si dawson

First of all, despite whatever you’ve experienced in life so far, yes, it IS possible to love without being hurt.

It’ll take a bit, but let me explain.

In your past, and in mine definitely, we will have experienced loving and being loved, only to be horribly, terribly hurt.

Why does this happen?

Very simply? Because we’re not loving unconditionally. We love hoping for a certain type of reaction or reciprocation (maybe that they’ll love us back, behave a certain way, or NOT do certain things).

In short: we hurt when our expectations aren’t met.

We have either attachments or aversions to their behaviour.

So, when they don’t live up to those expectations, we feel pain.

Pretty straight forward really.

Now, the key bit – how do we avoid this?

This won’t come as ANY surprise – “simply” drop our expectations.

Ha ha ha.

Oh boy, simple yes, but easy? Well, generally not so.

Of course, we could spend an entire lifetime dropping our attachments and aversions to various things. That said, we don’t REALLY want to have to wait until we’re 150 to have a great relationship, right?

The good news is, I’ve found a bit of a short cut.

To be fair, I haven’t practised this anywhere near as much as I SHOULD have (sorry ex-girlfriends). However, when I have? It’s worked incredibly well.

Now, I’ve hinted at this in the past, but here’s the full story.

First of all, it’s important to understand that relationships are a form of energetic connection. The stronger (more emotionally intimate/intense) the relationship, the stronger our connection.

So, for example:

1. The most powerful connections are usually to our parents (eg, there’s only one person on the planet that you’ve spent 9 months living inside of).
2. After that are family members – depending on how close you are of course – but these are people who’ve you’ve generally known your entire life.
3. After that tend to be the most tumultuous relationships in our lives. Lots of emotion flying around – for better or worse. People we’ve been intimate with for long periods of time.
4. Finally we have other intimate relationships, friends.
5. Below that, well, everyone else.

 

Now, one convenient way to “view” this connection is to imagine a thick white cord running between your hearts. The stronger the connection, the larger the cord. When negative energy/emotion gets thrown around, this cord can get filled with dark gunk, or twisted up.

Before we get into exactly what to do with this cord, a little back story.

I discovered this technique a few years back, when I was in a fairly heavily abusive relationship. She’d just come out of a marriage, so had a LOT going on.

ANYWAY. I had many, many chances to experiment with how best (and quickest) to get her off the ceiling when she started acting up.

After running through all the usual possibilities – placating, reasoning, apologising, arguing, fighting, attacking, defending, explaining, escaping (none of which REALLY worked), I stumbled on to this.

While she was busy shouting at me, I would focus all my attention on the cord between us.

Usually, I could see that it was twisted up, or covered in black gunk etc.

Whether this is ACTUAL reality or not really doesn’t matter. It’s just a useful representation (just like how a London tube map isn’t ACTUALLY how the tube is, but is still super helpful).

So. Then I focused ALL of my energy and attention on pouring as much love as I possibly could, out of my heart, down the cord to her heart.

I just imagined this as a super bright white light, but anything that works for you would do the trick.

It also helped for me to just keep repeating in my head “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Now obviously, parts of you will likely react to whatever is being said, particularly if it’s nasty or hateful.

If you’re pissed off too, you’re also going to react negatively to saying “I love you”! This is totally fine.

When these reactions come up, just let them all go and go back to focusing on sending as much love as you possibly can.

THIS is the real secret. That immediate letting go of every thought and reaction? THAT is where the magic really takes place. THAT is what makes it true, unconditional love.

Plus, best of all, every time you’re letting something go? You’re healing yourself and making it easier to love unconditionally in the future. It’s a HUGE win.

Oh, and for a bonus? It also puts you in an energetic space where it’s basically impossible to fight you. It’s like trying to push against water. So, it’s the fastest way possible to calm down and resolve a highly emotionally charged situation. A handy tip next time someone you love goes a bit nutty.

Obviously it may take a bit of practice to be able to do all this AND have a conversation with someone, but that’s ok. There’s no rush.

Just focus exclusively on pouring love out of your heart and into theirs, down that cord. Let everything else go that might come up. EVERYTHING.

Anyway, here’s the thing.

If you really are focusing EVERYTHING you have on sending them love? If you’re letting go of anything and everything else that might be coming up in you?

These two things combined mean you have zero expectations attached to loving them.

Which means, whatever they say or do – yes, it might have a reaction, but you’ll be so focused on loving them that your reaction will near-instantly disappear.

And guess what? That means you won’t get hurt. Can’t get hurt.

I came out of this ridiculously intense relationship, where I was called and accused of the most vile things I’ve ever heard in my life – and you know what? The cleanup required after it was utterly trivial. None of these awful awful things caused any damage at all (or such a minuscule amount that they fell away instantly).

Seriously. Don’t believe me. Try it for yourself and see.

As long as you let go of every thought and feeling that arises and focus 100% on SENDING love? It works. Phenomenally.