(By Heather Lynn Temple) It’s not our behaviour that stops us from
receiving love, but how we perceive ourselves…
One of my favourite quotes is by the poet, Rumi. Rumi says: “Your task is
not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within
yourself that you have built against it.”
I remember the first time I read this quote; it made me a little angry,
actually. I didn’t see how I could have been putting up invisible
barriers between me and what I wanted most: love.
I was doing everything “by the book”
Literally. I spent time reading self-help book after self-help book. I
read dating books and websites. I read books about femininity and
masculinity. I desperately tried to absorb all of the lessons and put
them into action.
Surely, I had no barriers within me keeping me from love. I was convinced
it had to be something external that I was doing wrong.
I was exhausted by trying to perfect myself. The problem with self-help
and dating tips is that they imply that there’s something wrong. The
fixing cycle is all about getting rid of what is innately “wrong” with
us.
It’s exhausting. And it certainly doesn’t invite in love
So I hired my first love coach. I hired her because her central message
was that I wasn’t broken. When she said that to me for the first time,
the floodgates of my emotions opened up and I cried and cried and cried.
In our society, we are told over and over again that we are too-this or
too-that. No wonder we are all guarded when entering new relationships
and looking for love.
Once I jumped off the fix-it roller coaster, I was actually able to look
inside and find those barriers I had built up against love.
Consciously, I wanted it; but my coach helped me see that there were
deep-seated parts of me that I had never acknowledged before. It was
these that were running the show; they were drawing me to the same type
of man over and over again.
I didn’t have to fix these in order to change the quality of my
relationships. I only had to see them and accept them as part of me.
That’s true freedom!
You don’t have to fix yourself or get stuck on the self-help merry-go-
round. Look inside and see what you might be protecting yourself from.
This is the birthplace of love because YOU are the birthplace of love.
Once you look inside and listen to your inner wisdom, you can navigate
your relationships from a place of wholeness, true wholeness. And it’s
from this place that you are able to love another completely.