I have had a deep yearning that craved to be in true relationship with others that was meaningful, supportive and loving and for which I have spent my life seeking but never truly established because I had not first developed love or acceptance of myself – I was expecting it to come from another initially. I was afraid to truly be loved and to be love.
All of my relationships were a great distraction from not feeling or taking responsibility for my choices. I blamed others for my not feeling loved, accepted or appreciated – imposing my own insecurities and lack of self-worth onto another.
When I finally stopped, realised there was more, that I’d lived a pattern throughout my life and had been given plenty of opportunities to be loved and have true friendships, only to push them away, I realised that it was no-one else’s fault but my own. With that came an opportunity to make a change, to begin chipping away at the wall I had built around myself, to let people in and to learn to love, accept and appreciate myself. I am no longer keeping myself and my body in a state of protection and hardness, hiding myself away from the one thing I always wanted – to be loved.
I would only let people see as much of me as I felt was safe, in case they may hurt me, let me down in some way – I was holding them to ransom you could say, just in case. Crazy, because I have come to realise that by doing this I am actually hurting myself more than anyone else ever could.
How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?
Observing how much I kept people at bay in the past, I am now more open to how I am with others and with myself. I can now feel that as a result of the choices made in the past I have been holding my body in hardness all of these years.
In developing awareness of whether I am being guarded or protected, I feel if my body is tense or relaxed: am I allowing another to see how fragile, vulnerable and gentle I truly am? Am I letting go of the protection and allowing myself to be seen, flaws and all; not expecting myself to be perfect or fit into any boxes?
I want to have true relationships and to be and feel loved and I now know none of this is going to happen unless it begins with me. I have started observing my body, such as my posture, stance, and tone of voice or if there is unease when I am around others. I am also noticing if I go into any form of judgement or comparison of another, an awkward conversation, or if I simply go into avoidance and walk the long way so I do not have to be around another.
These simple observations are small steps that are allowing me to open up and be aware of things that in the past I would never have thought to do.
I am now beginning to love myself, to accept who I am and know that my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow and evolve, that ‘all of me’ is what is required to live, that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.
I have by no means mastered this. It is an ongoing development, one I am committed to and getting ongoing support with to stop going into the past patterns I created. It is easy to hold back, to keep others at bay, but how that feels in my body is not easy. For me there is a huge level of discomfort I feel in my body when I hold back, now that I am aware of it. I am also aware of the choices I have been making and how they impact on me, my family and everyone around me.
Having a reflection of what it is to be truly open, transparent and loving is not something I see or feel every day, but when I do I am inspired to live in and with the same quality. Universal Medicine presentations and the ongoing love from Serge Benhayon and his family provide a ginormous reflection that supports me to feel what it is to be truly loving.
I am left pondering on why we do not let others in and why are we so afraid to truly be loved, and why such amazing qualities of tenderness, gentleness and vulnerability are hidden and held back, all in fear of being hurt.
The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel. A love that I have missed and longed for, which has always been there, but have not until recently decided to let myself feel.
Beginning to surrender, allowing myself to be and live all of these incredible qualities, I feel I am only now beginning to develop true relationships with others and myself.
By Nicole Serafin, Woman, Wife, Mother, Self-employed hairdresser and Business owner
Related Reading:
Serge Benhayon Raises The Bar On Relationships
What is a True Relationship and How Does that Feel?
Being your own valentine – real love begins with YOU!
Words on Serge Benhayon 
Nicole thank you for what you bring, as The Livingness fits what you have described and what we align to and thus how we take that into our rhythm at night is super important.
This is a great question probably one of the greatest questions to ask
” Why are we so Afraid to Truly be Loved?”
Or put another way, why are we so afraid to truly love ourselves? Humanity has been shown that there is a deep love within us and yet we resist the love that we naturally are. We have been given all the tools and continue to be presented with the reasons behind this lack of love so that we all have a greater understanding and yet we continue to be wayward. The energy of resistance is in complete opposite to the energy of love and the battle if we can call it that takes place within our bodies. Is it possible this battle is based on our past life experiences for some it is a huge ask to let go of the hurts that they are continuously fed and so assume is part of who they are, and there is the lie we are continuously fed thoughts that are not our thoughts and these thoughts, become a movement that keeps us away from what we all want the most and that is to feel within ourselves that reservoir of the absolute love of God.
Mary you have shared gold as much has been shared that is not true about our past lives and what we align to now gives us the great opportunity to return to our Soul so we can live in the magnificence and glory we all are as Sons of God.
“How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?” When we cradle a new born baby in our arms the love that flows and is felt is profound, vulnerable and powerful.
We are literally our own rock, aren’t we, but we didn’t realise. All that love within to be enjoyed and lived from, yet our perceptions of ourselves is that we are much less. Surely one of the greatest crimes in this world is the corruption of the word love, so that we see it as an emotional neediness and something we get outside of ourselves, and not as the very essence of our being.
Have we been sold a lie that love is fragile and once broken can never be mended? This seems to ring a bell somewhere in my sub consciousness. I am discovering that love is what the universe is made of that all the planets, stars and galaxies are held in love. If we were to stop and consider how heavy by weight our sun is and it is held in love then love is not fragile at all.
Yes indeed something I too have very much felt that in keeping others out and also resisting the love within we are hurting ourselves more than anyone else can ‘I was holding them to ransom you could say, just in case. Crazy, because I have come to realise that by doing this I am actually hurting myself more than anyone else ever could.’ Also the absolute craziness in spending so much energy resisting love … like LOVE! Why on earth would we want to resist Love? From my experience its not going into the who’s, whats and hows but just the simplicity of feeling what I was doing and how much it was hurting me and letting go of this and starting to embrace the true love I know within.
Why have I been afraid to love myself? I asked myself last night. At some point I’ve picked up that everything that is not loving in the world (which is a lot) is bigger than me when connected to the love that I am, and to do so is a risky move. Problem with this is that when I am loving myself, when I am love, anything that isn’t love can’t touch the sides. Is this fear based on a lie perhaps? I reckon so.
It is a complete illusion that the what is not love (and you are right there is currently a lot of lovelessness in the world) is bigger than Love itself. Just as we are finding out more and more just how huge (huge being an understatement) the universe is equally it is the same as Love. Its vastness our minds cannot fathom yet we like to ‘think’ we can put things in boxes such as love so we have more control over it!!!! I have asked myself the same question with regards to why do I not love myself to the max and have also asked why do I not equally love others to this max …. all I can say is it is work in progress 🤗✨❤️ and I choose not to delay with this.
I feel this is a very powerful blog, I have been quietly sitting with what is on offer here and have come to the realisation that when we reject true love we are not rejecting the other person but rejecting ourselves because somewhere within us we do not feel worthy of such a depth of love. If the thoughts I have are not mine but are a consciousness passing through me then the question has to be why am I picking up negative thoughts and not the positive thoughts that are also passing through. Is it possible there is a configuration in my body that picks up negative thoughts over the positive thoughts without me even realising this.
A very awesome observation Mary ‘Is it possible there is a configuration in my body that picks up negative thoughts over the positive thoughts without me even realising this.’ It all comes back to what are we aligned to in our body and the more we are aware of this the more we can let go of everything we are holding onto (like configurations) that are not love. Very cool ✨
I am discovering Vicky we have patterns of behaviour we don’t realise we have until someone who is not in that pattern of behaviour brings it to our attention. Then when the pattern is exposed there is a choice to be made stay in the pattern or discard it. Justification is just one example how many times in a day do we justify our reasoning or our behaviour, or even justify our being alive and taking up space! We can trace our justifications back to when we were young as we used justification as a defence mechanism.
“In developing awareness of whether I am being guarded or protected, I feel if my body is tense or relaxed: am I allowing another to see how fragile, vulnerable and gentle I truly am?” I have started developing a deeper relationship with my body, being more aware and present with my body, which is actually being more present with myself as a being, and allowing myself to feel how I truly am, not just physically but on every level. What I have been noticing is I am much more allowing of my vulnerability when I am connected to my body and present. This is also offering a change in my relationships to bring more of the whole me.
My heart lights with Joy Nicole, as I read what is being shared because as we allow and observe we can then accept who we are and surrender to a forever-deepening-love.
Nicole What you have shared with us is very true, I’m not sure that we appreciate just how much we are controlled by our patterns that we bring in from previous lives and have no awareness of.
I chuckled when you mention walking the long way round so you don’t have to say hello because just before I read it I realized I was standing in a queue with someone I used to work with and for some bizarre reason I looked down!! So much to learn in life … what a pleasure.
Nicole there is a real flow to what you have shared and that flow feels like it comes from you and your back and forth interaction with life as you allow yourself out and as a result allow life in. So, so beautiful to feel.
Thank you Nicole, it’s a truly tremendous read. I realised as I read your blog that it’s truly loving to not need anything from others, but instead to embrace the love I am and be that with others.
This is very beautiful to read Melinda “it’s truly loving to not need anything from others, but instead to embrace the love I am and be that with others.”When we fill ourselves with the love of the universe it is the most exquisite feeling and then to share that love is what is so sorely needed in the world. When someone feels met and loved for just being themselves it is a very settling feeling to experience in our bodies.
A blessing to leave behind the clingy version of love that leaves us feeling small, inadequate and always wanting more from another. True love is abundant and equally available to all, our first responsibility is to embrace and love ourselves.
When we are ‘confronted’ by true love from another, we get to feel the very depth of love that we hold for ourselves and for others. Now this may not be as deep as the one being offered to us, in which case it can be confronting to feel as it exposes those parts of us that have not yet gone to the deeper part of love that we naturally can hold.
I’m fascinated by the way we can just fob off the love that is shown to us by saying to ourselves they don’t mean it or convincing ourselves we don’t deserve such love and so reject what’s being offered. I am puzzled at the way we hold people at bay, what negative energy are we running with that enables us to do this and where did that negativity originate from? We can say we were hurt but what is behind the hurt we are feeling?
There is only One Love and it cannot be owned, personalised or attached to and any attempt to do so corrupts it of its true essence, One Love is above human, it is universal, beholds, a constant flow available equally to all of us
I love what you have said here Kehinde about love not being something that can be owned. It simply is.
I was in the company recently of someone who is so humble because they have that understanding that the love they express is coming through them and is not owned by them. Everyone is bathed in the love that just pours through. It is the most exquisite sensation to be in such company as I know I am feeling and a witness to the love of God on earth.
Mary that feels amazing to read and it must be truly heavenly to experience. And, a beautiful reminder that we all come from and can connect to and share this same love.
Amazing universal truth shared here Kehinde, thank you.
It is said that ‘Love changes everything’ but this love is not emotional. it is universal and beholds, not one, but all.
Today I am deeply appreciating my true friendships in my life knowing how much they actually care for me as I for them. A lot of things have been coming up lately of also not feeling met or loved by others. However what you say here is so true that at first it is surrendering to the love within and loving ourselves deeply.
When we surrender to the love within and say ‘I am Love’, we no longer seek love from outside ourselves, we feel full and complete. And when we feel full and complete, the focus moves to appreciation of all that we are and knowing we have so much to bring to others.
kehinde2021 I like what you say here
“When we surrender to the love within and say ‘I am Love’, we no longer seek love from outside ourselves, we feel full and complete.”
This fullness and completeness is then very settling within our bodies so that the anxiousness or nervous tension we are in can no longer stay in our bodies as it gets replaced with settlement which is such a relief for our bodies as it takes a lot of energy to be in a nervous or anxious state.
Romantic films and fairy tales are being told the other way around. There is no one who can bring love to us, we are not empty vases waiting desperatlety to be filled. We are love, a pure and an endless emanation of it. So why are we so afraid to truly be loved?
‘I am now beginning to love myself, to accept who I am and know that my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow and evolve, that ‘all of me’ is what is required to live, that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.’
Nicole your words resonates inside me as truth and inspires me so much, thank you
I appreciate the rawness and honesty in your sharing. The humbleness in recognizing that all of you is worth being loved. How freeing is to realize that imperfections are there to support us to grow. And such a blessing we can be for ourselves and others when we admitt that we are ‘the one’ who we ever expected to care and adore us.
I have observed similar things with myself in how I am in relationships. I very much appreciate the simple observations you have been making that are assisting you on your path to more open and loving relationships.
Holding back the love from ourselves is always a hard pill to swallow. Especially, once we realise that is what we have been doing.
In holding ourselves back, we are already stopping love from being expressed through our body, it is self-abuse.
I agree with you Fumiyo that to withhold love from ourselves is very self-abusive and many people self abuse in the misguided belief that it is better to annihilate oneself rather than letting someone else annihilate them. This is the illusion that we have bought into which sets up a pattern that is then difficult to let go off. Most of us live with ingrained patterns that influence how we move which keeps us in the patterns that are so familiar that we do not question them as we think this is who we are.
It’s such a relevant topic, what could be more important for us to sort out than our relationship with love? I know for me I am not yet able to be fully transparent and let people in, it’s a step by step healing process though with things coming to my awareness regularly to help me understand why and what the hurts are.
It is no surprise I am reading this blog after at the end of the day, reflecting how, I still do not fully let people in completely in. Yet absolutely nothing is stopping me from doing so. The crazy games we play .. at what cost? … our own 😶
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.” It has taken me a long time to come to this truth and realise that this is how most of us behave…setting up an impossible scenario for true love to enter.
So many of us go to great lengths to avoid feeling and expressing love but love is the one thing we crave the most. I have often wondered why we do this, after attending Serge Benhayon’s presentations on the spirit and soul he explains this so clearly. Now, I understand what is at play when we hold back being love and I have less judgement on loveless behaviours due to a deeper understanding of what is going on.
Chanly88 thank heaven literally for the presentations and humble guidance of Serge Benhayon who has clearly shared with humanity the difference between the Soul and the spirit so that we are left in no doubt what energy is running our bodies. Until Serge Benhayon opened up this topic of conversation to the world we were fooled into believing that life at the surface level was all there was.
It is ridiculous that loving ourself we find so hard, and yet we do, fighting our own love with all our might.
I agree Esther, and it is exhausting to put up this fight and then we go searching for love high and low outside ourselves.
We can be our own worst critic and judge ourselves very harshly. When we start to be love we discover just how harsh our thoughts have been towards ourselves. It makes sense that we can never truly love another if we do not love ourselves first.
Definitely Julie. Once we are aware about this harshness towards ourselves and allow us to feel it in to our body we just have to say no to it. In my experience, a significant before and after happens after a step up like this.
Julie Matson absolutely reading the comments today I was feeling how much we judge ourselves so harshly as lacking, surely one of the first things towards self love is to put down the stick that we beat ourselves up with because that is abusive behaviour to start with. I constantly have to remind myself that the negative thoughts I have are not mine but an energy I have aligned to, which definitely is not my soul.
When we are at one with the love we are hurts do not exist, protection is not needed as the power of love is a superlative divine force like no other. It is only our will to step away from our connection to this quality and drop our vibration, that we take on a lesser existence and lose sense of who we truly are. It is not always easy to admit what we have chosen to leave behind when we begin to return to feeling the stupendousness, freedom and all-encompassing and ever-present power that love is.
But you would think Carola that once we start to feel the difference in the quality of the vibration between our reconnection and the disconnection that we would want to stay in the connection, so could it be that we allow pride and a certain arrogance to get in the way of the return to the sense of who and what we are. Is it possible that we from a misplaced pride stubbornly refuse to admit that we have been fooled hook line and sinker, after all we ‘think’ we are so intelligent.
How truly wonderful to feel that we are loving beings and we only need to accept and appreciate this and understand that we have not made life about this beingness but instead about patterns, beliefs and momentums which only held us away from our beingness (that is love).
There is a flow to love and in the flow there is a sense of joy that is so great you just giggle as you walk along because if feels so grand to be alive and have living within our bodies such contentment.
When we enter a relationship there are many things we assume about ourselves and others which are not true. And, yet, we expect true love from it. The truth is that there is a long-standing relationship with untruth that is taxing us.
I’ve recently understood deeper that it’s not that others can hurt me. It’s that they show me where and how I have hurt myself. The lack of love and awaress I react to in others is my own reflection.
Great sharing Leigh and what a beautiful way to learn from our hurts, without any blame but with a huge dose of responsibility and love.
When being truly loved we are exposed at the lack of love we have for ourselves; a very necessary revelation while holding onto the illusion that it would be possible to be saved by the love of someone else like the maiden by the knight in shining armour.
Ha- yes Alex, and this is our greatest revelation for it opens us up to the fact that we are the one love we have been searching for.
Yes, Nicole, we are only hurting ourselves by holding onto hurts, as we are missing out on the love that is inevitable when we open our hearts.
So true Janet – In our absolute surrender to love hurts do not exist.
In answer to the title of your blog: ‘Why are we so Afraid to Truly be Loved?’ If we allow true love in, the whole world changes. It is like you look at everybody and the world with new eyes and a new marker in your body. It made me realize that I have all the love I have been looking for inside, but also that I can share this love with everybody and can’t keep it reserved for one or a selected few. It changed the way my body feels and how I am with my body and it gave the words space and responsibility new meaning.
I love what you share here ‘it made me realize that I have all the love I have been looking for inside, but also that I can share this love with everybody and can’t keep it reserved for one or a selected few.’ It has also made me ponder on do I reserve this love for a selected few … where I have come to the conclusion no but I do have people in my life I am closer to than others which I guess everyone has.
It feels to me that we’re only afraid of being loved when we’re afraid of connecting to our bodies and allowing ourselves to feel whatever is there – be it layers of emotions, or old patterns and reactions to how we are in life. But by connecting to the body, bit by bit we get to feel that there is more to us than the surface swirling emotions, the apparent highs and lows of daily life.. underneath all of that is a deep well of steadiness, and love. We seek to find it outside of ourselves, yet we already have it – in plentiful supply- within.
When we can feel that we are holding another at a distance it also means there is a part of us that is avoiding loving ourselves more deeply too – at least this is what I have experienced and once I let myself be more honest and feel that I am safe to deepen my own connection, then this makes it so much easier to do likewise with others.
When we lack love for ourselves, then we are more likely to accept another treating us in a way that is not loving, but as we learn to love ourselves more then it is like raising the love standard and not allowing or accepting anything (in terms of behaviour from self or others) that may be below that standard. This is something I have observed over the years with myself and how as I grow and learn to be more loving with myself, this also needs to be reflected in the way I treat others as well as my boundaries with others and my capacity to say no, lovingly so.
Henrietta I can relate to what you are sharing
“as we learn to love ourselves more then it is like raising the love standard and not allowing or accepting anything (in terms of behaviour from self or others) that may be below that standard.”
As we learn to love and accept ourselves then naturally we do raise the standards of what is or not acceptable, this can be quite confronting to partners, family members or colleagues who are used to the old ways until they get used to the new standards and some times partners cannot cope with this and leave the relationship because they are not prepared to grow and change within the relationship.
Allowing ourselves to be loved starts with simply appreciating… Both expressing appreciation, and allowing ourselves to be appreciated… I know this sounds really simple but this is the start, it has an extraordinary effect upon our bodies, our hearts and our energetic system that lays the foundation for a deeper connection which of course leads to self-love.
cjames2012 – thank you for brining it back to energy, and that there is an energetic system that as you say
“lays the foundation for a deeper connection which of course leads to self-love.”
Oh that is heaven to my ears Elizabeth, how truly truly wonderful and true this is.
Seeing our imperfections as something to embrace allows us to maximise the learning on offer. When we’re in the hardness of trying to be perfect, there is no room for making mistakes, and no room for expansion, either. Letting go, allowing ourselves to make mistakes and to learn, opens us up to a deeper and richer relationship with ourselves, and the possibility for that with others, too.
I had some interesting conversations this weekend about wanting our partners to be or do all the things we weren’t doing. Whether it was being more honest, more loving, less in comfort or reflecting God and how demanding it was to not go there ourselves and blaming them for not doing it.
Yes the classic pointing the finger but not wanting to make a change in yourself! I am familiar with that one.
I experienced afterwards how super empowering and setting free was is to look at my own hurts and issues and take responsibility for healing them. As a bonus, all of a sudden so much intimacy in sharing about this process with the close friend as well.
I am experiencing that every issue with love, expression and letting it in, is coming from me and never it is the other person. At times it seemed almost impossible that it was my lack of love for myself, but when I looked deeper at the way I moved, thought about myself and how I saw myself in relation to others clearly shows there was indeed something for me to heal and change.
Thank you for your honest sharing Lieke, and it’s a very practical approach to assessing where we are not love for ourselves.
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.” This is all too common Nicole and certainly something I know very well. But the more we allow love to come in, the more we are able to deepen that love for ourselves, and this is where the true healing lies.
Thanks Sandra for your comment, that particular quote from the blog stood out for me also. It totally changes the perception we have that we are not loved and the desperation and powerlessness in that, to the more empowering base that ‘we are love’ – which means love is inside of us and we can choose to be that love again.
It’s a real wake up call, to consider that all the love we have ever wanted is right there inside us, and it’s actually the essence of who we are. All the hurts, agonising and desperation we have felt around love could be ameliorated with a reconnection to the love within.
Yes and I am certain there would be a reduction of world wide conflict if we placed more value on that deep care and relationship with our own health.
Lucy I couldn’t agree more, once our relationship to ourselves is based on that deep care and preciousness it can’t help but then flow into our relationships with family, work colleagues, and community in general.
Is it possible Melinda Knights that the more we move towards and accept ourselves as being the love we all naturally are the more the resistance kicks in as the spirit resists every step back to our soul as it knows that once in the connection back to soul it will lose its individuality and this is the eternal battle of the spirit to resist the inevitable return back to the soul? We feel the tension within our bodies and I am learning not to fight but to surrender more it is in the surrender that we find our way back to the soul.
I “know that my imperfections are actually perfections” This awareness closes all doors to beating ourselves up. Imperfections, if accepted, are blessings and stepping stones to our own evolution.
“all of me is worth being loved,” a great place to be when we claim this fully for ourselves.
‘The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel’. Such honesty and such gold to feel the truth of how we humans shy away from love and in which costs more energy resisting that which we are, than just to be love.
‘I am no longer keeping myself and my body in a state of protection and hardness, hiding myself away from the one thing I always wanted – to be loved’. This was my old pattern which kept the world at a safe distance and was very harmful and toxic for my body, because we are not meant to be alone or struggle. Why do we fear, avoid, resist the one thing that can lead us home – love, starting with self.
It’s really crazy but seems to be very ‘normal’ – that we all want love, to be loved and to give love, yet to push it away, pretend we don’t want it, that we are fine without it and can survive. Being honest about this is very humbling, just being honest with that fact that we want to be loved is a huge step that opens the doors to see whatever we have put in the way of that love.
It’s quite odd really when you take a closer look at how we demand love from others and yet we do not consider to give it to ourselves. One would think it would be the other way around first.
I agree Julie – it’s weird yet totally normal. We are in high demand of what we are not willing to give to ourselves. But in that demand we can then settle for something close to it, or even and sadly enough, a re-interpretation of that love instead.
I sat and reflected what has been written here, and to be honest, if it wasn’t for Universal Medicine presentations and the ongoing love from Serge Benhayon and his family I’m not sure I would be in a great space. With their support I have turned my life around, the hardest part is learning to love myself again and to dismiss those negative thoughts that have been drip fed to me that I will never be enough. This is a carrot that has been dangled in front of me for years and I have tried so desperately to prove wrong. Because of the support of Serge Benhayon and his family I have been able to work out for myself that the game in life is to stop us all from realising who and what we are, and why we are here on this plane of life. I do not know anyone that speaks so plainly about life, the universe and our part in it all in a way that makes complete sense to everyone.
To notice how we hold ourselves in protection is a great first step in understanding how we are with others and thus with ourselves, for without a deep acceptance of who we are and how we are we do not accept others, and learning to understand that we don’t need to be perfect and to allow ourselves and others the space to just be is a huge gift for all of us and in this we let ourselves out and others in.
to me what you are sharing Monicag2 kicks a lot of main stream religions to the kerb, from my experience of religion it is all about looking outside of ourselves to a wrathful and vengeful God. There is nothing that is truly loving in every sense of the word when it comes to any religion except The way of The livingness which is based on the premise that we are all love come from love and are nothing but love, no matter how much we are in denial of this fact.
The way that we treat ourselves may be so ingrained that it takes a focussed commitment to change. Having people in our lives who are already well ahead in the self love stakes can be very inspiring and support us to make those steps necessary to revert our old ways and begin to care for and value ourselves.
I agree because sometimes the patterns of behaviour are so ingrained they are our normal and we don’t see that we can change without drama.
Deeply felt Nicole. Really beautiful it is for us to accept all parts of ourselves to become full again.
Sometimes we can pretend very well that we are doing great whilst actually we do not feel loved, adored, cared for or good at all. Interesting, as why would we want to hold up so wall and mask, as letting ourselves be, and allowing others to see us and be with others is actually opening us up back to the love we actually miss.
Our love for others definitely is founded on the quality of love we have for ourselves.
I found this very touching to read this morning, Nicole – ‘there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.’ What a beautiful claiming of your worthiness to be loved, something so key for all of us to accept who we are and what we have to offer the world just by being truly ourselves.
For me it confirms that we are all energy because the response in my body is energetic before it is turned into a logical feeling by my brain. My cells seem to be responding or reacting to what I feel around another and they are either attracted, repulsed or left alone – a little like a magnet on either end and in the middle. By considering there is no unimportant feeling we can build a relationship that offers ourselves amazing life skills.
My sense it is layers of awareness, we think we are being open but it is only when we drop a layer of protection and surrendering to that sense of openness that we can even contemplate there may be more. What we call openness and transparency now we may call so uptight in days, months or years to come!
“Why are we so Afraid to Truly be Loved?”. This is an important question to keep coming back to as each time I ponder on it something new gets revealed. All any of us want is to be loved yet when the love is there we often reject it because it does not fit the picture of how we think it should look like. Our images/pictures/expectations get in the way of accepting love.
The truth is that we are not taught what true love is, so we create our own version of it. What we want it to be like, look like and this is a great game to play because it keeps us in the separation to ourselves and therefore separated from everyone else because we never get to establish a solid foundation of acceptance of who we truly are.
What is it about us that we cannot accept or are afraid of true love and seem to be in resistance to it when we are shown it.
I was watching a SB.tv conversation between Serge Benhayon and Rebecca Asquith and they were discussing the spirit which I understood to be a part of the soul which separated to experience another way which is what we call human life and this information supported me to understand what our struggle is because this separated part of us doesn’t seem to want to go back to soul and so is in resistance and it is this resistance we have to overcome so that we can return to soul in full.
By pushing others away we are actually pushing ourselves and our access to our multidimensionality away. We are limiting our volume in expansion, because with another we can access more of that. That´s why it is so important to expose all the false beliefs and pictures we carry about relationships, as that is the fast track of evolution.
The moment we express our love in full it gets confirmed by itself. The moment we hold back and only express a version of our essence we then get back a falsity back and get “confirmed” in that. It is on us which way we are choosing.
“…my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow and evolve, that ‘all of me’ is what is required to live, that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.” That is wisdom to live by, thank you Nicole. We have this shame about “mistakes”, but as you share the so called imperfections are a beautiful part of us and they are part of the whole person. A lot for me to ponder on.
The tension we feel in our bodies when we are trying to be liked, let alone loved, is the part of us that feels so let down that we do not consider ourselves great in the first place. It is a clear indication we have forgotten where we come from, what we are made of and what we can never leave behind – no matter how many times we -re-invent- ourselves.
Feeling into what you shared Lucy, it is actually so ridiculous. We are held in the arms of heaven, a source of love unimaginable and it is the source we originally come from and then we look out in our humanness to be loved by another human. We definitely need to be disconnected to the grand love we are first, that we are looking for such a minor confirmation like being loved by another.
Yes, such a reduced version of the love we are from.
When we have an expectation of what love should look like, especially if we expect it to come from another we are hurting ourselves and others, love has to start from within ourselves, and the more consistent we become the more we accept our own love without any need of love from another.
It’s crazy that what we avoid is love when it is what we crave most. Is it possible that we settle for less that makes us feel comfortable because being aware of how we have diminished ourselves for so long is too painful to feel?
Last weekend I was in a self-care workshop held by an esoteric practicioner. We shared about our purpose and commitment in truly caring for ourselves. When I had to speak words didn’t flow very much, I knew that I had a lot to share about it but for some seconds I just could babble. The beauty of that experience is how I was in that moment, very rested in my body. I laughed and took it lighter – in the past I would have tensed and shared a speech that fit ‘well’ -, embracing my vulnerability of not knowing what to say led me to know what was needed to express. By letting go the perfectionism and stiffness of measuring myself depending on what I say or do, I could find myself sharing openly, looking in to the eyes of the amazing people there and appreciating very much the steps done since I came across Universal Medicine.
At some point we will embrace that we are perfectly imperfect and that our ache is the surrender to know who we are below all we do.
Learning to love ourselves through our imperfections and seeing our imperfections as an opportunity to grow is such a beautiful way to approach life, otherwise we get drawn into self loathing and self bashing which supports no one.
True Fiona. It is very harming and makes no sense beating ourselves up because of a mistake that can be a precious opportunity to learn, grow and evolve.
I too have cried the same tears. I have lived a lot of my life with no intention of being open to the love that has been around me. What is so ridiculous is that we all feel the same. How much more true is it to apply understanding? Then how much easier is it to be open to another? As the understanding invites us to feel the true equality that we are able to live with.
It is incredible how much time we spend looking outside ourselves because we can feel something is missing? And all along, it was inside, which we reconnect to when we stop the search. Love never leaves us it is we who leave, or shut out love.
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel”. It’s quite a bitter pill when you realise that there have been many opportunities for deep love and friendship but the way you move and think, protecting your old hurts has kept it out. It is also liberating knowing that we are able to change this through developing a very real and honest relationship with ourselves.
Yes, to deepen this relationship is a much needed focus. Not as anything special but as our normal, day-to-day behaviour.
This is a very honest and a great discussion to have because so often we wait for the other person to show us love first before we make a step towards them. But if we do not truly love and appreciate ourselves then we cannot love another person and the relationship is based on a need to be loved. I now know this to be true because looking back on my relationships in the past they were all based on a need for someone to love me as I was incapable of loving myself this puts an enormous strain on any relationship.
If we truly loved and accepted ourselves, and all of the imperfections and choices we’ve judged as ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’, we wouldn’t be so afraid of being hurt. Because what is there to be afraid of, to protect yourself against, when you can feel that there is so much love and joy within you that you can’t help but let it out?
‘you can feel that there is so much love and joy within you that you can’t help but let it out’ This is gorgeous to read, thank you Bryony.
I have been more aware of this recently too, how I hold onto protection in my body and do not let people completely in .. particularly on the right side of my body. So with this awareness I am learning to surrender a little bit more and more and to let go of the protection and hardness I have been holding onto probably for lifetimes.
‘The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.’ Wow, I can so relate to this Nicole. I have experienced this, it hurts to hold back love and not allow myself to feel it. As a result the hurt I feel means I am more likely to go into protection and this can feed the vicious cycle of abuse.
Letting ourselves be loved is something that we often don’t even think is part of the equation of life. But it is very much something to consider in our lives, the more I am self critical the less I see myself as worthy of love and the more I look at those who do love me and question, why? Doing this is keeping a wall up, living in a constant state of protection and constant ready to defend. When I consider this, it is very clear to me that we have to take stock and look at how we think and feel about ourselves, as every relationship we have is affected by the quality in which we hold ourselves.
True Leigh, only when we start to bring a body that doesn’t fight there will be no wall to protect or defend ourselves with. So when we surrender to what wants to come through us, the amazingness of God’s love, we can live our true qualities here on earth and love.
‘Letting ourselves be loved…’ why is that so difficult one could ask? You could write a book on this. Keeping it simple, to fully allow and receive the love of another in, one must first love self.
Once I feel what feels like a huge discomfort in my body from those choices that have not supported me I am left at a crossroads, an opportunity to change my movements. Do I keep repeating the ill-momentum and experience the discomfort again or am I willing, step by step to let go and honour me, not in reaction to the outside world but with a holding of love for everything and everyone?
As being truly loved is to truly surrender to universal spaciousness, a call to deeply surrender without self. This is what we all yearn for but resist the responsibility to.
Or react when we feel the truth of what we are and hold, and know that there is much to let go of to live it in the fullness that it is.
The responsibility seems to be unobtainable when we feel the vast difference between how we are now and how we can feel we really are. But could the true responsibility be to very simply stay loving, understanding and very tenderly encouraging of ourselves as we traverse the day’s, weeks, months and years ahead on our own steady journey back?
The simple steps of bringing self-love back into our lives… And they do need to be spelt out because there is usually such a resistance to even build the simplest foundation.
I agree cjames2012 and the resistance can feel huge but this is not true as we find when we begin to make even the simplest of changes to bring self-love into our day. It is a question as to whether we feel we are worth loving and worth giving the time, to truly love ourselves.
I quite understand what you are saying here Chris, as I have felt the resistance in my self. To love one self is to love everyone it is all encompassing. I wonder if this is where the resistance lies because by loving everyone equally then there is no room for self. And this is what we cling to for identification of who we are.
I “had been given plenty of opportunities to be loved and have true friendships, only to push them away” Oh the moment we realise this to be true – the ‘wambulances’ that have been called to mop up the mess! We are so much more powerful than we are led to believe.
‘The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel’. This is profound and I totally relate to those tears I have shed over not giving myself space to feel all of me and express all of me.
Yes I did too and this proves how much of the misery we may have experienced in life is self-created. No matter what is thrown at us, when we made life about love and allowing ourselves to feel, this is the best thing we can do for ourselves and everyone.
‘I blamed others for my not feeling loved, accepted or appreciated – imposing my own insecurities and lack of self-worth onto another.’ And that’s a game many of us play, and when we stop and start with appreciating ourselves we open up a door to deeper appreciation of all others.
‘…and know that my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow and evolve, that ‘all of me’ is what is required to live, that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.’ Wow, there is so much gold in this, so much gold in me that I’ve not accepted or loved. So worth reflecting on.
Agree Karin,
It is imperative we begin to see the gold inside of ourselves. It is only this deep appreciation that allows us to see even deeper wells of gold held in the gold we now know and feel within.
Recently it came to my awareness how unworthy I had been feeling. I was suddenly able to feel it because I did feel worthy – worthy of love. I was quite shocked at the level of unworthiness I had been feeling but celebrated in the new level of love.
Love this. Here in this comment lies the key for each of us. Only through appreciating everything we become aware of, the comfortable and the not so comfortable, will we be able to discard what is not of loving service to ourselves or another.
When we realise we keep ‘people at bay’ it is also a great moment to recognise how we keep our own love within ourselves at arms length too. The more we self-love, the more we are able to accept and let love in from another.
What I can feel is how much more there is when it comes to accepting and surrendering to the truth that we are love, and it hurts to feel how much I have held back just because I stop and measure how much of that truth I am prepared to accept and live and created layers of conditions, and when there is even a tiny slice of poison of doubt, I am no longer in my full-ness.
Oh the lifetimes we can spend looking beyond for what lies within.
A wise man once said along the lines off: ‘we all think we want to meet the love of our life, but often when we meet him/her we run a million miles away and can’t handle it.’ And this makes sense when there is no foundation of loving ourselves and appreciating every single aspect of ourselves.
Yes, this makes complete sense as we have not learnt to love every part of ourselves. In fact many of us don’t even like ourselves so if this is the case how can we allow others to love us.
I have been pondering on this topic a lot and especially about the question title about why we are/I am so afraid to truly be loved. Is it the same with my girlfriends, family or partner? And if not what is the difference? Am I also afraid to be loved to the bone by God? Why do I feel super vulnerable if I allow myself to truly feel how deeply for example I love my partner? All these feelings of not deserving this, of not having done ‘the right things’ to feel loved this much, came up and make me aware of my pictures, investments and fear of being all of the woman I am.
Gorgeous Monika, thankyou for sharing all of that.
Wow, you pretty much asked all the big questions that have been coming up for me as well lately, Monika, many of which have really frustrated me when I could not seem to answer them in any meaningful way. But what I have gathered from Nicole’s sharing here is that the key has been not dealing with the lack of acceptance of myself in all its imperfections too, and beginning to allow myself to feel what is going on there in all its ugliness.
I realized today Michael, that most of it for me had to do with not making my life enough about the grandness of where we come from, God or the universe or divinity and allowing this energy to come through me not just for myself but also for others around me.
Thank you Monika for your contribution, these are great questions to ask ourselves to see the various ways we do or don’t let love in.
When we allow ourselves to be stripped right back to the bare bone then what is revealed is that we are in actual fact the love of God and so it is for each and every one of us to get to the point that we can stand totally free of protection in the knowledge that we are the love of God in its entirety.
That is a lifelong question there, I remember coming to the realisation that I am actually afraid to let others love me. But, perhaps this is simply because I am not willing to love myself first.
“…know that my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow and evolve, that ‘all of me’ is what is required to live, that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.” I find this the most beautiful words one can say to themselves and then live them also. That all of me is what is required to live and that there is nothing we have to not accept from ourselves. There is this notion we I think learn when growing up that there is right and wrong so that there are parts that are wrong about us, but in truth there is only truth or lies and this has a very different feel than being wrong. We are never wrong just re-learning to express what is true again.
I think it’s great how when you realised that you had been blaming others for your own insecurity and lack of self-worth then you actually saw the opportunity to make a change, rather than be hard on yourself or ignore what you’d seen.
I found the observations of how you keep people from loving you a great guide to observe myself. I am starting to see some of my behaviours and postures that give off a ‘don’t come too close’ signal. I can also see from this experience and from observing other people open up that love is always there when we welcome it.
I cannot begin to share the respect I have for you sharing this blog, because we so often want to blame others for the lack of love in our lives and yet rarely take responsibility for how much we are pushing that love away for fear of getting hurt. It is worryingly natural and then goes under the radar.
I love how you make the point that when we close ourselves off it is we that we are hurting, it is the holding back that hurts. An open heart where love can flow freely in and out is our greatest ‘protection’.
It is a great question you ask Nicole. We are not so different at all really, everyone wants to be met and seen for who they are though many wait for the other to come forward before being willing to be that love we naturally are when it is there right with us all the time.
There is the misconception that we should not be feeling tension, discomfort or that we made a mistake. Far from it, there is no perfection and the whole point of going round and round, day after day is to evolve, deepen, become more aware of what does not serve and what supports… and then making choices and movements towards more love. Evolution does require a degree of tension or else we slip into comfort.
Thank you, that makes such sense and therefore we should embrace the tension as it offers an awareness that what is happening or what we are feeling is not the love we are from, or what we know we want. Rather than eat, drink, or pretty much do anything to avoid tension, we should look at it fully in the face and consider what it is we want instead.
“there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.” This sentence couldn’t go unappreciated. Getting to know who we are, where we come from and how connected we all our in our innermost connection is something well worth taking time over. So much can come up to show us where we have been afraid to live that love in full that support is sometimes needed to get underneath the hurt and the fear. Yet the freedom that awaits this transparent level of acceptance is the best investment we will ever make. We come home, we breath, we love, we are loved.
I can relate to all that you’ve shared Nicole. Recently I recognised how I get upset and hurt when I feel people close to me do not value me or adore me. I realised the reason I feel hurt is because I am not valuing and adoring myself. I will forever be searching for these qualities outside of me if I am not living and appreciating them in myself. So, I am now learning to appreciate, value and adore myself, and this will naturally be reflected out to others.
The fear of rejection, of not feeling worthy of love permeates everything until we build that love in ourselves first. It is our foundation and our benchmark.
Yes it is that simple in truth, though when we have it back to front all manner of complications and projections get in the way of seeing this clearly. Love remains untouched.
It’s a really good question as to why we don’t let anothers love in, and how awkward it can be to feel loved and adored…. really it should be the opposite! We have become comfortable with hiding ourselves away. I feel to explore this more deeply because I know for myself I can put a wall up if I’m not feeling loved and cherished, yet when another does love me it can feel uncomfortable too!
This is very interesting Melinda, I have felt the same. I sometimes mistake someone’s expression of love as them being needy. It could be that I was actually feeling uncomfortable with the level of love being shared and the uncomfortableness is most likely because I don’t always fully allow myself to trust and surrender.
It’s passing strange that we can feel so much loneliness, loss, lack of self worth and so on, that we can blame this on a million different reasons, but that the love is there waiting for any one of us on the inside. Always in reach if we just open our eyes, equal in everyone, and no judgement or experience can snuff it out… a little nurturing and the flame comes to life again, and again, and again.
Yes, and through that nurturing we are supported to see how much we have the skills and the potential to change the way we live and love for ourselves which then has a ripple effect on everything around us. We are so much more powerful when we consider what seeds we are sowing and ensure there is a quality in life.
“that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.”
Now that completely turns our long held beliefs that we can only show “bits” of ourselves to others. Often different “bits” for different people, when in truth another doesn’t want bits of us, they want all of us. And in truth, we want all of them.
Thank you Leigh, I have never really considered this before that we all want all of the essence of the people we are with, and that they feel the same.
“I would only let people see as much of me as I felt was safe, in case they may hurt me, let me down in some way – I was holding them to ransom you could say, just in case.”
Could we know this so well because most of the world is doing it, and it is simple to follow the crowd..
If life was an equation then it would make sense that the love I have for myself is equal to the love I have for another.
Sometimes we don’t see how much we block love in our lives or feel like we are not worthy of it so create complications to avoid love. Everyone wants this but we spend so much time fighting it.
The more we need another to love us the less open we actually are to receiving love, hence even if the genuine real deal comes along we will reject their love because we are not providing it to ourselves first. The irony is the greater the craving for love the stronger we actually resist it even when we get it!
The sad bit is that not only do we not develop the love for ourselves but we do not even realise that we should. Prior to Universal Medicine, it was not even a consideration that we could self-love let alone the benefits to ourselves and others.
If we observe children they have a natural sensitivity and have an ability to love and be loved. However as we grow up we loose this and seem to grow a hardened shell to protect our sensitivity and love against the world.
It seems to me that we give up on love and accept a lesser version of say companionship and this is our undoing because we do know love because we had an experience of it when we were young. Is it possible that this is why we give up on life and accept less.
I have realized that instead of focussing on myself and deepening the relationship with myself I have/had a tendency to focus on what is going on for the other. Instead of holding another in love so they can come to their own conclusions and wisdom I wanted them to be different and change, so I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. This is a great distraction for me to not go deeper in my own stillness, love and sacredness.
We are all looking for true love, but we are so bound up with ideals, beliefs and caught up in our patterns when we are met with true love we cannot recognise it and so is it possible that we walk right past it? Should we recognise true love I feel there is a process we then have to go through to undo all the barriers and walls of protection to let love in and let our own love out. When we can finally allow this flow of love through our bodies the rewards are far greater than any form of stimulant or entertainment we have so far come up with.
I love how our body supports us to be love and if we aren’t it communicates quite loud and clear. My right upper arm and shoulder are my constant reminder I am protecting or keeping people at a distance.
“Having a reflection of what it is to be truly open, transparent and loving is not something I see or feel every day, but when I do I am inspired to live in and with the same quality.” I agree Nicole. The Benhayon family offer this amazing reflection, but I know i delay in choosing to live it too.
Demanding love from others and taking this impossibility on as further fodder for and confirmation of our hurts keeps strengthening the wall of protection that we erect around us.
So when we don’t love ourselves, we are not allowing ourselves to be loved- most likely out of fear. This makes a lot of sense. If we can acknowledge that it feels scary at first to let ourselves be loved then that is one chip off the built wall.
This is very beautiful: to be loved is to love yourself. Simple and divine.
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.” Love this Nicole – taking responsibility for the part that we play through our lives and not blaming others.
A great sharing Nicole thank you, I can so relate to what your have expressed, keeping people out and hiding has been my way of life I had a feeling that I was not ok in this world, so why put myself out there to be hurt. It was such an empty life wanting to love and be loved and not knowing how. The most amazing thing now is that I now know the love I was searching for was inside of me all along and a big one is that I am ‘ok’ just being and connecting to the true and loving me .
I recall being at work a few years ago now and being gazed at by my colleagues as I was talking, they were all looking at me lovingly. it freaked me out. I wanted to stop talking and shrink in my chair. I realised then how important it is to let that love in for we are being given a gift from God, a confirmation in who we are and what we mean to people.
We can blame, we can play victim and do the poor me but nothing changes until we see and understand our part in it, and recognise how we’ve set it up that way. So it is with love and everything. And the best thing about this we can change it.
What you’ve shared Monica highlights how deeply loving it is when we are willing to take responsibility for everything in life. We are then free of the stronghold of blame, victimhood and hurts. Taking responsibility is not as bad as we make it out to be, responsibility is in fact an important ingredient in life.
I have also found that my body is a great marker or indicator of whether I am being open and loving or guarded and protected and unloving. My body always tells the truth.
I love that you have come to the conclusion that ” all ” of you is worthy of love. This is something I have not accepted in the past and I know that it comes back to me not loving all of me.
Beautiful to feel how through the simple observation of ourselves, with no judgment, we see how we are with others, and so how we are with ourselves. What we also get to see and realise is that none of these surface behavioural patterns are part of the core of who we are – they’re just ways we’ve taken on to adapt to the world as it is, to fit in and be accepted. The amazing thing is that in letting these behaviours go, we discover more of the grandness that lies just underneath.
What is this pattern that we will only share so much, and hide or reserve the deeper aspects. It does not serve us as we can only deepen our relationships to the extent that we are willing to go there ourselves.
I can so relate to this blog, we are led to believe from a young age that love is an emotion, we are daily bombard with songs, movies, books etc all conveying this type of love which is not true at all. I was completely taken in by this expecting someone to love me. I have since realised that first I have to actually love myself and this love is not emotional in anyway, but a deep self regard and a holding myself in a preciousness that I actual deserve and is innately part of who I am.
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.” This can be very challenging to accept, but it is so very true Nicole, and is something that I can very much identify with. Thankyou for your openness and honesty in this article.
Thank you for writing this article. It is quite confronting to realise that you have actually been loved, but only through ones own choices has there been the belief that you aren’t. No longer can I hold another to ransom or to blame another. I can though begin to feel the love that is flowing towards me, accept it and allow it to support the ever deepening love that I hold for myself and equally for others.
I know that one of my excuses for holding love at arms length has been due to some irrational fear that I will either not live up to the expectations of love or that others will not live up to MY expectations of love, hence letting me down. It’s not a conscious choice I make to keep love out necessarily but it’s certainly the energy that emanates off me. In saying that, over the years, I have come to re-learn that love doesn’t have expectations. It just is. It’s an acceptance of self and others and that’s it. No conditions, no rules. It’s simple and doesn’t have to be a scary thing, if anything it’s the most supportive thing we could ever allow in to our lives. So….with that understanding, I embark on letting go of my previous attachment to keeping the world at bay in an attempt to protect myself……from nothing.
Eloidie, your comment totally brings choice back into our lives. There is no hiding when we acknowledge our patterns we use to protect are infact deeply harming to ourselves, and others, as they keep the one thing that will totally support us in life at arms length, so to speak. Love.
Measuring ourselves with others is so exhausting and complicated, the effort put into this is incredibly draining and results in thinking we have issues with ourselves or others when we actually don’t.
The issue we carry is the hurt or protection that says ‘far enough’. We keep the world out and then feel the separation as the issue. Its our choice what we do with that each and every time the opportunity presents itself to go deeper.
Yep so exhausting and complicates otherwise simple relationships. Thank heavens for the awareness we have been able to re-connect to since Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon started sharing their lived experiences as inspiration.
“Having a reflection of what it is to be truly open, transparent and loving is not something I see or feel every day, but when I do I am inspired to live in and with the same quality.” I agree Nicole, Observing and receiving reflections from members of the Benhayon family is pure joy – and inspirational.
This is a topic I have been looking at this week, as I am looking to deepen the letting in of others, to truly feel their love and appreciation. I have shed a lot of layers of protection but can see there is more to go, not just the protection of old hurts but also the protection of irresponsibility and self.
When I connect and express from my Joy it doesn’t matter one bit how others are going around me, hence this is the level of quality I am being asked to step into in every moment…
It sounds ridiculous .. ‘afraid to be loved!’ but you are right many of us are. We spend a lifetime (or lifetimes) holding back in expression, in being loving, in loving, in being open, being transparent and instead pretty much spend a life in protection giving or expressing only a small part of our true selves .. we are living half a life. And the most important question of all ‘How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?’
These words were beautiful to read today as for the past couple of weeks my protection levels have risen at an all time high. However I can really relate to “It is easy to hold back, to keep others at bay, but how that feels in my body is not easy.” More than ever before. Thank you.
I remember when I was younger I would get so deeply devastated when a relationship would be over but I only felt that way after breaking up with the guys that treated me really badly. The guys that were sweet and loving to me I got over in two seconds. I was pondering this blog in relation to my past and considering that this is probably because I was so upset with the abuse I had allowed, that was the true devastation. The biggest pain we can feel is the lack of love we allow in our relationships.
I think it’s great to realise how much more it hurts to keep up protection and hold back all the love we innately are than it does to be rejected or seemingly let down by another…
Why are we so Afraid to Truly be Loved and love? – a question to ponder on and feel into with every encounter as there is always more love available than we already allow to be expressed, a question that not necessarily needs an answer but the willingness to forever expand the love that we are.
Deep down we really do love ourselves for we are love. It is simply acknowledging this and identifying ourselves as the love we are rather than ‘the what is not’ us.
When we are not willing to accept that we are love, naturally gorgeous loving beings then it is much more difficult to accept love from others.
When I’m trying to get everything done and wanting it to be a certain way I’m now seeing this as protection. It hurts my body a lot and I can see how it keeps people out. I’m learning that vulnerability and fragility are loving qualities to express from how I’m feeling and where I’m at and not something to avoid.
The opportunity for love is there every moment, it is ours to choose or not. It is everything that is not love that keeps us from making that choice. Eventually it comes down to the question what we want more – love or not-love. But in the end it will be love as there is a limit to how long we can resist and avoid being who we are; love that is.
Really this is the answer to all our relationship woes, yet it is crazy how we won’t acknowledge this and instead blame everything outside of us. Always how we feel in relationship starts with us.
Love is so simple that we often reject the simplicity of it. When we complicate things we feel like we are doing something but love does not need to do anything, it simply just is.
Recently I’ve noticed how much my own self love fills me that I have no need for others to fill that cup. It’s nice when I do receive love and I can receive it a lot more easily than when I was lacking in my own love. One thing that has been gorgeous to notice is that if others come at me with not-love – for example with a sly put down or negative comment that isn’t true, it doesn’t bother me. Someone told me my new haircut looked boofy. I thought my hair looked great and I felt gorgeous and so the comment didn’t get to me. Once upon a time it would have thrown me into self doubt and being very conscious about how I looked. I love self-love 🙂
Who am I when I allow myself to be truly loved? For sure not the same person that still resists to let in love in full.
It is absolutely, utterly and abhorrently irresponsible to want another to love us when we are not willing to love ourselves. It is so ingrained in our behaviours that we often do not realise the posture of being hurt only seemingly so by another’s actions is a demand often for them to love us and see our side. But what good does this ever do when we are all taking this stance and keeping each other out?
It hurts when another decides they don’t love us anymore, but would the pain be so hurtful if we truly loved ourselves, first? We are human – we cry, we hurt, we bleed – but if we truly loved ourselves, then that love doesn’t need love from another, but rather is confirmed by the other being love themselves, not giving it to us. What if love was more of a state of being rather than the transactional emotion we have come to know it as? How would we feel about ourselves, one another and what would our relationships feel like? As you’ve stated Alex, ‘to be truly loved asks us to be in our grandness.’ True love asks us to be nothing less than all of who we are, all of the time.
When I allow myself to be distracted by what is happening around me I begin to harden as I lose connection and then I become lost in everything I am not. As I reconnect the hardness dissipates and my body expands and returns to vibrating with the universe.
To be truly loved asks us to be in our grandness. Are we willing to be the gloriousness of our divine making? Or do we still like to hold onto the self-created lesser version, the spirit´s quest for self-identification and individuality?
I could have written this blog myself, word for word. All is what I have and still am walking through. Walking back to to the love I am, feeling the layers of hardness I have put on in order to protect myself. Coming to feel the lack of worth I have carried around. The path of return is not always sweet, the end result in nothing short of glorious.
It is through the awareness of our bodies, and the quality we express in that determines either how much love we let in or how much we let out, as naturally, we are from the same source of love so to hold back expressing it means to harden our bodies and live in constant protection which is detrimental to our health and wellbeing. Having the willingness to be open, transparent and embracing of our being-ness allows us to be naturally loving and intimate with others reflecting the truth of where we all come from.
Love cracks us open to the bones – we have everything to lose that we are not and to gain everything we innately are. Love challenges our conditions and asks us to be unconditional.
I love what you’ve shared here Alexander. I am beginning to understand that any form of conditional love is not true love. There is a distinct difference and we can feel this from a mile away.
This is a beautiful and powerful message Alex. To choose love may seemingly be one of the most challenging things we ever do, but it is equally one of the simplest and definitely the most precious, most honouring and the most loving thing we can ever do for ourselves.
Put simply – it is Self that is in the way or being truly loving !
As long as we have self-interest, even wanting to love and be loved, we are the obstacle to being the love we actually are. Hence getting self out of the way is a crucial part of having love in our life.
Well said Alex, self-interest and investments control and dictate our every move and unconsciously and consciously gets in the way of us being fully in relationships.
Love is not a one-way street and this we all know – thus why we struggle to let it in because of the volume of love we know we will naturally have to let back out…
It is the conditions we place on another that keep us from being open to live what otherwise would be natural. As long as we hold conditions we will not experience the love and intimacy we are craving for as we are holding such conditions as more important and thereby feeding and confirming the underlying hurts. The first step towards love must always be taken by oneself before love can make any steps towards as, otherwise it only would find closed doors.
Our essence is love. Therefore when nothing stands in our way, we naturally breathe it in and we breathe it out. The fact that so may of us struggle to feel or express this love shows us the hindrances we have allowed to thwart the expression of who we truly are. Our breath is arrested until such hindrances are removed.
As I have discovered and am discovering, it takes a lot to surrender. This surrender to self is a tender and delicate feeling yet holds a strength that is unparallelled with anything else. Despite, this, my experience is still to struggle with it, this surrender. How crazy is this – and it shows the level that I am trying to control life and myself. But I also know this to be a on-going incremental process, and I am willing to embrace this process and work with it. For every little step counts and before we know it we have walked a mile or two towards surrender.
I like this, literally after reading this comment I tapped the like button! As it highlights the fact that every little step counts. Sometimes it just feels like, what is the point? I am so unable to hold a delicateness or surrender for more than a couple of minutes at a time, it hardly feels like it is worth the effort but all these little steps add up and flourish when we appreciate how far we have come.
“How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?” – this is such a great question, and leads me to ponder on more….such as: How many times do we wait for another to love us up first, before we would even consider loving ourselves up? And more so too, how often do we expect another to love us up and then keep expecting them to do this as an excuse for us not to do this ourselves. I know many times I have in the past (and still catch myself) with this expectation of another, but how simple to turn it around like this blog suggests, and knowing this is never too late, no matter what our age, what our upbringing was etc. What a blessing.
Allowing love in can be more difficult than letting it out, we are a society full of people reluctant to let love in… surely the craziness of this needs to be deeply looked at and addressed.
Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon has also been a huge inspiration and reflection to me as in how to care and love myself which in turns means I can truly care and love others and this is still an unfolding process with loads to learn.
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel” Boom – this just says it all. All our perceived heartache gets exposed right here for the excuse it is.
Through observation comes understanding and through understanding comes a reading of the situation and through the reading comes acceptance.
Wise words Kathleen – and this is the blessing in life if we open ourselves up to the magic that is there.
You are right, as soon as we observe something and are honest about it like in how you mentioned going the long way so we can avoid someone then we can start to heal why we are like this in the first place. Nothing can be healed if we at first do not allow ourselves to see and feel it.
We live in a universe where ‘like attracts like’ otherwise said as ‘we reap what we sow’. Therefore if we are not fostering and honouring the great love that we are, then we are taking measures to secure a way of living that seemingly ‘protects’ us from getting hurt. When we make life about security and not love, naturally we will attract people, partners and situations that reflect the fortifications we have built around us so that they can be brought to the light of day and dismantled.
It does not make sense that we can be afraid of love – but it is true, we are. We fear what stepping up and stepping out and embracing Love will do, as it will bring the enormity of who we truly are. And that can take us out of our comfort zone and into the full responsibility of what we are here to bring.
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel. ” Very beautifully said. Love is always there but we have allow it and express it ourselves that is free will.
Keeping love out is an age old human behaviour which in many ways has contributed to the human condition complained about by many. Loving oneself is even seen as selfish when it’s true benefits are deeply beneficial for all and certainly far more beneficial than what could come from when one does not love themselves.
‘..that all of me is worth being loved.’ Wow, that’s a raw one, because it’s clear I have to nail this first for myself – feel it, accept it and know it – before I can expect someone else to offer it back to me. If I don’t, then I’m totally dependent on another for validating my self esteem and self worth. Not only is that grossly unfair as an implicit demand on the other person, it’s also irresponsible. For how can I offer myself to a relationship when I don’t fully feel worthy of being loved? What quality of relationship will I be settling for if I don’t have a clear marker of my own self worth?
Judgements on ourselves are so harmful and create an energy in the body that is restrictive and limits our true expression big time. Allowing our judgements the space to become understanding allows us to begin to appreciate and gives more space again for the love that we are.
It feels so very beautiful to feel the expansion as I allow your words to inspire a new depth of spaciousness and love into my body.
This is so true Elainearthey, the trouble is when we are in that restrictive way of living many of us do not know that there is another way to live, so do not seek to get out of it. Especially as those around us are also living the same way – the judgments become part of our life and then shape the reality of our existence. It paints a miserable picture, doesn’t it? Thank God there is a way out of it if we so choose.
It feels beautiful to be on the path of return – returning back to love. I am finding that this path is not straight – I have moments where I become distracted or lost and I am now realising that these are times to be extra loving with myself as I learn a new way to be in the world.
I am beginning to realise the enormous lies we are fed by an as yet unseen world where they have the upper hand they read energy because they/we are living in an energetic field. We live in the same energetic field but have made life all about the mind and have forgotten about our bodies and energy. We abuse the body and dump all sorts of rubbish into it and then wonder why it breaks down. I now understand that we are fed thoughts via our mind and so we can be easily controlled. When I reconnect back to my innermost which is my heart and trust the feeling that come from there I have discovered then there are less negative thoughts and I want to take care and cherish myself because I am so worth this level of deep respect. So imagine what the world would be like if we all deeply cared for ourselves I would take a guess and say that we would all be living in a more harmonious way with each other as a consequence of loving ourselves first.
It really does come back to learning to fully appreciate how we truly are. If we did then there would be no fear of being hurt and no holding back.
This is a great piece of writing for how honest it is. And, there have definitely been times in my life when I would end a relationship because I had decided that it was too flawed to carry on, only to find that all the unsettlement that I was feeling had nothing to do with the other person at all, because it after the apparent freeing from the relationship – all of that unsettlement was still there, and what’s more, the true love that I was searching for but could not seemingly find was also still there, I just actually needed to stop looking for it and allow it to be.
Your closing words are so simple and yet say it all – when we stop and allow ourselves to be love nothing else is required.
I am coming to terms with the fact that it is self loving to be honest and show another where I am at in life and not hide to fit in. Sometimes I find this challenging as I harden my body to protect myself from the onslaught of jealousy but becoming more aware of what happens to my body when I am up against this emotion is helping me to understand what is going on and respond to the very best of my ability truth and love.
FANTASTIC! You have proven yourself to be a very skilled individual who has the capacity to do great things with their life. Continue to make us proud as you face new challenges and adventures.
Our deepest pain is that we have left the love that we truly are and come from, that in all our searching and wanderings out there it has forever been with us deep inside hidden by our hurts.
It’s a huge step to realise we ourselves might be choosing unsupportive relationships and then feel the discomfort of what a truly loving relationships can bring up. Even though we may say we want love, we may still avoid it – this is exactly what I had to look at as new relationships came into my life that were truly loving. I suppose you could say that for some there feels like there is more risk involved to actually allow love back into ones life.
We all say we want to be loved deeply and with everything… so why have I found it so difficult? I have noted of old there is a lack of trust, and in particular to be fully loved I have to be willing to be open and that makes me vulnerable. As I release that control more and more the dance with vulnerability teaches me so much, and I open up more and more to how I am truly feeling.
Whenever I try to ‘protect’ myself, I’m simply imprisoning myself into a rigid barrier between me and others that paralises me and taints the true and natural sharing that is wanting to happen. This is an interference in itself that prevents me from living what is to be lived in that sharing. It is not for me to interfere into what is there to be shared with another. On the contrary, when I hold myself in every interacion instead of trying to protect me, I feel much more safe and expanded. I don’t need to control anything, as everything happens when it’s time to it… and deeply I know that I will be just ready for that. Stay present, fully embraced by the Love that I am is the only thing I have to ‘do’.
We really underestimate the importance of transparency. When we are willing to be transparent then we can open up to be loved and to love.
absolutely and I am realising more and more that my self-criticism, roles and pictures are what get in the way of being completely transparent. What if I showed the depth and absolute beauty I know I hold within?
Without transparency we can’t see the truth and the truth of who we are can’t be seen.
Love with conditions is what we think we want, Love as a picture, Love as a thing someone gives us but Love as a forever developing relationship with ourselves, now that sounds like work and it certainly leaves no room for other things we were planning to invest in, such as victim hood, pain, rejection, disappointment and anger. Being love and living that love in each movement, leaves nobody to blame if we slip, only an observation on how we stepped and why we choose to step in that way.
Like you Nicole, I am no expert but I am developing this understanding each day and I am so glad that I know that I am the only one that can hold back love from me!
I can really relate to your blog Nicole so thank you for writing it and being so honest about this subject. The trying to be good and nice and not show our weaknesses and imperfections is a big one and something I am still working on too.
A great reminder Nicole to be aware when we are closing ourselves off from love and how that feels in our bodies.
From living most of my life in contraction I am now learning to move in response to what I feel impulsed to do but are my movements made with love or are they made in protection and from a hardness? There is a vast difference between the two and something I am exploring in my day.
When we are willing to be seen for the realness that we are then we can begin to have a true relationship with ourselves. Allowing the warts and all to be exposed and knowing that this is part of the greater learning.
The funny thing is that up until fairly recently I found it easier to expose my warts than my qualities. The reason being that exposing my warts didn’t make others feel uncomfortable whereas expressing my qualities did. I am now unashamedly sharing my qualities in the knowledge that it can inspire others to not hold back the gold that they bring and also that if another person goes into any kind of emotional reaction then that too is a valuable reflection for them to feel.
How can we hope to be in a true relationship with others when we have not started that with ourselves? That is an impossible ask.
Thank you Nicole as usual you pose an important question for us to look at.. When we first look at ourselves in appreciation and love that naturally leads on to us loving others. Many of us fear rejection and don’t see ourselves as loveable. The difference learning to accept the love that we are is huge.
The more aware I become of my body and I how feel, the more I’m aware of any discomfort – any situation around me that I’m reacting to, on a very subtle level, and more aware of having something that is there to say. It makes expressing much easier, when I refer to my body as my guide.
Loving our imperfections is a great way to begin to let go of hardness – when we hold onto our imperfections we set ourselves up for a big disappointment. As I expand my understanding of true love I realise that God made me the way I am so that I could become more love.
This is great as it made me stop and ask myself do I really truly deeply accept all of me? And I can still feel there are parts that I don’t .. if we don’t feel these (the parts we do not accept) we cannot heal them so it is awesome to be able to clearly feel this.
Nicole I can so relate to what you have written
“Am I letting go of the protection and allowing myself to be seen, flaws and all; not expecting myself to be perfect or fit into any boxes?”
I remember describing what you call a box, to the psychotherapist I was seeing at the time I called it my prison because it felt as though I had imprisoned myself and thrown away the key; But then couldn’t get out.
That is one of the first things I noticed about Serge Benhayon he is not at all imprisoned he lives free of ideals and beliefs he lives in the moment like we used to as young children. Learning to let go and surrender I find quite hard, it feels as though I want to hang on to some of the old stuff just in case, like having a foot in each camp as it were.
This is a beautiful sharing Nicole, how different life becomes when we begin to let go of the layers of protection that have stopped us from feeling the enormous love that is available to us at all times.
This was so supportive to read, it is very relatable and reflective of my own experiences. What I have realised is even those awkward moments are to be embraced because they are part of the process towards greater love and transparency. I also appreciated this line “Am I letting go of the protection and allowing myself to be seen, flaws and all; not expecting myself to be perfect or fit into any boxes?” That is a great question to ask myself, thanks Nicole.
Its an interesting thing that we fight so hard and for so long to keep out that which we most want in the world – each other.
Without the loving reflection of Serge Benhayon and his family I have no idea how long it would have taken before I came to start loving myself.
We have to be truly open to receive love and allow ourselves to feel it. What we all long for is love, but it is us who block it out.
And the hardest block to take down is the block to allow oneself to love oneself.
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel” If only we could be brought up with this wisdom we would save ourselves so much heartache no longer would we fall for the illusion that our pain was caused by another.
So lovely Nicole, the truth of your expression here can be felt and brings a knowing and understanding of our divinity so beautifully.
We long to be loved and when it comes our way we have conditions on it, that is, we have pictures as to how it ought to be. These pictures that we hold are lifeless and totally devoid of love yet we try and fit the love that is before us into them. Crazy isn’t it?
Our relationships are amazing when we live the real us.
Even though I have broken down loads of energetic walls of protection, hurt, blame and anger I was holding onto in my body and my self-esteem, self-worth, confidence and relationship with myself is so so much better including being more open with others than it has been; the other day I could still feel within my body how I am holding back and have some form of protection (albeit little) in not allowing others fully and truly in and not allowing my love completely out. It is great to have this awareness though as now I can truly heal this however I feel this will always be work in progress as there is always a deeper layer we can go to within.
This is beautiful Nicole for it is so powerful when we give ourselves permission to surrender and receive the love form others as it is just a deep confirmation of that which lives within.
It is so true if we were to show how much we want to be loved, we risk being hurt and yet when we shield our hearts we can never receive the love we so dearly crave.
Every single moment when I feel judgement wanting to creep up, I would commit to seeing what the gold is there to deeply appreciate with myself and with others. There is in truth such a well of unending appreciation everywhere waiting for us to tap into, and it’s all free and will never run dry.
It has taken me years to tear down the walls I have built to keep everyone out and to wear my heart on my sleeve. Being open beats hiding behind the wall I had created. There are free-range people out there that are naturally connected to themselves, and that is just normal for them. It’s amazing what we have refused to see and feel by hiding in our fortresses.
I love that Steve, free-range. Like chooks but free to move and live in a way that lets people in rather than pushes them away.
Love is responsibility and each member of humanity is worth us living in accordance with all that we are here to be and to bring.
We each are a wondrous treasure and no degree of hiding, dulling or negating will change this fact for we are each Godly and an equally magnificent expression of a whole.
“I blamed others for my not feeling loved, accepted or appreciated” my sense is that you are not alone in feeling or behaving in this way. We have a tendency to blame others for how we are feeling, because we are not wanting to go deeper within ourselves to read them, asking inquisitively…..’why are the making those decisions?’ They are making them usually or blaming, because there is a level of responsibility that can be taken and a lot of the time, most of the time, we shun that responsibility.
It’s quite an eye opener when you realise how much you push away love, even though you would tell yourself that’s what you most want in life. Lately I am realising that I am not actively pushing away but containing my relationships, just in case they get too loving and inspiring! I can feel there is a fear of allowing that much love in case it is lost but understand that true love can’t be lost. It’s who we are. So it’s just looking at the attachments and investments I have in relationships, which is an ongoing process.
“or if I simply go into avoidance and walk the long way so I do not have to be around another.” This reminds me of a time I was crossing the street and saw someone I knew and averted my gaze, she then saw me and yelled out across the street, ‘Oi Sarah,come here!” and I crossed the road and was welcomed with a big hug and smile. I thought to myself, ‘and that is how it is done!” 🙂 – being open to people and not living in protection and averting a gaze.
The willingness to observe oneself alone is a tremendous start into a more loving way of living.
How ridiculous it is Nicole when you put is so clearly as you have in this blog that we protect and guard ourselves from others just in case we might get hurt but in doing so hurt ourselves far more than anyone else could ever do.
What a great question
“Why are we so Afraid to Truly be Loved?”
What is it that we are running away from?
I have been asking myself these questions for many years, as I have always felt a tension in my body that something is missing from my life. Since meeting Serge Benhayon and participating in Universal Medicine workshops and healing modalities I have come to the understanding that I did not in any way shape or form love myself; quite the opposite in fact, I was very self-abusive. To truly love myself I feel I have to surrender my body and to do this it feels as though I have to give up something which I have discovered is my individuality to life. And actually, as much as I want to love myself and others; giving up my individuality is very hard, because if I give it up then who am I? How do I identify myself? To me this is my ultimate lesson of life to give up my identity and surrender to true love and see what happens, and this I feel is everyone’s eventual path of return back to the purity of love we all come from.
” Why are we so Afraid to Truly be Loved? ” It would show up the evidence of truth that we are not living lovingly , this would then throw light on the choices we have made to not live lovingly and this then would show us how fooled we have been by what is not love , which then would show how we have willingly contributed to a nearly loveless world.
ouch! I can now see why we avoid being loved John! I agree the more we let love in, the more we are asked to love ourselves and the world.
Ouch indeed – it can show up a lifetime of lovelessness. Buts its only if we are honest that we can start to make the changes necessary.
I question whether we are truly afraid of being loved or whether our ideals and beliefs about love get in the way from accepting truly loving and purposeful relationships.
That is definitely an aspect I feel too that is what is standing in our way when it comes to love, all the expectations and pictures we have about love, instead of living simply from our heart.
We are surrounded by mediums that tell us that love is found with another, outside of ourselves, and even with certain foods, holidays, rituals and ceremonies. But, we don’t, as a collective, advertise the fact that connection and love starts with having a relationship to the body and what can come through it energetically.
We all crave to be loved and yet we push others away because of our previous hurts and protect ourselves with a closeness that even if it were to penetrate we would reject.
We do carry so much tension, everyone is ‘holding on’ and when we carry this tension, its like a web that filters out love, leaving us with remnants that have a faint echo.
When we try and supplement our relationship with ourselves with anything outside of us, we are setting ourselves up to feel incomplete – it is only when we can stand steady in our relationship with us, that we can then develop equal and steady relationships with others.
We are afraid of being ‘love’, not of being loved. When we are love we have to take responsibility for . . . well . . . everything.
I too am deepening my awareness within myself when I am around others. How I feel, what happens when others react to me, have I contracted, am I putting others before me, have I gone into sympathy, hardened or felt rejection, observed how I have suddenly felt uncomfortable, am I avoiding deepening the intimacy with another etc, etc reading as much as possible what is going on within me to support me and my body in my day.
I have held back my love immensely in the past, and it is a blessing to be reminded by my body each and every day whether I am fully letting in the world or not, and then to take the steps to understand why and to reconnect them. Allowing love in and out fully is the most amazing gift we can give to ourselves and others.
The body is truly incredible in showing us this in every waking moment. A stiff neck, an achy back or a simple unsettlement in the body are all signs of holding onto life and it expectations rather than living the quality we know inside out.
‘How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?’ – A question well worth asking ourselves – true love cannot be found outside of ourselves, no matter how much we keep searching. Take the time to truly connect with yourself and you will find that love is naturally on the inside.
Even within truly loving relationships there is never perfection. Love is a constant choosing and flow, when you choose it, it flows but if we hold it back it builds up and starts to burst in one way or another, like a river.
Love is a movement. We are either moving in the love that we are or we are moving away from the love that we are.
If we have no love for ourselves then we will cling to others and grieve when they take their love away. There is no need to grieve if we have love in our own lives, for that gap is already filled.
What I found in my relationship with my husband is I get to a point and then say ‘no more love, I don’t want to go deeper’ luckily I don’t choose to stay there to long and before I know it we have dropped to deeper level of surrender together.
This is a beautiful sharing and your openness and willingness to love and be loved can be felt in every word.
Hmm, it’s yummy to be truly loved and to truly love, it’s the way we were made to be. What has made us so hard and concrete with one another? Our ideals, pictures and hurts.
Beautifully said harryjwhite, it is so yummy and what we yearn for the most and also what we keep at bay the most by holding the hurts we have taken on more dear. It shows to what extent we have a lot very wrong in the world today…
We are all the living consciousness of God, which is love and yet have managed to construct an almost entirely loveless world. That’s actually a major achievement, seriously that takes dedication on all our parts to continuously keep the charade going.
One of the most inspirational things to see is to see, when people who have become so locked up in their bodies and in their hearts that they can’t express or move, to start to shake off the straitjackets, to let go of the ingrained protection, and to start to actually enjoy themselves and their bodies.
And you Chris are an absolute master at supporting that to happen.
The journey back to our gorgeous selves can be baby steps as we navigate our way through that which we have chosen before and can feel how unloving those choices were. In this absolutely perfect return we get to deepen and cherish our own unique essence that only we can bring for others and let shine once again what has always been there for us.
Recently I found myself realising I was so in protection I wasn’t letting in a group of women who I met regularly and who were all there waiting with open arms to welcome me. The letting go of protection feels very exposing but continually shutting myself away is becoming too cold an existence to ignore. And what joy it is to feel there are people there who do let people in with such love that it doesn’t matter that perhaps the majority aren’t, because it’s about opening up and trusting we’ll be held every step of the way to being the love that we are.
It’s interesting how we can measure ourselves and what we show to others. But we are always showing everything of ourselves, whether we know it or not. Letting people in is the big one for me and I know it’s worth it for both me and for them.
Can we truly accept how loving we are and in turn allow even more love in through the appreciation of what is already there?
It’s what we long for the most and what we push away from ourselves the most. Everything in our natural make-up and design is propelling us to love. But the disharmony that prevails in the world today in people’s bodies and in the world at large shows how much we push this love away, damaging ourselves deeply by doing so. And it’s the pride of not wanting to realise that the way of living we have chosen for so very long is contra to what our bodies have always known… and so we avoid the sweet humility that can melt away our pain so beautifully and continue relentlessly on a reckless path away from the love that we are instead.
What this shows clearly how much we are standing in our own way and thus how we always hold the reins in our own hands.
To be truly loved means letting another in in full.
A great question to ask. We could give all the reasons in the world, or we could simply let go of the fear and take the leap, little by little letting others love us, as we love ourselves.
Accepting our imperfections and seeing them as opporutnities to evolve creates space that can be filled by the constant appreciaiton of our beingness.
The Benhayon family reflect the magnificent proof that not only do you not spontaneously combust when you open up and let people see/love you, but it is really easy as you are no longer going against the flow of life (LOVE). Although I have more opening to allow, I know what being open, loving and willing to be loved looks and feels like – and deep down that is something we all want and know to be our truth.
A great revealing to realise that when we live in protection this hurts us more than anyone or anything else ever could. An open heart is our greatest protection and it feels beautiful to allow love to flow out and in.
We are afraid to be truly loved because we know that love is not a one-way street and if we receive the love expressed through another, it is part of our natural design to respond with such love. Sounds simple enough but not so when we have based our life on security and built a comfortable nest which becomes a fortress around (not in) our heart.
Letting go of the layers of protection we build up over time is essentially a returning to who we are in truth and on our return we explore life from honesty, vulnerability and an open awareness of our body’s every movement and the sheer beauty this holds.
Recently I have noticed how much love I am surrounded by. I have the most gorgeous husband in the Universe, work with a team of awesome people who love me and have many amazing loving friends. As a child I never felt I had friends and have never experienced the level of love that is currently in my life. To start feeling and receiving all the love that is being offered has made me feel very vulnerable and also brought up some old hurts for healing – maybe one of the reasons we avoid it.
I agree with you Nicole that when I face my hurts what hurts is having chosen to be less than the love that has been with me all along and will continue to be there. This is the bottom line/root cause of all ills, tension, problems and little niggles – that love is there to be expressed and we say no.
So incredible to finally be letting the protection go and allowing the support and love that is in every particle on earth be felt.
Letting love in is the greatest gift we can give ourselves for it helps us to confirm the true essence of who we are.
‘I am now beginning to love myself, to accept who I am and know that my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow and evolve, that ‘all of me’ is what is required to live, that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.’ Nicole this is so beautiful and something I will read again and again.
I love coming back to this and realising the beauty in your amazing sharing of the love we all are to appreciate and allow ourselves to feel and something that is deeply missing in society and us all today.
It is a common occurrence amongst us that we put a condition on love by virtue of our stance – ‘I’ll be love if you be it first’. This is how we have been played to seek security and it is this protection that then feeds us a love that is not true but the emotional band-aid we crave when we do not live true to the love that we are.
We can waste so much time blaming other people for not loving us when it is our responsibility to love ourselves first. Only then will we be open to the love of another. This needs to be one of those basic life lessons that we ought to learn from an early age, as it would prevent so much hurt and angst in us.
Observing our movements with out judgment is the first step to be able to make different choices.
Being curious towards our movements/behaviours rather than critical opens up the space to change. But focusing on our judged ‘issues’ or ‘wrongs’ actually keeps them in our lives!
The title of this article stopped me in my tracks today… a moment to consider deeply why we would hold off from the one thing we truly deeply yearn for; it offers the inspiration and simplicity of exploring what it feels like to surrender ongoingly into being truly loved.
We do all deserve absolute care and adoration, respect and loving appreciation, understanding and dedication, every moment. And we are naturally, all of that and then some. But the fact is we live in a world with 7 billion plus people, most of whom are so far from living that way. So what are you going to be, do and say? Will you wait for a better day and favourable circumstances? Or will you begin now to see you’re the one who can bring all of this to yourself and set a precedent in the Universe? We are here as you beautifully show Nicole to rip up the old textbooks of need and want and bring a new day of awesomely strutting our stuff. There’s no point to waiting for others to Love you when that’s what you are here to bring through.
“How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?” – this is very similar to the self care situation where we cannot truly care for another, unless we have first cared for ourselves. A classic example is in airplanes when they talk you through the emergency plan stating that you must first put the oxygen mask on yourself before helping someone else around you.
Sometimes, the thing that we seek the most is the thing that we also fight so hard!
Yes the body has to be moving and living in a way to receive that which we seek.
This is a topic that is a great point of discussion as we can so easily fall into the pattern of seeking the love that we are wanting from within yet not giving ourselves the permission to accept this.
Generally, we harbour our hurts, wall them off and hold the whole world to ransom for what we think one or two people ‘did to us’. And as you say, we hurt ourselves most in the process, no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that we are mainly hurting them. We all end up losing out, that is for sure but the deepest damage is the one we inflict on ourselves.
To be Love and truly loved is the most amazing this on this world. But once we get a taste we must ask ourselves why we have rejected this Love for so long…
There is such a deep love ready to be reflected back when we embrace every detail of how/who we actually are – without the tension/ picture of expecting perfection.
I have just recently discovered a whole new layer of deepening the love I have with myself, the relationship with myself – that is, to keep myself steady amid the barrage of otherwise crazy thoughts that will come in. The thing is – the crazy thoughts, stimulation and excitement is from the need to compensate for the lack of love we feel in ourselves. In comes the thought to fill up the empty space… and then we are fodder to be played with as deep down we feel how much we have actually dishonoured the preciousness of who we truly are.
By confirming the quality we feel and recognise ourselves as through the practice of self-love, and self-care, builds a foundation of Love within the body. And gradually, this relationship we have with Love in the body Loves you back infinitely.
Beautiful Nicole. Protection harms us while masquerading as support.
This is beautiful Nicole and thank you for sharing , the want to be all of you in the love that you are is very powerful.
Lately I’ve been allowing myself to feel my vulnerability. At first I recognised that this was something that when I felt it I always thought there was something wrong with me. Now, I’m learning to be with it and to enjoy being this way. It’s a joy to lets others see the real me and not the version I want to present or the protected me.
I love this, Nikki… this is a big changer I reckon… allowing ourselves to explore our vulnerability and see it as an invitation and opportunity for true relationship with ourselves and others.
I used to feel my vulnerability was a weakness and would hide it from others, but I am now learning to express this quality as well and notice how it is not a sign of weakness but rather a strength we can show to others, allowing the space for a more true connection.
A beautiful sharing Nicole and so true the importance of opening up to love ourselves and letting it in is enormous and changes everything and what we deeply know and miss and allows the real appreciation and living of who we are.
There are always layers with how we are with others, I had always considered myself a people person but more recently I’ve gotten honest and realised how much I protect myself around people. It’s very much a work in progress to open up with others and with myself and each day I learn something more. And nothing another does is the issue, it’s really how we are with ourselves.
This is beautiful Nicole. We think protection will protect us and keep us safe, but all it does is keep us away from love.
The importance of self-love in daily life is greater than anyone could possibly imagine.
Letting love in and expressing it is my lifetime focus aswell. Interesting how we can sense, how much love the other would accept of me and how much I measure myself in result down, to not rock their boat with too much love. I find it fascinating watching myself doing this “unknowingly” sometimes. Bringing this reduction/ dynamic more and more in my awareness is a fascinating process. For me it is first feeling the immens love that I am and then expressing it. What makes me teary, when I just let it out and give it space. Boy oh boy, how much do I obviously miss, expressing my love in full. And how much are we aware of it.
I have been deepening my love for myself for a number of years but have still felt quite isolated from others. Just this week I began a program of Chakrapuncture sessions with a Universal Medicine practitioner in London, and with her support have recognised how I have been walking with more Love than ever before but have I been letting it return to me? There are people around me in my life who, through their movements are appreciating me, but I have been missing this for the most part. This has been a revelation and I can feel how devastating it is for me to have not been allowing the returning of Love to me. What’s beautiful though is that now I’m aware of it I have been seeing and feeling the appreciation of me in others and can feel myself opening up to more Love within. An endless circle of ever-deepening love.
Nicole, this is very practical and helpful, thank you; ‘In developing awareness of whether I am being guarded or protected, I feel if my body is tense or relaxed: am I allowing another to see how fragile, vulnerable and gentle I truly am? Am I letting go of the protection and allowing myself to be seen’, I had a feeling recently when face to face with someone that I could feel a protection and that I was not as open and loving as I could be – I was holding back my love, it was great to feel this and work on letting this go.
Your blog reminds me that I love to love people, even if they cannot offer the same love back, there is something so grand and wonderful about our capacity to love someone absolutely and not require anything at all back from them.
Brilliant, Meg. Turning on its head the notion that love is in any way conditional. It is not and the more we offer it unconditionally the more we build this as the norm.
I am finding more and more that it just starts and ends with us, that if I am not feeling loving towards myself, tolerant, understanding, accepting, appreciating of myself. There isn’t a hope at all that I can be that way to another.
Haha I don’t mean to laugh but when I think of all the tears I have cried in my life over not being loved all because I could not allow myself to feel the love that was within all along . . . it is a comedy tragedy really and such a waste of time and energy in the indulgence of ‘poor me’ when it was simply me missing me and blocking the love all the time!
That’s it Kathleen, all those love movies that sell a story that love is something we wait for or go seeking, when in fact it is there all along, residing within us, and only needing us to stop blocking the love from being felt and emanated.
It really is true that we can only allow in the love that we are able to live for ourselves. If we continually block caring for ourselves then it stands to reason that all we are going to attract is that same level of disregard in our relationships.
Very true Stephen. I find that I tend to treat people in the way that I treat myself. How can it be any different if that is our reality. Anything else would be false. If I’ve been treating myself kindly this is how I then treat others. If I’ve been talking to myself in n abusive way, this is what comes out when I speak to others. We literally can’t hide. Everything we have been living is there in every interaction.
This is so true, Nicole – “The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.” We spend so much time in distraction and making it about others, when really what we long for is to reunite with the love that resides within us.
Nicole isn’t it funny how we long to be truly loved and adored and yet when it is presented to us we run a million miles in the opposite direction. I wonder what it is about love that we feel we cannot cope with? So much so that it almost seems as though we prefer abuse to true love. I say this because we all live in a very abusive world and yet we don’t have too? So why do we do this?
I agree Nicole, when I have cried, its been because of the realisation that I have compromised myself, and that really hurts to feel. We think we have gotten away with it, but situations always come up where we get reminded.
Raising awareness is a crucial element in the movement of re-imprinting our lives. Surrendering to what we have felt also requires to be aware of our movements and to the extent that we are embracing/embodying that which we had become aware of.
How many songs have used or mentioned ‘looking for love’? Everyone’s favourite source of everything will give you lists; falling in love again, searching for it, be ready for it, looking, hoping and waiting. There is about the same amount of ‘loving your self’ songs! But, how many of the love yourself songs are about being on the rebound from being hurt? When we love ourselves without any conditions, we love everyone equally.
Wow – I keep coming back to this blog and being blown away Nicole. This to me is what life’s all about. The beautiful thing is when you have this deep connection and love for yourself it permeates and emanates every situation and person that you meet. We can’t underestimate the power we have in embracing and holding ourselves.
This is a very beautiful sharing Nicole – you show the depth of having a loving relationship with ourselves. In bringing a loving relationship to ourselves, something deepens – the acceptance of who we are and we begin to value ourselves irrespective of what is happening outside of us. The dependency to get it from another begins to dissipate. Instead we begin to share our love and deepen that in our relationships.
It’s essential to love all of us as we are where ever we are at in total. The second I want to pin-point just one tiny aspect is the split second I give my power away and open up to thoughts that are the opposite to the love that I am and then cuts me off from All love.
It is not until we are present with absolute love that we begin to realise the impact of all the actions made in resistance to it.
It feels like we have so much to learn about love, having lived what’s not love for so long. I recall a deep longing for love when I was young without knowing anything about what true love was about and then going for the fairy tale of ‘living happily ever after’. As we begin to appreciate that we are on this earth to learn and accept and become more aware we realise that as you say ‘my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow’.
There is a great vulnerability here in this piece which I can feel to the bone is sincere and meaningful. It is this kind of precious vulnerability that speaks to everyone as I am sure everyone can relate to wanting to be beloved but yet holding this at bay when it is presented.
‘The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.’ – The importance of self-love, and by that the ability to truly let others in, is one of the most profound things I am continuously learning in life.
I know for me that I have not wanted to let Love in (or out) simply because it asks me to be more responsible with how I live as more Love brings more openness and transparency.
“Why are we so Afraid to Truly be Loved?” For me that is easy: afraid of getting hurt but what a paradox. The one thing I, and everybody else, truly crave is to be loved but we learn to believe that if we protect ourselves, keep a shield up around our heart we will stop the hurt but in fact that is the hurt, which we blame upon others though it is in fact self-imposed. Realising that it is self-imposed and it is a false protection are the first two steps to accepting being truly loved. I am so pleased I have taken these steps.
Recently my husband has been asking for more one to one time and I have been resisting, I gave myself a number of excuses but when I finally surrendered I realised how important necessary and absolutely amazing it is to spend more time together and go deeper in this love we know is true.
Crazy I had originally said no to this.
It is crazy how easy it is to keep being distracted by busyness and away from deepening the amazingness of true love in a relationship. Yet I keep finding I have to keep reminding myself, and being reminded, that that time together requires that same level of responsibility as the other aspects of my life. The more consistent I am with this the more flowing and joyful the other aspects of my life are. Everything is important.
Its crazy to live life not letting people in and yet that is what we do in order to protect ourselves from future hurts. All the while we never get to feel another’s love or share ours with another.
It’s crazy to consider we protect ourselves from the ‘future’. I’m pretty sure it is a well understood principle that if we start out protected then we will end up experiencing what we think we need protecting from. No one truly needs protecting from true love.
This is great what you have shared Nichole and along with what you have shared may I add some Questions. “I am left pondering on why we do not let others in and why are we so afraid to truly be loved, and why such amazing qualities of tenderness, gentleness and vulnerability are hidden and held back, all in fear of being hurt.” And also as you say Nicole, ”How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?” So what is it about Love that seeming keeps us from connecting to it and feeling this most natural part of us?
Could it be that we are sold a lie about the truth of our divine connection and thus so much is set up to keep us from feeling the True Love we are?
To deeply care and love ourselves is the starting point of love in the world spreading through brotherhood and something we are being shown by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine showing the way for us all.
“I am now beginning to love myself, to accept who I am and know that my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow and evolve.” It is the surrender to who we are and all the imperfections and behaviours where we begin to see the real honesty and life we hold and that is our true beauty. Our acceptance of self is where we see great shifts and growth because we begin to not hide and hold back and allow the world to see everything and be totally transparent. This is our true gift.
I don’t actually feel that we are afraid to be truly loved, I think we’re all terrified of being hurt.
How many of us hold back our love in a relationship and wait for the other to go first? I get it in that we think we’re protecting ourselves from being hurt, but how is Love ever to flourish, evolve and deepen in this environment? “You go first” is no foundation for true love. And if we are holding it back from others that’s reflecting to us that we hold it back from ourselves. How sad that we have unfathomable depths of absolute love within and yet so very many of us do not allow ourselves to feel and express it.
I know this pattern well Lucy, but through choice I am now making more self loving choices, that in turn ripple out to how I am with others.
Everything in our life is geared around being loved. Will we meet that person? Will we get married? Will we be cherished and adored and cared for as we deserve? Yet the fact is these dreams and ideals have nothing to do with what true Love is. When you find someone who will hold you as divine and is willing to share themselves with you, totally openly – then often we run other way. What a paradox. But it seems as you show Nicole that we will never actually be able to accept true care from another if we don’t accept and first give it to ourselves.
The moment we allow ourselves to feel truly loved we are also willing to face the pain of having been closed off to love for so long.
“why are we so afraid to truly be loved, and why such amazing qualities of tenderness, gentleness and vulnerability are hidden and held back, all in fear of being hurt.” This is indeed tragic. There is so much beauty that we can share with each other, but we create such hardness to keep it all out.
It is incredible to feel how much impact a choice to not love ourselves has on another person. Yesterday I observed that I was not doing something I felt to do because ‘there was no time’. In this contraction I could feel how that created a tension in my relationship where she too did not feel the full Love from me she always does.
This lack of love for oneself is an interesting one. I have deepened and taking much time to care for and really look after myself but when it comes to going deeper with that adoration for myself 24/7 and keep taking that deeper and cherishing all that I am this becomes stuck and I feel the resistance coming in. Definitely a working progress and what an amazing journey it is too. It keeps coming back to surrendering more and more to who I am and letting it all else unfold from there.
Transparency is, on one hand, such a subtle thing, and then , when experienced and felt and observed it is life changing.
Knowing our value and loving ourselves to the hilt allows us to look at those perfectly placed imperfections that we need to learn from.
Wonderfully honest and open – and relatable to all. Recognising that your imperfections are perfections and that you bring so much to the world is a true revelation – who wouldn’t want to share that with everyone we meet.
‘that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love’. Yes indeed, the reason I have resisted love is because I have felt I was not worthy of love and I did not deserve… oh how these 2 beliefs have kept me in the land of separation and aloneness. But I can feel today that every part of me is worthy of love and beyond.
It hurts more to protect ourselves and not allow the love to flow in and out. I have experience how draining and exhausting it is to hold our love in. Letting go of the barriers and protection is so freeing and loving, why would we hide our love? It would be insane.
‘Am I letting go of the protection and allowing myself to be seen, flaws and all; not expecting myself to be perfect or fit into any boxes?’ A constant deepening process to truly let go and to allow myself to be seen in every situation and or relationship. I can feel how in me there is a resistance to go deeper in the relationship I have with myself and from time to time I tend to give this too much energy but I always come back to the realisation (and my body is telling me this also) that the resistance is not who I am and want to go into, it’s more acknowledging what is there and keep on loving myself more and more.
Nicole this is a great question to ask of humanity
“Why are we so Afraid to Truly be Loved?”
For me I feel it has something to do with the devastation when we first disconnected from the love that we all truly come from. It as though we are hurtled into a very dark space and so the memory of the love gets erased and for me I can say it has taken a lot of hard work to reawaken my self out of the dark space and to open my self up to the possibility that indeed I am love and allow that flow back into my life.
Thank you, Nicole. This inspires me to reflect once again on how much I let love into my life, something that I know is forever deepening.
When we put anything in the way of the flow of love in and out of us, we interrupt one of the most innate and natural cycles of life… and like trying to dam a river with matchsticks it is ultimately futile and a waste of energy.
What is it like to want? What are we looking for out side of us? Why are we not enough? When did we fall out of our best relationship ever… with our self? You are right Nicole, all that is required is for us to get off the fence we have been sitting on and choose to come back to the love that is within all of us and live it in our fullness.
There is a way to be with ourselves that is deeply Self-Loving. And this way can open the doors to something even greater that lives within each person on earth – brotherhood.
We may think we want love from another and then be showered with love and feel uncomfortable with it, it is then we realise that it is not love from another we need but love for ourself, then the love we experience is more a sharing of the quality of another person’s company, not something we need them to project onto us for security. If love is within us all then why would we ever go searching for it, and if we have that love in ourself and we really nurture it then by the pure law of attraction others will be drawn to share in that emanation.
Sharing of one’s own love with another is a great reflection for others to feel. Thanks for putting this so simply for others to enjoy and learn Stephen G.
Glorious piece of text to take into my day and surrender to we / I are imperfect – we might as well accept it and love ourselves for it . . “I am now beginning to love myself, to accept who I am and know that my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow and evolve, that ‘all of me’ is what is required to live, that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.”
Our relationship with ourselves is deeply revealing and is reflected in our interaction with others and willingness to express who we are in the world for all to see.
I realise that the displays of affection when I was growing up were very inconsistent and I could not rely on being understood or feel unconditionally held in love by my parents so it is not surprising that I would not easily be able to do this for myself, be consistent and trust myself, loving myself unconditionally. This is changing and I feel that foundation of absolute and unconditional love for me and everyone else slowly but steadily growing. It is great to have blogs like yours Nicole to allow a deeper reflection on how this is working out.
We are all born pure and complete. What would happen if we all carried on that way in life? We are a long way from finding out, but it will happen. If we were all a glass of water, what happens when just a drop of ink is added and stirred, all clarity is lost. Our world will stay obscured until we realise we are the one that puts the ink in our water!
I have discovered for myself that to not love ourselves first is our greatest self abuse. Keeping ourselves in protection and hardness is so harming to our bodies and one day medicine will catch up with this fact that this hardness and protection is the cause of many illnesses and diseases in the human body.
It’s a great question – “Why are we so afraid to truly be loved?” We all crave love but can we let it in? I don’t know the answers but the realisation that I am afraid to be loved is quite healing in itself.
” Why are we so Afraid to Truly be Loved? ” When I saw this question my understanding is that if this ” Truly be Loved ” was allowed it would expose the lies I have lived to be not loved.
Surrendering, accepting and honouring what is sacred to us and making this our foundation supports us to no longer allow judgements, pictures and other negative thoughts to creep in through the cracks.
We all want love, but are we actually open to Love – a great question to feel.
“How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?”
The million dollar question that we all need to ask ourselves.
This is so beautiful, Nicole – “my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow and evolve”. It is super inspiring to see our mistakes and imperfections as golden opportunities.
I find that acceptance of myself has many layers, the more aware I become of where I have been holding judgments and pictures I need to live up to, the deeper the acceptance can go – it is very much an unfolding process.
The moment we are asked to let love in we get to feel everything we have put in the way to be the love that we have closed off from; a quite painful moment to be honest about but not dwell on.
Beautiful reflection of how it is when we truly open up to ourselves and let others see who we are with our flaws.. I absolutely love that. Something well worth and deserving to give ourselves permission for to be our simple selves with all that there is. Beautiful blog..
It is a significant point that love is actually our inherent essence. When we live true to the expression of our heart, we naturally feel the love pour through us into our own life and embrace everyone else equally.
If at any point we are needy for love and seeking for it outside of ourselves, that is a sure sign that we are running on what is not of our true essence.
Nicole, I am feeling this too; ‘Beginning to surrender, allowing myself to be and live all of these incredible qualities, I feel I am only now beginning to develop true relationships with others and myself.’ I can feel how in the past I held many judgements of people in my life, I did not feel an equality, an appreciation and an adoration like I do now, as I have let many of the judgements of myself go and as I adore and accept myself more, this has allowed me to adore and accept others too, I appreciate the people in my life and this feels joyful and very different to the holding back and judgement that I used to feel.
What gloriously simple freedom there is in making no apology for who you are.
Sounds like you’re at a great place to move forward from Nicole. It sure takes a lot of effort holding back love and keeping people out.
A raw and beautiful sharing Nicole. What stands out to me is how you are experimenting with your learned behaviors and clocking how it feels. This is such an amazing reference point when we start to be honest about how we are with others. Do we avoid, compare, hold back? And then what are the consequences of this? I am fast observing these and noticing how simple it actually is to be there with people in full. So what is this game I play with myself about staying small?
“These simple observations are small steps that are allowing me to open up and be aware of things that in the past I would never have thought to do” – love is beholding observation and hearing this as presented by Serge Benhayon has really opened my life up to true love instead of love being equated or associated with dating, romance or sex. That to love is to behold with understanding.
Taking responsibility for our own inner love and connection will open the doors to love everywhere around us.
True, it is weird – we seem to learn at an early age to turn our backs to that which we crave the most and which we all innately are.
‘The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.’ A profound reflection, how many of us have allowed ourselves to feel that which we are all naturally made up of – love?
Holding back hurts oneself and is selfish. And it hurts others as they don´t get to experience one´s unique expression, love and beauty.
Our relationship to ourselves is no less important than any others in our life, if not the most important relationship because it sets the foundation for all else. In today’s society we’ve distorted the value of this, and instead invested in ‘functional’ relationships where we can remain unchallenged by one another, but who does this support in the end?
Your line ‘I had not first developed love or acceptance’, we were all born with it! At some point we chose, and in most cases, it was decided for us and informed that self-love was not required. Many have now re-discovered that self-love and the acceptance of ourselves is the only way we can evolve, rather than living the self-fulfilling prophecy of wanting something from outside us to make us whole again that has become the Merry-go-round so many now call life. We but need to choose to step off this ride that goes nowhere.
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.” – Spot on Nicole, these are the missed opportunities in life, however, the beauty is that they just keep coming around and around as a blessing for us to one day embrace fully.
It is interesting to realize that the quality of our relationships with others is a reflection of the quality of relationship we have with ourselves. And this makes me ask what is the quality of relationship that I hold and have with myself? And how can I work on making this more loving, caring and more honest?
Sometimes when we are hurt or struggling with something, we hold others out and those we love most we shut out or lash out at. Often when I come back to myself, I realise how much I love the other person and how much more it hurts to hold them away than does the prospect of being rejected.
The idea of a transparency in life is not something I had considered until I met Serge Benhayon, it makes perfect sense though, because I used to call myself a crab with a hard shell and a soft centre…but why do I need the hard shell, when I build a steadiness that does not require protection, it is strong in the way I live. Amazingly simple and beautiful.
It really is quite odd – we separate from the love that we are and then we blame others (particularly God) for denying us this love. Does this not expose the absurdity of the human condition and the entirely futile existence we have created for ourselves when we go seeking outward for a love that lives within?
“‘all of me’ is what is required to live, that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept” This is part and parcel of our medicine chest. We cannot live in parts, liking and loving bits and pieces of ourselves and being ashamed or hating other parts of ourselves. We learn and from our stumbles and they each all opportunities. So when you say all of us is what another wants to love, how important is it for us to love ourselves in full as well?
‘there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.’
I find it really tricky being loved and often want to run a mile. Starting to love myself is a sure way of accepting love.
It is very empowering when we can can approach our imperfections as opportunities to accelerate our own evolution in order to be more loving and understanding in the way we express with ourselves and others alike.
Thankyou for your heartfelt blog Nicole, you always share so richly and openly about your life, it’s much appreciated. You have supported me to realise that I have a deeper level of self love to go to, and in this I can develop a stronger foundation to be with people but not be needy of them.
Oh Nicole, it is so beautiful to read about all the steps you have started to take toward loving yourself in full again, – what an amazing journey! I can relate to your blog, about being closed off, and so called protecting myself from being hurt by others, which is such an illusion. I have also started to open up and let people in, and in that process I have realized how closed off I actually have been in the past. I love connecting to people, and in the end, that’s what life is all about.
I have noticed also that when I am holding back or feeling tense or guarded in a conversation that the tone of my voice changes – it becomes tighter and higher pitched – a great marker to notice when this is happening and I find just letting go of the tension and surrendering in my body and allowing my voice to come out naturally really helps.
It is crazy that people tend to collude with one another to blame, hold onto issues and build walls of protection. This only hurts everyone further and adds to the ills we are witnessing in our world.
Thanks to Serge Benhayon I have learned that the greatest support we can be to one another is to inspire unwavering love, understanding, personal responsibility and true empowerment in the situation.
“I blamed others for my not feeling loved, accepted or appreciated – imposing my own insecurities and lack of self-worth onto another.” I can relate to this, blaming others and taking responsibility for my own choices.
Surrendering to God so we can live in the glory of being the Son of God with every breath to the best of my ability is the stability that I am searching for in my life as I deepen my surrenderabilty. As you say Nicole, it is up to each of us to return to the truth of who we are and; “Beginning to surrender, allowing myself to be and live all of these incredible qualities, I feel I am only now beginning to develop true relationships with others and myself.” After surrender comes our awareness that is forever deepening.
One of the greatest turning points in my life was realising that the lovelessness in my life, that I was living with, even whilst in a relationship, was not the fault of my partner or anyone else but was completely by the hands of my own choosing. How tricked we are into thinking that blaming others brings us the answer or the reason for unsettlement, unease, or the lovelessness we feel? As at the end of the day, blame does not change the choices we are making as to the degree of love we hold for ourselves, or embrace the responsibility to live the love we are, we deserve to live and share with others. Thank you Nicole, this is so beautifully shared and you reflect just how magnificent the love we are within is, and how enriching our lives and relationships are when we embrace a loving relationship with ourselves first.
Touching post Nicole, yes, the more ease I live within myself about myself and less critique, the easier it is for people to come through that open door of self-love. Allowing a person to love me when there is little self-love there first is like peeling an apple with a spoon ; )
How deeply transformative it is to realise that perfection is not the aim and that we are each learning and unfolding with everything that is offered to us.
Beautifully said Deborah – indeed it is not about perfection, but about being open to learning and understanding and bringing more and more of our true and divine qualities into expression.
“I realised that it was no-one else’s fault but my own. With that came an opportunity to make a change, to begin chipping away at the wall I had built around myself, to let people in and to learn to love, accept and appreciate myself.” This is beautiful. This is the truest first step to lasting change and healing.
And this is something we have to remind ourselves now and then, at least that’s what I have to do because of this long lived pattern of blaming others which sticks its head out on moments that I don’t expect it but by being aware and just feel what is happening in my body I can let it go and build more love inside me.
We are so afraid to truly be loved because it exposes where we have been in unloving relationships. We have to drop the guards and armour around us and be vulnerable to accept to be truly loved .
And that is a big ask isn’t it? To accept that we too have been unloving and no more so than with ourselves and that we are the ones who need to drop the guards, allow ourselves to feel vulnerable and to truly let people in.
Indeed Gill returning to the deep well of inner settlement & shedding the layers of protection can feel vulnerable and unchartered in a world that tirelessly uses push and drive.
“All of my relationships were a great distraction from not feeling or taking responsibility for my choices. I blamed others for my not feeling loved, accepted or appreciated – imposing my own insecurities and lack of self-worth onto another.” These are words out of my own book of life and learning to self-love again. It makes all the difference to turn the mirror onto yourself and build from there.
What we crave the most, we also resist the most. Such is the pride that we have, the unwillingness to concede that what we have bought into for a very long time has never been true to what we deep down know. And even though this continues to hurt us more and more and more, we inflict even more pain upon ourselves by denying the acceptance of love – within ourselves and others.
How can we really wonder about what is going on in the world today, the atrocities, extreme behaviours, the rising rate of illnesses and so much more, when we let ourselves actually see what it is we are actually choosing as a human race.
The life long search for true love, answered in one simple blog – it is not outside of us, it is not found in ‘the one’ or in a group or with a friend, it is found within us, and starts in our relationship with ourselves. Once we are able to set a foundation of love for ourselves we need nothing else to provide us that and can instead enter into relationships with no need, but with the ability to offer and open up to true love with another.
We have such a miss conception of what love is. We call need, expectations of another, pandering, emotional attachment and many other things along those lines love when all along we are Love and all we have to do is to align to the Love that we are in essence and walk in and be that Love.
So true Kathleen, we need a licence to use the word love, as we have been bastardising the true version for too long.
‘In developing awareness of whether I am being guarded or protected, I feel if my body is tense or relaxed: am I allowing another to see how fragile, vulnerable and gentle I truly am? Am I letting go of the protection and allowing myself to be seen, flaws and all; not expecting myself to be perfect or fit into any boxes?’ – Super important sharing and a reflection that can be of great support for someone who is open to look at their own patterns but don’t really know where or how to start.
So true, the devastation of separating from the love that we are is our deepest hurt and sadness.
To build from within out makes the necessary steps without. To appreciate this process brings glory to life.
Truly being loved exposes our loveless choices and asks can we deeply accept that quality of true love – do we feel we are worth it?
The fear of truly being loved is there because it reveals how unloving we have been – the fact that we haven’t been truly loving with ourselves.
To love and allow ourselves to be loved is to simply let one of the most natural cycles in life happen.
Like a kid waiting to be looked after by a parent, we seem to think that life should deliver Love to us the same way. Sure, we are willing to do certain things and perform a few tasks, but underneath we still crave and want someone to come in and make it all ‘better’. The thing is as you show Nicole, life doesn’t actually work that way, even when you are a kid. It’s always down to us and whether we are willing to be there for us. This is the bit we consistently and relentlessly resist. Thank you for this beautiful reminder that there’s no circumstance in life that deserves less than Love.
I love this: There’s no circumstance in life that deserves less than love. B r i l l i a n t !
Beautifully expressed Joseph, I agree. When we treat ourselves or others less than love, we are not being who we are. Our nature is to be loving, so when we are not this way, it hurst us more than anything we could imagine.
It is very easy to put the blame onto others for lack of love and appreciation in our lives yet it is equally as easy to take responsibility.. be the love we seek, it is but a choice.. as we are already all the love we are looking for, as you have shared Nicole.
I have heard of many who have resisted Love when it is truly presented their way. I have done this myself and it is the most Love-less thing we can do for ourselves as it is essentially a choice of abuse over love.
These are strong words Joshua and yet I can feel the truth in them, thank you.
It’s a truly powerful realisation to have that we have experienced what we have because of our own choices and therefore that we can change our experience of life in any area by changing the choices that we make.
So true, we miss ourselves first and foremost, we seek so much from others without resolving and nurturing ourselves within first. I live with Love, not because I am just loved by others, which I am deeply, but because I have made steps to truly love, nurture and accept myself. And still there is more to go to accept that love in full within myself and others..it is ever deepening.
Thanks, Nicole. There is so much here that I can relate to, and I love the questions you pose, such as – “Am I letting go of the protection and allowing myself to be seen, flaws and all; not expecting myself to be perfect or fit into any boxes?” Having grown up with so many ideals about love and relationships, it is so freeing now to come back to the truth that if I simply open up to love, there will be love in every aspect of life and in every relationship.
I am finding that to love oneself is to have an appreciation of oneself if there is no appreciation there’s no love. I seem to have hit a road block with self- appreciation it feels as though there is part of me that knows once the road block is removed it will have no further hold on my body and so it is resisting the deeper levels of appreciation and therefore love.
“… How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?…” All issues and angsts we may have surrounding love boil down to this. A great read Nicole, thank you
We spend a lifetime painting ourselves into a corner then complain it was others that put us there. When we let go of these protections, we find that there is no box that we could ever be contained within!
In fact you can say we are living lives in contradiction, we are craving for love but when love enters our lives we tend to run miles away from it. Why are we doing that while we sit on a bomb of love, just a simple choice away residing in our inner hearts, but are choosing to not live it? Could it be because we have an investment in life as it currently is and because of that do not like to change that out of form of security or such?
Nicole this part said it all for me: “I am now beginning to love myself, to accept who I am and know that my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what support me to grow and evolve, that ‘all of me’ is what is required to live, that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.” For me that is the experience most people are looking for – so thank you Nicole that you are not longer holding back your love for yourself as it is a way to inspire the whole world.
If we can come to see the true significance of the energetic quality we choose to live, then we will never blame another, nor seek a gift to lift our day or require that other people be a certain way, for we will be complete and able to enjoy ourselves. We don’t have to struggle on – this possibility to be our own best friend is available today. Thank you Nicole for the inspiring reminder that we all deserve an awesome relationship with ourselves.
“I am now beginning to love myself, to accept who I am and know that my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow and evolve, that ‘all of me’ is what is required to live,..” Beautiful Nicole, the way forward to developing honest and open relationships with one another.
Sometimes I am faced with not knowing how to express all the love i feel for people in my life. Generally we are not encouraged to be and express all the love we are, but we should not hold it back and instead explore what it means and looks like to allow our love out.
The tears you have cried Nicole came from the lack of love you had not given yourself. How true this is, I so often can have regret or longing for a situation, but whatever it is it all stems from how much I gave love to myself to allow me to be really open and enjoying of the time I was in.
As we are innately love and love is all around us, it is the protection we carry that keeps us from experiencing our very nature…is this not what is the most painful?
There are so many behaviours that we go into to try to hide our imperfections so that others don’t see them.. but when we do this, we all miss out: we’re presenting a fake, reduced, surface version of ourselves, and not the real, full and true us, and in that, there’s no connection: both people can end up feeling pretty isolated, disconnected or bored. Imperfections need to be adored, cherished and celebrated as equally as the things we have mastered, because until we accept and appreciate them, there’s no growth and no moving forward – just lashing ourselves to the past.
Yes in truth there is nothing to be afraid of and nothing to protect, it is the protection that hurts us most. We will only allow ourselves to be loved as much as we are able to love ourselves… and we are so loveable when we are being ourselves.
The most important relationship we can ever have is one with our own evolution, for the more loving we can be with ourselves, more understanding and open we can be with others the more our bodies will respond with surrendering to that which is divine.
I like what you say here, Francisco, about our most important relationship being with our own evolution, as a constant deepening of love in every moment so we return to our true nature, which is divine.
Francisco great point you make the more loving we are with ourselves the more we can be with others, it is through this true connection we are connecting to which is divine.
You write “Having a reflection of what it is to be truly open, transparent and loving is not something I see or feel every day, but when I do I am inspired to live in and with the same quality. Universal Medicine presentations and the ongoing love from Serge Benhayon and his family provide a ginormous reflection that supports me to feel what it is to be truly loving.”
I love Serge Benhayon and his family as they have given me this reflection and it has changed my life and how I am with people. Words can’t really describe my appreciation.
It is an unpeeling of layers and layers of protection to feel the divine beauty we are, supposed warts and all 🙂
It’s incredible how far we have twisted relationships in order to fit to our requirements rather than support the healing of the causes of some of our hurts – even more amazing that we can change the direction in which we are heading in relationships simply by being open and expressing without reservation.
Surrendering to the love that we truly are sounds so simple, and it is, but we can tend to make it rife with complication and difficulty, Surrendering to Love is not a mental decision, but a livingness in the body.
“How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?” so true if we open to the love we are we really do see it everywhere.
Yes Ariana and this reveals perhaps why we run a million miles when love is presented to us – that when we actually feel love from another it exposes the fact that we have not been loving ourselves and rather than accepting the gift and the blessing and the inspiration that this love provides, we react to this reflection, we reject it and push it away so that we don’t have to deepen our own love.
I can really relate to this blog and the tension that I feel in my body and in my relationships when I hold back in allowing myself to simply be me in the moment. The key thing is definitely surrender to what is already there inside of me and then there can be no trying or striving which feels like a much simpler and less tiring way to live.
There is literally love all around us if we open ourselves up to it.
So very true andrewmooney26. Love is in abundance when we begin to let it in. It is we who turn off the tap and stop its flow.
That’s so true “it is we who turn off the tap and stop its flow”, the flow of love. Love is available and there for us all equally, constantly pouring in abundance all the time. It is us through our movements and choices that step up to connect to this abundance.
As our loving ways become more consistent, the flow gets stronger and the volume increases. I love how our body confirms these truths for us.
To consistently release the build up of sadness/grief felt from the ill-choices I have made in my life brings about a clarity and expansion in the body that otherwise if I had not dealt with a tension and emotions are left running through it. How I feel in any moment is no other than my own making.
“How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself? How true this is. We often push away love because we’re unable to receive what is offered. My younger teenage self did the same when faced with a beautiful, kind, generous, tender, loving man. Later in life, I expressed appreciation to this same man in a way I wasn’t able to as a young woman.
Thank you Shirley-Anne, I came to the same realisation over night.
Highly relatable Kehinde – the lack of words to describe what I felt even though I knew that what I felt was precious and something to be deeply appreciated. Today I know what was on offer was a reflection that I was not able to appreciate because I had not appreciated it in myself first.
Never a more true statement has been offered Nicole… “The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.” We are seldom good at truly letting love in, starting with the love we are for ourselves.
By not reconnecting to ourselves, life just becomes a merry-go-round that never stops or goes anywhere. When we return to who we are, life evolves.
Great point Steve, it is through returning to who we are life evolves, otherwise it’s like a scratched record repeating itself and going no where.
I find the idea that to be loved by another can be scary to be really interesting. But the more I observe the more I see that to be loved requires a strong degree of love for self, acceptance and appreciation. And for many this does not come easy, I can attest to that. To feel love and to emanate it is really what we are all about, as we are simply made to be loving, so everything that does not emanate this from our bodies and allow it in from others, is leaving us in a state that is less than our optimal wellbeing.
This blog is so pertinent when we hear how people share that they are lonely and looking for love. Seeking it in others when the pull of love lives within us all.
Whenever situations get uncomfortable, my normal reaction in the past has been to instantly blame someone else, to be critical, judgemental and then run away – walk out of the room, go for an angry walk, anything to pull away from the cause (or so I think) of my troubles, having dumped the most awful abuse on them before I exit and slam the door. More recently I have felt into the absolute non-truth of my expression, the harm it has done to others and I have been able to look deeper and feel the hurt that underlies my anger. So now, when I feel myself reacting, I stop, resist the urge to walk away and instantly ask myself what is the hurt in me that has just been triggered off? The results are amazing – in my recognising the truth of any situation, I am able to express with truth and without judgement or blame – and, like a miracle, the situation dissolves and never arises again. By lovingly feeling my truth I am able to express it with love and I get love back.
It is rather mystifying that we run a mile from what we deeply yearn for all our life – true unemotional deep love.
I can relate Nicole, and particularly to the need for acceptance – and the need for another ‘A’ word that’s super-important: APPRECIATION. Of self, and others. It feels like the loving partner of acceptance.
I wonder if we are afraid of being loved. Is it more of a decision not to live in a way that receiving love is easy and natural as that would mean making many changes in our life?
“Why are we so afraid to Truly be Loved?” Great question and one I have recently been asking myself. I feel it is because we do know love, but we continually are willing to accept less. I know growing up I could feel what was not loving,(I didn’t use the word love) but something in my body knew it was not true, but I didn’t have the understanding that I have now to express what I was feeling.
‘all of me’ is what is required to live, that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.” A gorgeous sharing that brought me to tears Nicole, feeling how so much of myself I have held back from myself and others, the “all of me ” is longing to be truly felt and loved. Thank you for the inspiration Nicole.
I can so relate to what you have written here Nicole. I have gone through similar aha moments, and changed blaming others to taking responsibility for my part… which was to first learn to love me… cause without that, why would I expect anyone else too.
Great point Rosie first step is to love self, it is this deepening and understanding that allows the start of a true foundation for others to feel.
Also to create our own foundation so that when we hit a road block or get led astray, we know where to come back to… we know where not to stray from too much as we learn.
Surrender and allowing, can feel quite a challenge at times when you’re holding on tight to something by trying to work it out from the head. But when you do succumb to surrender and let go in your body, it actually wasn’t as hard as you thought, and the body delights in these moments when we come back to ourselves and allow what we naturally are to shine through.
To accept Love, it will expose to what extent we hold back our own love. Hence, we measure what we let in so as to remain comfortable with our own level of measure.
So true, so much is measured in order to not feel what we do to, or indeed, hold back from ourselves.
Understanding that the choice is ours to be loved is an essential first step. Then there is the re-connecting to the loveliness we already are, nurturing tenderly the unfolding and blossoming that ever so gentle dissolves the protective barrier that may have constricted to bloom. What’s not to love when this is all going on with-in?
Nicole, this is really interesting to read, I have been noticing in my body recently how I am much more at ease with people now; how I am avoiding people less and how I actually want to talk to and connect with people that I meet, this feels very lovely and is very different to how I used to be.
Thank you Nicole, you speak for many of us who have put a shield around our selves in an attempt to not get hurt, not realising that the biggest hurt arises when we do not openly honour and express what we feel. We all crave love it is essential nourishment. Building an intimate, tender relationship with our selves is the first step towards successful, loving relationships with every one.
Holding back and not being open with others is painful and for me it feels like there is an enormous amount of love, expression, contact that is being pushed down.
Holding back our love ought to come with a health warning as it is detrimental to our health and well-being.
I love that Elizabeth and its a great idea! It would great to do a study on the heart, and cardiovascular disease and how it is affected by holding back!
Thank you Nicole, that is so sweet, by this expression I equally feel that I can let myself be, and no longer strive to be perfect..
Your expression inspires me and we all can sense our present now by allowing ourselves to be, and no longer allow those past patterns to be part of our life.
Danna true to say a lot of us get caught in having to be perfect,but that is not required, its is about being true to ourselves, and in that connection of truth with our selves we are giving that reflection, we are giving that to others.
It is well worth removing the wall that keeps us incarcerated in distance from others for we all know love and naturally are impulsed to express the love we are with each other.
Surrender is the key in all ways I am discovering! Thank you Nicole for your good observations.
Oh wow this is such a big one – how often do we keep ourselves just on the fringes of true love, out in the cold so to speak but really desperately craving to take our place in the warmth of a truly loving relationship? In my life there have been many times where my own insecurities made a situation look to me like i was unwelcome or not a part of it, when in truth it was always me holding back, not anyone else.
And we do that when there may even be in many cases a simple answer, which is dealing honestly and truthfully with whatever comes up in the relationship.
I can relate to the tears being cried not from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel – Yet despite the at-the-time very real, but absolutely self-created contraction away from love and the feelings of isolation after the event, I know this love and support to be there all around me, constantly, and can choose to come back to it.
Surrender and allowing… seemingly two of the most difficult words to live… and yet the key to everything we are and everything we have ever wanted.
The opposite being control, which we have all learnt and think we have got it all together, but really that is so not the case. I have found that when I do finally let go and surrender, that is when things really fall into place.
When we sit on the fence, surrender and allowing sounds like a good idea as you have said, Samantha. Could it be our past hurts, keep flashing red lights and keep saying; don’t do it. it’s a trick! That continues to hold us back?
Your sharing is profound, real and very relatable Nicole – eventhough I did not particularly go out and look for love, I was always missing it – and yet my pattern was to reject it when it came my way, all because I had never learnt to truly love and adore myself first.
we are all made of exactly what it is we are all looking for and what we get ourselves in a huge pickle about. Because how can one be bereft of love when one is love?
It just goes to show how we’ve got something very wrong and created a life and world for ourselves that is far from true to the core of our nature.
Curious indeed that we are seeking what we oft refuse to live for ourselves.
We don’t live it, we want someone else to do it for us…. funny really.. and beautiful is it when we live it, and then can see it all around us and reality is it has always been there, we were just not open to feeling and expressing it ourselves.
This is kind of funny when you really stop and consider how ridiculous this situation is! That we could spend a lifetime searching for something we know is the key to life when it is literally right under our noses all along!
So important to when we are becoming more aware of those patterns of avoidance that we simply observe the patterns and don’t judge ourselves for we stop ourselves from observing in that instant and are no longer able to see beyond those patterns.
This is a great reminder Jennifer, when we don’t judge what we are feeling then we can remain open to what exactly is the pattern, where it came from and that it doesn’t service. I got upset by something tonight and now reading your comment I see how I could have kept it light and saw it is a great opportunity to ask myself why.
This challenges the fact that we complicate life needlessly – the simpler our life, the more space that exists for each of us to truly get to know who we are and the love that we carry within.
A true relationship can never be the same from one day to the next as it is based on love and the love we are willing and open to express and receive.
In my childhood and youth my deep yearning used to be more about my wanting to share my love and joy with others but them not wanting it. Really it is the same thing as I was not giving it to myself – which is crazy because I am love at essence – so can’t even say was not giving it to myself – perhaps more accurate to say was not connecting to what was and is already there.
I also had a huge issue around the word Love itself because we use that word to mean emotional things and love does not have one ounce of emotion in it. Love simply is, does not impose and does not need anyone else to accept it. These days I am surrounded by love and I love it!
How very common this belief is that love comes from another. But surely this doesn’t make sense because if it can come from another it can come from us too. If we all believe that love comes from others, we will all end up looking in hope at each other with no-one connected to the love innate within. It makes much more sense to me that love comes from within us all. Not only does it make sense – it is my experience too.
A very important sentence in this article is that this is an ongoing development…. We are so engrained with the pattern of having to be perfect that to understand that we are all simply developing and evolving is crucial.
We’re afraid to be truly loved because we are afraid of getting hurt. If we let our hurts dominate our lives we will never ever let true love in.
It is easy to blame others or our situations for not feeling loved but when we start taking responsibility for our life and our choices it becomes very clear that the only person who can block or receive love is in fact ourselves. Love is always present so how much we allow ourselves to feel love is up to us.
Nicole what you have written here is so true
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.”
How many have felt that we are somehow not worthy of love and so deny ourselves the very thing that we crave the most – true unadulterated love.
‘… that ‘all of me’ is what is required to live, that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.’ – love this, Nicole. So true, there should be no part of us that we hold to be any less than another. All of our parts are equally needed to make the divine whole that we are, and each of these parts deserves to be equally treasured.
Love is not the emotional version we have been led to believe. When we are truly loved it is felt in every cell of our body and the emotional version is exposed as the imposter that leaves us needing wanting or searching for. Love resides within us and it starts with us first, not needing another to give us what we already have.
….in answer to my question ‘why are we afraid to truly be love?’ we are afraid to be seen and felt by others because of reactions but surely (and from experience!) holding back, living in contraction, and not being who we truly are is hurting us more than being who we truly are. Therefore it makes no sense to live this way .. to live less than we naturally and innately are.
Great question Nicole and for me it has to be because of my lack of acceptance of myself and appreciation of what I bring leaves no space for another to truly love me and when I have had this reflection in the past I have shied away from it because it amplified my own lack of self-love . The more that I am building a loving relationship with myself the more I am able to drop my protection and allow others to see the whole of me and experience what it is to be truly loved.
Why are we afraid to truly be love? This felt good to read ‘letting go of the protection and allowing myself to be seen, flaws and all’.
“All of my relationships were a great distraction from not feeling or taking responsibility for my choices.” This realisation is transformational as by doing so we claim and empower ourselves rather than being at the mercy of others.
“How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?” Without Serge Benhayon, I would never have know this truth. I then found that having the knowledge was not the same as living it. Truly loving myself did not come easily. Not until I understood how everything I did and each choice I made was either in the energy of love or harm, did I get it. There is no in-between and this is true responsibility.
When we get so used to pushing people away and telling ourselves that it is everyone else’s fault, but what it all boils down to is us keeping ourselves out of reach to others, and a lack of acceptance of ourselves.
True relationships begins with truly loving and appreciating yourself in just being you.
The relationship I have with my house mate is setting a marker for any relationships I have in the future. As house mates we have the opportunity to deepen our connection with each other and allow love and intimacy without the complication of a romantic or sexual relationship. It is setting the standard of how I know relationships can be in terms of integrity and respect. Having experienced this I do not want to accept anything less in any other relationship.
We hide parts of ourselves because they don’t fit our pictures of how we expect/want ourselves to be. But it’s not that we don’t fit the picture and that’s why we aren’t loved. It’s that the pictures and expectations we hold don’t fit us that are already perfect and lovable just as we are.
‘How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?’ If we want to be in a truly loving relationship then we have to be able to let the love in – we can’t let it in if we are not prepared to go there for ourselves. It can be a huge ouch to realise those functioning relationships in terms of arrangments are put in place and kept there because we haven’t been prepared to live more deeply the love that we are. What an eye opener to realise that the inevitable level of abuse as a result, which may be quite subtle or non-existent to those looking on, is actually deeply felt but has been allowed because we have allowed it to be so.
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel. A love that I have missed and longed for, which has always been there, but have not until recently decided to let myself feel.” This is very powerful and such a beautiful place to come to and begin life from here.
This is a deeply beautiful touching real blog about how we live and the love we truly are and how we can feel this by building it for ourselves first.” I want to have true relationships and to be and feel loved and I now know none of this is going to happen unless it begins with me.” so true.
I was always very afraid of letting others see me cry or upset and tried so very hard to hold back this from a very young age. Very recently I have gone through a lot of healing physically and have felt to cry and show my vulnerability with people and this has not only allowed me to be more of who I am and appreciate every ounce of my expression, but it has also opened up honest and warm conversations and connections with many people in my life whom I felt I was close with but now feel a much stronger bond and intimacy that I ever felt possible. Surrendering to who I am in full and breaking down the protection I put up, allows for a greater awareness of how I feel and how much I value myself and how this then outplays in my relationships . We are forever learning more and more about our lives and how we move within it.
How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself? This is something we all must learn for it is almost impossible for another to truly love us if we don’t love ourselves. I say almost as there are some that can see past all our insecurities, issues and faults and truly love us anyway because of the fact that beyond that we are all divine.
“How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?” Nicole this line for me sums up the start of a whole journey in life, a way of stopping the merry go round approach to wanting love from another and taking steps to build love for myself, it was at times hard, like you I cried many times over, yet through all of that the spark of fire, of love and of my ever deepening connection to God along with the reflection of absolute love from Serge and Universal Medicine helped me to appreciate that love is first with myself before another.
Taking those first steps of choosing a loving relationship with yourself is to open the door to the Divine love of God that dwells within our inner heart.
Feeling an old grief (surprisingly) re-emerge this week I realise, again, it’s the separation I have felt from myself – and from God – that is the root cause. We all want to be loved. Why do we deny giving this to ourselves! Crackers!!
I too used to keep people at bay. I am much more open these days and let more people in, but not everyone. Realising I haven’t fully accepted myself has gone a long way to address this though. When I hold myself fully with love I won’t worry about others reactions, ‘cos this has been why I don’t open all of me, the fear of being hurt.
If you sat people down and asked them what they truly want, they would surely answer ‘true love’. In our heart it’s everything we crave and know is natural and innate. Yet as you show Nicole the confronting fact is, in everything we do and the way we act, we tend to resist everything that leads us to this. I wouldn’t have accepted this to be true, except in my own experience I have got to see how I have consistently behaved as my own worst enemy. Like an abusive boss who keeps you quiet with occasional treats and pats on the back, our spirit tries to get us to settle for a situation where it is in charge. It fights and puts up a struggle to hang on to control like a tyrannical dictator. So every step, every act, every choice back to truth can seem hard, until it finally gets the message: there is only one way, one quality for me, one purpose, one impulse to which I will serve -and that is Love. The road back may not be easy but it is simple when we understand it this way.
There is a sense here in this writing, of a return to the loving quality that you naturally are, simply by choosing to love yourself first.
Our imperfections are what makes us human, feeling it deeply makes us part of humanity!
Thank you Nicole, this is a beautiful read. The biggest change came in my life when I stopped blaming others and looked at what I was doing to prevent true relationships. From there I could focus on building a true relationship with myself.
We all suffer from holding our love back and once we understand that we have to build that love within ourselves first, we are setting our baby steps back to the ginormous love we all are innately so.
All of my life I have hidden my vulnerability from others, not even wanting those closest to me to see my tears, only those I truly trusted. At the moment I don’t like myself very much because I don’t like how I react in situations where my old hurts get triggered. What I can appreciate though, is my willingness to look at those same reactions and find out what particular hurt they belong to so I can explore and let it go. Acceptance of our imperfections and appreciating the lessons they bring is a good approach, thank you.
I do know that too Carmel, those situations where the old held hurts are triggered and come to the surface in all their ugliness. But what i always keep in mind that these reactions are there because i am building more love in my body and therefore there is no place for these hurts anymore and they offer themselves to be healed.
Sadly it is so common to hide our true feelings that most of the time we don’t even know that we are doing it. It takes willingness and true honesty to start to acknowledge what we truly feel.
I can so relate to not allowing myself to feel the love that is already here. Keeping people out, holding my body hard. But why? What would happen if I allowed myself to feel and accept that there actually is love that I say I have been looking for and in fact has never left me? That love would let me know God is here – and that God is not exclusive to me, it is in everyone. Is that what I want to resist and look away from? What would I get out of separating from and denying God and His Love? – Creation.
Observing life so we can respond in a loving way deepens the respect and decency we have for our-self and others so it ripples out and permeates everything we touch.
“How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?” – so simple and it so makes sense that it starts with my relationship with myself, and this is something I have been made aware of and been developing over the past few years yet sometimes I feel as though I don’t know where to begin. So, thank you for this beautiful reminder, Nicole. I can never be reminded of this often enough.
Beautifully expressed Nicole. I get the sense that my relationship with me could go to a whole new level of love.
Yes always room to deepen Leonne, – and catch the situations that we still react to and pull away from that love for ourselves.
Stupendously glorious Nicole. Sharing your truth in the way that you have allows us all to open to the same truth, which means that we all get to surrender into the glorious, unlimited love that we all are. Love has been referred to as an ocean of love but this is far too limiting a description. Love is a never ending expansion and we are all part of it, let’s take our self imposed brakes off and fall back into it’s loving embrace.
Your “imperfections are perfections”, I loved reading that, how beautiful to accept you as you are. It is easy to get hung up on what we are not. But I love how you have spun that around Nicole, and presented that we learn from everything we are.
Thank you again Nicole for such a beautiful sharing. Another part of your sharing talks about being aware of the feeling of unease we often have around others and this is often a sign of feeling inadequate or a judgement on ourselves.
Gorgeous Nicole. I love the realness with how you’re exploring how you feel in your body and how you are around people … to protect to us seems natural and yet it hurts which tells us another story that it’s not our natural way of being at all, so to unpick all of that is amazing. I feel your openness and humility as you do so, thank you for the inspiration today.
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel” Wow what a statement and one that in truth many of us feel. We deserve all the love in the world, we are priceless, we are God’s sons every single one of us needs to claim this fact and live this truth accordingly.
When you start opening up to more love for yourself and then others, you feel all of those areas in life that are still missing this natural openness and love, which can feel like a bit of a surprise initially when you discover those little ways in which you do hold love back. Bringing in more loving focus on the details of things with yourself first, also deepens the love and is very empowering and inspirational for others to feel and experience.
Love absolutely begins with the Love we are and allowing this for ourselves and making Love our every expression.
There is a lot of Love to live, and when two people live that together it’s just stunning.
It is such a common thing to blame others for not feeling loved, and a great way to stay in the ‘poor me’ of that is to continue with that as our focus. It reminds me of the endless search we women often have running for the partner who will ‘love us and make us feel good about ourselves ‘ It is the ‘answer’ to our self-worth issues and certainly was for me for many years. Taking responsibility for that love being for yourself is something once claimed, is liberating beyond belief, and an easy shift to make once it is accepted as the key.
It is not ‘love that hurts’, as the popular saying goes, but a lack of it lived that cuts us to the core. The fortresses we build around our hearts are there to ‘safeguard’ us against being hurt but ironically are the very structures that crush our chests and imprison us so deeply. Therefore it is our protection that hurts, not love and until we come to realise this for ourselves we will continue to build elaborate fortresses within which to hide to keep our true selves at bay and not in open communion with all others. It is love that is our greatest form of protection in the sense that when we let others in and hold them with love, we do not get scarred by their actions that are not of this love or by our own withdrawal from love.
Gosh Nicole, you’re ‘singing my song’. Protection was the name of my game, but now I also feel the amazing love-filled life that flows from opening up, letting other people in, letting them love me, letting my love out to everyone I meet. The sense of instant brotherhood and sisterhood with anyone, friend, family, colleague, stranger… is our way to a whole and healthy humanity.
It is so very healing to come back to the truth of our choices, to no longer blame others and to take full responsibility for the decisions we have made in our life. “The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel. A love that I have missed and longed for, which has always been there, but have not until recently decided to let myself feel.” And when we are totally open and honest, our life begins to transform.
Letting go of all our ideals and beliefs around being perfect allows so much to change in our lives. And I love what you present here Nicole that… “…my imperfections are actually perfections and they are what supports me to grow and evolve…” It turns our judgments on ourselves upside down! Sometimes we have to feel the opposite of something to fully understand the truth.
I was moved to tears reading this today, thank you, especially this line “that all of me is worth being loved”.
Beautifully expressed and very true – we are pure Love and Godly.
Tears over here too Nicole. I can feel how much I’ve been holding people away, holding myself away, and it’s beautiful to feel myself let go and surrender. Surrender to accepting and loving myself.
There is much to discover about what love truly is in entirety. Understanding that if we hold back anything/part of ourselves then how can we be loved for all of who we are? We have to be willing to embrace who we are so another has the opportunity to lovingly respond.
I have noticed my relationships are slowly changing as I develop more awareness around the way I am with myself. There is a very obvious link between how I feel about me and therefore how I feel about others. When I’m down and out, I don’t want to see people, when I feel great and have minimal judgement, I’m so much more open to others.
We don’t realise how closed and protective we are until we truly start to open up. I found that letting go of the layers and letting people in begins with how I am in my relationship with myself and uncovering my own hurts and pictures.
We seem to go around and around in circles at times looking for all manner of things. Where else do you see people speaking like this? That it all starts with us, if the world truly needs love then bring this ‘true’ love to yourself so you can see it in all else and so others may feel it and be inspired to dedicate the same way. In a world where there is a lot written and talked about it is great to see some tangible on the ground action. The way we move in and around the world has an impact, we can either choose to bring more awareness to this and thus support ourselves to grow and expand or we can just do things and hope that everything is ok. I know which action I now take and it’s nothing about ‘living in hope’.
Blaming others for a lack of love and staying with that hurt is a great distraction away from looking at our own love.
This brings a lot of understanding to how other people can behave in public space like for instance the supermarket. Often people are closed off and seem like to feel not being worth a loving smile and connection. Knowing that our relationship with ourselves is at the basis of every relationship and connection helps to not take this personally but understand what is going on for people. And it is not that they don’t like you, it is just they find it hard to understand you like them because they do not like themselves.
I can so relate to this blog, isn’t it crazy how the one thing we want and crave can also be the one thing we hold ourselves away from! I am learning a lot about how holding back the level of love I feel for life and people only makes me feel small and withdrawn from life – all the while thinking somehow I am protected from rejection but I am in truth only missing out on living a life with all of me.
I can recognise the hardness in the body that is employed in order to not let love in or out, yet as you say Nicole it leaves its painful mark on the body – the pain from the hardening and physical outplay… but also the pain of putting ourselves into separation from everyone else.
How true it is that we keep others out for fear of being hurt, but do not realise that in keeping that separation in place we are in fact hurting ourselves…and each other. There is no doubt in my mind and it is my experience, that the more I love me, the more I love other people too.
Great title and question Nicole – why are we so afraid to be truly loved? Well, I was carrying and holding onto so many hurts and wounds in my body, I actually blocked love from naturally flowing….Through attending the Sacred Esoteric Healing courses, and many other courses, and making many self-loving choices in my life, I have cleared mountains of old stuff; patterns and beliefs from my body, so much so that I am now learning every day how to love myself more. And there are so many opportunities to do just that! Life is about learning to love once more ( and not hold it back) which is the foundation for true relationships with everyone we meet and already in our life.
‘that there is and should be no part of me that I do not accept, that all of me is worth being loved, that all of me is what another wants to love.’ Full acceptance of who I am, needing nothing to change, appreciating not judging, is how I need to live in order to feel my own love which can then be reflected in another.
It makes total sense all that you have shared here Nicole. if we can hold the quality of love with ourselves and hence get to know, understand and enjoy ourselves from this quality, then how could we ever not hold another in the same? Suddenly putting yourself down in any way shape or form comes with a greater responsibility, for if we treat ourselves in this manner naturally we will do the same to others.
Recognising our patterns, our ways of living that we have accepted as a valid though dysfunctional way of being is the start of reconfiguring to a new foundation
I too am only beginning to accept and truly love myself. Recently I realised I was still holding a deep seated feeling of disdain about my self. Which, when I uncovered it, I realised it was not mine, but what I had absorbed from my mother. Letting go of that configuration in my body was very freeing and made loads more room for the love I naturally am. I am now able to say no to that energy when it comes my way.
A very powerful and insightful blog Nicole, it is very true… the whole issue of letting people in is universal, with us each reacting and protection from one another. It takes one to relinquish this dance and reclaim the love we are within and the fact we are designed to express it, not just receive it. That ol’ conditional love thing we’ve got going on… I’ll let you in if you let me in first!
Exactly Jane, I found that too… once I let one person in more, my partner in this case, others around me expressed the difference they felt with me too. Love is love, and not something that is between two people as an exclusive. I love that about it and that go deeper with one, and everyone gets it.
” Beginning to surrender ” I find that this is the challenge we all have , surrender to the truth of who we are. From and before birth we are show by the world , by out parents , that they need us . The parents need their babies to full fill the emptiness that they have grown up to feel and so the babies grow up the same way and therefore it becomes a vicious circle of full filling the emptiness that people carry. And as beautifully explained in this writing , truly there is no emptiness , we have been fooled into believing we are not the love that we are. Surrendering to the truth and loving the love that we are will expand out and clear away that which we have been living that is not us.
‘I want to have true relationships and to be and feel loved and I now know none of this is going to happen unless it begins with me.’ A wise consideration. What if we all had this approach to being in relationship? Perhaps much would shift and be taken responsibility for.
I have been observing how much blame and creating issues stops us from connecting to love and to who we are. It blocks the flow of love that is naturally there within everyone. When we are not choosing to take responsibility for our choices, behaviours and actions blame is often present. At the end of the day holding onto our hurts hurt us deeply because it stunts any form of connection or true expression.
It is the most beautiful thing in this world – to be in relationships where you let yourself be truly seen, where there is no protection, where you bear it all and you just keep deepening. There is no end point in a relationship – it is always calling us to go deeper with ourselves and from there with others. Such a divine glory, offered to us all.
We can make love seem so complicated and painful with ideals about how it needs to come from another when all along there is this deep well of love inside of us that we can reconnect with and open up to share with the world…
Nicole, this is an inspiring blog to read. The small observations you are bringing to your daily life are the big keys to developing an honest and true relationship with yourself first and from this, deeper relationships and true connection with others.
“I have started observing my body, such as my posture, stance, and tone of voice or if there is unease when I am around others. I am also noticing if I go into any form of judgment or comparison of another, an awkward conversation, or if I simply go into avoidance and walk the long way so I do not have to be around another”.
Could it be that whilst we do want another to Love us as that is the most gorgeous thing ever, that we in truth avoid being loved on this level because it also asks us to be that love with ourselves and this means we have to be more responsible with how we choose to live?
Hitting the nail on the head there Joshua!
Love this question amazing and the answer is yes 🙂
Yes it’s time to drop the walls! It’s so ridiculous that we all want to be loved but we all resist it so much. But what I have found is that there is no way I can let anyone else’s love near me if I do not have any love for myself. It simply bounces off me! It is impossible to let it in even though I may want it. First we have to drop the wall to ourselves.
True Rebecca and Nicole it is time to drop the walls, have they ever been useful?
‘I would only let people see as much of me as I felt was safe, in case they may hurt me, let me down in some way – I was holding them to ransom you could say, just in case.’ How many of us have lived just like this, and if we are honest possibly still do at times ? This is so well worth being aware of and as we build that foundation of love within ourselves which naturally comes the more present we are the more we are able to sustain that connection whomever we are with.
Perhaps more of the ‘relationship issues’ that we identify ourselves with, e.g. struggling to commit, lack of intimacy and so forth are to do with our personal relationship to us than we realise.
I guess it all comes down to not feeling loved or appreciated as children, and this is not to lay the blame at the feet of any parent because they were also brought up in a loveless society, as there has not been a true reflection of love for a long, long time. For many it wasn’t until they met Serge Benhayon that they got a glimpse of what true love truly means. And that feeling that there was always something missing was realised and the something missing that we all feel deep within us is the true love that Serge Benhayon presents and lives so that we all can get to feel what that actually looks like and feels like.
These words leapt off the page at me – “or if I simply go into avoidance and walk the long way so I do not have to be around another.” – as this is what I used to do but once I had done it I used to feel horrible right through my body. What a lot of time I wasted avoiding love and what a lot of damage I inflicted on my wonderful body. Finally there is no more walking around or away from anyone as these days I am open to all who come my way even if only for a moment; my body loves this new approach to life and to love
When we start to love and appreciate ourselves what really stands out is the amount of effort put into disregarding ourselves and how much we want others to bring something to us that we were not willing to give ourselves – it is easy to see why people are so lost right now.
This is one of the most beautiful blogs I have read – from the words of the title right to the end, it speaks loud and so direct to the heart of our life, our troubles and strife. We seek the ‘ideal’ situation, partner or place and end up just finding fault, when the missing part of the puzzle is in us all along. Talk about a multi-layered case of mistaken identity. Thank you Nicole for a super honest blog.
I agree Joseph, a blog that goes to the heart of life – we are made of love, it’s our nature and yet it’s what we starve ourselves of and therefore hold back from embracing in others! Absolutely crazy and this blog highlights it beautifully. It’s like we are forever looking for the treasure in a field when we are the actual treasure!
Nicole your sharing is so touching (it brought a tear to my eyes) and I found so much that I relate to in your words and actions. Very much a heart felt sharing. I shed tears for the love that I have not let into my life as much as that I have not given to others in my fear of being hurt again.
“How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?” Answering this question for myself has, and is the door to an ever-deepening loving relationship with myself and others.
Yes and also how come we ask others to love us and when they do not love themselves and we are not loving ourselves – where is the love in all that!
Asking a person who does not love themselves to love us is a huge reflection of where we are coming from. Great point Nicola.
“The tears I have cried over my life have not been from the lack of love of another, but for the love I have not given or allowed myself to feel.” You nailed it here, we don’t need love from another if we already know we have love inside us, in fact that love is untouchable no matter how someone else responds. If we keep loving then we never lose, it’s when we stop loving that we feel the devastating consequences.
I agree Meg if we love ourselves then we will love all equally and we do not need to be loved by another but naturally it will come our way as love magnetically pulls love.
“How could I be truly loved by another if I was not first truly loving myself?”
This is an observation which is gold, as when I think and act against myself and my natural impulses and beingness I am not loving and accepting myself in full. How then can I receive the love of another?