Caroline Oceana Ryan |
This week’s Message is an excerpt from the Collective’s new book:
Connections: The Collective Speak on Romance and Friendship
Go Here for info on how to receive the free Connections Preorder Giveaway gifts
From Chapter 6 – “On Releasing Jealousy and Insecurity”
[Question] I was a very jealous person when I was younger, though am far less so now. I know I can’t own or control anyone, nor do I want someone thinking they can own or control me.
Yet I still feel insecure if I see my partner noticing and spending time with any woman he considers attractive. I still wonder if I am enough. I wonder whether it means that my partner isn’t fully satisfied with me.
Am I breaking my own heart, by holding false expectations? I need some clarity on this!
[The Collective] This is a fascinating area, and one that goes to the very heart of the issue of self-love.
For you cannot fully trust and believe that another loves you until you know that you love and believe in yourself.
Self-love is the very large, irreplaceable piece of the puzzle that is missing in most human connections.
It costs both partners—and whole families—a great deal in terms of emotional energy spent on worry, feelings of insecurity, expectation of the need to compete with or be fulfilled by others, perfectionism, and other offshoots of not loving yourself fully, exactly as you are at this moment.
From that perspective, you can see that jealousy or possessiveness is only a symptom of a far deeper problem. If you do not love yourself enough to be kind and patient with yourself when outer conditions get rocky, you will find it nearly impossible to believe that someone else could love you—or that you are lovable—unless conditions are perfect.
As you go through life unconscious of this gap between your desire to be loved and your inner lack of self-love, you then project onto outer situations your feeling that not only are you not enough to yourself, but this person or that has confirmed your worse suspicions—that you do not measure up to that person over there, who clearly outscores you on every level.
We would say, that to come out of that game, which no one can win, is the best possible antidote for criticizing yourself for not being an idealistic dream—someone your partner is so fascinated by that they would never think of noticing someone else.
Because in order for them to never notice another attractive person, they would have to cease being attracted to anyone, including you, and we are sure that is not what you would want.
You would also live in the increasingly uncomfortable situation of being not a whole human being to them, but an object—a fantasy or illusion that is not real, and therefore only experienced in an altered state.
Falling in love can be just such an altered state. But it is not sustainable as a day-to-day reality for anywhere near as long as most people assume.
And so the question becomes, Is feeling secure about being a perfect ideal—your own, or someone else’s? Or is it about extending to yourself and others the kind of love that is unconditional?
The love that says Yes to every quirk, preference, and characteristic that makes everyone the unique example of Nature they were born to be?
This is not to say that all behaviors should be tolerated. No one should use flirting with or commenting on an attractive person as a way to upset their partner. That is passive aggression, and unacceptable.
But releasing the behavior of the other person for a moment, let’s look at your words and actions toward yourself.
We would say that your most secure moments come after having spent time being kind to yourself—special time alone in Nature or in meditation, or listening to peaceful or inspiring music.
Or time spent being creative in some way—music, painting, dance, or some other form of self-expression that gives you joy.
Likewise, time spent giving to others, including yourself, in ways that support good health, well-being, self-esteem. All of this centers you in the high heart, so that you are channeling your higher self.
Much of the stress of the modern world comes down to the opposite of that—the belief that instead of expressing yourself joyfully, you must always be playing a role of some sort.
Not merely the roles of parent, worker, artist, or activist. But a sort of stage role as the Perfect Woman or Powerful Guy or Inspiring Leader.
These are all as one-dimensional as they sound. They are caricatures of what people are meant to be. Human beings have many more dimensions and aspects than what your modern advertisements claim you have.
Those very flat prototypes are intentionally created to put you in the unhappy space of feeling Less Than, Out of It, Not Very Well Informed, Not Cool, Not Wealthy, Not Pretty or Handsome Enough, Not Successful, or Not Someone You’d Want to Date.
You have spent a lifetime viewing these commercials on television, on the internet, in print media, and in film (the big studio films often being only slightly masked advertisements for certain products or industries, hence the two-dimensional characters).
So that whatever you are, they tell you, that is not enough.
And we would say, that you are now in a place in your life where you realize that trying to keep someone in your back pocket in one way or another does not fill the gaping insecurity that these distortions have created inside you.
You see yourself Ascending to a higher level, and would like to take your self-esteem and your connections with others with you, rather than keeping them on the old, false level you were taught as a child.
For truly, there is no way to constantly “measure up” and always be the winner. That is a false security, to always be outwardly beautiful, charming, well-dressed, admired.
You have seen how easily it can slip away, sometimes in only a few years’ time. And it is so that those lauded as most beautiful and accomplished in your societies are often the least satisfied, with themselves and with their inner and outer lives.
Their beauty is all the more fleeting, as they pursue one method or another to feel better about themselves, in the competitive race they entered when young and idealistic enough to think they could run in it forever.
The pursuit of perfect health, beauty, and attractiveness on any level cannot be based in the expectation that it is wrong somehow to not be perfect.
“Perfection” as you know it cannot be the goal.
You are not made for perfection in that sense, and your spiritual and psychological makeup are designed in such a way as to either rebel or “go numb” within the mechanism of pursing an idea of perfection that is no more than outer conformity.
This is why so many feel their subconscious rebel each time they force themselves into an exercise regimen or weight loss system that is not based on holistic health and self-love, but self-criticism.
You were not designed for a false form of perfection. You were designed to love and honor yourself, in all your uniqueness, no matter what—and nothing can change that beautiful, uniquely human fact about you.
And so yes, when your spouse or lover looks at another with admiration, you may feel a bit left out—but only if you have left yourself out first.
If you have spent the attention you need to spend on caring for and learning to like yourself—the attention and kindness your own heart requires, not that which society requires—then you will either not notice or not mind that your beloved has let their eye wander for a moment.
This is true for all sexes, orientations, and sexual identities. Because when you extend the Love and compassion of your high heart to yourself, as well as to everyone else, your partner’s attention or lack of it is not the central starting point for how you feel about yourself.
When you can look in the mirror and smile into your own eyes with the warmth, compassion, and caring that you would reserve for a beloved small child, then you will see how far you have come.
When you can spend time each day being kind to yourself—exercising for the love of movement and feeling like a child again, being self-expressive for the beauty and joy of it, having quiet time in meditation, and time in Nature to connect with the trees, rocks, waterways, and to feel their ancient wisdom—then you will begin to remember that you are someone precious who is well worth spending time with.
Someone interconnected with all Life. Someone uniquely beautiful in ways that the human ego may miss, but that the awakened heart will always recognize.
Then with this newfound appreciation of self, you spend time with your partner, maintaining that same wavelength of allowing them to be who they are, while being amazed at the amount of soul Light you see coming from their heart, as you cease to judge them.
And if the moment comes when you recognize that it is time to release them and move on, you are able to do so.
Not out of bitterness that they did not perform their role as your preferences or insecurities or society dictated, but out of the realization that your self-love is far bigger than any one situation, or any one connection with another . . .
Go Here for info on how to receive the free Connections Preorder Giveaway gifts
Copyright 2017, Caroline Oceana Ryan
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