Relationships had never been my strong point. I had them, was in them, did not need them, but still managed to end up in them.
They were unavoidable… relationships were and are everywhere. We have relationships with everyone we meet: big, small, long term or short, we are all in one in one way or another.
However for me it was how I was in and around people that determined the kinds of relationships I had. For the most they were ‘good’ – they were reasonably safe. We had an exchange, we supported each other in what was needed: company, conversation, support in times of struggle and drama.
All these things most of us want and seek in a relationship, but is it what a true relationship is or should be? Or is it a level of comfort, an opportunity for us to continue along in life, not being asked to go deeper, to be transparent, completely open and surrendered to another, willing to reveal or live in our true state of tenderness and vulnerability?
There was no way I was prepared to allow myself to be totally transparent, tender, vulnerable or gentle, totally surrendering to another in all that was me and fully letting them in. I harboured way too many hurts of the past and pictures and images of how I wanted things to be, forever shifting the goal posts so that even if another got close to ticking the boxes, I would shift the goal and add a few more restrictions and demands into the mix. Meaning I would never have to fully let them in because they would never be able to live up to my ideal of how they and the relationship should be.
Expectations were high, their love for me always having to be proven – an unrealistic but safe way to play the relationship game.
This was a game I was very good at – one that, if I allowed it, could go on for my entire life, entering into relationships of convenience, arrangements that allowed me to stay where I was, holding others out, never letting them in to see just how vulnerable and tender I am.
Building my exterior armour, forever in the fear of being hurt, let down or disappointed. Brilliant really, what a great excuse I had set up, lived and played out my entire life. With friends, partners and family, no one was exempt from the standards I had set. Relationships of convenience, we both got what we wanted without having to let ourselves get too intimate, too seen or exposed.
I thought I was being loving, open, honest and supportive of others, but all the while I was forever gauging how I could keep them at a safe distance, protecting myself from the possibility of being hurt. The only true hurt that was occurring was me keeping myself held so tightly, so hard and withdrawn that I ached for true love, to allow myself to just be.
Clever and cunning are we, setting up ourselves and another in a game, you can almost see the pieces being moved by another hand, manipulation at its best, and we are the big-time players, all in the name of perceived protection. Demanding the love and support of another and yet not prepared to give that ourselves.
This is a game that no-one can win.
I have been observing myself in relationships, and it has been exposing, challenging a new level of responsibility I have not allowed myself to go to before.
The manipulation… how I set my partner up to fail in a deliberate attempt to justify the images I hold, the expectations I have of him. Doing things that I know will get a reaction from him, setting him up so when he does react I have an “I told you so” that justifies why I don’t open up and surrender in full. If he reacts, gets angry, doesn’t do something I’ve asked him to do, I’m justified in my actions and thoughts. Absurd, ridiculous, cunning and sneaky, knowing exactly what I am doing, setting the board, making the moves, then calling the shots.
The more I observe my behaviour the more I see how it plays out – excuses, justifications, deliberate sabotage. Asking myself: do I really want to be loved, what am I so afraid of, what is it I am really keeping at bay? I have spent many years keeping people at what I thought was a safe distance, entering into relationships that are safe, that allow and support me to continue playing my game of denial and protection.
Recently I became aware that the demands I have placed on my partner were all to avoid and hold back my own connection, not allowing the love to pour in and through me from my one love.
God’s love, it pours in and through all of us, and it is us who at any cost will hold that back, keep it at bay.
My partner was the perfect distraction and point of focus with me, demanding he love me and prove his love and dedication to me, all the while knowing that no matter what he did, I would continue to avoid the love on offer from above.
God’s love is forever running through my veins: it is felt and cannot be ignored. We can attempt to override it with the many distraction, addictions and games we play, but never does it stop knocking.
For some of us that knock becomes louder, more obvious, unavoidable. It is here we have a choice –– do we bring our focus to that which is within, allow that out, to truly love ourselves and others? No games, no pawns, no more moving of the goal posts, instead surrendering to the love that is on offer, putting an end to the need of love from another?
Simplicity is revealed: God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another. To surrender to and allow this brings a whole new dimension and understanding to relationships as I had known them to be.
In the past we were like pieces of a puzzle that fitted together, filling each other’s gaps and needs. Once I realised I had to fill my own gaps by loving and appreciating myself, allowing the Love of God in, my relationships changed dramatically. There was no longer a need; the expectations and pictures of how it should all be fell away, there was now an allowing of myself and others I had never had before.
As I become more allowing of the love on offer, surrendering to the will of God, Heaven that is knocking on my door, I can feel my levels of protection fall away and I am opening up to the potential of true relationships, to be seen warts and all, no judgement or criticism of self or others.
The spark we carry within burns bright: avoidance can only dim the spark, but never can we extinguish the love that pours in and through us.
By Nicole Serafin, 46, NSW, Australia
Published with permission of my partner.
Further Reading:
Appreciation in relationships
Relationships – Around and Around We Go
Relationships are always about evolving – the key to making relationships work
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
“I ached for true love, to allow myself to just be.” The Love of God is a constant flow and it is for us to reflect this Love from within us with every person and in every move we make.
My relationship with me is my relationship with God; I have spent most of my life rejecting me and so rejected God. The first step was to put down the cudgel so that I could actually stop hitting myself, that gave me some space. From there it has been a journey of getting to know me from all the ideals and beliefs that I had absorbed growing up thinking they were my thoughts without once stopping to consider if I actually believed them or not.
Nicole, the word that stood out for me today is the word ‘seen’. That’s huge because how many of us actually allow ourselves to be ‘seen’ in full, completely open, not many. What is it about being ‘seen’ or being transparent that we shy right away from?
Avoiding relationships is in itself a reflection of our relationship with relationships.
Nicole reading this again and once again feeling the deep beauty and truth in what you have written.
Relationships, Me and God one and the same thing because there’s nothing that God isn’t.
Nothing He is the every thing of everything.
So true, even if we try ‘never can we extinguish the love that pours in and through us.’ ….. so why fight love? ✨
Moving those goal posts is exhausting, playng the game is exhausting. Afterall, the love is pouring in from every angle so I need to make minute adjustments to the goal posts all the time. And it’s all for the sake of not being love; the most precious thing in the world to me and everyone. An elaborate and devastating game; when we are every bit of love we have ever wanted and all the while God has always been around us and pouring through us.
Reading this ‘Recently I became aware that the demands I have placed on my partner’ reminded me of something I felt really clearly last week which is how do I ‘see’ people and also what do I hold them as. Meaning what projections or assumptions do I make on a person. If there has been an argument do I hold them (even on a subtle level) to that energy and being that way or ‘that’ person or do I not put anything on them and give them the space to be all that they are. It is great when we knuckle out the nitty gritty of our ill behaviours and ways turning the finger lovingly on ourselves to see how we are rather than pointing it at others.
This is a great blog to be asking such questions because I feel it is asking us all to look deeper into our relationships so that they are not just an arrangement, comfort or support in times of struggle. We are all missing the vital ingredient which is self love. When we can love ourselves it becomes natural that we love others easily so.
Gosh the games we play are exhausting!!!!!!! When we let go of these and actually allow love to flow both in and out from our being it is so much easier. I can still feel there is part of me that is holding onto some kind of protection .. time to let this go as it actually hurts us more when we don’t love and instead hold onto hurts and protection, when we fully let go of all of these there is no hurt.
“The spark we carry within burns bright: avoidance can only dim the spark, but never can we extinguish the love that pours in and through us.” Once we start fuelling this spark all sorts of previously unimaginable magic occurs.
Life can be utterly magical, totally marvellous and unbelievably majestic, how telling is it then that most of us have made it bland, unimaginative and repetitive to the point of tedium.
We are so much more powerful than we give ourselves credit for and the pull back to truth is forever achingly reminding us through the unease in our body. What a gift – long may our soul hold us in so much love that it will not allow less than truth to be our lived way.
My goodness – how supported are we that we can find out way back from such waywardness! Knowing how lost I have been myself I am constantly humbled when I connect with the level of detail that supports us to return.
Me too, When I reconnect and feel the Love that is holding us and how much less stress and tension it is to surrender to that Love, I start to understand a smidgen of the Love that holds us on our return.
The demanding of another of the love we’re not able to give ourselves is something I can relate to! What’s great is that every time I become aware of this I can let go of looking outside of myself and bring myself back to my connection with me and the love that I am.
“Once I realised I had to fill my own gaps by loving and appreciating myself, allowing the Love of God in, my relationships changed dramatically.” Initially ‘to fill my own gaps’ seemed very daunting, however, with the loving support of Serge Benhayon and his family this has not been the case. Instead it is an ever unfolding joy.
My question would be why do we have gaps in the first place? If we truly lived responsibly and lovingly, loving ourselves to the max which would then reflect to all those around us, including our children and families, then there would be no gaps that would need to be filled. It is possible all we need to do is change the way we are currently living.
It is interesting how we can ‘think’ we are something ‘I thought I was being loving, open, honest and supportive of others, but all the while I was forever gauging how I could keep them at a safe distance, protecting myself from the possibility of being hurt.’ but when we allow ourselves to be honest and dig a little deeper more is revealed until eventually after much self-love, healing and willing to look at energetically what has been stored in our body (hurts, frustration, sadness, anger, resentment, wanting to control .. to name a few) we actually are loving, open, honest and supportive of others.
Yes, we can live in illusion for so long in order to protect ourselves from feeling our hurts etc. Once we are willing to take down the defences and to be in Truth we discover there are layers, like an onion, that we have to keep peeling away. However there may be many layers but if we do the ‘peeling ‘ with love, love is always there to take us deeper and the Truth keeps expanding.
Yes, love is always at the core but once we feel the layers we can think that it is scary because they have been our normal for such a long period of time. In fact, the scary bit should be the fact we have those layers in the first place, they are what should feel incredibly uncomfortable.
Vicky that sentence struck a chord with me as well. It reminded me of the many things that over the years I have thought of as being me, all of which turned out to be ‘not me’. In fact not me at all.
How can we expect another to be loving with us when it is us that has shut down our connection from divine love from God. I know if every movement, every breath of life was lived with this divine love there would be no need of emotional love from another but an open communication allowing a depth of beauty to be shared with all.
And it is so gorgeous in those moments when we do manage to express from and with this divine love.
“If every movement, every breath of life was lived with this divine love” then not only would there be no need to have emotional love but we would feel very clearly that emotional love acts like a barrier to divine love as it comes from a completely different energetic source. One is true, the other is not, one is divine the other is not, one represents God and the other one doesn’t. There are no similarities what so ever between the two.
Its interesting for me in reading this blog to see how I criticise my partner for not being loving but the more I uncover the truth of the situation, I can see how much protection I’ve been holding, making me right and her wrong, to justify my stance on why I’m not letting the protection down and the love out.
Yes, that is what is so magical about the reflection we offer each other in relationship and the potential surrendering to honesty opens up.
What a gorgeous piece of writing Nicole, and at this point very valuable for me to reflect on what you offer.
The game of protection can be deeply ingrained and a game nobody wins.
How are we living if we can’t have loving relationships? If we want to move on and develop and grow our relationships, we can’t avoid them.
I feel this question could be a wiggle around uncomfortably in your chair question for some! ‘How are we living if we can’t have loving relationships?’ All the same, a great one to ask because if we are honest we have the opportunity to let go of so much that does not support or evolve us in our relationships so they can truly develop, deepen, blossom and evolve ❤️
We have so much to learn when it comes to relationships. Universal Medicine have truly supported me in having more awareness with this, starting with the relationship with myself ✨
I find observing my own behavior in relationships a really supportive practice. Feeling how I am with others helps me to be aware of anything that isn’t love.
Some of the past ways of relationships you have described, felt very similar to how I felt about relationships too. And that behaviour of who I let in, how much I let in, still plays out now a days. However, as my relationship with God has evolved, so has my love for people, evolved too.
Every single person I hold back from, is a reflection of what needs to be explored within me. When I am holding back from another, then I am holding back from another level of God too.
‘God’s love, it pours in and through all of us, and it is us who at any cost will hold that back, keep it at bay.’
I for one am exhausted at keeping it at bay but it’s coming through me – how am I even thinking this is possible? Could it be that I’m filling up my body with all sorts of other energy that is toxic to my body and then I’m so full of rubbish I don’t get to feel the fact I am divine and there is a constant communication of this going on?
Sometimes we may feel we are at a crossroads but we know which way to go. Keep deepening the love and appreciation for self and the reflection of a greater love begins to flow and comes our way.
“Recently I became aware that the demands I have placed on my partner were all to avoid and hold back my own connection, not allowing the love to pour in and through me from my one love.” What an awesome realisation Nicole, one that evidently confirms that the quality of relationship is very clearly in our hands and hence exposes the games we play to avoid taking responsibility for the quality of our interactions.
Knowing we cannot be or ask of another what we are not prepared to walk ourselves is very sobering. It is so much easier to blame and pretend to keep us in the illusion, but that never feels ‘quite right’ and the tension often needs medicating with something – hence the sobering aspect when honesty finally comes to call.
‘God’s love is forever running through my veins: it is felt and cannot be ignored.’ I love reading this and saying to myself, just let go, just be, life is so simple if I drop all the resistance.
God’s love not only embraces us 24/7, but it is always at the ready to flow through us and touch everyone and everything in our path – if we just let it. Considering this fact brings a whole deeper understanding of insidiousness of the protection, games and strategies we engage in life.
Healing one’s unresolved hurts is the greatest medicine to be able to be transparent in relationships.
Even knowing that it’s our own hurts getting in the way and not something ‘they’ have or haven’t done is a huge step forward.
Very true Leigh, for without that honesty one is playing with smoking mirrors which resolve nothing.
Absolutely being willing to be honest about how we are rather than pointing a finger at another.
And no escape as we are in relationship whether we like it or not. So what are we going to do about that?
There is nothing but relationships, relationships are quite literally all there is. Everything that we can see, hear and touch comes from our relationship with something. And so a really key question is what are we in relationship with?
We are responsible for filling our own gaps and getting ourselves into ‘love’. That way its a responsibility for each and every one of us to be there. And if we all meet in this pool of ‘love’ then we meet each other in full, as was intended, and not in need.
That can be really obvious to most by being wary now after feeling burnt in a previous relationship. If there’s repetition then it’s within us that needs looking at and not them. But if there’s love in the relationship then it grows as we have love in more than that first relationship.
I used to think that being transparent “warts and all” was the hard part but actually it’s being transparent “Glory and all” that is the seeming greater challenge at the moment.
So true Leigh yet it seems so ironic that the greatest challenge is to express oneself in one’s fullness..
Yes, being transparent is an incredible freedom, no more hiding, pretending, protecting just surrendering, living, breathing, serving… the list goes on!
It’s a huge stop moment to consider all the hurts we focus on outside of ourselves can be alleviated from accepting the love within, and by letting go of the pictures and expectations we place on others. I am working through pictures at the moment and now I’m becoming aware of them I’m floored by just how many I’ve subscribed to and given my power to. The problem with pictures is that they simply are not real and they often don’t eventuate, and so the set up is perfect to continue being hurt and feeling emotional by life not meeting our expectations. Even if we live the picture we have it doesn’t have any true substance, so it will fall apart at some point as life has many variables that don’t play ball with how we prefer life to be.
It supports me to know the quality of relationships are more about myself than others. They reveal the truth of our relationship with self and willingness (or not) to respond lovingly to people regardless of how they present. It is always about us.
Relationships are the heartbeat of life, each one offers an opportunity to deepen our understanding of self and others.
I love this ‘relationships are the heartbeat of life’ … its very true.
“God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another”. It may take a while to get this, but once we do, relationships are changed for ever.
Its only through relationships that we truly grow, relationships with our work colleagues, relationships with our family, relationships with the shop attendant, opening up, being who we are and allowing love in and out can sometimes feel super hard but is in truth the only way for us to go if we want to truly evolve.
Yes, and I’ve felt it happen so naturally when I’ve dropped my protection – my judgement and comparison and started appreciating who I am and who we all are. Then gold happens naturally. We know what to do and say.
To be open to fully letting another in, is to drop the protection and see them for who they truly are, to either be inspired or to have no judgement in the choices they make, or have made and where they are at.
Great blog!
Put like this Gill, its really very simple.
To me God is the space that makes up our universe and that space has an intelligence that surpass anything our minds can know. What if our minds create what has already been created and it is just copying as a child copies from their parent. But it is just a copy; what if we stopped copying and instead tapped into the universal mind of space that constantly passes through us and lived from there? We seem to have tried everything else, have we tried living from the universal mind rather than our mind?
I love feeling space, love, God, sparkle, truth, sureness and/or clarity in my body, flowing through my veins, in every cell. It not only makes like super inspiring but also super simple.
In relationships we often set each other up to fail and to prove the point that the other does not truly measure up, to the created image and the held expectation. We get to know each other’s buttons and will push them as we see fit, thinking that we have achieved a victory while we keep building the protective wall that we assume will shield us from the hurts that we carry within.
If the Love of God naturally flows through us, then ‘we’ don’t really have to do anything. God’s Love is breathed and expressed in every movement, if we allow it.
Deepening our own relationship with self and God is the gateway to truly understanding others.
Saying Yes to yourself and letting out the whole tender, vulnerable, fragile YOU is the most beautiful expression you can ever choose and gift other people with.
If you have a person that really triggers you, embrace them, as they are the highway to evolution. They offer you exactly what you need to look at and to understand and learn to observe.
Yes, that is so very true and likewise at times so very difficult to embrace and act upon.But we do learn most from the people we at first want to keep at arm’s length.
To not fall for: ” I have to do it” and to let go of any control is the direct line to God.Very simply but for a human mind oh so hard, as it has nothing in it to identify and to grab on as something that worked, so I can do it again.
The moment we let the love that we are out we are preparing ourselves to let it in. There is no other way- we have to say YES first to us and express that, before anyone can ever come close.
What has come to the surface for me is how we can carry past life experiences into this life. I know from my body that I have an issue with God, it comes from past lives of being a nun where I placed God above me and worshipped him from afar. While I continue to hold God as greater than me I will not have access to the divine nature of him because I am holding myself less than.
Often I have felt cold and incapable of loving my partner in a relationship. There is also another equal part to consider which you have described here: how much love do we allow in?
In fact we cannot love another- we can be love ourself and offer that, but love can´t be sent or given to someone. It is only the level of love in and for ourself that gets expressed and inspires another to be the same, that we call being in love.
We can be a gateway through which love comes but we can’t dictate in what direction it then travels because love is an all encompassing emanation not a directional beam of light.
I feel very settled as I read this, and read about God. The pictures fall apart, as do the projections, judgements and the needs for others to do things for us. They all fall away when we feel God and that we are love and can’t be given it by another.
A relationship with God can only be the most natural thing for us, and must come with complete simplicity. But how then is it that we have gotten so good at forcing things and making them complex? Are we denying our deepest relationship by this form of sabotage?
The first and foremost relationship we have is with God and from there come all other relationships. Hence the quality of relationship we have with God is the determining factor of the quality of relationship that we have with ourselves and all others.
Feeling God within and allowing ourselves the expansion love and joy to be felt is an amazing gift for all our relationships starting with ourselves first.
The force required to hold God’s love from flowing through us, is a major factor in why we are all so exhausted.
Love this Shirley-Anne.
It’s amazing how much we will fight the simplicity of what is offered us, to be in relationship with God or not.
The spark can truly never be extinguished. In all of us is a love that forever remains no matter what, it’s up to us how we activate and live it … and anything which is a demand, an expectation or an assumption is not that love, but an interpretation we’ve put on it and we’re not in truth that idea of love. So back to us, do we live it or not?
“Heaven is knocking on our door” so true and so beautiful to know and open our hearts and our bodies to all we feel, letting go of all our protection and allowing ourselves to be the love we truly are, and know God within us as our every moment connection.
‘I can feel my levels of protection fall away and I am opening up to the potential of true relationships, to be seen warts and all, no judgement or criticism of self or others.’ Letting go of protection is a process because of the layers and layers we have put on ourselves to peel away, it is a process that is so worth the journey as we can then see how much effort we have put in to holding onto our hurts and not being the love that we are.
It’s huge what you share here because it pours a light on what are often seen as ‘good’ relationships and says there is so much more. I have settled for so much less in a relationship if it got my pictures of what was good when inside I knew it to be comfortable and then would stagnate. As soon as I say no to the what’s next in a relationship it curdles.
I have been very sure about how much I love God all my life. What I didn’t’ do was live this openly, confidently and unreservedly, confused by the world and how it presented God under titles of religion, in certain buildings etc. Supported by The Ageless Wisdom teachings I have been confirmed in the fact that our relationship with God is from the inside out and simply to be brought into every aspect of our every day lives as a quality not a dogma or adherence to rules.
Totally relate Matilda, it is really difficult to say even the name God due to the way God is portrayed.
All relationships offer great reflections and realisations… It shows that together we evolve one another.
God’s love is a challenging concept for me… but call Universe’s wisdom and i’m right there with you!
Yes! I still have remnants of God being something that I was taught growing up. I’m learning to feel my reactions and be more open to the word God. Universal wisdom I have no resistance to.
Yes, I’m with you Michael, Universal Wisdom feels far more accessible than God, isn’t it interesting how words have been so barstardised that we can no longer appreciate their true meaning?
I feel complete in who I am, there will always be more to connect with and express but being open and receiving of God’s Love within us and of us, brings a knowing that is true, infinite and cannot be broken.
When we don’t know ourselves and haven’t claimed ourselves, it is easy for us to tell ourselves that we do not do relationships very well, or we want to avoid people because we do not know how to act around people. The thing is, we are never not in relationships with others and the easiest way to feel competent at relationships is to know yourself first, because all other relationships are a reflection of how you are with yourself.
To surrender has been so misused that we no longer recognise it in its true form, but to surrender to God is one of our first true relationships, the next is to ourselves, and from there we can take this to all our other relationships, and as you say Nicole “Simplicity is revealed: God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another. To surrender to and allow this brings a whole new dimension and understanding to relationships as I had known them to be.”
Surrender from my experience is a deepening not a weakness.
Agree Alison once you have those two core relationships active and alive then everything and every other relationship is supported.
Yes and where can we learn these most simple, basic and fundamental understandings about relationships, because I know until I came to Universal Medicine I had no idea what it meant to surrender to God or to myself and build a relationship, knowing that this would support me in all my relationships.
“Relationships, Me and God” – without a loving relationship with myself, there is not so one with God.
This is true, but I have also been pondering recently why I haven’t felt God be accessible, or that no matter how much I evolve I am not quite there yet to have the right to access him in full. In spite of all my growing awareness, I have still perceived God as outside of me. Having a relationship with God should be so natural, like brushing our teeth.. I think I am going to go off now and just have a chat with him and let him in!
For me God is power and care and love that is always with me. Watching and observing me, giving me impulses I simply have to follow and whenever I am not, everything is there for me to learn from it. It is the ultimate order and truth, which I embrace more and more being a servant and executor of.
This is beautiful Stefanie because what you are sharing is that simply in order to have a relationship with God, all that we need to be aware of is that this energy (power, care and love) is flowing through us all the time. It is about how we have a relationship with this energy, being aware that it is flowing through us all the time, and how much we allow it through in expression. In my comment above I had got caught out by an image or picture of what a relationship with God looks like. It is simply energy, the acknowledgement of it, the alignment to it and allowing it to be expressed verbally and through the body, getting self out of the way.
Adding here that it doesn’t change anything as far as God is concerned – His love is beholding and all-encompassing nonetheless, no matter our antics if not at times gross aberrations.
Seeing every relationship as an opportunity to grow I have come to realise that I cannot separate one relationship from another, with one relationship being more worthy than another. Every encounter I have there is always potential to expand and deepen the relationship with myself and hence with another.
So true Ariana … the consistent love and support that is offered us is beyond any ideas, beliefs or pictures we could ever conjure.
I keep discovering that when it felt like the world abandoned me I reacted by abandoning myself… and it was my own reaction that hurt me the most.
Universal Medicine showed me that in order to heal I did not need to change the world or wait for the world to treat me lovingly, I needed to make the choice to re-commit to myself, to open my heart and regather myself up in my own arms.
As I do this I am able to love people and commit to living in this world more and more fully.
I get this Jo. And know that when I stay in a loving relationship with myself I am automatically in relationship with God. Here everything makes sense and the quality of all my relationships is assured.
What I have been feeling lately is such a grand and beautiful Love that it can only be of a Devine source.
I am feeling, more and more, the loving connection that is my relationship with everyone, with everything and with God; in fact I am sure it is God that holds us all together by holding us in His Love no matter what we do.
Because I am feeling how much we all really do love and care for each other I am starting to see this truth in everyone around me. I can see how much people simply want to be loved and be loving with each other…
I feel a call being made and it goes like this,
“Its time we set all-that-divides-us-aside and focus on how much we actually do just love every single person, including ourselves!”.
I reJOYce in feeling the truth of this call within me and I know it is also within every single person equally just waiting to be asked to be felt, realized and lived.
Our quality determines our relationships.
To know God is to know ourselves; to know ourselves is to know God.
God’s love can surely put us all under his umbrella of understanding. That when we speak of love, funnily all the differences we have, agrees to meet in the center. Makes you appreciate the beauty and Idea of love. Where it come from? It’s God. He is love.
A great reminder Nicole for us to truly look at ourselves and the way we sabotage ourselves (love) by our beliefs and actions.
Once we start to open up to developing & having a relationship with ourselves first, that is when we truly feel the ‘magic of God’ in every relationship .
Such honesty is the open door to start surrendering to love
Holding back the love that we are takes a very big toll on our bodies, ourselves, let alone holding it back from others.
Holding back the love that we are is holding it back from others. Same, same and no difference.
It is a beautiful way to live in constant reflection and expansion.
So many of our relationships are scarred by the idea that we’re not supported, valued or trusted by others. But God is there the whole time going ‘buddy you are just great!’. Connecting back to this connection within transforms our relationship with everything.
In every relationship we have the potential to know and feel God.
Relationships, Me and God … We know God is universal and yet we have this perception of a distant ‘person’ we relate to when we want – how can a being be individual when they are universal, multidimensional i.e. always with us and around us?
Relationships are a roller-coaster ride and we can’t get off!
This is so true Richard, the harder we are on ourselves the harder we are with others. I also find myself being more loving these days because I have more love and appreciation for myself. It’s simple really.
Absoultely Julie and Richard. It really is so simple when we start to let others in, which is only possible when we love ourselves more. And the more we deepen our realtionships with each other, the more others open up to us as well. It really is a win win for everyone.
Thank you for this article, for exploring the futility of resisting, veiling, obfuscating the love that is always, absolutely always, sparking within us.
Opening up to the love of God that is pouring through us is a beautiful reminder to the love we are and our relationship with ourselves and God which is paramount in our lives and all our relationships and allows our body, our love and the universe to flow through us joyously from within and changes everything…
We cannot demand from another what we are not prepared to give ourselves.
I sometimes find it difficult to get the awareness of how I’ve been, especially when I have thought I’ve not been that way, but I also super appreciate the awareness because then I can change.
It is very humbling to realise that we have created our own life including everything we don’t like.
Sometimes we get it into our heads that if we avoid people, then life would be so much simpler (I know this one very well) but in fact, we need other people to help us to grow and to get the reflection of our behaviours.
Relationships give us the opportunity to learn much about ourselves and our expression, it’s never ending what we can open up to seeing I’m finding…
I like the ‘never ending’ bit. Embracing this as the truth in life stops me striving to get to an end point and keeps me open to learning.
Yes, so true, it takes away the tension to needing to get somewhere and allows one to see the space there is to simply be and take the next step.
“God’s love, it pours in and through all of us, and it is us who at any cost will hold that back, keep it at bay”. This is the game we all play in life. We have access to the greatest love of all but only allow a small trickle in and through us most of the time. When I allow myself to feel it in full there is no need to demand or manipulate love from anyone as it is all there and I know I am complete. Returning to this as an everyday way of being is the point to life and our relationships with each other can support this.
‘Relationships had never been my strong point. I had them, was in them, did not need them, but still managed to end up in them.’ – it’s not that we are ‘no good’ at relationships – we are actively choosing not to be good at them by having all sorts of ‘arrangements’ with each other, so we can stay protected in our own little bubble – not truly letting anyone in, or our selves out.
‘Relationships of convenience, we both got what we wanted without having to let ourselves get too intimate, too seen or exposed.’ I know this one well but no matter how hard I tried, at its core I felt the devastation of not bringing me to the relationship and felt a great loneliness that was there for us both. Far richer it’s been to bring me to the equation.
To know that God and my Soul are always walking behind me in support and to ‘have my back’ is breathtakingly beautiful and something to never forget.
‘…an opportunity for us to continue along in life, not being asked to go deeper, to be transparent, completely open and surrendered to another, willing to reveal or live in our true state of tenderness and vulnerability?’ with the reversal of the word ‘not’ in the above excerpt, we have a gorgeous description of the what it is to be in a true relationship with anybody or anything.
We can always be love first and let the other move with the love or against the love. If it is the latter, we need not change our way the next time. Some people will take great exception to such an approach but that is how the world is.
It is so inspiring to know we are constantly in relationship – no matter where we are in the world we are relating to something and or someone, somewhere, all of the time… even if no-one is seemingly around we relate with nature, and God is within us and around us all of the time.
As I am starting to sense more lately, God is in space and so his love is literally all around us. The more I connect within myself and my body the more I get to sense this and the more I allow my relationship with it, God’s one, to develop.
I have recognised that one beautiful aspect that constellates for us is in relationships where all our buttons get pushed – these are the people from whom we learn the most.
So true, Carmel – when our buttons are being well and truly pushed – we’re being presented with the most awesome opportunity to see what we are resisting seeing about our gorgeous selves.
Yes in the heat of the moment when a ‘button is pushed’ it can be difficult to realise that there is actually an opportunity for us to be more true to who we, to deepen rather than to withdraw but nevertheless the opportunity is always there for us to come back to…
No wonder we think of our relationships as difficult, strained rollercoaster rides, when we relate to God as a vengeful judge who lets us down when we need it most. This is the complete and utter opposite of the truth.
We let our selves down all by our selves. No one is forcing us to do anything, we have free will to make every single one of our choices. If we don’t like the consequences of our choices, it’s time to us to look at how we are choosing to live and the make the changes we would like to see.
“We have relationships with everyone we meet: big, small, long term or short, we are all in one in one way or another” – yes, all of life is relationship.
Yesterday I had a ten minute chat with the guy who’s painting our kitchen and we went deeper in those ten minutes than I have gone with some people that I’ve known for years.
In our relationship with each other we have the potential to feel our relationship with God.
When we fill in our gaps as you have expressed, we are not pictures, but unique pieces of art. And, when we appreciate others and what they bring, we become more, than the sum of the group.
“Relationships of convenience, we both got what we wanted without having to let ourselves get too intimate, too seen or exposed.” I know this one well, and yet when we are willing to be open and ready with what is really being offered with each relationship we find ourselves deeply blessed by them. Deeply blessed when we live life willing to embrace the depth of relationship with ourselves and others.
Whenever I choose to remember that the love of God runs through me and it also runs through whoever I am facing, instantly the way I see the other person, my appreciation of them and my whole interaction becomes something magnificent.
Absolutely Ariana. It does not matter how it externally looks but within when the movement is back to deeper love we are expanding.
I allowed myself to show myself to my partner and friends truly vulnerable and as is. When I didn’t want to talk, I didn’t talk. I didn’t try to pretend to be anything else. I just listened to how I was feeling and honoring it. This was the first time I felt my partner feel really comfortable and didn’t need to pander to me.
Too often we bail from relationships in order to reject others before they reject us.
… and so exposes the lengths we will go to to protect our hurts…
And are ready to incur major hurts in order to protect us from other hurts we may be less familiar with.
If we aren’t already being fully open and honest with ourselves – we are not truly allowing any of our relationships to be the amazing potential that they all offer.
When we ‘give up’ on our selves – we take this ‘giving up-ness’ to all of our relationships.
When in truth we have rejected ourselves first to then reject another.
When we understand just how much we let judgement run our lives, it’s easier to see why our relationships run into strife. If you’re judging me and I’m judging myself – it stops us from just simply being ourselves, free from pictures.
Very true, Joseph, when we feel judged, there is a sense of not being enough, we either withdraw and close down, react and perhaps lash out at the other person, or look for cues as to how we can be accepted by those around us – none of which reflect us being our true selves. It’s not currently our normal modus operandi to remain with ourselves in the knowing that we are already amazing, understanding that the judgment coming towards us is the other person’s stuff, which only they can choose to work through themselves.
And when we do choose to stay with ourselves in the face of judgment, holding the other person with understanding and love, it provides the space for them to be able to let go, if they choose, and feel the truth of what is going on for them, rather than shutting it down and directing their hurt towards another.
We imprison ourselves with our own behaviours of protection and security. To look at our own hurts and start to heal them is the key to true freedom.
Our hurts hold us in our behaviours – in fact they run our behaviours.
Well said Ester, we have built a prison around ourselves and in that we have shut out the love of God and the truth of who we are. Healing our hurts is allowing us to see through the bricks of the prison and realise they are not real nor needed anymore.
Since letting go of so many of mine it has been truly miraculous to see how this freedom is now expressed in my body. My movements are much more fluid with no shyness or self-consciousness – my movements are also far more gentle and there is far less room for hardening.
Learning to feel our own love, learning to accept and love ourselves paves the way for letting others in and feeling their love.
When we have very little self-love it is easy for us to convince ourselves that we do not like people, or they are annoying or are out to get us. What we fail to realise is that we are still in a relationship with everyone and everything even though we tell ourselves that we want to be left alone. The relationships are always there but in an unhealthy way.
It is so easy to blame another and yet it caps our evolution in the relationship with ourselves.
It’s a cop out to blame another – we are actively avoiding feeling our responsibility in what ever has taken place – which in itself is providing an opportunity for honest sharing and growth for all concerned. To blame is saying no to evolution, for us and all those involved.
‘The only true hurt that was occurring was me keeping myself held so tightly, so hard and withdrawn that I ached for true love, to allow myself to just be.’ Holding back being love is terribly painful!
‘God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another’ – from a place of guarded protection we can be very reactive in the way we are with each other, making assumptions about what the other person truly means, why they said what they said, or didn’t say what we ‘thought’ they would …. we pull and push each other in an emotional whirl which never truly addresses anything, rather causes unnecessary drama and angst.
With Gods love, nothing more is wanted, needed or sought – we can be honest, open and vulnerable with each other – nothing can ever hurt us as much as denying our selves the love that we are.
Be love and that’s everything.
I can see in my own life the amount of love I let in actually determines the volume which I can express it in.
Allowing another the space to be themselves is balm to any relationship, including that with oneself too.
When we have expectations of ourselves and or others it creates a tension within us – let go of the expectations and there is space to simply be ourselves and an allowing for others to also be themselves.
I life without protection = realising there is nothing to be fearful of.
What I get from this is that ultimately the relationship we have with ourselves will determine the true quality of our relationship with others.
When we give in and allow manipulation to win, do we not all lose?
Absolutely, we are giving our power away and choosing to be something that we are not.
Absolutely Steve … when we give in to another we compromise our relationship with them and we compromise ourselves.
On reading this it makes sense to me that complexity is a marker of emotional love rather than the true love that God is and, we are in essence.
“Simplicity is revealed: God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another. To surrender to and allow this brings a whole new dimension and understanding to relationships as I had known them to be”.
The ways in which we can try to manipulate and control other people in relationships is very destructive and disharmonious to all. Leaning that accepting and allowing brings an appreciation for what is there rather than the former.
Bringing love to ourselves and the way we live, develops and inspires an ever-deepening relationship with ourselves.
It changes everything and whilst it can be hard to understand and appreciate that fact before love becomes part of your every day, my experience has been that with each step my relationships deepen in quality and care.
God is Love and Love is God … (true love – not emotional needy love) … and so to make love our way of living is our way of being with God.
True Paula ‘living is our way of being with God’, there is a way to bring the qualities of God as a very everyday part of life.
He is Us and We are Him.
I can very much relate, as relationships were not ‘my thing’, and so kept people at a safe distance, so as I would not be hurt. Truth was I hurt myself as I only ever wanted to be able to connect and share myself with others…. I do this easily now, and can appreciate how solid I feel from within, now that I have cleared those old hurts from my body. In deep gratitude to Serge Benhayon and his family for the wonderful courses they provide that support you to make different choices, choices that bring one back to loving self.
How absurd is it that we keep out the thing we yearn for the most – love..?
Yes, we think we keep ourselves safe from being hurt. yet we hurt ourselves the most because we don’t see that another may well be presenting us with more love than we are accustomed to offering ourselves.
I guess the question is how honest are we with ourselves, in that do we really allow ourselves to feel the underlying discomforts, feelings or hurts we may be holding onto and letting run in our body?This is not to say we have to analyse everything we do, far from it, and definitely not about being perfect but I can totally relate to what you have shared here. Only recently I was honest enough to feel (after an unpleasant incident) even though I was presenting one way to a person (being friendly, open etc) on the inside, I actually didn’t feel this at all with them and was shutting them out! When we start to have a deeper honesty with ourselves, how we are outwardly with others matches how we are actually feeling within, a transparency happens and the body can feel/be/is more harmonious.
When I surrendered to myself, I am with everything else and that includes the universe that is God.
‘This is a game that no-one can win’ – anything and everything that is not love is a game that no-one can win.
f’or me it was how I was in and around people that determined the kinds of relationships I had. For the most they were ‘good’ – they were reasonably safe’ – So many of us are masters at picking exactly the ‘right’ relationship, the one that keeps us safe and does not push our buttons. However what I learn more and more is that the realtionships that truly challenge me can be the real gold and an experience and reflection I need to truly heal, grow and evolve.
If we settle for better in relationships and plateau, then we are really not evolving. The universe keeps expanding and so we must do so too. Deepening our relationships in love are pivotal in this.
I agree Eva, and am so aware of how powerful the reflections that relationships provide of where we are at, always our choice to ignore or learn and grow from the reflection. This entails all our relationships, not just the close partner.
I love the honesty of admitting that you were not willing to be open and kept changing the goal posts, so no one ever measured up. Having high expectations and always needing the love to be proven is very accurate of how most of us operate in relationships. It feels like the complete opposite of what love and relationships are supposed to be about.
Expectations kill relationships with others… because they are never achievable and so they give up/walk away.
When it is our relationship with ourselves we give up on ourselves.
From very young, we need to be supported and encouraged to hold the innate relationship we naturally have with ourselves… and to know this is the most important relationship – before all others.
‘Demanding the love and support of another and yet not prepared to give that ourselves.’ This is such a key factor that very few are aware of. If we understand this basic concept within relationships, then we have the tools and the foundation to change so much that is ill in society.
I agree Michelle – when we come from an awareness of the All as opposed to being focussed on the individual self, things are changing.
It is crazy how we fall for the consciousness that we are born empty vessels and that we need to bring everything in from the outside, but if we have ever been parents or work with young children, or even if we remember being young children ourselves, we would know that we all come in with everything already intact, full of wisdom and whole. All that’s needed is to simply stay connected to it
‘I thought I was being loving, open, honest and supportive of others, but all the while I was forever gauging how I could keep them at a safe distance, protecting myself from the possibility of being hurt.’ We do fool ourselves because it is what we have chosen to make real, so to each of us it apears ‘all we know’. Yet along comes a true reflection of love, transparency and intimacy that reminds us that maybe we know more than we like to think, and slowly those shifts are made and our lives expand to where we once would have never imagined.
When we begin to resource the endless well of love that is within us, as equal sons of God, then our relationship with relationships changes forever too. There is a human pull to be caught up in the emotions and stuff, but there is so much more to us than that and up to us to go there.
‘“He has found God who has entered his own house in full.” Serge Benhayon. It is only within ourselves and in the deepening of our inner relationship that we find God. It is then that we will see God is everywhere.
‘The spark we carry within burns bright: avoidance can only dim the spark, but never can we extinguish the love that pours in and through us.’ Avoidance of the ultimately inevitable surrender to the love of God, the love that we are, is like putting a bell jar over the spark we carry within, it will never shine less brightly but we can thus avoid its radiation and expression out.
I am discovering that many of us have a warped relationship when it comes to God. We seem to put him above us and that we are lesser than him. I feel this comes from certain religious teachings which we absorb, not appreciating or understanding that we are equal to him, and it is this falseness that holds us back from claiming who we truly are. If I am equal to God then the first thing that jumps at me is responsibility. And how easy is it to blame God rather than take responsibility for our actions. Could this be one of the reasons we hold ourselves less than (God), so we do not have to take any responsibility for life?
Yes, I feel it’s our unwillingness to take responsibility for ourselves first that is behind all blame, wherever it’s directed.
Agreed Alison. Once we realise that another person can’t make us feel a particular way then it reduces our incessant need to blame others considerably. When I share with others that it is us that chooses to react to others, rather than them enforce feelings on us, they are often very resistant to the fact but what’s interesting is that if I put the Dalai Lama into the same scenario they have no problem whatsoever seeing that he would not be imposed on by others but would sail a steady and loving course through whatever it was that was unfolding. The Dalai Lama, like any great teacher, is an example of what’s possible for all of us.
“They were unavoidable… relationships were and are everywhere” – there is nothing that we are not in a relationship with whether that’s an object, our workplace, our own body, another person, the earth, the stars, and of course God.
The fact that we are in relationship with everything and everyone is perhaps a reflection of how key relationships are in our evolution. Therefore, what a gift it is to have blogs such as yours, Nicole, inviting us to openly and honestly explore the quality of our own relationships.
If I had been asked 10 years ago, what was my relationship with God, it would have been some picture from my head, or a very remote idea, but quite intangible. Today I have a very real tangible knowing of God in my body
We see the effects of building walls in the field of national politics, it separates rather than bring people together and is ugly. In personal relationships, protection is the wall we erect that separates us from ever having a true relationship with another.
To untangle ourselves from complex inner threads of insecurity, self doubt and anxiety opens the way for us to see truth. True relationships are built on the quality of relationship we have with ourselves and what we bring to them. If we are without a solid and loving foundation, we cannot offer love to another.
“God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another”. To fully understand this sets us free from the constant need to be loved by another and games played to hide our true feelings. Forever held in God’s Love, we can simply be ourselves,
The way to God’s love is to surrender to it. There is no need for searching for it, nor any ‘good’ doing to earn it.
Thank you, Nico. I have spent so long trying to earn everything, including my worthiness of love. As I begin to understand this pattern, I am opening up to what life feels like when I build my sense of worth and feel the love I am within.
Surrender is key … surrendering the body to God’s love, which it innately knows.
It is returning to a way of being that is natural to our body but is heavily fought against by our mind.
We tend to have so many conditions on true love, the love of God, that at times you may wonder if we want it or not.
For a while it’s a ‘love/hate’ thing, we know we want it (more than anything) yet fight surrendering back into it. Love is the way back to love.
Indeed, even if you say I want nothing else than love then too the love that could be presented can make you wonder if that is what you have asked for as you rather would have had it more conveniently.
Beautifully written…
I love that relationships are everywhere – we can’t hide from what we see about ourselves reflected in other people or hide from knowing we are reflecting how we live back out. I felt bad about myself and used to shut myself away. But in this isolation I wasn’t seeing other people are just the same as me, imperfect and amazing. It’s accepting myself and everyone unconditionally that we get to feel our interconnectedness and ignite the love we have for one another beneath the protection and hurts.
‘I harboured way too many hurts of the past and pictures and images of how I wanted things to be,’ …. I know this well, holding on to pictures of how we ‘think’ we want things to be, when in truth the potential of what is on offer when we allow ourselves to let others in, and our selves out, is greater than anything we could ever imagine.
Indeed, Alison, our minds are unable to grasp what will happen if we simply surrender to the love of God we are from.
“when in truth the potential of what is on offer when we allow ourselves to let others in, and ourselves out, is greater than anything we could ever imagine” I agree Alison and we have Serge Benhayon to thank for this new level of awareness which breathes new life into all our relationships..
Very true Alison as soon as we want things to be or look a certain way we miss out on the beauty and magnificence that is right before our very eyes.
If we agree to a relationship of convenience we do not want to be challenged to go deeper and this is a delay of our own choice, even if in truth we crave intimacy.
A self-imposed road block preventing us from moving forward to where we know we want to go.
We are always in a relationship, we cannot not be in a relationship, although we think we can. The interconnectedness that we come from, the universe, 24/7 communicates about relationship to us and deep down we all love it and want nothing else than be united with each other.
Yet all around us, the life that we have created on this planet is not currently supporting us to live in this way. We all hold the key within ourselves to the truth of how we want to be with each other and by us choosing to live in this way we can bring about change on the outside too.
To know we cannot have a relationship with anyone not even God if we are in any sort of protection, brings an understanding as to why we all struggle so much with relationships, as most of humanity live with a cloak of protection around them
And monumental to have this exposed as it offers us a truer way to be and sets us free from struggle and constant disappointment.
Agreed and the disappointment puts a further cloak of protection around us because we don’t want to feel the hurt and devastation of rejection, either our own or from another.
We hold protection with others, but is the first point of protection with God? So we think we are keeping ourselves safe from people by keeping our distance but we are actually holding ourselves at a distance from God/ multi-dimensionality.
It makes sense when we look at it this way Alison. We first have to have the relationship with ourselves, otherwise what and who are we bringing to the relationship with others.
well said Alison, we do live more from our hurts and the protection of them than from the love we truly are. From a human perspective this is understandable, but from the multidimensional perspective it does not make sense to live so much less then we are. To let go of our hurts and protection asks of us to start to see the divinity in who we truly are, realizing that we are so much more then mere humans and that therefore the hurts we encounter are naught compared to the pain of holding back the immensity of our love and glory.
True Carolien the pain of holding back the immensity of our love and glory is far more painful than any hurt or protection we may choose, and it is this pain that we try so hard to numb with food, negativity and criticism rather than embrace our divinity and multidimensionality that is in truth our natural way.
Relationships give us the opportunity to forever learn and grow in expressing from who we truly are, learning from and being inspired by one another.
And when we appreciate this fact we open ourselves up to learn and grow along side each other, rather than compete, protect, judge etc.
‘There was no way I was prepared to allow myself to be totally transparent, tender, vulnerable or gentle, totally surrendering to another in all that was me and fully letting them in. I harboured way too many hurts of the past and pictures and images of how I wanted things to be, forever shifting the goal posts’ – Nicole, this is a brilliant expose, how often do we simply let another see ALL of us, with no need to alter anything?
And yet when we do we become transparent, allowing our vulnerabilities to be felt and seen is the breakthrough moment for we allow others to get close to us and we to them. The other way is hard work, life becomes a struggle when we hold on to all our hurts and disappointments behind a wall of protection..
‘Demanding the love and support of another and yet not prepared to give that ourselves.’ this so clearly shows the way to remove need from relationships, be all we are for ourselves first and then in relationship with others naturally.
It’s like we’ve got our wires crossed – looking for love in relationships, when it’s in our connection to God – which when realise it, brings love to every relationship we have.
I recognise this “I have spent many years keeping people at what I thought was a safe distance, entering into relationships that are safe” and then the fact that when you are met with Love, true love, what do you do? It can be very confronting saying you want love but actually always keeping people at a safe distance to then be met with love and have a choice to make – embrace love or not.
How many relationships have we created for our benefit that have been the burden of others? Genuine relationships are never at a cost to anyone!
Great call to re-examine and be open to the current state of relationships – do we fully appreciate the opportunities we are offered to be in relationships to support us to learn and return to a true way of living with each other.
Changing the pictures of what we would like from a relationship is a great way to avoid the gold that is there. The gold is when I drop the pictures and feel what’s being presented no matter ugly that can feel at the time or how difficult because I cannot deny I’m the one not letting love in.
We can ruin the most beautiful relationships (beautiful for how we can grow from them not for how they look) with the pictures we impose.
Finding the truth in life about what a relationship is all about and the part we play in avoiding our responsibility at looking for what God has to offer when we deepen our own divine connection to our essence starts with us breathing our own breath so we can then move in a way that develops our relationship with God and thus everyone else. Thank God for the; FREE GENTLE BREATH MEDITATION presented by Serge Benhayon!
http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=Free+Gentle+Breath+Meditation
It is incredible the amount of time and energy we put into manipulating, justifying, defending and basically sabotaging ourselves, our relationships and life in general… and yet when we drop all that, there is a rhythm and flow to life – everything, including relationships, flows without effort of any kind.
How do you open up and fully let someone in? For me this means being totally honest and holding nothing back.
It is only with the ongoing love and support of Serge Benhayon and his family over many years that I have been able to see through my patterns of behaviour and relationship games, to now be at the point of embracing the simple joy of being me, with others and with God.
I’m coming back to my knowing that my relationship is with God first, get that right and everything else naturally falls into place.
What I have discovered is when we start developing a relationship with ourselves, that is becoming more self aware, developing self-love, we are actually taking steps towards deepening our relationship with our Soul. And this relationship is forever beholding… for there is always more to deepen into.
If relationships are naturally effortless, why do we seem to find them so hard? Could it be that we fight our Love being seen and prefer to stay struggling on?
Yes, and perhaps we don’t like what we see sometimes. Relationships offer us a great reflection. I’ve recently noticed when I’m explaining how someone’s behaviour is not ok, I’m can actually be describing my own behaviour! When this is pointed out to me, thankfully I’m finally willing to accept the truth in this and agree, how I’ve just described myself!
So true Alison – a great point – what sticks is typically what we struggle with ourselves.
I had always ‘thought’ that I was good at relationships. It’s only since I’ve understood how true relationships can be, and have chosen to deepen my relationship with myself, that I realise how aloof and unattainable I’ve been, keeping people at arms length and never truly letting them in, or the essence of me out.
True relationships can be very uncomfortable but there can also be moments of exquisite joy.
Yes Carmel, truth can be discomforting but at least we’re evolving, whereas comfort often signals stagnation.
When we are feeling dis-comfort, letting go of control and allowing ourselves to read what is going on energetically cuts the emotion – which is what often challenges us, bringing understanding for why people are behaving the way they are, without judgment.
And there can be no true joy in something that is not real.
I have found that my most profound learning comes from ‘difficult’ times, when I feel challenged and uncomfortable, but allow myself to let go and be open to what is on offer for me to learn, feeling into what my next movement will be, rather than falling back on old patterns. It doesn’t necessarily feel amazing at the time, but the joy that follows from the knowing that I’ve taken a big step back towards my soul is heaven on earth.
Relationships are the greatest place to discover oneself.
Yes jstewart51 and I would add, they offer many opportunities for us to expand and evolve as human beings.
We don’t exist anywhere else other than in relationships.
So true, Nicole – ‘God’s love is forever running through my veins: it is felt and cannot be ignored.’ When we truly stop and settle in the body, we cannot deny that God is eternally present and felt within the stillness.
“The spark we carry within burns bright: avoidance can only dim the spark, but never can we extinguish the love that pours in and through us.” An immutable truth that applies to us all, every single person on this planet.
My one love, God’s love, what is it about us as a race of Human beings that we seemingly deny God’s love exists?
Choosing ‘safe’ relationships is actually harmful.
Definitely can relate to plugging gaps and filling pockets of need… it’s actually more toxic to do that then to have the awkwardness of the need, as the plug makes it look much better than it really is.
True Michael… we don’t like to feel the uncomfortableness of ‘need’ and will do anything to not feel it but why is this … it doesn’t fit our pictures, ideals or beliefs of having it all together, it’s seen as a weakness maybe? The truth is none of us have it all together and yet we all try and pretend we do! There is no such thing as perfection and letting go of it transforms our lives.
The other thing with need is that it is something we are searching for outside of ourselves, wanting it to come from someone else, rather than giving ourselves what it is we are needing.
well said Michael, the plug makes us believe the need is no longer there and that all is well but the moment the plug is removed we are left with the same gap, if not a wider one. This is what we can see play out in relationships and break-ups.
Bringing my focus to deepening the quality of my relationships has been a more recent development in my life. In my formative years, relationships were about survival, neediness and trade offs. Transmuting them into relationships built on mutal honesty, respect and ultimately joy has restored a great depth to my life and all those who I have relationships with.
Expectation is a killer, it sets you up for reaction, and pigeon-holes the one you have the expectation of.
When we are willing to look at another and see God first before we see anything else, we are able to get a better understanding of that which is moved into place, form both parties, to impede this divinity expressing.
Knowing and held in the embrace of God changes the way we relate to all others.
Indeed – it changes everything down to the quality of our every movement.
Being honest and observant of ourselves in relationships is central to making changes: pay more attention on us and what we’re doing and less on others is worthwhile.
IN relationships we have the opportunity to either learn from our experiences and re-imprint/heal old hurts and our choices or we can use them to hide them, cushion life and ensure we do not have to face that which we feel has hurt us before. Harm or heal, the choice is ours.
So true, Michael, every relationship is a constant invitation to evolve by being open to the potential of what is on offer, allowing open and honest expression, deepening our awareness and understanding, setting a new standard for all of our relationships.
Getting to know myself deeper and who I am truly am has been how I have got to be knowing of God’s presence and love. It is the only way to live my life.
Here, here, Zofia. What a beautifully simple way to live life, continually deepening the connection to God and our divine purpose.
It is very easy in a relationship to blame the other person for not being the way we want them to be or doing things differently, but that is who they are and we are diminishing them with our judgement. Instead I am learning to bring all of me, my qualities of sweetness, for example, into every interaction, to make my life more about me and my inner connection than about anything or anybody else. When we are truly connected within everything else constellates accordingly.
Whenever we seek to blame another my experience has been that this is a distraction we use to avoid taking responsibility for the root cause of our tension and discomfort, which lies with us first.
How often is it that when we blame another and then look deeper it is but a reflection of an aspect of ourselves we do not like, let alone love?
Letting go of the need of love from another not only allows us to fully embrace the love of God that is constantly flowing through us, but it also frees the other person from the constant tension of never feeling ‘enough’, and to just be who they are, having the space and freedom to share their love without any expectations.
Great point in that of course if someone needs love this is going to cause tension both in themselves and with others. Crazy since our innate essence is love! It is like not seeing the forest for the trees as they say.
Well said, Nicole. Once we start to truly accept ourselves, we can entertain the possibility that we deserve to be embraced by God’s beholding love at all times…that we always have been and always will be.
‘However for me it was how I was in and around people that determined the kinds of relationships I had.’ – This is a significant point, our relationships are exactly what we allow them to be.
Control and need in relationships go hand on hand.
And then, we call them arrangements.
When we realize that we can actually use the relationship with those we say we love to sabotage the deepening of the love with everyone, i.e. the love we are by the very nature of who we are and what we are part of. The falsity of what we have constructed love/relationship to be is exposed – This is a necessary step to return to true love and develop true relationships of love.
In most relationships, be it marriage, parent-child, friends, colleagues… we tend to abandon our number one relationship, that with ourselves, with our Soul and or inner truth. That´s possibly the root cause for all problems we have with one another.
So true, Alexander – if we chose to deal with any issue we have by starting with our selves first – we wouldn’t have any issues with anyone else!
I agree Alex, a simple truth: without intimacy with self we can never be intimate with another and hence why we have so many perceived difficulties with one another.
Know thyself first and from here we get to know God.
If we stuck to being the God that we are we wouldn’t have any problems, not one. But we don’t, we apply ourselves doggedly to becoming unstuck from the truth of who we all are and hey presto end up with complicated troublesome lives!
Relationships are the greatest science labs in which to discover truth.
Building our exterior armour pretty much ensures we cannot respond with the tenderness and openness we can otherwise allow.
When we surrender to the love of God we open our heart to an endless stream of joy.
What does it mean to be in a relationship? What does that look like? Letting go of the pictures, ideals, beliefs and expectations of what it means to be in a relationship, feels like it is always knocking at my door calling me to go deeper, but what does going deeper really mean and look like in my relationships? How does going deeper play out in my relationships? These are questions I am playing around with at the moment, forever questioning, but at the same time knowing that I am responsible for the love within me first.
“how I set my partner up to fail in a deliberate attempt to justify the images I hold” Candid and most likely very true for so many of us, self included. What a glorious day for humanity it will be when we make our focus about the quality of our collective relationship, rather than spending our time and effort on making people fail.
A beautiful and inspiring sharing of the love we all are and have pouring through us if we simply surrender to it. The potential for true relationships is an amazing reflection, as is the letting go of our protection and opening up and showing the world we are love.
Which begs the question, why do we work so very hard to resist the love of God, which is there for us all, always?
Looking back at this life, I can say most if not all the relationships I have made, were all about me, and the symbiotic arrangements were not always equal. For whatever reason, I justified how I was existing, and evolution was making it to tomorrow. As you have said Nicole, life has never been about self, we have created it that way. It is never too late to let down our walls, and let the love that we have suppressed out into the world we live in! It is also infectious, in a good way to all those around us!
The more I enjoy a deeper relationship with myself the more I enjoy a relationship with the divinity of myself, of the universe and of God too. Without this relationship, I would not know myself or God.
Without this relationship we are always left ‘lacking’, feeling the loss of something vital that is missing – which it is. Our search all too often is focused outside ourselves, when in truth, we already hold everything we need within. It’s our resistance to accepting, appreciating and living our own divinity that is stopping us from feeling complete.
“God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another.” A beautiful reminder when we think that we ‘need’ another to love us.
I love your honesty, Nicole, your article is a really gorgeous invitation for us to let down our guard and be really honest about our relationships, starting with the one we have with ourselves – without judgment, rather allowing ourselves to connect back with the truth of who we are and to allow the space to deeply appreciate this. When we take our selves for granted, we are taking everyone else for granted too.
‘Expectations were high, their love for me always having to be proven – an unrealistic but safe way to play the relationship game.’ – True love never comes with a condition yet this is the crazy game we play.
Having tried for decades to fit a parents picture – exhaustingly so – it is definitely not worth a minute of that precious time when one could be walking in their own love, light and glory alongside God … nothing is more inspiring and fulfilling than this.
When we have expectations within any relationship we have already tarnished what we see before us, so the person in front of us isn’t seen for who they are… and no matter how hard they try to fit our picture they will never succeed because they dont know the detail of our expectations/picture.
So true, Paula – with any expectations we are reducing, dismissing even, the potential of what the other person has to offer, the potential of the relationship and the potential of everything we have to offer.
This is beautiful to read how relationships are so fundamental to ourselves and how we are always offered to go deeper.
‘Relationships of convenience, we both got what we wanted without having to let ourselves get too intimate, too seen or exposed.’ this has become the norm and it has been for much of my life. Living in a relationship which is based on the opposite, offers us the opportunity to face all of the reasons we have not done so before and make new choices, so they are not part of our relationships any more.
‘There was no way I was prepared to allow myself to be totally transparent, tender, vulnerable or gentle, totally surrendering to another in all that was me and fully letting them in.’ I’m finding this more and more easy when I let go and trust.
To surrender is to know that it is not ‘me’ that the relationship is with, that it is with the universe, this changes the way we learn to relate with one another.
Beautiful Rosanna, there is only one relationship and that is the one we have with God/
The ‘game’ with no winners or losers and where every relationship has its foundation in love is the ‘game’ we all crave and naturally align to when we follow our hearts.
Absolutely Ariana… how we are with ourselves is how we will be everyone else.
Interesting how your first sentence has just struck a different cord in me. In the past I would have agreed with it, however these days I am realising that relationships are my strong point, even when I think they are not, because I am very good at manipulating them to suit my small agendas. When I fully comprehend this, it makes sense that by focussing on the quality of my internal evolution and awareness, all my external relationships will flourish as a consequence, they have not other option.
Nicole, I love your honesty with this article. Reading this makes me realise how complicated we can make relationships; ‘Expectations were high, their love for me always having to be proven – an unrealistic but safe way to play the relationship game.’
I like the part about God’s love being the one love that we are searching for. The makes sense to me because whenever I have felt this love in my body it has been very simple and practical, with no need from another to be anything for me, because I know that I am loved – which feels amazing.
Yes, I can very much relate to this, Shami …. the feeling of God’s love is complete, there is nothing needed or wanting, rather an exquisite warmth that holds me from the inside out.
“God’s love is forever running through my veins: it is felt and cannot be ignored. We can attempt to override it with the many distraction, addictions and games we play, but never does it stop knocking.” Therein lies the simple choice, to surrender to what we cannot stop from entering our bodies and allow it to impulse our lives, or numb our selves with ever more intense forms of distraction until the day we realise that ignoring God’s Love is impossible.
When we ‘think’ these negative thoughts, I have found it very supportive to remind myself that where I am is a reflection of all the choices I have made and I have the free will to choose something completely different moving forward. It’s up to me to take responsibility for my life, how I live it, particularly the quality in which I am living it, which affects everyone.
It’s not that I’m no good at relationships – rather, I’ve chosen to be no good at them as I’ve chosen to hold back and resist loving even myself, making it impossible for me to truly love another until I’m prepared to let go of my protection (which is actually causing more harm than good) and re-connect with and share the love that I already am.
Choose, choose, choose, choose our way into and out of all and any situations. And choosing not to choose our way out of something is also a choice to stay in.
These are important questions to ask ourselves because they question what we have taken as normal that might well be capping both ourselves and the ones we profess to love.
What has become normal for all of us is to reduce the magnificence and blinding brilliance of God into a shabby offering that we call modern life. Life is a trussed up, bound up and very inferior offering compared to the unparalleled and unlimited constant burst of potential that life was naturally made to be.
What I can feel is the absurdity in being in a relationship, which none of us can actually avoid, while holding love out and away, resisting surrendering to the very thing we say we want. If this isn’t a game, I don’t know what is.
I agree, Fumiyo, put like that, allowing ourselves to be completely honest about what it is that we are saying yes to, this only makes sense if we consider that there is something else at play here, that we are being coerced and lured into making these choices which are the complete opposite of what we actually deeply crave, which is love. That we are aligning to an energy which is the complete opposite to love, hence the non-sensical decisions that we are making, leading us away from the very things we are seeking – true connection, love, intimacy.
Very true Doug, it is amazing how much we ca learn from others when we are open to seeing the reflection they offer us.
It is so easy to look out and at others to blame for how our relationships and interactions and interactions are but when we do this nothing really changes. For me the more I look at myself and the quality I bring to each and every interaction the more the quality of my relationships deepen. So it starts with me and then ripples out.
This is beautiful, James, and a lovely reminder that we all have free will and are only responsible for ourselves and our own actions. When we decide to live with awareness and consideration for the responsibility we have, choosing to bring all of our gorgeous selves to every interaction, no holding back, the ripple effect is enormous through all of our relationships.
Thank you Alison, I still find it is so easy to immediately go into reaction and blame but the more I allow myself to see the situation the less I react and the more responsible I am for the way I then respond rather than an immediate reaction!
Reading this I can really feel how we do this; ‘entering into relationships of convenience, arrangements that allowed me to stay where I was, holding others out, never letting them in to see just how vulnerable and tender I am.’ Recently I have been enjoying being more honest in my relationships; not trying to hide it if I am upset and instead allow the support from another – this feels like a true way to be with each other – no hiding, just a raw, honest and open way of being in relationship.
Knowing that in truth we are all actually the One United consciousness makes it so obvious how consistently hard we have to work in order to think that we are individuals. That we can sit shoulder to shoulder on a plane and not even acknowledge each other , when in truth there is no such thing as another, there is only other aspects of ourselves.
Just reading the three words in the title of your blog – Relationships, Me and God – I was blown away by how my life has transformed since coming across the teachings of Serge Benhayon. Each of those 3 words fills me with absolute Joy and a deep sense of connection whereas in the past it would have been quite the opposite!
One of the biggest eyeopeners was when I heard Serge Benhayon explain that we are in relationship with inanimate objects and systems. Yet now I can feel, and it makes total sense, that my relationship with myself and God is what determines my relationships with all other things.
Gosh it is so obvious when you put it like that so clearly Nicole – that the protection and games we bring to others is because we are not allowing in the connection with our own self, our soul, and God and therefore not giving ourselves permission to be simply who we are. I can see now it is impossible to truly open up to another person unless we have opened up to God’s love and our own heart.
And this is all theory till be take a moment to consider the truth of that in our physical body. Have we been sold a picture of what God’s Love looks, sounds and feels like and therefore are we holding the world to ransom for the way it is, yet we are not prepared to consider this primary relationship with ourselves?
‘Clever and cunning are we, setting up ourselves and another in a game, you can almost see the pieces being moved by another hand, manipulation at its best, and we are the big-time players, all in the name of perceived protection.’ There is a lot of us to consider in what you’re sharing here, Nicole, not just in terms of how manipulative we can be, but what is behind that manipulation – what is ‘the force’ that is driving us away from what we crave the most?
Even when we are single we are in relationship and our biggest, closest and most taken for granted partner is God himself.
God and us, one and the same thing.
” Once I realised I had to fill my own gaps by loving and appreciating myself, allowing the Love of God in, my relationships changed dramatically.” This is gold Nicole. So many look to others to complete themselves – I did for one. Becoming whole in oneself one can then look for another whole person –
and let God in – if in search for an intimate – or any – relationship.
Jenny what I have come to realise is that it’s the relationships with the people that we shut ourselves down to that potentially hold the most gold. Having said that I have also come to realise that most of us have shut ourselves down to all relationships, but just to varying degrees.
‘we are the big-time players, all in the name of perceived protection. Demanding the love and support of another and yet not prepared to give that ourselves.’ – The deep resistance we have to self-love affects everything we do in life.
‘Recently I became aware that the demands I have placed on my partner were all to avoid and hold back my own connection, not allowing the love to pour in and through me from my one love.’ This one has given me pause for thought, I am currently working on letting go of judgement and that includes not expecting others to do things MY way. I am also working on feeling what’s going on within my own body at any time.
Good on you Carmel, we would all do well to take a pause and consider this. How much space do we allow for ourselves and others to simply be rather than work over-time to control who we are?
If someone had said to me in the past that I used manipulation to get my way in relationships, I would have been horrified, but as I become more honest (as you have been here Nicole) it actually feels super liberating to expose the games we play in order to protect our hurts…it is not that we are bad people.
I love being in relationships with the people I meet in the street as I pass them by, I smile and sometimes say hello and it is lovely when I get a shy smile back or a hello, and I’m bowled over when they stop to say hello.
It is the older generation that usually stop as they are so surprised that someone has noticed them.
As I too learn to fill my own gaps of the avoidance of love to love, appreciate and confirm myself, the clarity of what is to be seen is seen without reaction. There is a solidness of what I know is true and this is not wavered even if I am called arrogant and ‘up’ myself! To love and appreciate ourselves and what we bring – no less is key and something I am now beginning to live up to.
I love your honesty here; ‘My partner was the perfect distraction and point of focus with me, demanding he love me and prove his love and dedication to me, all the while knowing that no matter what he did, I would continue to avoid the love on offer from above.’ Reading this I can feel that you are certainly not the only one that does this, I have done this. It seems that we are not willing to be love first, that we are always waiting for the other to be unconditionally loving and then we will let them in, this game could go on forever.
We run from one incident to the next – thinking avoiding hurts is the best, instead of questioning why we feel this way inside in the first place. One way or the other we’ll all be coming back to deal with our relationship with God and ourselves one day. It’s just a matter of how long we want to spin it out.
Going there and allowing ourselves to see in full how we are in relationships can be exposing and sometimes we may not want to see what we find but it is so worthwhile in the opportunity it then affords us to make changes in our life to live true relationships.
Our hurts do get in the way in relationships, as we choose to stay in protection mode so as not to get more hurt… so we keep people at a safe distance and at the same time, we keep ourselves small and hidden, I know this well. Dealing with our hurts is a great gift to ourselves as all our interactions and relationships with others significantly improve – as there is nothing to protect, but there is lots of space for love to flow in and through our bodies, and flow out as we share ourselves, being open, honest and transparent.
Being in relationships with others supports us to evolve – we are a constant point on reflection for each other, which is actually very beautiful, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.
We tend to view relationships as always being with people or animals/pets, and yet even if we try to avoid these relationships due to past hurts, we still remain in relationship – with nature, the planet and the universe…. so in truth we cannot avoid relationships.
God is constantly in relationship with every one of us … and we are constantly in relationship with God – what we choose to make of that relationship is up to us.
‘God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another. To surrender to and allow this brings a whole new dimension and understanding to relationships as I had known them to be.’ This is our way forward as we return to the love that we all are. By being open to God’s love we are bringing a whole new dimension to all of our relationships, reflecting the truth of how relationships can be when we let go of protection and control.
‘I thought I was being loving, open, honest and supportive of others ….’ I too have felt this, only to realise, once I chose to love myself and understand what that actually feels like, how hard and closed I actually was.
We have a relationship with everyone and everything, but we tend to struggle with relationships because we struggle with our relationship with God and ourselves. This then affects all our other relationships especially if we ignore this simple fact that we are in constant relationship with ourselves and God.
God is in people and never is He/She not. Considering the current population of the world and our diminishing borders, you have to work very hard to avoid people and thus very hard to avoid God. And even if we succeed in a mutual agreement to not express this innate divinity, it does not for a second erase the fact that it is always there.
I remember the moment I realized that love is not something to give and take but something we are and the how we love others is based on how much of this love we live in our everyday life. It also came with the slightly shocking realization that we can then only love all in the same amount, even if our expression would differ based on the kind of relationships we have. This means that we cannot love our children, partner or friends more then another and it also means that when we close the door on one person, in that moment the door is closed to all, as It cannot be open and closed at the same time.
God has always been my everything, my all and my foundation even when I wasn’t aware of the fact. It’s in my conscious and unconscious thought. This connection is in my cells and to my very core; it doesn’t need to be voiced or shared simply felt and treasured.
This deep seated belief that things need to look a particular way before a conditional acceptance, love, care and regard is far more insidious than it first seems. Recently I realised how my pockets of self-loathing and lack of self-regard is due to an unconscious belief that God plays this game too and imagining that in his eyes I don’t fit the picture therefore he wouldn’t consider me worthy!
I wonder how much of our misguided behaviours are encouraged and ingrained by the false man-made twists we have added to religious teachings.
I have recently been seeing how I have been fighting my relationships, trying to withdraw as much as I can, from an already established position of withdrawal! But we can’t – no matter how much we try and how good we are at the fight- it is still impossible to not be In Relationship. As you say Nicole, God’s love flows through our veins so our first relationship is with God. Reading this brings a timely reminder that there are no issues in relationships, there is only ignoring the thing we can’t ignore- God’s love.
We are constantly in relationship – with people, with nature, with the universe, with God … how we respond or react in every relationship is our choice.
Our relationship with ourselves forms the foundation of all other relationships we have… how we treat ourselves is how we treat others.
Yes, it is the greatest set up, to demand love from another but refuse to love ourselves or the other in return. Developing love in our own body establishes a solid foundation to take into all relationships.
Everywhere we look we are in relationship, with the Earth, Nature and each other. It is impossible to be totally isolated, even in the remotest of places because beneath the physical surface of life lies an energetic web that we are all irrefutably a part of and that can always be felt within us.
‘Relationships of convenience, we both got what we wanted without having to let ourselves get too intimate, too seen or exposed.’ – in acknowledging how I have been in these arrangements for so much of my life, I can feel how very dis-honouring this has been, of myself and everyone else. To allow and choose to reduce myself and others in this way rather than feeling the amazingness of all that I am a part of and taking responsibility for my part in the big picture.
When our relationships with ourselves or those around us are not supportive then we can easily turn to a devoted relationship with alcohol or drugs, or excessive exercise or study or screen time (TV, computers, tablets etc). But what are we investing in then?
So true, Henrietta, all these things distract and dull us from feeling the truth, the potential of what could be and allow us to avoid taking responsibility for living the truth of who we are. If any relationship doesn’t feel supportive – we are an equal part in that relationship, we have free will to say no to anything that does not feel loving, especially the way we treat our selves. If we are accepting abuse from ourselves, we are also saying yes to abuse from those around us.
What a point you make Henrietta,
I can see how when I am an unsupportive friend to myself I am more willing to turn to something that may not be so good for me; I want to focus on anything but me, I am drawn to devote my time to activities and distractions which further degrade my relationship with myself…
If I would be so devoted to myself as I have been to so many other things… oh how beautiful that could be and how far reaching the benefits of such an investment!
I’m working on it.
Relationships are unavoidable and the one relationship that is in our face all the time is the relationship we have with ourselves. Who we are, how we are with ourselves is something we carry with us all day, go to sleep with and wake up with, in the morning. There is no escaping this. In my experience, this can feel like a curse or like a blessing depending on how we look at it and how we are handling ourselves. There are days when I have wanted to escape myself and how I am feeling and those are times when I have made choices that are not so supportive and caring of myself which incidentally then lead not to an improvement in my relationship with myself. And then there are those times when I have felt very caring and loving of myself and this has been the opportunity for me to build a more supportive relationship with myself. Having a relationship with self that is caring, honest and intimate takes a work and time to build. We are constant works in progress knowing that our natural state of being is one of deep care and love and this is what we are always returning to.
I like what you say here, Henrietta, about us being constant works in progress, as we never graduate from the school of life and learning about how to deepen in love and joy.
Yes and that relationship with ourselves is our relationship with God. So God’s Love is constantly in our face, are we able to handle that?
Yes the longest relationship we will ever have is with ourselves. Important for that to be loving and deeply honouring.
‘Having a relationship with self that is caring, honest and intimate takes a work and time to build.’ – Yes, we are prepared to spend time and work on our relationships with others, but are we in truth willing to make the same effort on the relationship with ourselves?
Relationships that support us to be the truest version of ourselves, expressions of divinity on earth in a playground of Gods.
Even if they can be challenging at time I’m learning that the value in relationships is gold, as no matter the relationship the one key and most important thing is the relationship I have with myself. The way I hold, treat and nurture myself above and beyond anything else.
Agree David.
It is exposing to realise that the quality of relationship we have with ourselves, is what is shared with others. It becomes clear that what we project and expect of others is often what we are not honouring in ourselves. We have it all within us, and the love is ever present to reconnect to.
How can we expect from others what we are not choosing for our selves first?
With deeper reflection any expectation at all is not in respect of another or allowing of the freedom of choice.
Relationships are indeed unavoidable – though I’ve tried to substitute them through watching sitcoms! There’s nothing more uncomfortable (well, there is) than thinking I don’t want to need people, or be vulnerable and then being so because of circumstance or, more recently choice. It’s so lovely being supported. I’ve been more transparent in my life and am amazed at how amazing people are which has really supported me to learn to trust humanity again.
It really comes down to loving and trusting ourselves. We can’t wait until “humanity” is trustworthy to let them in or we are all waiting for each other and all perpetuating the same hurts and lack of trust.
The more we know who we are the more we can allow others to be without imposing on them and demanding for them to be a certain way that fits our expectations, needs or time frames.
Nothing about human life truly makes sense. At least on a purely physical level. Why is it that we are so good at doing anything and everything to not be and to not express love despite love being the only true state that offers any true stability or benefit? There must be more going on than merely what is physical and it serves us all greatly to open ourselves up to seeing this fact.
The problem is that it’s not possible to open ourselves up to seeing the fact that there is more going on than just the physical because our choices determine what we are able to open ourselves up to. Therefore if we are adamant that life is purely what we can see, then what we think, say and do all confirm that belief then it’s not possible to simply step to the side and look freshly at life. Our perception of life is governed by how we choose to think, speak and move, which is why so many of us have been incarcerated into a way of being that has repeated itself for one blinkered lifetime after another.
When we are open to the possibility that we are part of so much more than our human existence on this planet, we in turn open ourselves up to receive the magnificence of what life has to offer.
We chose to step into our own coffins and even managed to nail down the lids!
Spot on Joshua, we have made life about function and being good at doing things, whilst forgetting the real relationship which is with the being deep within and the deep care and honouring that is our natural state of being that we have walked away from.
Relationships are a training ground for evolution, the individual spirit is learning to come back to being in brotherhood. No wonder they can be tricky at times, and no wonder there are others that have a basis of mutual understanding – both have room for deepening the love in the relationship.
Yes in truth we are in a relationship with literally everything and everyone in life. Nothing we do is separate from the whole.
We cannot help but breathe each other in; it is the very nature of our divine design. The ‘fortress of flesh’ we encase ourselves in is a self-imposed barrier that only gives us the illusion that we live in separation to each other until such a time that we remember we are One, and return to living this truth through our fleshy vehicle that then becomes an instrument for the Divine.
It is so true, even the places and people we shut ourselves down to we are still in relationship with, the relationship is just one of resistance.
I love your point Liane, about us have a self imposed barrier, one of flesh, as we are in our own individual body, yet, we are all inter-connected and in constant relationship with each other, even if we’re not communicating with each other in words, energetically there is constant communication.
Just through being a point of light in a larger body we are inextricable in a relationship with everything else in that body and beyond – everything we are and do affect that relationship with everything else and the all we are part of.
Interesting how I am sure it is a very common comment or experience for people to say they are not good at relationships and yet it is true that they are something we cannot avoid and are an inevitable part of life, so it makes sense to me to start exploring how we are with them i.e. what is our relationship with relationships 🙂 and learn to deepen and develop them rather than fight, limit or avoid them.
Sometimes by saying a comment like ‘I am not very good in relationships’ easily dismisses the fact that this may well be the case, but then we need to ask ourselves why and explore this more rather than leave it.
Ah yes Andrew, the ones we want to avoid are most likely the ones we have the most to learn from.
This is so profound, simply and directly expressed – for God is Love and so to Love is to be in relationship God.
For a long time I avoided dealing with the negative feelings I had about myself, and blamed my relationships for the disharmony in my life. Thanks to Universal Medicine, I have been able to develop much greater honesty about the relationship I have with me, my soul and to God, as an ongoing responsibility I now embrace.
This is lovely Bryony, powerful to know when we allow our equal love to flow into each relationship, we affirm “one another in that equality of what we bring”.
I love how Universal Medicine presents the fact that we are all equal, and all equal to God – it takes away the supremacy, the false hierarchy, domination and control, the supposedly unattainable … and makes life very real. If we are all equal, then we are all equally responsible.
Relationships and expectations – when we enter a relationship with extreme neediness we will be disappointed, for example, if we do not appreciate ourselves we cannot expect our partner to appreciate us, our love comes from within us, not from another.
It is in the quality of our relationship with ourselves that we deepen our relationship with God.
It is a new way of learning to live, building relationships from transparency, openness and purpose – a very different experience to the usual investments and trading that we so commonly mistake for a ‘good’ relationship. It requires a committed willingness to take an long, honest look at our selves, not the sort of thing often displayed on our TV screens or in our romantic movies, but far more worthwhile and fulfilling when really embraced.
What comes to mind is the saying, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”, an exchange of pacifying our own wants and needs but not ever really coming with a genuine love or support. I had someone imply this to me the other day, and I could feel what it was coming with, that they would do something for me if I didn’t rock their boat in the process. When we stay in this status quo of comfortable exchanges none of us evolve, none of us come back to who we are, none of us express our true nature.
There’s a devastation I feel when I admit how much I am loved but how much I’ve held this back. In trying to substitute love for emotional love I run on a constant underlying grief and try to mask this with distraction until I stop and say let me feel it all, let all the quiet despair go and let love in like opening up the shutters on a bright morning.
This blog is such a brilliant exposure of the games we play in relationships, the variety is endless. Thanks Nicole for calling it out.
I agree Eva and the complicated games we play makes life complicated and harder than it needs to be. When we have loving relationships the flow on effect of this is a joyful and loving life due to being deeply connected to God and our Soul.
I have gone through stages of opening up, being hurt, closing down, putting up more protection, feeling love, opening up again, being hurt, shutting down again, like a vicious circle or a dog chasing its tail. None of this ever works until I commit to openness and true love for all. Watch this space!
I can relate to that rollercoaster, Kevin, but am now beginning to have more day to day steadiness due to a consistency and commitment to the relationship I have with myself, which then ripples out to every aspect of life.
I can relate to what you say here kevmchardy – it is the ‘dipping the toe in’ approach to see if it is safe to come out and play and then we get disappointed or hurt when it does not result in what we want, but we are already limiting it and lacing our relationships with limits to begin with!
So relatable Kev, I have done this too. It can be exhausting to have this chase that at times can feel like it is never ending but it can end very quickly when we commit to being love.
One phrase you use here Nicole is ‘play the relationship game’, this alerts us to the point where we might care to to look at what is going on, what are the unspoken agreements, where might there be control and witholding, and what are the complications of continuing to relate in this way?
We have interpreted being in a relationship as a romantic involvement but as I see it we are in a relationship with everything and everyone, and it’s how we are in those interactions that determine if we grow or not.
We ‘think’ we have good relationships when perhaps the truth is that we have good ‘arrangements’ with each other that allow us to stay comfortable and don’t challenge the status quo – arrangements that allow us to avoid taking responsibility for our choices.
‘The spark we carry within burns bright: avoidance can only dim the spark, but never can we extinguish the love that pours in and through us.’ – what an absolute treasure to behold – no matter how long we resist the love that God holds us in, the love that pours through us constantly – it will always continue to do so, for it’s a love that we are all a part of.
As you say, Nicole, being transparent, tender and vulnerable in relationships is something very beautiful, yet we are not taught or supported to stay open like this from young the and walls we erect in protection are rarely questioned.
In a lot of cases these walls are preferred, as being open and transparent is perceived as a weakness. However these walls we put up do nothing to support trust in ourselves or each other and most often this hardness only encourages more hardness and lack of honesty.
The reality of relationships is clearly shown here as is the beauty of how relationships can be with openness and the joy of letting the world know you are love. It changes everything and removes our protection and acknowledging our hurts as a way of healing and opens up for all to be the love we are with ourselves God and each other honestly.
For me and in re-connecting back to the truth about religion thanks to Universal Medicine and The Ageless Wisdom Teachings – understanding that a person’s religion does not make them a religious person and moreover you don’t have to belong to a specific religion to know God either, have been totally confirming of what I have always felt inside.
It is very gorgeous that we can love ourselves and that we do not need to be reliant on others to complete us and make us feel loved.
Nicole, this is really gorgeous; ‘There was no longer a need; the expectations and pictures of how it should all be fell away, there was now an allowing of myself and others I had never had before.’ I can feel this happening in my relationships too and it feels very joyful to allow others to be – without judgement and holding pictures of how they should be.
We keep people at a safe distance and why? What is it we are protecting for in truth as we do this, we shut ourselves off from ourselves, and yet it’s so ingrained, so even as I write this, I know there are protections I carry, and ways of being I live which are not open to myself or others, so reading this today I’m reminded that it’s always an unfoldment as we see our protections and choose whether we wish to keep them or let them go.
The difference of relationships based on arrangements- just enough care to warrant being in partnership, just enough to navigate life’s challenges – and relationships where we bare all and find beneath all the protective layers, perhaps vast quantities of shame, we are loveable and bursting with love.
It is possible to function in any relationship, dealing complacently with day to day issues, but when it comes to deepening, there is likely to be a level of discomfort that cannot be ignored. Relationships offer reflections of lessons we need to learn and it is always our choice to react or respond. The deepening comes when we reflect upon what we have been shown and make different choices as a result.
Reactions can be quick to surface or sometimes simmer under the surface for a while, but when we sit quietly to reflect and drop the expectations, pictures, rights and wrongs, there is always something to learn from and deepen in the relationship.
It feels like the key here is to always be open to learning more, being open to the fact that we will never know all there is to know. Nothing stays still, there are shifts and changes taking place for us on a daily basis, however, small they may be, therefore, the more aware and open we are to these changes, the more understanding and learning we can bring to our lives and our relationships.
I love that, filling your own gaps, not looking for someone else to make it better….being committed to healing what is needed and filling ourselves with a Love that is known and lived.
Yes as the love is lived our relationships become unencumbered, deeper and ever unfolding.
The saving grace for me was hearing there is not one ounce of emotion in love. Before hearing this .. and knowing it was the truth. I had spent most of my life thinking that was exactly what love was, emotion and that you had to show it, and if you did not show this emotion then it meant you did not love. Not only was it exhausting, it changed absolutely nothing but just kept me chasing my tail round and round.
The ideal of romantic love we have fallen for certainly keeps us in need and in a spin. Having an understanding of what love actually is and how far it reaches has changed my life in an incredibly profound way.
“Demanding the love and support of another and yet not prepared to give that ourselves.” What an exhausting and ultimately very unsatisfactory game to play, especially in view of how awesome and gorgeous relationships are when we become equal players in giving, receiving and magnifying love.
So true Rowena – it’s the equal sharing of love in a relationship that feels so exquisite – the open and transparent meeting and treasuring of each other for everything that they already are, a true sharing of love and intimacy.
When we are afraid of getting hurt and put up those walls of protection we are refusing to take responsibility for them, but are also shutting others out. I had just let go of some protection this morning and had been feeling fragile all day, was just getting on top of it when I allowed another hurt in by compromising and not claiming the truth of what I felt in the worry of the reaction that was coming to me from two different parties. It would be easy to put the protection on again, but in nominating my part in it, whilst I am still feeling hurt and fragile I can take charge of my choices. Knowing where I let this all in and what needs to happen when the same situation crops up again, I am giving myself permission to make a different choice next time.
It is ridiculous how much time and effort we put into hiding ourselves away – when everyone else knows and can feel the amazingness we are anyway … so why not surrender and show our true selves? Note to self!
I really appreciate the honesty you have brought to reflecting on your own part in keeping your partner and that deeper relationship with yourself and with the divine out. It offers the reader a moment of consideration.
Vulnerability is a challenge because we can remember our childhood when the world did not celebrate that. Therefore we judged the world and built an extraordinarily efficient fortress to keep ourselves safe.
Most ‘good’ relationships are based on being allies of survival. If that works well we may think we’ve got the best you can wish for, and compared to much of the everyday struggle and the disappointing behaviour of people, it is. But once you’ve had a taste of the supreme love that true love actually is, everything less doesn’t do it anymore, and then we are asked to let go of what once was considered to be the real deal.
It’s so true, Alexander, that a seemingly successful partnership is often built on being ‘allies of survival’, rather than the openness to constantly going deeper and letting more love into our lives and the relationship.
So true Alex & Janet, for once true love is experienced survival alone is just not enough – true love provides purpose that is greater than survival at any cost.
‘Allies of survival’ so true Alexander. I can see when I aim for the ‘good’ ‘right’ picture perfect relationship then I’m excluding myself and all others I’m in relationship with. I’m saying you have to sit in this box and I have to sit in that box for this to work out.
Could it be that our biggest hurdle in relationships is holding ourselves to blame for the past mistakes we’ve made? When in truth it wasn’t just us but energy.
Joseph that was a big hurdle that I had to get over, for the choices I made I would wallow in them instead of reminding myself that there is more to life than wallowing in the mud and instead get on and enjoy life, let go of the past, knowing its not only be but energy that I choose and embrace the future. The best choice I ever did.
Great question, Joseph, we tend to ‘humanise’ everything and see things from our own perspective. However, when we’re open to considering that we are a part of something so much more magnificent than just our selves, we realise that there a whole lot more going on out there than we’d every imagined.
We often have expectations of our partner being able to fill our “..gaps and needs…” but its not until we love and appreciate ourselves that we can feel the expansion and potential True love can bring to a relationship.
No one can bring love to us, that’s for us to claim for ourselves as it already lies within each and every one of us. Other people can share their love with us, but unless we love our selves first we can’t actually receive it as we haven’t chosen to allow our selves to be open to receiving it. The greater our depth of love is for our selves, the greater the depth of love that we can receive from others.
Nicole, what you are sharing in this article is really interesting, I can feel how I move the goal posts and say to myself that when this person is loving in a certain way, then I will allow myself to be open and loving with them. I can feel how I am holding back my love in this way. Thank you for exposing this.
It is so much easier to be open to someone who is open and this is something we can all feel, so the more we drop our guard, the more everyone has the chance to do also.
And, by working at being open with everyone, including those that are not open for whatever reason stand out like a sore thumb. When we have encounters with them, our openness is offering the opportunity to drop a bit of their guard.
So many of my relationships in the past were about comfort, not rocking the boat and often colluding in a particular identity or outlook on life, whereas now I am starting to appreciate the golden opportunity of relationships to constantly support one another to be more.
‘never can we extinguish the love that pours in’ these few words really bring home for me this morning that God is everywhere, there is no way we can actually extinguish his light. It is here to stay. And therefore there is only one way for it to go, and that is grow and expand.
Yes, what a revelation that we don’t have to fill each other’s gaps but can be together from a fullness.
When there is a deep underlying love that is rock solid, then the day to day issues that can cloud a relationship are always seen as temporary and to be worked on. When there is low self worth on both sides and no sense of value, that’s where you can get blame and judgement, because there is no strong foundation for self love to build upon.
The quality and complexities of relating to another honestly and brilliantly dissected, to reveal what is going on behind the facade of what appears to be good and safe relationships.. To go beyond this and allow ourselves to be true, transparent and trusting with another is something we all can return to. This is how we were as children.
We are very good with our protection mechanisms. In constantly adjusting the goal posts so we can play safe, we do not have to open up to the love that is possible to be lived in the relationships that are there for us to engage in.
You talk about being totally transparent, totally tender, totally surrendering etc – that is totally too high an expectation to put on ourselves up front. First step is to become aware when we are not being these things, and from there open up the space to deal with whatever issues are getting in the way of us making more loving choices. Going for totally is like some sort of ideal and already sets us up for failure as there is no such thing as perfection on this planet other than to be perfectly imperfect!
If you can have a very good relationship with just one person, you can expand what you have learnt here to many other relationships. That actually works.
This is true Christoph, and we learn in relationships different things with different people, therefore when we are open to relationship we all get so much from each other.
I love these words Nicole. ‘The spark we carry within burns bright: avoidance can only dim the spark, but never can we extinguish the love that pours in and through us.’ they speak volumes of our innate potential, equality of essence and the forever holding love that unites us all. Thank you for a super blog.
What was interesting Johannah, was that previously I’ve tended to relate references to igniting the inner spark to my own experience of life but this morning it really hit me that the spark is in everyone, even those whose behaviour seems actively defiant of our true nature and intent on extinguishing the flame. It really is something worth remembering.
It interesting and quite normal nowadays to deem a relationship as ‘good’ because it is safe. I don’t get hit and my life is not in danger, we look the part and ‘get along’, what more could I want? To me, it shows how far we have strayed from a true and deep relationship with ourselves to settle for surface engagements with another.
This is so true. Just the other day I was having a conversation with someone about accepting abuse in his relationship and that that would not happen if his relationship with himself was of a deeper quality of love and respect.
Life is lived at the level of awareness we are at. Once we know a deeper quality of divine love exists and pours through us and we connect to it, we can never settle for ‘surface relationships with another’.
So true, what if good meant we kept feeling the same and what if the same was not growing evolving and having love in our lives? Then perhaps we would consider good as something other than the pinnacle we often make it today. I would run my life looking for Good moments, only to spend most of it feeling not so good. Today when I let go of good and feel how I feel in my body then I truly enjoy life.
Very true, Rachael. It can all look ok on the surface but many people feel lonely in relationship because there is no true intimacy and sharing of one’s innermost feelings.
It is a sad indictment of where we are at as humanity when we are prepared to settle for ‘good’ and superficiality – when relationships and life in general can be so rich, vital, deeply loving, harmonious and joy-full.
The way you feel Gods love as a steady, deep holding that we can rest in, allows me to feel the way to let go of the fight and protection. I am realising that the battle of love never happens outside ourselves. It is what we create when we refuse to surrender to the love that is constantly flowing through us.
I love this, Fiona, ‘I am realising that the battle of love never happens outside ourselves. It is what we create when we refuse to surrender to the love that is constantly flowing through us.’ – completely debunks the belief that we have to ‘find’ love – rather, it’s about letting go and de-constructing our self made fortress that prevents us from feeling the beholding love of God that is and always has been flowing through us.
It is an enormous effort to keep God’s love at bay. We keep doing it until we come to our senses and surrender to our predestined way of being is once again lived on this planet earth.
“the battle of love never happens outside ourselves. It is what we create when we refuse to surrender to the love that is constantly flowing through us.” Not knowing there is a love incessantly flowing through us is the barrier that impedes us from connecting to the truth of love.
So true – we create our own complication and battles when we don’t let go and surrender to what we already hold within. If we try to bring in love – or any other emotion – from the outside, to fill an emptiness within, we are constantly reliant and at the mercy of that outer source, instead of bringing our equal love to it, and affirming one another in that equality of what we bring.
The pictures we create around relationships, and the expectations we then have of these pictures manifesting, is a killer for true relationship of any kind… because no-one is perfect and so the pictures will never be perfected.
Yes, we have really created a game that can have us on a forever spin around pictures that need to be fulfilled.
God’s love comes through us and is like a flood light, it indiscriminately encompasses everything and everyone both in our immediate environment and afar. However it’s light can’t be directed, it’s like a blanket, it covers everyone and everything equally.
“The more I observe my behaviour the more I see how it plays out”. I like the word observe here as it puts some distance between you and the behaviour making it more easy to observe. When we are the behaviour and feel taken over from it, it is difficult to observe and see how it indeed plays out.
I agree, Sarah, it confirms that the behaviour isn’t who we are, rather just how we are choosing to be in that moment, which we can choose to change. Our behaviour doesn’t define who we are, just how we are choosing to be in that moment.
“Relationships of convenience, we both got what we wanted without having to let ourselves get too intimate, too seen or exposed” a game that is played universally by us all.
I have; been there, done that and worn out the T-shirt of convenient relationships! It is like being in a boat trapped in a whirlpool that never moves forward, but gives the illusion of movement from the view in the boat!
Yes, this game is an agreement we all play with each other to not expose we are playing the game.
Games, within games, within games, it’s never ending.
To meet the God that lives within is to meet our true selves and the All that we form when we live in connection with each other and the Universal wisdom that pours through us from this source – the breath that breathed us forth.
And when we live this it comes out as love.
Absolutely. The love pours into us, through us and out of us. Thus why we are vehicles for the Divine when we align ourselves to this source.
‘This is a game that no-one can win.’ – Ain’t that the truth. We can be very clever at this game of protecting ourselves yet we all know that there can be no true connection or relationship where there is no openness and transparency.
To be reminded of this purity that we are apart supports us to live it all of the time, in every single relationship. We have to start somewhere and that is being honest at where our relationships are, most importantly with ourselves.
“God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another. To surrender to and allow this brings a whole new dimension and understanding to relationships as I had known them to be.” My appreciation and thanks to Serge Benhayon and The Way of The Livingness for guiding me to this connection is beyond words.
What I am appreciating more and more these days is how everything about who we are, all our lovely bits and all our blemishes, is reflected in the quality of our relationships with others. So learning to observe the mirror and humbly adjust our own metaphorical clothing can if we allow it, bring incredible healing, revelations and evolution, which in turn will naturally enrich our ability to form worthwhile relationships.
‘God’s love is forever running through my veins: it is felt and cannot be ignored. We can attempt to override it with the many distraction, addictions and games we play, but never does it stop knocking.’ I often say I can’t feel God although I accept his existence as a fact in my head. Because I cannot yet feel God in my body I would not be able to stand up in a court and say for sure, but I know that the moment I allow myself to feel my body in full, then that true sense of God will manifest and be easily known.
When we can get really honest with ourselves and be free of judgement and critique, we can really see our behaviours and how they impact our ability to be in true relationship. It still amazes me to realise how many habitual, protective strategies I adopt that interfere with having open, transparent, nurturing and inspiring relationships. This is so mad when I know deep inside that that is exactly what we all want and is what is needed to change the way we currently live in such isolation, conflict and disharmony.
What you’ve brought here for me to reflect on some more Nicole is the rejection of another’s love, whilst all along the love of God is passing through us constantly, – how is that even possible?! and what does it say about our relationship with God? And the distortion we have to put ourselves into to have these counter forces or posture?
You mention that you would continue to avoid the love on offer from above. Really we avoid and don’t let out the immense love that is available within.
Although shutting love out does seem like and is in fact a very real option, it’s something the body cannot in the long term withstand and indeed something in the immediate term is contra to our natural tendency. However, such is our need to protect. I’ve found the Esoteric Healing modalities are invaluable in uncovering and letting go of the reasons I have held on to to stay protected, keeping others out and us all from our natural way of being.
Yes, Nicole, I too can remember the manipulation, the games and setting others up to fail in order to justify my hurts…eek! Not something that is comfortable to face, but this level of honesty is key if we are to learn and let go.
‘Relationships of convenience, we both got what we wanted without having to let ourselves get too intimate, too seen or exposed.’ This is often the blue print of most relationships, we feel the gaps and want to fill them. It is no wonder then that relationship break ups and divorces are at such an incredible high rate. Universal Medicine continues to present a different blue print, one that is about having a relationship with ourselves so that we can be the love that we are and from there share this with all we come across in life.
“The only true hurt that was occurring was me keeping myself held so tightly, so hard and withdrawn that I ached for true love, to allow myself to just be.” This is a brilliant summing up of the senseless cycle of protection. Indeed it was not until I met Serge Benhayon that I began to see how this way of being was running me down but most crucially how my self critic had accepted this as my lot in life.
Gill I so agree with you here, it was very much the ‘I will choose who I love’ without appreciating that love is about being me, and then how can I possibly limit that love to a few, when to do so would mean I am not being me in the first place.
Letting go of expectations in relationships not only allows us to come to a point of acceptance and then deeper appreciation and understanding for another person but also for our self.
“With friends, partners and family, no one was exempt from the standards I had set” – the thing i have learned about standards or ‘having standards’ … is finding out what the type of standard it actually and truly is. If it’s not that which upholds the value of love then it’s a not truly a standard.
‘It is here we have a choice –– do we bring our focus to that which is within, allow that out, to truly love ourselves and others? No games, no pawns, no more moving of the goal posts, instead surrendering to the love that is on offer, putting an end to the need of love from another?’ – these games that we play are exhausting and they destroy the potential of what is already on offer to us through our relationships. Whilst we ignore and resist the love that lies within all our relationships suffer.
“Once I realised I had to fill my own gaps by loving and appreciating myself, allowing the Love of God in, my relationships changed dramatically.” Nicole that seems to be the best medicine ever to deal with everything in life and not get so much affected by it anymore – wonderful.
My oh my, reading this has really got me to feel how we’re all just skimming the surface of life, we’re barely making a dent.
Oh how we proclaim and lament how much we want love in our lives, and all from behind tightly shut doors, knowing full well that we have no intention of opening them even so much as a crack! The whole thing is an elaborate game conjured up by us The Universal Theatrical Society.
Who is this “we” you speak about? Not me for I am certainly opening my doors!
When we know ourselves to be enough, just as we are, then so too do we know everyone else to be enough, just as they are. And when this happens it’s as if a two way valve opens up, allowing love to flow from one person to another. As opposed to holding ourselves and others to ransom for everything we deem we/they are not.
“We have relationships with everyone we meet”, we’re also in a relationship with everyone that we don’t meet physically because we are all interconnected, there is no divide between any of us, we are one united whole, therefore in constant relationship with each other.
Even when we go out of our way to avoid being in a relationship with anyone, we can’t help but be in a relationship with everyone.
Yes, the all time major illusion is that we think we can choose who we are in relationship with.
Eva I reckon there’s one illusion that trumps even that and that is the illusion that there is more than one of us. Once we realise that there isn’t, then that topples every other illusion and belief known to man.
I am learning to recognise an aspect of me in everybody that I meet.
We set out to get proof of what we want proven so things can most comfortably stay the same; we set others up to act and behave in a certain way so that we are right, triumphant even – at our own expense. And all that to keep others out, at a ‘safe’ distance, at arm’s length and further away still.
We don’t all do that and certainly not all the time. One of the ways many set themselves up is by not confirming and appreciating themselves and the steps they have taken. I for one have been developing more and more close and loving relationships with myself and others and where I am these days is an absolute miracle compared to where I was 12 years ago.
And all this to avoid the Love we innately are and we crave every moment of every day – crazy.
Well said Gabriele and it is sad but true. We can also set others up to do wrong by having unrealistic expectations of another that they cannot physically or emotionally live up to thus disappointment and the ‘I told you so’ tyrant strikes again.
“Relationships of convenience”…I wonder how many of us have relationships based on this? Too many to imagine I suspect.
What I deeply appreciate with your blog Nicole is how, through your absolute love and honesty, I can acknowledge the truth about my own relationships, which I’d always ‘thought’ I was pretty good at. It actually feels very liberating to get real about the truth of how I am with myself and others, warts and all, so, moving forward my relationships can be based on a new standard – a foundation of love, honesty, transparency and true connection.
It is ironic and sad that “…never can we extinguish the love that pours in and through us.” And yet we spend an enormous amount of time and energy over lifetimes doing exactly this – dulling it down, avoiding, ignoring and or denying all this love that completely surrounds us and is within us… it is who we are and where we are from – so in effect, we are constantly fighting ourselves – crazy!
I used to think the same Gill… however, if Love is universal – which it is – then Love is for everyone equally so… it can’t be for a select few.
Nothing in this world can’t fill us when we don’t feel love inside, whether that be work, distraction or attention from others. It is us who can open ourselves up to the divine love we all innately are.
The more I allow God in my life and deepen my relationship with him, the more my relationship with myself and others deepens as well. Feeling, accepting and letting in God’s endless love is such a huge support in allowing the love I feel for people come out.
‘This was a game I was very good at…’ to be free of all of life’s games, including this, we need to learn to surrender to the natural flow of life and let go of all types of control. This I am learning to do bit by bit and realising just how easy it is to slip back into a familiar way of dealing with things.
God can be found in our relationships if we let people in.
For me, there is nothing lovelier than when I let my guard down and am open with another and they, in turn also drop their guard; a true connection and meeting takes place that is a sheer joy. It is for me to learn to be open like this with everyone and not just those I feel safe with.
Beautiful Rachel and I can relate to this, there is so much more that can be in true connection, it exceeds the some of the two in that moment. I am learning this too and the learning is not so much in knowing what true connection is, as we all know it innately, but to reveil all the wants, needs, protection and images that get in the way of that.
To let the wants, needs, protection and images that get in the way of that takes a lot of commitment to dealing with them, getting underneath them and a huge amount of self-reflection. The work is worth it though, as to live life with less need and emotion is priceless.
The proof of love form another is a big issue that most of us will be familiar with….it starts when we as children are not supported to understand that we need to Love ourselves first, and that Love is not to be given and taken, but Lived.
We demand, stomp our feet, throw a tantrum – al the while standing in the way of what we most want, i.e. to love and be loved.
Yes, and learning to practice surrendering to what is already there,the Love within and known takes the trying out of it and cuts the tantrums, if we allow the space for this surrender to grow as a way of being.
Your deep passion to honour all that you are is exquisite Nicole. It is a confirming reflection for us all – thank you.
If we are honest most relationships are probably founded on comfort, even the ones with ourselves and unless we get real will stay that way.
Being comfortable and not triggering our hurt, hiding and not needing to step into responsibility are reasons that most us us, yes, want to stay in comfort, even if it is really uncomfortable.
At least you have been willing to see and be honest. I am realising more and more that my relationship with myself really is the most important thing in being loving with myself automatically means I become more loving with others around me.
We are extremely cunning and manipulative when it comes to us in relationships with others and finding ways to get our own picture of what we think a relationship should look like. Unfortunately, sometimes those pictures have us settling for much less than what we are capable of.
Surrendering to God’s love feels to me a bit like when I get into a lovely warm bath. The more I let go the more my body deepens in repose and I return to my true essence.
Its certainly worthwhile looking at what expectations we have in our relationships and where these come from. The more we love and support ourselves the less we seem to have expectations…we have less need of them.
“Once I realised I had to fill my own gaps by loving and appreciating myself, allowing the Love of God in, my relationships changed dramatically.” Taking responsibility to fill one’s own ‘gaps’ rather than relying on someone or something external to do so builds a foundation of true confidence and love which then allows and enables the establishment of true relationships.
“Taking responsibility to fill one’s own ‘gaps’ … builds a foundation of true confidence and love…” This is so very true jstewart51 – we then know our worth, that foundation becomes our standard which we won’t drop below (no perfection) … and in that we build that quality in our relationships and in our life in general. Its a very worthwhile process for us all.
It is quite ironic that we think we are in charge of our relationships, calling the shots, demanding proof of love from the other, setting up booby traps to prove a point and so on, all the while living in the immense body of Love that God is and completely ignoring the vast unconditional love we are irrefutably held in.
In simple terms until we start to embrace that fact we are always in relationships and that starts with the relationship with ourselves my experience has been that we seek someone else to fix or resolve any uneasiness we feel but this never works as we miss the main point, our relationship with ourselves which leads onto how we feel about ourself and then life in general.
True David, also I’ve found that we endevour to seek relationships to avoid the things we are uneasy with. The more open we are to seeing these things, from both those perspectives, the more our relationships naturally change and evolve.
It is so simple when we accept this truth. Our relationship with ourselves sets the standard and quality for all our relationships, with others and life.
well said David, in short we want others to give us what we are not willing to give ourselves. Having this as a foundation for relationships is a disaster waiting to happen as we can see by the state of relationships in general these days.
‘Or is it a level of comfort, an opportunity for us to continue along in life, not being asked to go deeper, to be transparent, completely open and surrendered to another, willing to reveal or live in our true state of tenderness and vulnerability?’ Most of us develop relationships with others, whether it is with partners or friends because they support us to feel safe and not push our buttons. It feels like most end up being arrangements. This is a huge ouch to admit to and accept.
Nicole, this is so true, I have really noticed how with myself and others that this happens; ‘Demanding the love and support of another and yet not prepared to give that ourselves.’ Loving ourselves first and putting ourselves first in relationships is key.
I love this; ‘to be transparent, completely open and surrendered to another, willing to reveal or live in our true state of tenderness and vulnerability?’ This feels like a true and joyful way to be in relationships – where we can support, love and encourage each other.
God’s love is constantly on tap; it is us and only us that either says yes to it, welcoming it into our hearts or… do we react and forever keep it at bay?
‘The manipulation… how I set my partner up to fail in a deliberate attempt to justify the images I hold, the expectations I have of him.’ The games we play that we pretend we are completely unaware which we are in fact the very creators of.
We can use relationships in two way’s – one to provide a ‘comfortable’ life that will not ask me to become more but just to stay where I am, please do not change – or – to make it a space where the constellation that you are can be lived and explored in full.
Gods love is always inside and available, and has no hooks or neediness. Its just waiting for us.
My experience is that the more you put into relationships of any sort, the more you get out of them. They can support you, encourage you, goad and chivvy you to a greater depth and understanding… or they can be used as a cushion to stay comfortable and safe and not challenge you to be everything that you are and can be.
How confirming, strong, steady and expanded the inner foundation is on reading these simple, wise words Nicle”God’s love is forever running through my veins: it is felt and cannot be ignored”.
Our relationship with God is all that truly exists.
What I love about relationships is that by deepening my relationship with myself, I am then offering that new foundation of love to every relationship that I have.
Looking in the mirror and being in relationship are two very similar things. If we find one hard, the other will be hard too.
So simple yet so true.
And a great place to check in with how we are getting on… with ourselves, all our relationships and love.
“Once I realised I had to fill my own gaps by loving and appreciating myself, allowing the Love of God in, my relationships changed dramatically.” This is the game changer that exposes the arrangements we make.
Life is full of reflections: we leave one relationship and start another thinking we have left all that was bad behind but no, we bring ourselves into every relationship we have and unless we eliminate old patterns of behaviour they will arise in each new relationship for us to ponder on and make different choices. I find it extraordinary how people who have never met can treat me with the same amount of disrespect, which shows there is something innate in me that invites disrespect. It is very exposing but a lovely lesson to learn, i.e. I need to honour and respect myself.
Very rare do we see and experience a truly loving relationship because the way our world is currently configured does not support us to be love. Our world is predominately run by an energy that make life complex, about manipulation and control, so when we align to this energy our life is then aligned to this way of moving/being. Equally there is another energy we can align to, and that is love. But a majority of us are not choosing to align to the energy of love, which explains why our world, our relationships/life is the way it is.
It is so interesting to observe the relationship we have with others is a reflection of the relationships we have with ourselves and vice versa. It all comes back to our relationship with ourselves, it ultimately has a flow-on effect on everything else. So it makes sense to develop a deeply loving relationship with ourselves and naturally, all our other relationships will also shift to realign to the love we are willing to accept within ourselves.
As shared here, relationships are unavoidable and are everywhere… however the most important relationship we can ever have is an honest, true and to the depth-of-our-being relationship with ourselves.
Surrendering to Gods love is what it is all about.
I recognise that behaviour of keeping people at a distance having done it most of my life. Incredible the games and strategies most of use without even owning up to ourselves. Many of us even have conditions with God: prove it to me by giving me what I say (often by clearing up the mess we have made) otherwise I won’t play!
Dropping our protective layers and allowing ourselves to be seen, warts and all: the more we accept ourselves, for who we are and as we are right now, the easier it is to open up and allow ourselves to be seen, in full.
It’s as natural as breathing, love. But in this example, we sure can make it difficult to breath – and it’s all self imposed. Breathe deeply, love deeply.
We have the idea that it is safe and comfortable to not let see all who we are in relationships. But at the end one day we have to conclude that it has kept us imprisoned in a body that is by nature designed to express freely and does not need any protection by any armour or guard and from us doing exactly that have brought harm to the body and to any relationship we are in.
We do not have to imagine anymore how it would look like to have loving and transparent relationships. We simply can look to the family Benhayon who are already living it and have set the role model for how all relationships will look like in the future to come.
“Once I realised I had to fill my own gaps by loving and appreciating myself, allowing the Love of God in, my relationships changed dramatically….” When we deepen and accept the love that is naturally within our body, the relationship we have with ourselves improves, and naturally our relationships with others follows suit.
What I learned in asking myself this question: ‘do I really want to be loved, what am I so afraid of, what is it I am really keeping at bay?’ is that I think I want to be loved and yet I have (had) an addiction that says no to the bigger awareness and greater responsibility.
If for a long time you refuse to be responsible for tenderly and delicately taking care and loving yourself, you will end up being hard on yourself.
Building a protective armour does not work, all hard shell and sensitive on the inside….we still get hurt, we still feel, but we find it harder to connect with what feels true. I speak form my experience, letting down the guard and building strength and confidence from within has been melting that protection, and I feel I enjoy life so much more by choosing this as a practice in life.
Oh, the irony of the manipulation and games we play in the belief that they will be the means to gain what our heart desires, yet in reality and truth, they take us ever further away from that fulfillment – true love.
“God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another.” An overwhelmingly sweet, tender and majestic love that completely embraces us without need, investment or expectation. All we need to do is surrender to it unconditionally and allow the same to be expressed through us.
It makes sense that no relationship with another can be healed if we don’t address the grander relationships first, the one inside us with God.
So simple actually, we are hurt because we have abandoned God which we are by essence. And how then would it be possible to not bring that hurt into our relationships without healing it by returning to the love of God, the Gods that we are first and foremost.
‘I thought I was being loving, open, honest and supportive of others, but all the while I was forever gauging how I could keep them at a safe distance, protecting myself from the possibility of being hurt.’ Ouch the games we play to avoid love are so damaging for ourselves and others. The more I am allowing myself to love myself, the more it is reflected in my other relationships. There are many layers to unpick and I am shocked at how often I retreat into protection to avoid exposing my vulnerability.
I had never considered that I am in a relationship with everyone I meet however fleeting that meeting may be.
It then dawned on me slowly that if this is the case, then it matters what mood I’m in. If I’m feeling frustrated while sitting in a train going somewhere, then everyone on the train will feel my frustration because we all feel everything all the time. Many of us live in such a state of nervous energy we wouldn’t feel the frustration that we were being loaded with. If we were to come back to the natural state of our bodies which is to be in stillness, then we would feel everything. Is it because we would feel everything, and we don’t want to feel everything that we check out and race our bodies so that it cannot feel anything except the continuous raciness? This is why, for me, there is so much more to being in a relationship than I have ever considered.
I very much relate to this, Nicole – ‘I can feel my levels of protection fall away and I am opening up to the potential of true relationships, to be seen warts and all’. I have spent most of my life trying to be something I am not, but as I connect and surrender more and more to the stupendous love we are all held in, there is a natural joy and openness emerging, in just being myself with others.
“Relationships, Me and God” – my relationship with God began in truth when I started to have an honest relationship with my body and explored the actual quality of the way of my relating; and the quality which has supported me in my relationship with God is the quality of my innate stillness.
Yes, Zofia. Having searched far and wide to find God, it is so beautifully humbling that this connection is re-established through the quality of stillness in the body.
‘I realised I had to fill my own gaps by loving and appreciating myself, allowing the Love of God in, my relationships changed dramatically.’ no matter how many times we hear it we don’t truly understand this until we feel it.
It’s not so much that any of us need to let the love of God in, because it’s already inside us, the question therefore is what is it that we do (constantly) for us to not be aware of it sitting right there within us.
Brilliant blog Nicole, I can very much relate. I too have been very good at keeping people at arm’s length and what you’ve shared sounds like you are writing about my experiences. I find letting go of the games we play like you shared where no one wins is one of the most loving choices we can make.
How many of us settle for relationships of comfort that tick all the boxes but keep us from the truth that will move us forward in our evolution?
It can be challenging to disrupt the status quo in our relationships and initiate the opportunity to take the relationship to a whole new level, but it’s the only choice we have when we choose love, letting down our guard for transparency, open-ness – true connection.
errrr how about ‘all of us’ Kev.
‘… entering into relationships of convenience, arrangements that allowed me to stay where I was, holding others out, never letting them in to see just how vulnerable and tender I am.’ – this is exactly how my relationships have been – not asking anything of me, comfortable – allowing me to stay in my stuff and avoiding the very thing that we all crave the most – true connection with each other, to love and be loved.
When we are love there is no desire to be loved. Being love is complete.
This is where being around a baby is the best medicine to observe exactly how at ease we can be by not withholding any of God’s love through us. We are blessed to have the constant reminder that we are born naturally expressing in full, and that we are in a process of surrendering the protection. It’s not a trying to get somewhere.
Thanks Nicole for your blog, it feels like we place the hurts first and dismiss the very love within us, but if we were to keep expressing love it would no doubt heal the things that have hurt us. It’s a beautiful life purpose to stay steady in love. I’m starting to become very aware of how protection and hurts play out in my life, and that my love is still there within me untouched. It’s up to me though to reconnect to and live from that love again – to give power to love, not to the hurtful experiences I have had, and simply allow the hurts to heal.
If we hold back our relationship with God, this affects every relationship we have.
We are all playing the one game constantly, and that one game is blocking out the love and light of God. I feel to add that we’re absolute masters at it, truly we are accomplished in the art.
Nicole you have taken your writing to a new nother level. And in taking it to a new nother level, you provide everybody else to also go to a new nother level. Deeper and deeper we all go together. Utterly glorious.
The love we have within is what we bring to all our relationships, we cannot expect love back because it doesn’t come from outside
I love this Carmel, ‘we can’t expect love back because it doesn’t come from outside’. We focus so much of our lives looking for answers outside when we have all of the answers we need on the inside.
I can totally relate to this, perceived protection of ourselves so we don’t get hurt, not wanting to be totally open and let everyone in – ‘The only true hurt that was occurring was me keeping myself held so tightly, so hard and withdrawn that I ached for true love, to allow myself to just be.’
Today I went for a walk and contemplated my relationships. I haven’t fully surrendered to God’s love and I see this in how I try to protect myself from being fully in the world. I numb myself out in one way or another and don’t love myself. I feel how I can’t ‘protect’ myself from one aspect of the world and be open in another. So I am really feeling to just go for it, be open, understand before judging, feel that even if another seems to be having a go at me, what’s actually happening is they’re fighting their own love. Do I really want to be fighting my own love too? It is time I let go of ancient hurts and reconnect to God’s love that you beautifully expressed is in our veins.
‘Demanding the love and support of another and yet not prepared to give that ourselves.’ This is huge and quite possibly the norm in most cases… I can certainly say this is true in my case. The seeking for another to fill a hole within myself was enormous until I found Universal Medicine and began to learn how to fill this gap for myself.
Whenever I feel a huge amount of love for another, I think it is connected to that specific person. I don’t realize enough that this love is inside me, not just between the other and me, that I am this love and that this is God’s love coming through.
“God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another.” Emotional love keeps us in the cycle of comfortable (or not so comfortable) arrangements, whereas God’s love brings a truth, joy and harmony that is universal, it is for everyone equally.
This is a timely reminder … to honour ourselves and allow love – pure and simple.
Thank you for this honest and real sharing Nicole… and the realisation we are the ones who have to make the choice to allow love in and through us – there is no-one else who can do this for us.
Funny how we can be so adamant about placing expectations on our partners and children and family and friends, when really this just interferes in the quality of relationship and openness that we could otherwise share.
Nothing to add to this truth: ‘God’s love is forever running through my veins: it is felt and cannot be ignored. We can attempt to override it with the many distractions, addictions and games we play, but never does it stop knocking.’ This is what I would call true love.
We can be very good at playing things safe in a relationship so that we are not asked to go any deeper, though in truth that is what we crave and what we know to be natural to us.
Yes, Henrietta, it does not make sense that we shut out what we long for the most.
It’s hard to dispute that there aren’t other forces at play when we acknowledge the lengths we go to, to avoid what we crave the most.
When we consider how much we are closed off, leading to greed and corruption, which is also then feed to us every day as a normal platform that most come from. It is ‘a breath of fresh air’ “to be totally transparent, tender, vulnerable or gentle, totally surrendering to another in all that was me and to fully letting them in.”
To allow out, without any holding back, all the love I feel inside for people, which is endless, is a whole new ballgame that I am experimenting with.
All my past and present relationships have been under review lately. Not something I expected or suddenly felt to do, but it has been a natural process unfolding. What I am seeing is, in the past I did not express how I felt, and am now realising how much deeper and open I can be with all others than I currently am. If we are willing, there is always more for us to see.
So true Vicky, the depth and a level of intimacy in a relationship is only limited by the level intimacy with our self.
We cannot truly love another without first connecting to the love that breathes deep within us and from this depth, love not only them but also all others. Love is never for the one; it is for the many who make up the One.
Another cracker of an article Nicole, and one – if we are truly honest – that many of us could relate to. I know I can, I have played the push/pull/prove game, demanding love from another whilst not truly letting it in nor bringing it to myself. Thank you for writing this.
Why have relationships scared me so much? It was because I was afraid to have a relationship with myself. With support from Serge Benhayon, and Simple Living Global I am understanding that I have to have a true relationship with myself before I can have a real relationship with something else. For me this was about being honest about what I was feeling in my body. I had spent my life not wanting to feel what I was feeling. Such a simple thing, but with much patience and love for myself it has turned my life around. I feel like I am finally in a true relationship with my partner, mostly because I have discarded much of the stuff that was in the way.
We can make it so much about he other person or the relationship being wrong, but do we ever consider that we are fighting something totally different – God’s Love?
There is a certain simplicity to relationships: Being open, being truthful (at least to oneself and, if possible, to the other) and following the true impulses that come up.
To make the choice to surrender to God’s love opens a way out of the complication we are so accomplished at living in and offers the key to the doorway to simplicity. In the simplicity God just is, and life begins to flow with an ease that feels unfamiliar but familiar at the same time, as it is a way of living that we’ve always known but often, have chosen not to live.
Nicole Serafin – you are one fiery woman. A deeply inspiring blog to read. Thank you.
I’m sure this sharing is one that many can relate to. We have made love and relationships about giving and taking, about feeling needs and distractions from the tensions of life. IN our relationship with God we can find the model of a true relationship, one that can be freely shared with all around us.
Gosh Nicole. I really enjoyed reading this and can deeply relate to it. Our relationship with ourselves is what lies at the foundation of our relationship with others, and what better relationship to have with ourselves than acknowledging the love of God within.
It is the ugly truth Nicole and one that I have recognised too, the games and manipulation to keep loved ones and others at bay, all to justify not accepting that I am love and worth every drop of equal love.
It’s a huge transition from emotional and needy love to reclaiming the love within we in essence are. Once we realise we are love then we also realise we can’t truly be hurt (unless we have expectations of others) because all the love is within us. I’m enjoying coming to this realisation. It’s quite a process with much to clear, but I am learning to take my love to others and if they are in their love, that’s what they share with me. If not, then I’m learning to give others space to be where they are, and get on with being responsible by being the love I am. At times I feel like I’m in a tight grip with the needs I have placed on others, but also that my love is a simple gentle breath away as I reconnect to myself and come out of the illusion of it all.
How have we gone so far to even consider that we are not worthy of love, it is crazy but when we start opening up and talking about our experiences, we may find that this lack of worth runs through many people. I definitely fell for this game and many various forms of control and manipulation in relationships, but now being able to see through them and understand what gets in the way of us being loving and accepting love is truly freeing.
We are the only ones who bar our own access to love. There ain’t nobody else involved, as much as we’d like to think there is.
‘Recently I became aware that the demands I have placed on my partner were all to avoid and hold back my own connection, not allowing the love to pour in and through me from my one love.’ This is a bit of an ‘ouch’ for me, as I am currently working on letting go of judgement, which means letting go of expectations, pictures and images of how I think people should be. Your words have helped me to feel a deeper level of responsibility in relationships, that of deepening my own connection.
I can relate Carmel, and also can now see that the problems I think I’ve had with people are not really problems at all, because I have everything already within me and the challenge comes from learning to live connected to that love, and being responsible (and understanding) about leaving it in the first place, and letting others be where they are.
The more we connect to and feel the love of God within, the more we allow ourselves to be seen, so that others see that same love within themselves.
There will come a time when we all strip ourselves bare and stand naked in the presence of God.
I am constantly amazed at all the ways that I find to keep people at arms length. It feels as if I have been doing it for lifetime and is therefore well practiced. It takes a deep commitment to myself to let it go and be totally vulnerable and transparent with people.
In covering ourselves up we are also covering up God, expose ourselves and eventually we expose God.
I loved your comment Elizabeth and I had to giggle (at myself) with your line “I am constantly amazed at all the ways I keep people at arms length.” This is something for me to look at and to lighten up about. What I’ve really been finding is if I remain open and allowing of people to be as they are, and I let me also be who I am, there is a clearer space between us to connect to one another in love, and for me to relate to the essence of the person in front of me.
Oh, I can so relate Elizabeth. I too feel I have been stuck in the same old pattern of keeping people out for most of my life and for many lifetimes I am sure. But working on letting people in, being open, honest and vulnerable requires a steady commitment to returning to love and this is what I have been inspired to do. Thanks to Serge Benhayon and the amazing people at Universal Medicine, I now know it is indeed possible to live free of these constraints and loveless ways to embrace and embody a more loving way.
‘..the spark we carry within burns bright….’ So true Nicole and even my attempts to bury it, dull it and even ignore it cannot put out the flame. ‘…never can we extinguish the love that pours in and through us,’
When we start loving and appreciating ourselves, everything shifts and changes: no longer are we reliant on anyone else to validate us or appreciate us, and so no longer do we demand it from others. We liberate ourselves from the need and demand, and in that space, there is the potential for more love, and more genuine connections and deeper relationships.
I have discovered that by letting go of my picture, my expectation of how relationships should be, so they have developed and deepened in ways that are far greater than anything I had, or could have, imagined.
That’s is so key, to let go of pictures and expectations in relationships. I find when I let go of one, there is another layer to discard and the more I discard the easier it is to be in a loving relationship because the barriers get thinner and thinner to allow us to go there and be love.
We either are manipulative or we are deeply loving in any relationship we are in, including with ourselves. There is no middle ground. It is the way it ultimately is.
A beautiful sharing and understanding of love, relationships and God that is so real and easy to relate to and makes sense. Accepting the love of God pouring through us, not rejecting it and looking elsewhere; surrendering to it is amazingly beautiful “As I become more allowing of the love on offer, surrendering to the will of God, Heaven that is knocking on my door, I can feel my levels of protection fall away and I am opening up to the potential of true relationships, to be seen warts and all, no judgement or criticism of self or others.”
“The spark we carry within burns bright: avoidance can only dim the spark, but never can we extinguish the love that pours in and through us.” This is such a revelatory sentence Nicole. We, humanity, have tried every which way we can to extinguish this spark and then have the audacity to blame God for the ensuing suffering. We can never, ever escape God’s love that flows through us 24/7 and when we come to realize that the self erected road blocks don’t work, our only choice is to surrender to the exquisite tenderness and immense love God has for us and express and magnify it in all our relationships.
Thank you Nicole for exposing how, because we choose to live denying the love of God that is constantly on offer, we then have to protect ourselves from this being exposed in our relationships with others. Hence the crazy games which feel so familiar to avoid going deeper, and always keeping others at arms length with our unrealistic expectations. It is such a lonely place to be until we realise that we hold the key to release ourselves from this self imposed prison.
Thanks, Nicole. I can very much relate to everything you share here. The games we play for the sake of self-preservation and protection are indeed cunning and manipulative. Once we re-connect more to our bodies and start to feel the love that we are held in at all times our desperation falls away, replaced by a greater acceptance of life and less need or investment in any outcome, which frees us up to be naturally ourselves in relationship.
It is a wonderful marker in my body when I feel the connection to God, as there is not one ounce of need, attachment, control, judgement or imposition I feel towards another. I am with myself, my body and the universe – what more could I want.
When the game is exposed it sounds ridiculous, but I can recognise the game in myself and I feel it is the basis of most relationships. They are arrangements and an agreed unwritten contract of how far we are willing to let ourselves go, be transparent, open and willing to be seen. The game starts early in our childhood and we become masters at it, but at the cost of holding back God’s love, a love that is eternal and is pouring through us constantly. It has taken me a long time to see the game and how ugly and painful it actually is. It takes a lot of effort to constantly hold back a love that is naturally there for all to see and connect to.
It is difficult to imagine that we don’t need another person to love us if we love ourselves first. Many of us are very stuck in the idea that in order to feel love we must receive it from another, another must care for us, give us flowers and make sure we’re okay. And what you say is very true, in this we play a game and we make life a game.
How liberating – to not need anything from anyone but to feel completely full of the love we hold within for ourselves and everyone else.
The quality of how we hold ourselves develops our first relationship. From that point and quality, everything else is.
This really highlights the games we put in place to keep people at arm’s length and give us a good excuse to stay there.
When we open up to love we learn to love the ‘warts and all’.
Love truly is blind.
When we open up to love there are no warts.
Nicole thank you for sharing. I can relate to a lot of what you have shared, and how much we can rely and focus on others to bring us love, rather than allowing ourselves to be the love we are first and then bringing this to another. So no blame, no games, just being the love we naturally are. And as you say ‘God’s love is stronger than, and can hold us deeper than, any emotional love from another’.
Nicole, this is a very beautiful way to be in relationships; ‘I am opening up to the potential of true relationships, to be seen warts and all, no judgement or criticism of self or others.’
Nicole, I love this; ‘There was no longer a need; the expectations and pictures of how it should all be fell away.’ I can feel that this is starting to happen in my relationships too – that I am letting go of judgement and expectations and instead enjoying and accepting people as they are much more.
I agree that one of our greatest treasures in life, is to be able to make decisions about the way that we would like our relationships to be. Although this does seem to require a fair amount of self discovery and reflection, the beautiful relationships that are possible as a result, far outweigh the discomfort of being very honest with oneself.
Nicole I adore these words you have used
“God’s love is forever running through my veins: it is felt and cannot be ignored.”
Living in our modern world as we do we have forgotten about the stars and the universe, there is so much light pollution and no one seems to look up to the stars any more. We all live in the universe which is the body or space of God every breath we take, we breathe the vitality of God, that is why God’s love is forever running through our veins. God is the very oxygen we breathe for many of us we have forgotten this fact and most religions have steered us all away from this basic understanding of life.
What an exquisite comment Mary. I can clearly feel you haven’t forgotten that we are part of the universe and are with and in God all the time.
I agree.
We do set ourselves up through so many ways to not be the love that we truly are. I have also pondered many times why we do this, when it is all there just waiting for us to choose it when we can break free of the traps we have set for ourselves.
Nicole thank you for sharing such a personal experience and journey that you have gone through in regards to relationships. As you share so beautifully “Once I realised I had to fill my own gaps by loving and appreciating myself, allowing the Love of God in, my relationships changed dramatically”. Having gone through a similar journey myself, there is no doubt now that my strength comes from my connection with myself and God. Without that I feel lost – so before making that a commitment, a choice to stay in connection, no wonder I used to want others to try and fulfill that very thing that I had not chosen at the time – to be in connection with me. But how could I ever expect another to fulfill that, it is an impossibility – yet a reality I yearned after for many a year.
What I find the most challenging in relationships is when I am asked to be more of myself, to live to my full power.
The moment we stop matching or measuring in relationships but instead bring all of who we are, our relationships will be about evolution, and the functional arrangement that possibly has been there, will cease to exist.
Indeed Nico… bring the truth of who we are to relationships and our relationships will be true.
And in true relationships, we will be together as one, open and transparent, ready and willing to work on to let go of what we are not and in that return to our true way of being, being living Gods on earth once again.
We think relationships are about other people but first and foremost they’re about us accepting we are Love.
Yes, I agree, and this is my experience, I spent a lot of time looking out for others to fix this and that, and then it would be ok, but learning to live love and know love form within has made the real shift.
Thank you Joseph Barker, this is so true.
We do tend to focus outside of ourselves in any relationship, our attention focused on the other person… whereas our relationship with ourselves is key in how we then are in relationships with anyone else.
We have to love ourselves first, know our identity in God, and by then, we can make relationships around people and be the figure of love in itself.