Kittens, wrote this a while back on Your Tango, and realized I hadn’t shared with you.
For all the times we grieve love. #6 is my fave!
Love is a practice, not a destination.
Letting go is probably the most difficult journey any human being can undertake.
We are in a constant state of releasing it seems.
The fact is, we will go through many cycles of life, death and re-birth in one lifetime — many sequences of growth; an almost unlimited amount of opportunities to level up, spiritually, emotionally and intellectually if we so choose. Life is not constant progress. It is a growth spurt, a win, a challenge mastered and then a dip, a perceived failure. Later, another win, another span of time where everything has lost its wrinkles and we have it all under control. Then, the cycle repeats itself. It’s not you, it’s the nature of things. On this planet, we are creatures of seasons and change.
Break-ups are part of the death (transformation) cycle, just as love is part of the re-birthing and life cycle. You will notice that nature is quite adept at this, and humans are not separate from this phenomenon. Just as trees drop their leaves, we shed layers of our hearts, we go inward, rest, heal, and when the time is right, we turn our face to the sun once more.
The magic is in what happens between death and life. That ‘between’ space is where the soul finds its wings. Dormancy is actually quite a dynamic process. What happens during the dark night of the soul is pure alchemy.
When it comes to the broken heart, there are intuitive ways in which we can help ourselves navigate the quagmire. We can be completely blind to how we participate in elevating our own anguish and grief while in the depths of it. It’s perfectly natural to lose perspective. In fact, when we do, we offer ourselves an opportunity to work out some unhealthy patterns.
Here are 6 break-up hacks that will keep things real – questions we can ask ourselves and a few tenets to live by. Every relationship reveals a different part of our psyche and emotional state. The willingness to peer with true curiosity at all these parts becomes the ground for surrender to what is. Perspective usually leaves the room when a love relationship ends. Suddenly, we fall down a deep rabbit-hole of emotions, and in that downward spiral, wisdom takes a terrible tumble. Perhaps, in the moments of silence that ensue at the bottom of that hole; we can muddle over what is real, not imagined.
1. Was I Present to My Relationship?
Presence is the lifeblood of any relationship. I doubt that anyone is one hundred percent present to anything at all times, but for the most part, ask yourself; did I practice mindfulness and presence? And what if you didn’t? That is the opportunity for introspection. It’s part of the cycle of growth. Each experience brings us closer to how we want to show up for ourselves and others. In the long run, this kind of inner search is what turns the tide from pain to moments of peace.
2. I’m Only Responsible For My Part of The Relationship.
I don’t know about you, but this drops me into some serious relief. How can I create shifts in how I receive and practice love if I am concerned with what’s not mine? I can only be present to what’s mine if I take my focus off what’s outside my realm of knowing. Oh, I may have some well-cooked ideas about what’s going on for the person whose love I am still grieving, but I don’t know much, really, about what’s in their soul. I have to respect the fact that their heart has many spaces belonging only to them. It’s not about me in those places. It’s their own sacred journey. Now I can focus on my responsibility toward myself and my own healing.
3. Did I Honor My Heart?
This is where we dig deep into our authenticity. How did we give of our heart — was it honest? Did we honor our heart in the relationship, or give to our lover at the cost of our own? Were we protective of it during arguments and decisions to end things? Or did we leave it out there to be trampled without a scrap of safety net? No matter how you answer those questions, the key is awareness. Without awareness, we make the same mistakes over and over. Be kind to yourself, especially if you realize that you’ve been following unhealthy patterns. Love is a practice. The more we understand ourselves and our motivations, the closer we come to the best love affair of all, love of Self.
4. Everything Is As it Should Be.
A hard one to accept, I agree. ‘What if’ is a beguiling question. However, if it was meant to be, it simply would be, because we would have manifested it! Everything that is, exists through the power of our thoughts and the action we take as a result of those thoughts. Therefore, the reality and moment before us is exactly where our soul sought to be, even if it makes little sense. Once we find acceptance of what is, we can let go. In the letting go lies a beautiful gift; clarity. Clarity that is not governed by the pain-body but by wisdom.
5. You’re Here Now. What Will You Do With Your Now?
‘Now’ offers so much scope for joy, gratitude and hope. This moment is real, the past and future are either memory or imagination. Pain arises not only from being lost in other dimensions, but from the soul’s knowing that it is not alive in the present. There is an innate grief for the moment we are missing. The first time I realized that my soul was grieving the moment it was missing, I understood how precious a gift Now was. This moment, where everything is possible, according to our thoughts and intentions, is the miracle. Choose the miracle of Now. Everything else is illusion.
6. Hardening Your Heart is a Form of Self-aggression. Keep it Soft.
When the very instinctual impulse hits us to harden our heart, to shelter it from the tenderness of love and loss, we stand at a very delicate precipice. It is a choice between feeling it all, or feeling only what seems supportive. The dichotomy of that is – love and loss are the best teaching ground of what truly is supportive. To stay soft is to know the very depths of the heart. We are empathic creatures, we must feel in order to make sense of our environment. The heart is a sensory organ, and more so, it is an energetic center (chakra) which guides our trajectory through life. A calcified heart affects the energetic centers next to it, the throat (self-expression, communication) and the solar plexus, our power center. The solar plexus is where we draw confidence, self-esteem and self-worth from. Each of these centers, though separate, operate wholistically, and that is why hardening the heart leads to a form of self-aggression. In conflict with ourselves, we attract more relationships that reflect this inner conflict. Keeping it soft and open supports our self-empowerment and ability to take our full place in the world; to speak our truth and our desire.
In the end, two things remain; it does not matter whose fault it was, blame is irrelevant if we’re to rise empowered. Secondly, we can choose to take one hundred percent responsibility for our relationships. Free from agonizing over minute details of where things derailed, we can focus on what is most important, self-care and moving on.
When the heart, mind and ego are absorbed in grief over lost love, support them with every act of loving-kindness you can imagine. This mindfulness practice will lay the groundwork for your healing. Every time.
Feel it, love it, let it go.
See it on Your Tango!