Looking Through the Eyes of Love

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Have you ever had times when every one and every thing is agitating you and you feel like what you most need is a vacation from people in general?

 

On a typical day, we all have an infinite number of opportunities to react to situations that trigger our own fears and insecurities. The driver who suddenly cuts in front of your car may spark you to react with an angry gesture; a work associate who adamantly disagrees with you may cause you to be overtly defensive of your own point of view; being on the receiving end of someone hurling cruel words may cause you to retaliate with a vengeful response; or experiencing a food server with a negative attitude may cause you to respond in an unkind, judgmental manner.

 

When you react to someone else’s fearful words and actions with the same defensive energy, you are perpetuating separation and adding to the negative energy of the situation.  This ultimately results in everyone’s feelings being hurt, as well as a serious breakdown in communication.  When you find yourself in a reactive mode and feeling pulled into other people’s dramas, it is a sure sign that it is time to expand your perspectives to focus on more than just your own personal reality.

 

Perspective is the overall viewpoint from which we see our world. We don’t actually see our perspectives.  We look at life through our perspectives, much the same as we see through a pair of eyeglasses. While we cannot control everything that happens in our lives, each of us is responsible for choosing how we want to interpret and respond to life events and situations.  If we change one letter in the spelling of the word responsible–to responseABLE–we are reminded that we are able to choose our responses to life. Since our responses are based on our perspectives, we are each able to change how we experience life in an instant by changing the lens through which we view our life experiences.  Ultimately, we have a choice:  We can view life from the perspective of fear, which results in mindlessly and defensively reacting to the negative energy of people and situations; or we can learn and grow from every person we meet and every situation we encounter by changing our view of life to see through the eyes of love.

 

Looking through the eyes of love is a conscious choice to perceive people and their situations with compassion and understanding. When you exercise compassion, you are empathetic because you are able to sense the feelings that are motivating another person’s actions, rather than judging their obvious outward behavior. Rather than focusing only on your own personal situation, compassion enables you to see a situation from the other person’s perspective as well. It is through compassion and understanding that you can resonate with another person’s feelings by remembering that, just like you, every single human being you will ever meet is also experiencing pain, sickness, and loss in their lives. You also begin to stop taking people’s reactions so personally – the way someone acts is a projection of how they feel about themselves – not an evaluation of your self-worth.

 

Choosing to perceive life through compassion and understanding, rather than judgment and defensive reaction, opens us up to a whole new vista of life.  It is like looking through a special pair of eyeglasses that enables you to have an emotional x-ray vision that can see the issues of fear that are motivating someone’s negative and offensive behaviors. The person who cuts in front of your car may be going through a divorce; the work associate who relentlessly argues with you may have a serious mental imbalance; the person who is speaking to you with unkind words may have just lost her job; and the restaurant server who had a negative attitude may have just gone through the loss of a loved one.

 

I experienced the value of perceiving a situation in a compassionate way a couple of years ago when I was waiting in the checkout line of a local grocery store. The cashier appeared to be rude as she haphazardly threw the purchased items into bags and never once looked up to smile or greet any of the customers.  I was fourth in line, and the annoyance and judgment of each person who preceded me intensified as the line progressed forward.  When it was my turn to be waited on, I gently asked a simple question:  “Are you having a difficult day?”  The woman who was cashiering looked up and stared at me, her eyes brimming with tears.  “It is more than a difficult day – I am so upset I can hardly breathe. Today marks the one-year anniversary of the day my daughter was killed in a car crash.  She was only 4 years old.  I don’t know how I can even live through today.”  My heart ached for this woman, and I found myself giving her a long, spontaneous hug.  “Thank you for understanding,” she replied. As I left the grocery store, I was so thankful that I had not judged the cashier and had taken an extra minute to ask her that simple question.

 

When we choose to look at people and situations through the eyes of love, we are acknowledging that we are all emotionally vulnerable and that every one of us is  experiencing tremendous challenges in negotiating our spiritual journey here on earth. Not only are we being kind to others, it is also one of the most self-fulfilling ways to honor our own soul.

 

I welcome you to share ways in which you are aware that your perspective has greatly influenced your relationships with others.

 

Love and Light

 

Sandra

 

Letting Go of Our Judgment of Others

This is a vintage image of a glamorous women being judged

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Nothing creates separation and discord among human beings more than when we judge each other.  While this is true, judge is a word that causes confusion for many of us.

 

 

On one hand, for centuries humanity has received countless messages through spiritual masters from all walks of life instructing us not to judge. Two of the most well-known are the biblical verses citing Jesus as saying,

 

 

Judge not, lest ye be judged,” and, 

Let he who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone.” 

 

 

On the other hand, most of us would agree that we certainly need to use our judgment skills to navigate through this very complicated, polarized physical world of experience.

 

 

No wonder we are confused!  In the strictly literal sense, some of the definitions of judge are:

 

  • a person qualified to decide on the relative worth of anything
  • to criticize or censure
  • a person designated to determine the winner

 

Wow!  When we apply these definitions to how we engage with other people, it brings up a lot of questions.  For example, who among us is the one person who is supremely qualified to decide on the worth of anything?  Who among us appreciates being criticized or censured? And, how about, who among us is the ultimate judge of who is a winner?

 

 

In order to understand what is meant by letting go of judgment of others, we need to adopt a more neutral interpretation of the word judge. Rather than construing the word judge in a polarized way that involves attacking or assessing the value of another person, we can rise to a higher perspective by perceiving judgment as an act of discernment. We need to use our skills of judgment to discern situations, opportunities, agreements, and decisions to determine what is in our greatest good.

 

 

How do we differentiate between the polarized perception of judge versus the more enlightened, neutral interpretation?  

 

 

A good point of reference to determine this is to ask ourselves, “What is the source of my judgment?”  If it is coming from an intuitive space guiding us to make choices that are in our greatest good, we are most likely coming from a space of spiritual integrity.  When we judge from this neutral perspective, we are assessing and evaluating objective things, such as a baseball game, a career opportunity, deciding on a financial investment, or choosing which college to attend.  If we find ourselves subjectively judging another person, then the source of our judgment is coming from ego in that we have determined our superiority over some else.  When we do this, we are, in essence, proclaiming ourselves to be the expert in someone else’s life. The ego perspective implies that we think we have the answers to someone else’s problems.  Judging others is usually a sign that we have decided someone else needs to act the way we want them to.  We are saying we are right, and someone else is wrong, which almost always creates conflict.

 

 

How can we let go of judging others? 

 

 

We begin by reaching into our hearts (not our heads) to remember compassion. Compassion is a deep level of kindness in which we are open to trying to understand where other people are coming from by putting ourselves in their shoes.   We acknowledge that we have not experienced their victories, their losses, their relationships, and their pain.  We draw on our own experiences to understand other people more than we seek for others to understand us.  We practice treating other people the way we want to be treated. We also take responsibility for the fact that when we judge another, we are also judging ourselves. Whatever we find annoying in another person is an aspect that, to a greater or lesser degree, we need to heal within ourselves.

 

 

Being non-judgmental requires that we choose to look beneath the behaviors we are witnessing and focus on the soul level of our fellow humans. There is a principle called the “Pygmalion Effect” (from the popular book of the same name or the movie, “My Fair Lady”) that exemplifies this state of grace.  This principle states that if we expect the best from another and communicate such to them, they will respond by adjusting their behavior to match. The main idea concerning The “Pygmalion Effect” is that if you believe that someone is capable of achieving greatness, then you have created a space of potential for that person to achieve greatness. Stated simply, when we let go of judging others, we focus on the goodness (Godness) within everyone, rather than what is wrong with them.  When we practice being non-judgmental, we offer others the opportunity to find themselves and to meet us partway.

 

 

The famous Sufi poet, Rumi, expressed this truth so eloquently when he said:

 

 

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.  I’ll meet you there.”

 

 

Love and Light,

 

Sandra

 

I welcome your comments, insights, and experiences on how we can let go of judgment of others.

What is the Difference Between Conditional Love and Unconditional Love?

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Love – This is a word that is very frequently used in every language to describe our emotions ranging from something as relatively trite, such as, “I love your shoes,” to something as deeply significant as a mother saying, “I love you” to a child in the most vulnerable moment.

 

 

Is there really a difference between conditional love and unconditional love? 

 

 

The answer is, yes.

 

 

What is conditional love?

 

 

Conditional love is a polarized emotion, meaning that it has an opposite emotion.  The opposite extreme of love is hatred.  Conditional love comes from ego and  generally focuses on someone (like a romantic partner, child, parent, friend)  or some thing (like a house, a car, or a job).  When we love someone conditionally, we tend to want them to look, act, and think in ways that fit our own paradigms and expectations.  We hold others accountable to our expectations in order to qualify for our affection.  If they act the way we want them to, we express our approval; if they act contrary to our wishes, we withhold our expression of acceptance of them, usually in some form of anger.  Conditional love polarizes our internal thought process to believe, “I am right, and you are wrong, so I think you should see things my way.”  As soon as begin to judge someone as being right or wrong, it is our cue that we are not in a space of unconditional love because we are perceiving that we are the authority for someone else’s life.  This ultimately results in a power play for everyone involved because it focuses on control, which typically elicits a defensive reaction from the people whom we are trying to change.

 

 

Another version of conditional love is passion, a term we use for the sexual feelings we have when we meet someone with whom we have “chemistry.”  The term “falling in love” is a revealing expression indicating that we sometimes lose ourselves when we are involved in a passionate romantic relationship based on conditional love. Possibly, this is because we are looking for another person to complete us rather than looking to share our whole self with another. “Looking for our other half” is a statement that strongly indicates we are seeking to make ourselves whole through someone else, rather than working on ourselves to become more of who we truly are.

 

 

When someone acts in a way that vastly deviates from our expectations or does something to hurt us or someone we care about, we can transform the emotion of conditional love to the complete opposite end of the spectrum – hatred.  Hatred is a very strong emotion that is rooted in fear.  Hatred is extremely destructive and wreaks havoc on our mental, emotional, and physical well being.

 

 

What is Unconditional Love?

 

 

Unconditional love is neutral and has no opposite polarity.  The source of unconditional love is Spirit; therefore it is available to everyone without discernment, and there is absolutely nothing we need to do to qualify for it.  Unconditional love comes through to us at a soul level, beginning at the level of self-acceptance and self-forgiveness, and radiates divine light to everyone and everything.  When we make a conscious decision to choose thoughts based on unconditional love, it does not mean that we agree with everyone and everything.  It means that we consciously commit ourselves to expressing respect, kindness, and cooperation to everyone and everything in our environment.

 

 

Unconditional love is not something that happens to us or outside of us.  It is the life force of energy within our very being and is ingrained in every cell of our bodies.  We don’t have to search for love–we ARE, each one of us, the physical embodiment of unconditional love.  Because unconditional love is life energy, it is formless, infinite, constantly in motion, and unconditionally available to us 24/7!

 

 

Unconditional love has a positive effect on our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual state of being, creating truth, joy, beauty, health, harmony, and everything in the world that is in our greatest good.  The benevolent, compassionate nature of universal love flows through us and blesses everyone and everything it touches.

 

 

When we open our hearts to receiving and expressing the love of the universe, we feel expansive and radiant.  We automatically rise above the limitations of fear because unconditional love is infinitely more powerful than fear; in fact, unconditional love is the most powerful force in existence.  There is no amount of darkness that can blot out light; yet the tiniest amount of light can overcome darkness. This means that no matter how dark and chaotic our lives may seem at times, we can find comfort in knowing that our earthly world is always held within an infinitely larger context of universal love and light.

 

 

Remembering that we are each created in the energy of divine love gives us great inspiration and renewed hope that we each have the power to bring our own unique expression of unconditional love to the world, which brings healing to everyone and everything we touch.

 

 

Love and Light,

 

Sandra

 

What We See in Others is a Reflection of Ourselves

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You may have heard it before, but it is such a strong statement:  “We can only see things within others that we see within ourselves.”  I think this is one of the most challenging spiritual lessons we are here to learn.  When I first read this statement in a spiritual book many years ago, it seemed very odd to me.  Like most people, my first response was, “Surely, I do not act like a lot of people who annoy me and push my buttons.”   Interestingly, I find that when I facilitate spiritual classes, this statement typically elicits the same response from most others.

 

 

Everyone you meet is your mirror.  Why is that?

 

 

We come to understand ourselves best through our relationships with other people. We can only be triggered by something we have experienced ourselves. The traits we tend to dislike in others are usually the traits we do not like about ourselves.  We then tend to judge and criticize these characteristics.  This calls to mind the analogy of pointing a blaming finger at someone.  One finger is pointing at another person, and three are pointing back to ourselves.

 

 

When certain characteristics in someone’s personality trigger a negative reaction from you, there is something within you that is coming up because it is ready to be healed.  Usually, it represents issues from your past that have gone unresolved. An example of this would be constantly attracting people who betray you in close relationships because you have not dealt with a parental abandonment issue from your past. What you are seeing is a manifestation of your belief that you cannot trust anyone with your feelings. Here is another example:  You are someone who has a constant need to prove to others that you are “right.”  Chances are you will attract people who strongly disagree with you because they also have the need to convince others to see life from their perspective.  Also, if you dislike controlling people, most likely you dislike some bossy tendencies within yourself.

 

 

Every person we meet in life is showing up at the perfect time in our lives to reflect something we need to heal within ourselves. The people with whom you interact are showing you who you are and ultimately providing you with an opportunity to love yourself. Since our mission is to discover what we don’t love and learn to love it, the people who get on our nerves the most are among our greatest teachers.

 

 

When you find yourself triggered by a person or situation, ask yourself the following questions: 

 

 

 

    •    “What is this person teaching me that I need to learn to become more whole?” 

 

    •    “Do I behave like this now?”

 

    •    “Did I behave like this in the past?”

 

 

Believe it or not, forgiving YOURSELF is the most effective way to disengage from negative interactions with people.  We can only love and accept others to the degree that we love and accept ourselves.  When you make it a habit to learn from your relationships, eventually you will discover that you can observe negative traits within others without judgment and without getting hooked into someone else’s drama.  If you discover that you are in a relationship with someone who habitually abuses you in some way, it is sometimes healthy to limit your exposure to that person or to avoid their company completely.  This serves you well only after you have embraced the lessons that you have seen reflected to you through the relationship, followed by choosing to forgive yourself and the other person.

 

 

The good news is that the desirable behaviors we see in others is also a reflection of ourselves.  When we predominantly choose thoughts of love, we live in a reality of love.  In other words, as we focus on our light within, we bring out the light within others.

 

 

We came to this earth to return to the remembrance that we are ONE. Everyone we meet has come into our path to help us to remember this.

 

 

Do you find it challenging to believe that what you see in others is a reflection of you?  I welcome your thoughts.

 

 

Love and Light,

 

Sandra

Forgiveness – The Greatest Gift We Give To Ourselves

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I have often shared with others my belief that forgiveness is the greatest gift we can ever give to ourselves.  This many times surprises people, because it is a commonly held perception that forgiveness is something we do for others – almost like a favor that we are doing for someone. Sometimes we perceive our forgiveness as a reward we will give someone if they apologize first or change their behavior to accommodate our expectations. 

 

It is extremely important that we understand the actual meaning of the word forgiveness.  When trying to accurately interpret a word, it is many times helpful to go back to the original definition as it appears in the dictionary.  According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, the actual definition of forgiving is allowing room for error or weakness; and the definition of forgive is to give up resentment.  When we remember that we are all fallible and that the only thing we have to lose by forgiving anyone is the self-destructive resentment and judgment we are carrying, we begin to see more clearly that the person who benefits most from the process of forgiveness is self.

 

Let’s discuss just a few of the many reasons that help us to understand why forgiveness is essential for our OWN health and overall well-being: 

 

Forgiveness is rooted in Self-Love – Self-love is the fundamental principle of all healing and the root of all compassion for self and others. When we hold on to anger and resentment with people from the past, we hurt ourselves by continuing to experience the emotions that are associated with these painful experiences.  This takes a heavy toll on our mental, emotional,  and physical health. It is also important to remember that life is a two-way street.  Either knowingly or unknowingly, we too have hurt others through our unkind words and actions.  We can only give to others that which we give to ourselves—so developing the attitude of being compassionate and kind to ourselves is a very healthy way to develop the habit of forgiveness.

 

Forgiveness creates harmony – It frees us from the need to be “right,” which automatically makes someone else “wrong.”  This attitude breeds constant conflict with others and within ourselves.  Every person who is in a disagreement thinks he or she is “right,” or there would be no discord in the first place.  By letting go of our need to be right, we are not admitting we are “wrong.”  We are simply being wise and compassionate enough to realize that we do not know what someone else is experiencing, what they are feeling, or why they have responded to a situation in a way that does not match our expectations. Simply stated, we are not the authority for how someone else thinks and acts, so it does not serve us well to criticize others.  By judging others, we plant the seeds to remain entangled in an unproductive drama that intensifies the struggle, rather than focusing on the resolution. 

 

Forgiveness creates inner peace – A peaceful mind is a quiet mind.  Paradoxically, I think most of us would admit that we have cluttered minds.  Forgiveness promotes mental clarity by cleansing our minds of unhealthy, resentful thoughts from the past.  This creates the mental space for more expansive perceptions based on our spiritual values.  Our society is extremely focused on physical fitness and cleansing diets for our bodies; yet we ignore our mental fitness and the critical need we have to houseclean our minds of the toxic thoughts that we constantly recycle in our minds based on our anger and resentment toward others.

 

Forgiveness frees us to be in present time – Blaming others keeps us stuck in the past and reinforces thought patterns that create the same dramas in the future.  The only time in which we can create new realities is in the present.  Since our thoughts create our personal reality, why not choose to forgive the past and adopt a new way of thinking? Why look backward?  It’s not the direction you want to go.

 

Forgiveness shifts our self-perception – We can transform our perception of ourselves from being a victim of our circumstances, reacting to hurtful situations from the past, to one of being a student of life.  Seeing ourselves as a student of life means choosing to interpret all the situations we have ever had and all the people whom we have ever met as lessons that help us to learn more about ourselves, others, and life in general.  Since our perceptions determine how we experience everything in life, shifting from a self-image of being a victim to the more enlightened self-image of being a student of life empowers you to create new, more expansive realities that align with your desire to live the life YOU choose.   

 

Forgiveness, like any form of thought, can be consciously chosen.  While it can seem difficult at first, the more we practice forgiveness, the more natural it becomes.  We begin to feel better about everyone—especially ourselves.

 

Do you have a challenging forgiveness situation that you would like to share?  I welcome your comments and questions.

 

Love and Light,

Sandra

Is Anyone Listening to Me? How to Hold a Loving Space for Communication

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It seems that everywhere we turn, most people are

 

talking and very few are actually listening.

 

 

 

A few days ago a dear friend called me to say, “Hello.” Shortly into the conversation, I sensed a twinge of pain in the tone of her voice. When I asked her if everything was okay, she opened up and expressed that she was feeling a lot of frustration from speaking to her sister on the phone the previous day. My friend explained that she had called her sister to discuss an emotionally challenging situation. “My sister just talked over me and never heard a word I said,” lamented my friend. “What hurts most is that I just wanted to talk through my situation with someone who loves me and who could acknowledge my feelings.”

 

 

Does this sound familiar?

 

 

It is understandable that most people are not clear enough to listen because the majority of us are walking around with unexpressed feelings. Coping with the ordinary and extraordinary challenges of life can tap us out emotionally, mentally, and physically. Since it is not socially acceptable to cry at work, hit someone with whom we are angry, or to scream in public, many times we just bury our feelings. The problem with this is that repressing our feelings can create a reservoir of pain that can eventually fuel an emotional outburst at an inappropriate time and place that is not even relevant to the original situation. Or, even worse, we can continue to keep our feelings locked inside, which many times results in some form of dis-ease.

 

 

What most of us are really craving is simply to be heard! 

 

 

I have come to the conclusion that listening is an art, and like most artistic expression, it needs to be developed and practiced in order to become good at it. Creating a non-judgmental, open space of communication that allows one person to talk while the other just listens is spiritually referred to as “holding the space.” In the world of psychological counseling, it is referred to as “reflective listening.”

 

Listening without judgment is an act of self-love.

 

Holding a non-judgmental space to listen to another person’s expression of feelings is not an act of selflessness.  In fact, it is an act of self-love that helps to free you from being attached to other people’s issues.  It is an exercise in letting go of our own ego, rising above the drama, and extending the utmost respect for others by acknowledging that we each have the inner wisdom to provide the answers to our own questions.  Since what we project is what we attract, chances are that when you practice being a good listener, someone will be there to hear you in your time of need.

 

 

The following are guidelines to assist you in holding the

 

space for another by being a good listener. 

 

 

1. Make an agreement between yourself and the speaker. Only one person talks at a time while the other simply listens. Give your complete, undivided attention to the person who is talking. If this is an in-person discussion, it is ideal to maintain eye contact.

 

 

2. Be fair to yourself. Agree that there will be no personal attacks – you are there to listen to feelings, not to be verbally abused.

 

 

3. Tap into an inner sense of stillness that enables you to be an observer of the conversation, rather than a participant in the drama.

 

 

4. Neutralize the space by choosing not to interpret anything that is being said as a personal attack. This is easy to do when you remember the truth that what people project onto others is a reflection of how they feel about themselves – not you.

 

 

5. Let go of all judgement. There is no need for you to “fix” anything. The person who is expressing their feelings is usually not seeking any answers from you. In fact, many times the person who is talking becomes aware of their own resolutions after they have had an opportunity to clear their emotions through expression.

 

 

6. When you have allowed a period of listening time that is fair for both you and the other person, bring the conversation to a gentle close by summarizing aloud your perceptions of the feelings that have been expressed to you. For example, you could say something like, “So I am hearing you say that you feel sad, frustrated, angry, etc.” This reinforces that we have, indeed, been listening.

 

 

7. Remain unattached to how things unfold. We all have our own lessons to learn in our own unique ways.

 

 

 

Holding space for another is a profound way to bring more love to the world because we are listening with our hearts. If we each had someone to listen to our feelings in an open space of no judgement, we would more easily experience personal peace. And if more of us were feeling peaceful, what a bright world this would be!

 

 

Do you have any suggestions or experiences you would like to share regarding holding space? We would love to hear from you!

 

 

Love and Light,

 

 

Sandra

The Aftereffects of Valentine’s Day

Why does everyone make such a big deal out of Valentine’s Day?

“Whew!” You tell yourself. I made it through another Valentine’s Day. What is this holiday all about anyway, and why does everyone have to make such a big deal out of it? With so many singles out there it is not like we need reminders of all those happy couples out there doing all that romantic stuff with each other! Or, you may be thinking that all this sappy stuff is silly now that you have been married for so long.

 

Why did I react the way I did this year?

It is kind of funny though, how you can catch yourself automatically criticizing something just to make yourself feel better. If you hate Valentine’s Day and what it stands for, does that mean you are either dissatisfied with your current relationship – feeling alone even though you are with someone? Or, have you had so much difficulty connecting with another person that you deride others for being able to make such connections? If you are having difficulty in your current relationship or if you have difficulty being in a relationship, you may want to ask yourself why you have such difficulty loving another.  Have you really taken the time to explore your relationship with YOU? My guess is that you have not.

 

This is an image of a broken heart with a bandaid

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How weird, right? You may be saying at this moment, “Yeah…let me stop everything and take time to  have a relationship with myself!” Well, actually, yes – please do!!! So many people have asked me, “Why am I alone?” or “Why do I feel so alone?” The answer can be found within – I promise you.

 

Have you really made yourself available to another person?

 

If you are single and would like to be with a significant other, ask what steps have you taken to get out there and meet people? Or, more importantly, ask yourself if you are in a good place to bring another into your life. Perhaps you have filled up your life so much with other stuff that there is no room for anything or anyone else.  It is amazing how energy works. Stuffing your life with so many things puts out there that you are too busy and that loving another isn’t a priority in your life. Providing the space to clear your head, your heart, and your life to be open to receive the love from another is an important first step.

 

Would you want to date you?

This is an image of a lonely, sad man

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Another important component is being healthy within before you look outside yourself for another to be in your life. In many cases we look for another to “complete” us when in all actuality you are already a beautiful, unique, complete being! Often we look to another to “fix” us.  The familiar words, “If only I had a man or woman in my life that…I would be happy,” somehow don’t end up working out quite like that. We might find a person who makes us happy initially, but that tends to fizzle out once we got our quick “fix.”

 

 Lonely but not alone?

This is an image of a sad and lonely persian cat

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For those couples out there who may have had a less than romantic Valentine’s Day, ask what is it about your relationship where you no longer are honoring each other? It is so easy to take another for granted, especially after being together for a long time. But, ask yourself how would you feel if that person were no longer there? PAY ATTENTION to your body’s physical response to this question! Do you feel anxious, scared, sad, relieved?

 

 Have you lost yourself and your own personal power to your partner?

If you feel anxious or scared, is it because this person “takes care of you” and you wouldn’t know how to live on your own? If so, perhaps you may want to evaluate whether you or your partner has come to resent this dynamic. Have you lost yourself and your own personal power to your partner? Often these underlying issues can cause the chemistry that brought you together to come to a screeching halt!  Talk with your partner; find out where their head is. It could be that a 5 minute conversation could turn into an hour of pure pleasure that you thought wasn’t possible before!

 

 When was the last time you said, “I love you?”

 

If you feel sad, could it be that you deeply love and care for your partner and the thought of them not being in your life almost makes you feel ill? If so, and you feel disconnected from this person, what have you done lately to let them know how deeply you care for them? Perhaps this separation you feel comes from them thinking you don’t feel the same about them. Again, a 5 minute conversation could turn an old relationship into something new again. Don’t wait for him or her to say, “I love you.” Taking initiative in a relationship is important – and you might just shock your partner – in a good way!

 

 Do you need to get out?

 

If you feel relieved, it could be time for you to move on from an unhealthy or unfulfilling relationship. This also goes back to making space in your life to receive love. Staying in a relationship that no longer fulfills you isn’t good for the partner you are with either. If you can no longer give love to this person, it is in their best interest for you to move on as well. Once you are on your own and have healed from this relationship, really get to know yourself and get on stable footing before seeking another partner. Otherwise, you may tend to repeat the same dynamic you had before. Make sure to reflect on the lesson(s) you needed to learn from the relationship you had been in – this is crucial for your emotional growth so that you bring a healthy, stable, and empowered YOU into a new relationship!

 

 It’s all an illusion! 

 

Remember that, loneliness, after all, is just a perception. You are never truly alone. You are always surrounded by the unconditional love of the universe. Remembering this will fill your heart and allow you the space to reflect on the love you have for YOU and that special person in your life…or that special person who may be about to enter your life!

 

Love and Light,

 

Sandra