Bridging the Gap
Last weekend I dropped into a deep dark pit of aloneness – a portal into My Personal Hell – where it feels like there is no love for me in this cold, mechanistic, indifferent universe. My soul longs to connect with a warm, living, feeling human being to be delivered from aloneness. Connecting in authentic, open-hearted way nurtures this longing. Each time that deep connection happens, the heartless, indifferent, unloving universe that I dread, loses its grip on me. |
With an open heart we can see the other for what he or she is. If heart is closed, we only see our projections in the eyes of the other. We see nothing but ourselves and so gain nothing from this connection. While open heart allows the valuable exchange.Remembering the fox from The Little Prince: „It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.“
Of course nobody is obliged to provide us this deep open-hearted (and heart opening) connection. Unless their own soul obliges them to extends their love in this way.
There is much to be said about the immense importance of being able to satisfy our longings by ourselves. But the synergy that happens when we truly connect with another, as well as the depth of awareness we gain in conscious interaction, evade us in our separation. There are joys that just cannot be had without another and plains we cannot reach on our own.
Being able to be there for yourself – lovingly – is the bases for being able to receive that gift from another when it is offered. But when I fall into my hell pit of separation, I don’t see the love. That happens when I encounter heavy friction in connection to someone or something that truly matters to me. Then I develop an urge to run in the opposite direction – longing turns into resistance, the flip side of the coin.
In those moments I want love to be painted out crystal clear to me, since my eyes are blind to it. I need to borrow the eyes of a seer. If the friction is with another human being, very possibly, he/she is not seeing it clearly either, and represents the opposite scale of misalignment, not the golden mean where we could meet.
Although I want that seer to be a warm, loving, living being on whose shoulder I may rest my head, if he/she is not there, I can seek for the seer inside myself. It may be my higher self or my spirit guide, an entity that does not loose the clear perspective when my incarnated self falls into misalignment.
Rumi says “Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
No one else can give us the love we long, if we resist it within ourselves. So first of all we might want to look at healing our relationship to ourselves. Do we embrace all of ourselves or do we still reject aspects of ourselves? It is easy to see considering the concept that we love ourselves to the extent that we dare to love another, for another is a mirror of us and what we resist in the other, we resist in ourselves as well.
I used to argue this concept, until I learned to recognize that every shadow has two faces – the apparent one and the opposing one (the flip side of the coin). Either I idealize something or I reject it (either I long for it or resist it) – both indicate a blockage (barrier).
Longing for connection indicates my incapability to see its presence, so I perceive the lack instead. Resistance to connect indicates an incapability to bear its presence, possibly out of fear of being deceived by it. Both are just projections of our own conditioning and have but little to do with situation at hand. But they have a power to steer the situation towards what we project upon it.
My longing is rooted in the lack of connection I experienced as a child. Hence I tend to idealize connection and then I don’t see it for what it really is. Another with similar experience might have decided that connection is something unreliable and keep rejecting it instead. Both sprout from the same root. Both block us from seeing the reality at hand.
Our ability to see the love in our life is limited by all these blockages (misalignments, barriers) that we entertain. The stronger we idealize or reject love connections, the narrower its pass-ways, since we are able to receive it only if it comes in accordance to our beliefs about it. If we wish to have wider perspective, we need to bring awareness into these beliefs.
Perhaps there is a deep wound beneath those beliefs, a loss that has not been grieved, a pain that we have not allowed ourselves to feel. Then the medicine lies within the wound – if we wish to heal, we better move towards it, not away from it. Just by allow ourselves to feel that pain, by being with it, without trying to fix it, the hellish flavor of pain might turn in time into a sweet scent instead.
Or we may ask ourselves why are those beliefs there – probably to protect us from something. Then we may ask – what are they protecting us from – and the answer may be – from pain, failure, ridicule, etc. And then we may ask – is it really true? By using Byron Katie’s process called The Work, we may shine some healing light upon these beliefs that do not serve us any longer and choose the ones that do.
I paint and write, so I use these forms of expression also for healing. Writing this blog post helps me to realize many things for myself. I have also painted series I call Love on Canvas to anchor the sense of deep connection with another living feeling human being, so looking at it, I would remember how it feels. Interestingly enough – in the state of separation I actually don’t even notice these paintings, unless I consciously decide to plug into that loving space.
The sense of aloneness I experienced last week is a manifestation of a blockage built upon beliefs that have sprouted from past wounding. By bringing awareness into my current state of connections and beliefs and allowing the past wounding to surface and heal, the gap between where I am and the golden mean where I wish to be, gets bridged.
The golden mean I imagine to be the state of pure Love – no longing, nor resistance, just open-hearted healing presence to all that is. I can tap into it each time I choose loving presence over my habitual tendencies.
Of course nobody is obliged to provide us this deep open-hearted (and heart opening) connection. Unless their own soul obliges them to extends their love in this way.
There is much to be said about the immense importance of being able to satisfy our longings by ourselves. But the synergy that happens when we truly connect with another, as well as the depth of awareness we gain in conscious interaction, evade us in our separation. There are joys that just cannot be had without another and plains we cannot reach on our own.
Being able to be there for yourself – lovingly – is the bases for being able to receive that gift from another when it is offered. But when I fall into my hell pit of separation, I don’t see the love. That happens when I encounter heavy friction in connection to someone or something that truly matters to me. Then I develop an urge to run in the opposite direction – longing turns into resistance, the flip side of the coin.
In those moments I want love to be painted out crystal clear to me, since my eyes are blind to it. I need to borrow the eyes of a seer. If the friction is with another human being, very possibly, he/she is not seeing it clearly either, and represents the opposite scale of misalignment, not the golden mean where we could meet.
Although I want that seer to be a warm, loving, living being on whose shoulder I may rest my head, if he/she is not there, I can seek for the seer inside myself. It may be my higher self or my spirit guide, an entity that does not loose the clear perspective when my incarnated self falls into misalignment.
Rumi says “Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
No one else can give us the love we long, if we resist it within ourselves. So first of all we might want to look at healing our relationship to ourselves. Do we embrace all of ourselves or do we still reject aspects of ourselves? It is easy to see considering the concept that we love ourselves to the extent that we dare to love another, for another is a mirror of us and what we resist in the other, we resist in ourselves as well.
I used to argue this concept, until I learned to recognize that every shadow has two faces – the apparent one and the opposing one (the flip side of the coin). Either I idealize something or I reject it (either I long for it or resist it) – both indicate a blockage (barrier).
Longing for connection indicates my incapability to see its presence, so I perceive the lack instead. Resistance to connect indicates an incapability to bear its presence, possibly out of fear of being deceived by it. Both are just projections of our own conditioning and have but little to do with situation at hand. But they have a power to steer the situation towards what we project upon it.
My longing is rooted in the lack of connection I experienced as a child. Hence I tend to idealize connection and then I don’t see it for what it really is. Another with similar experience might have decided that connection is something unreliable and keep rejecting it instead. Both sprout from the same root. Both block us from seeing the reality at hand.
Our ability to see the love in our life is limited by all these blockages (misalignments, barriers) that we entertain. The stronger we idealize or reject love connections, the narrower its pass-ways, since we are able to receive it only if it comes in accordance to our beliefs about it. If we wish to have wider perspective, we need to bring awareness into these beliefs.
Perhaps there is a deep wound beneath those beliefs, a loss that has not been grieved, a pain that we have not allowed ourselves to feel. Then the medicine lies within the wound – if we wish to heal, we better move towards it, not away from it. Just by allow ourselves to feel that pain, by being with it, without trying to fix it, the hellish flavor of pain might turn in time into a sweet scent instead.
Or we may ask ourselves why are those beliefs there – probably to protect us from something. Then we may ask – what are they protecting us from – and the answer may be – from pain, failure, ridicule, etc. And then we may ask – is it really true? By using Byron Katie’s process called The Work, we may shine some healing light upon these beliefs that do not serve us any longer and choose the ones that do.
I paint and write, so I use these forms of expression also for healing. Writing this blog post helps me to realize many things for myself. I have also painted series I call Love on Canvas to anchor the sense of deep connection with another living feeling human being, so looking at it, I would remember how it feels. Interestingly enough – in the state of separation I actually don’t even notice these paintings, unless I consciously decide to plug into that loving space.
The sense of aloneness I experienced last week is a manifestation of a blockage built upon beliefs that have sprouted from past wounding. By bringing awareness into my current state of connections and beliefs and allowing the past wounding to surface and heal, the gap between where I am and the golden mean where I wish to be, gets bridged.
The golden mean I imagine to be the state of pure Love – no longing, nor resistance, just open-hearted healing presence to all that is. I can tap into it each time I choose loving presence over my habitual tendencies.
Wishing you Love and Expansion!
See the paintings at ethelsarts.weebly.com/
For questions and art purchase go to ethelsarts.weebly.com/contact.html
See the paintings at ethelsarts.weebly.com/
For questions and art purchase go to ethelsarts.weebly.com/contact.html