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So, these past few years, I’ve been on a journey.

I don’t know what to call it, but whatever it is, it has taken me down unfamiliar roads where I’ve met many different versions of myself.

This has forced me to examine what makes me me over and over again.

Often painful but never dull, the process was slow but continuously forward moving, and with every trip I made, I brought a little part of that awareness back into my external world.

Recently, it feels like I’ve reached a milestone. For the first time in my life, I feel truly and fully worthy of love and that I’m also prepped to receive it.

And it’s happening, just not really in the way I expected…

It’s unfolding in such a manner that it’s changed my complete perspective on the nature of love.

Romantic love to the majority of us usually comes with a lot of lust.

The desire to be physically intimate with others is one of our most basic instincts and one that I certainly enjoy indulging in. However, recently, when I was met by the familiar overwhelming desire, I found that instead of placing my focus on manifesting that energy, I was drawn to inspect its origins.

As I tracked back to the roots of my longing, I was surprised not to find the usual ticked checklist of desirable attributes. Instead, all I found was my desire to feel wanted…my lust wasn’t there to express my love but to help displace my fear of rejection.

People talk about the healing power of sex, and I can see how in my scenario it has an application. But actually, in that moment, it felt pretty unfair of me to put this on another.

With this realisation, my energy shifted.

I put my fears to the side and connected with my feelings for this person. As I dug deeper and deeper past my usual checklist of requirements and my wounds, I found a stream of love that was free of attachment and expectation. It was expansive and surprisingly not tied to this one person.

It wasn’t the nature of love that had changed…just how I was actually processing it. I had stopped seeing this person in terms of what they could offer or what they meant to me. Instead, I saw them as a sentient being in their own right. In that moment, I was able to feel a love that transcended them and extended outward without limitation.

When we first feel it, love is amazing. The euphoria and exhilaration are blissful, but at some point, nerves and anxiety set in. We feel vulnerable, and our mind takes over.

Whilst it’s shooting off warning signals, it also wants to give the illusion that it’s capable of being the driving force in love, and thus, will take the label of love and run rampant.

It will externalise the experience, only to see it in its fully manifested form. When we place expectation on what love looks like to the outer world and when the mind is in complete control, it won’t be long before we see some extremely cringeworthy displays of romance that come with a high dose of inauthenticity because they are nothing more than optical simulations.

It feels like we’re being set up for a fall when the mind is in charge. It will line up expectation after expectation, whilst bolting attachment to those who are delivered and disappointment and pain to those who are not.

It’s only when the mind surrenders to the heart that it can be used effectively to aid the experience.

The love that I unearthed was an internal love. To date, I’m still unsure of its external application, but I get the sense it has to be free of sucky expectations.

That’s not to say that lust and desire are off the table. God, I certainly hope not. It’s just a different starting point that aligns us to the internal experience and not the expectation.

What we can create from there is limitless.

~