What is the Perfect Love?

What is the Perfect Love?

A few years back I met not the perfect person, but the perfect love.

When he left months later because it was the right thing to do at the time, I thought I wouldn’t struggle so much but I had no idea what I was in for. I’ve been heartbroken before, I’ve met what I considered soulmates before, but this was different. It felt like a part of my soul was ripped from me and I was left out here in what felt like an isolated desert, alone and incomplete.

It felt like life showed up and said “oh here’s a piece of your soul” then stripped it away suddenly, like some kind of sick joke.

But…through all that darkness I slowly became more stable, stronger, wiser, and more self-aware. However the most amazing thing is that what has remained is that love I felt, despite all of my mental noise and emotions throughout these years. Despite all my attachment to what I thought it needed to be. Despite my doubt.

Honestly, I’m more amazed by the nature of the love itself than I am with anything else. It’s pristine: like a diamond, only having gotten more refined under pressure. It’s always there in the background, radiating light even while my mind can bring on darkness and shield it momentarily from my view.

This is Love. Absolutely radiant, everlasting, unconditional, and it brings me joy all by itself! When expressed fully, it can heal one’s deep seated wounds in an instant, and absolutely nothing at all has been required to keep it replenished.

Because I was so used to the feeling of “love” being altered by my own perceptions from moment to moment, I was surprised when this didn’t behave the same way, especially after years.

If I hadn’t been so busy with my attachments, I could have just sat back and immersed myself in the beauty that is really is. But that is life, and we’re here to learn.

 

Walking a Tightrope: Learning Unwavering Faith and Letting Go

Walking a Tightrope: Learning Unwavering Faith and Letting Go

If you know me well, you know that from a young age I have had some unique experiences in regards to “spirituality”, by which you can attribute many different names. I call them my “meditation experiences,” but they are also called “metaphysical” or “mystical,” or simply just spiritual experiences. However, they happened of their own accord without any particular beliefs or intent to try to bring something about.

Usually what happens is I get a very small picture from my intuition, or a vision of something pulling me strongly in one direction or another. In the moment it’s just enough to allow me a glimpse at a drastically new perspective or world even, but without fully understanding it yet. This then usually marks the beginning of a journey within to reveal the full picture of what my intuition is telling me.

Since having these kinds of experiences, I have been a lot more cognizant of the cause and effect of my life’s events and what they might mean for the bigger picture. I realized that everything truly is a lesson and my entire life’s experience has been such a dance between my human experience and my soul (as it is for everyone, whether we are aware of it or not).

My latest lesson has been such an unbelievably difficult test in balancing letting go into unwavering faith, and its other side: doubt and questioning. It feels as though I’m walking on a tightrope and every day’s outcome is different. It has encompassed some of the deepest emotional pain I have ever had, with at other times, some of the most magical moments. And, it takes me back and forth from periods of sadness and doubt to periods of absolute clarity and seeing the big picture.

During those times I am seeing the big picture, I always feel content in thinking it’ll be difficult now that I’m holding that perspective to spiral back down into doubt or sadness. But no, it has happened every time. Simply because I still have some level of attachment or fear that creeps up and causes it.

So this “tightrope walking” feels like a condensed timeline to learning to absolutely trust in the bigger picture and let go of my attachment to the outcome. It is condensed, because on a near daily basis I am having to release, let go, and have faith in the bigger picture’s story in order to be able to create and sustain my own happiness. It has been a true sink or swim scenario.

It has also taken me from such a sense of confidence and self-awareness I had before, to a place of not quite insecurity but a period of questioning myself and seeing new aspects of myself that I didn’t address or pay attention to before; things that I don’t particularly like.

What has been even more difficult for me still is that this time, it has been a silent journey. I am used to being able to share what I’m feeling with those around me and I do so freely. But in this case it feels futile and almost like I am not supposed to share some of the details of the journey, at least for now.

So while it often feels like I am going backwards in progress, overall I realize I am going forward. But it is just simply not without absolute pain, fear, the humbling of the ego, and a very shaky ground beneath me at times.

Facing Your Emotional Pain and Learning Its Lessons

Facing Your Emotional Pain and Learning Its Lessons

The battle we fight is always within ourselves first, even if others are acting as a catalyst.

I’m so far from perfect, I have my flaws just like anyone else, but my relationships with people over time have served to tamper down my ego by showing me things about myself or triggering things in me I never would have seen otherwise.

I have so far had a few very major events in my life that really made me struggle. One being my anxiety disorder where I had to really get a grip on my mind to not suffer anymore (this took years of practice). Second being one of my “meditation experiences” where it felt like my ego and “soul” for lack of a better term were on a battlefield — the deeper part of me was trying to fly high while the ego was cowering in fear over what was happening. Perhaps close to ego death which can feel like you’re actually throwing yourself over the cliff mentally.

My latest battle came through in connecting with someone in a way I had never experienced despite having other very deep connections before, and it taking me to a level of vulnerability and love in a way that I had never seen.

Love on this level can trigger so much fear, and if you already have past wounds, forget about it. In this case, their past wounds caused pain and for us to have to stop contact altogether.

This made my ego go absolutely crazy. I could not accept that things would go this way for a connection so beautiful, deep, and meaningful that we both felt. As a result I felt as though I lost control of myself entirely.

I couldn’t stop messaging them, and I found myself overcompensating and showing more love and affection in times when they weren’t showing love, effectively throwing things out of balance. I would beat myself up daily over doing it but yet, I couldn’t stop.

As someone who felt like I usually had so much control over myself in this way in relationships and prided myself on being good at letting go — this was EXTREMELY unsettling.

I also found myself trying to teach them things I learned that I felt might help them see things clearly — something that seemed helpful at the time. But I learned this was really just another sign of my ego trying to control the situation.

It has taken me months of pain and reflection to realize what was going on with me internally. That it wasn’t really about them directly, it was how the situation’s dynamics were causing me to react, and I did not have a handle on it.

This showed me there was something for me to learn, and the lessons wouldn’t stop there.

Over a year later, and I still experience bouts of some of the most intense emotional pain over it that I have ever had.

In dealing with the pain, I previously thought I could just push it away like I do with my anxiety: distract myself and with time it’ll lose its power.

I made lots of new friends. I traveled. I did anything to put my attention elsewhere, but to my surprise, that pain was still consistently weighing very heavily on me beneath it all.

When I thought things were going okay for a while — like even a month or two — BAM it would hit me and take me over completely…making me wonder “what the hell is this?”.

It’s been this and the connection itself that showed me this wasn’t just any ordinary love journey I was used to, and it’s so hard to describe this unless you’ve experienced something similar.

And I realized that this pain was serving a purpose that I needed to address. In order to stop the pain, I couldn’t just ignore it anymore.

This is where more lessons begin. The pain nags at you until you learn to figure your shit out. It REALLY won’t let you NOT begin to dig deeper and understand yourself.

I had to start asking myself questions like…what daily thoughts am I holding that are reinforcing the pain? What ideas if any am I holding onto about this situation that is inherently causing it? Is it my attachment to wanting something to happen with one of the most beautiful connections of my life yet now not even being able to talk to them? That was certainly part of it.

And ever since this has been my journey of learning to strike what has felt like a very tricky balance between loving and letting go. How do I continue to love this person and honor the connection without being attached to the outcome — without my ego trying to control it in some way?

How do I learn to keep this level of love while not having the pain? It almost seemed like the two come hand in hand.

My goal has been in this journey to learn to love unconditionally and without fear, and I honestly can’t say I’m there yet, but at least I’m getting closer.

And looking in retrospect, this journey from the time I met them has been something intensely connected with self evolution.

It was never really about what they did to me or how they handled things. Things happened the way they happened for a reason.

I have simply had to learn to move forward and deal with my own stuff amidst some of the strongest things I’ve ever felt, and it was way harder than I would have ever anticipated it to be.

This is me getting used to being vulnerable more often rather than in a state of pride. Being able to not be afraid to sit with the pain, to love without blame, and without the shame weighing on me of how I handled things.

And in some ways, I recognize I’m a different person than I was a year ago because of it. Kind of the way any sort of pain will wear you down over time. I’m more resilient, more humble, less attached, and stronger within myself, and at the end of the day that’s the most important thing.

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses
your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the
daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem
less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
even as you have always accepted the seasons that
pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the
winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within
you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy
in silence and tranquility.”
—Kahlil Gibran, “On Pain”

What does it mean to truly love another?

What does it mean to truly love another?

Krishnamurti QuoteLet’s talk about love. For me, this quote by Krishnamurti (philosopher) picks out one of the most true aspects I see in relationships. I’ve thought a lot about love, and what it is. Because for me I always truly believed real love was possible, but I felt that for love to be real, it didn’t make sense that it would just start to go away after you break up with someone. That would mean the love you felt was based on something temporary. Like some kind of conditions or desires they were fulfilling for you. And could we truly call that love?

Being “in love” on the other hand is a bit different because those feelings do fade at some point. Which does not mean they are not meaningful, but shows that you feel something for another that eventually will lose its “newness.” The fact of the matter is that I rarely see true love in relationships, and I believe it reflects the general awareness state of ourselves as humans in this period of time.

Truly loving someone means that it doesn’t come from a place where you only love them if they fit into some mental model you have either of who they are or what they’re doing (or not doing). You’re able to truly let go of those things and appreciate them, exactly as they are!

Truly loving someone does not mean that you need to be bound to them in any way. You need the right timing and compatibility to be committed to someone in a partnership. But you can truly love someone whether those things are in place or not.
It’s also okay if we aren’t sure if we have truly loved yet. I don’t think every relationship necessarily will contain real love.

Sometimes you have to be in a place where you are ready to actively love in that way. This happens naturally when you have come to a place where your ego doesn’t have such a firm hold on you. Where your inner world has expanded beyond yourself to a certain degree to make room for a true appreciation and compassion for others. This takes time. You learn through experience to see how often our ideas of who someone is can taint this as well, so you learn to slowly let go of those to really be able to SEE someone for what they are.I also believe that love is the most fundamental thing between two people even if the relationship doesn’t last.

Too many humans are operating in the world with themselves as the center — so the filter for their entire experience of life (not just relationships) is very much solely about fulfilling their needs, though this is invisible to them at the time. We are used to operating from within ourselves because that’s all we’ve known. But once you get to a certain point in self-realization and awareness, an inner shift will start to happen that will expand your life’s filter to be truly more inclusive of others. This is really a prerequisite to being able to come from a place where we’re not always evaluating something’s value to us based on our mental models but truly appreciating it as it is.

It is normal during our growth phases in life that we NEED to focus on ourselves. But I feel too many stay stuck in that for many reasons. It all comes from within. We must come to know and understand ourselves to begin to make that inner shift.

I’ll tell you many people are very surprised and often confused when I explain that I have been in relationships with people whom even if I’m not with them now, still truly love and care for them just the same. If the love is true and based on the right things, why shouldn’t you?

Two people truly caring for each other and supporting each other on their life journeys regardless of the status between them is a beautiful thing that should always be treasured, because it doesn’t happen often enough.

 

Understanding My Own Duality: The Journey Of Being Both a Human and a Soul

Understanding My Own Duality: The Journey Of Being Both a Human and a Soul

I’ve always been, since I was a child, someone who is very tapped into my soul.

”Soul” is one of those slippery terms that varies too much based on the person, so I’ll define it as I understand it. I can’t claim to know what the soul is made of, its exact properties, nor exactly how it operates.

But I have always had a strong awareness (and sense) of a part of me that I would call simply an awareness in itself. It does have its own attributes — it is ME, in the deepest sense. But it is something that remains constant while the rest of my human character does not.

As humans, we define ourselves by humanly things: genetics, various factors in the environment, values, likes, dislikes, and so on. The soul is outside of this. It is a constant presence — an essence — and many describe the soul as having more of an “observer” role throughout our Earthly journeys.

Being aware of my soul to the degree I am today often makes me feel like I am simultaneously in two worlds.

All of this generally sounds like a positive thing, and it is. But now that I have been through multiple types of consciousness-breakthroughs as well as various types of spiritual experiences that came to me rather spontaneously, I’ve become increasingly able to differentiate between the “soul” part of me and the “human character” part of me.

The Challenges of Increasing Awareness

As I become more aware of my soul as I am experiencing being human, I’ve realized that there are inherent difficulties that can come with this.

Part of the difficulty for me has been the fact that learning to follow your soul has been very much like walking blindfolded in a pitch dark place, having to learn to use another set of senses to guide your way.

You have to develop this set of senses, and keep developing them, if you want to fulfill your soul’s desires and understand yourself to the very core. This requires discernment: you have to know when to shut out outer influences and trust your inner voice.

There is a time to acquire knowledge from outside yourself, and a time to shut it out and pay more attention inwardly.

I’ve noticed that the majority of people I meet don’t really know how to trust themselves, let alone listen to themselves, and it’s not really their fault. We are part of a time when we look to external authorities, common knowledge or perhaps the “latest” knowledge in order to decide what anything means. We are taught this from a young age — we get our knowledge from going to school and having someone tell us what things mean.

It’s not a surprise to most at this point in time that as a whole on Earth, we are spiritually lacking, because we are mostly cut off from our selves.

The idea that there is wisdom to be gained from our own selves — from a part of our selves — sounds ridiculous to many. So they don’t even attempt to believe in themselves or begin to listen. They see themselves as just another human going to school to “get smarter.”

From the time I was 17 years old, I began to have significant things happen to me psychologically (including my first “consciousness-expanding” experience at 18). If I, for example, had had a parent who was not very open-minded and I had told them what happened to me, I could’ve been committed to an asylum.

Instead, I learned to follow what my intuition was telling me. Because it was sending messages to me loud and clear, and honestly, those messages were hard to ignore even if I had wanted to.

Potential Isolation

The other difficult thing that happens when you begin to align more with the “soul” part of you, is that you begin to have things happen to you that make it more difficult to relate to others at times.

You may begin to feel, see, and desire different things that sets you apart from the rest. You may become more detached and potentially not enjoy the things you used to enjoy in the same way anymore.

Values or other perceptions you felt once were a part of who you thought you were may begin to fall away as your human character expands beyond what you thought it could ever be.

Seeing the Duality More Clearly: My “Higher Self” Is a Parent to Me

I like to say this journey of awareness really accelerated starting at age 17, and I am now 35. It has taken me this long to be aware of this “soul” part of me to the degree I am now, after developing my mental tools.

In one key experience I had which was some type of random out of body experience, I sensed my “higher self” presence there directly. It felt as though it was the parent and I was the child, yet both were me! It’s hard to make logical sense of with the way we understand things, as it did feel like a separate presence from me in some way, but it was pretty clear that it wasn’t somebody else.

After that for about two weeks, I felt this incredibly secure, beautiful, unimaginable sense of love. It felt like something was taking care of me, showing it loved me and wrapping me in the most unbelievable security blanket. It wasn’t a presence I sensed at that time, but rather just the love itself.

I still don’t fully know where that sense of love came from, but I believe it may have been a result of experiencing that higher consciousness state in the way I did.

The Expansion of Your Understanding of Your Identity

As you continue to wake up to your soul’s presence and understand that you are not just merely the human character you’ve been playing for so long, there is usually a bit of an initial shock or time period of integrating this knowledge. Because quite honestly, it changes your life completely. But it only comes to you when you are ready.

When this integration happens, over time you slowly start to uncover things that feel like you simply had long forgotten them. But at the same time, you can’t put these memories on any kind of timeline. They feel like they are coming more from another dimension (for lack of a potentially better term) than they are another “time.”

For one thing, I began to constantly get what feels like pieces of memories coming from this “soul” part of me. I was able to feel that it not coming from the same part of me that my typical human memories come from. But these memories are so vague that I can’t hold on to them for more than a second. However they often offer me some recognition of something. They often feel like a very sudden remembrance and confirmation of something I experienced but once again, on a timeline I cannot pinpoint.

No matter where you’re at in your life in terms of understanding who you are and how things work, I think the most important thing to take away from all this is simply to believe in yourself and trust in yourself. Learn to go within.

Sometimes this starts by simply questioning who you think you are and why. Where do some of your opinions and perceptions come from? What types of emotional attachments might you have that drive your desire to interpret something one way or another?

Try to look at yourself objectively and with an open mind, and watch how your thoughts tend to process things. Are you mostly negative or positive? Where is the negativity coming from, and does it have any basis?

The journey within typically starts with questions and really learning to acknowledge why you are feeling what you are feeling, without judging yourself.

It’s all easier said than done, but it is one of the most worthwhile journeys there is — and it becomes an endless river of learning as well as many rewards along the way. Over time, you’ll begin to have more confidence, depth, and clarity than you could’ve imagined having.

A Little Taste of Spiritual Love, a Piece Written by Sophie Bashford

A Little Taste of Spiritual Love, a Piece Written by Sophie Bashford

“If you choose to love an awakened woman, understand that you are entering into new, radical and challenging territory.
If you choose to love an awakened woman, you cannot stay asleep.
If you choose to love an awakened woman, every part of your soul will be aroused, not just your sexual organs or even your heart.
Frankly, if you prefer a normal life, stick with a normal girl.
If you want a tame life, seek only a woman who has allowed herself to be tamed.
If you only want to dip your toe into the flowing waters of Shakti [Shakti is the concept or personification of divine feminine creative power in Hinduism], stay with the safe, tamed woman who has not yet plunged into the wildness of the sacred feminine ocean.
It is comfortable to love a woman who has not yet activated her inner sacred powers, because she does not push your buttons.
She will not challenge you.
She will not press you into becoming your highest self.
She will not awaken the forgotten and numbed-out parts of your spirit that urge you to remember that there is more to your life here than this.
She will not look into your weary eyes and send a lightning bolt of Truth through your body, jolting you awake and stirring long-lost desires for Soul Love within you.
A safe, unawakened woman will be wonderfully satisfying and soothing to your ego, heart, and body. She will walk quietly beside you and make you feel needed, responsible, like you are fulfilling your manly role.
If this is enough for you then accept it, love her with all your heart, remain faithful to her and thank her daily for the gift of her mild, un-threatening feminine presence in your life.
If this is not enough for you – if your heart, body and spirit is only craving the ‘other kind of woman’, the wild one – then know that you are on the cusp of soul-shifting transformation.
Know that you are making a serious choice with karmic consequences.
If you choose to step into the aura and body of a woman whose spiritual fires are blazing, you are accepting that you need a certain level of danger and risk in order to grow.
Once you begin to love a woman of this nature, you must accept total responsibility for the life-changes that will then ensue.
Your life will not be sleepily comfortable all the time. Your life will not allow you to stay stuck in old ruts and stagnant routines. Your life will take on a radically-new flavour and scent. You will be ignited by the presence of the wild feminine, and it will begin to send electric shock waves of spiritual light through your entire chakra system, attuning you to the call of the divine.
Choosing to be sexually and romantically-intimate with an awakened woman takes masculine courage to walk fearlessly into the Unknown. But it will reap rewards beyond your mind’s comprehension.
She will take you into undiscovered worlds of mystery and magic.
She will lead you, mesmerized and half-drunk with love, into the wild forests of sensual ecstasy and wonder.
She will show you sacred skies so full and burning with stars that you will start to wonder if you are still living on the same planet that you were born on.
She will break and tear you open so that your fierce, passionate heart drives you half-mad with longing. You will want to consume and penetrate her on every level so that your masculine essence can consume and penetrate the world – illuminating the universe with your devoted Love.
She will see you like you’ve never been seen before.
She will trust you.
She will appreciate you.
She will acknowledge your efforts to make her happy.
She will value everything good that you do, and everything good that you are.
She will not run from your darkness, because your darkness does not scare her.
She will embrace, kiss, caress and love you back to life. She will speak words that your soul understands. She will not punish you for your mistakes.
It is a monumental risk to love an awakened woman, because there is suddenly no place to hide. She sees everything, therefore she can love you with a depth and presence that your heart and body have yearned for so hard, so long, so fiercely…that you wonder whether you have actually been alive for all the time that she has been away.
Loving a woman like this is a choice you make to start living with your soul on fire.
Your life will never be the same again once you’ve invited her energy in.
Take this risk on yourself, or step back, stay with the “normal” girl and accept a different, safer, more comfortable and somewhat calmer life.
Just make sure that if you choose the latter, you don’t spend the rest of your days with your eyes looking back over your shoulder, straining to see once again the hazy vision of feminine mystery that has now disappeared from view.
She has long gone..spiraling back up to the Stars, the distant Galaxies and the Heavens…from where she came.”

–Sophie Bashford

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