belief. I know that that was a piece of a grieving process and transition out of a relationship I needed to have to find the more solid ground on the other side of that loss.
I love my husband and am so happy to be with him, but I also learned (in the time following that first break up and years to follow) that his love, that kind of love did not define me or my loveability. But there are days I still have to reinstill that fact and it was a long, and at times quite painful journey to find that new self of mine–not defined by romantic love but able to enjoy it and let IT grow into something more complex than what it started as.
I wish you all the luck and many blessings on your journey. Your rich and poetic words describing that feeling were a perfect depiction and your sentiments of finding our own loveability so true–all of us have to remind ourselves from time to time that we are loveable and loved–it is something everyone forgets.
Teresa at http://myembodiment.wordpress.com
I was just watching this clip, a fave, and thought of you and this post – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef3JTiHNQAA
“Cinderella, you’re stellar, you don’t need a fella – I don’t need your glass slipper, I like my shoe just fine thanks, have you noticed how beautiful my soul is” xx
Sorry, this is a better link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otw3D67TS-A