We grow up in a way, our life experiences are such, that we feel that we need to find love, to be loved, in order to be happy. This need is rooted in our learned insecurity. Typically, this drive becomes a craving. Followed by an obsessive need to do the things that we’ve learned need to be done in order to gain or retain someone’s love.
In my particular case, I certainly felt that I needed to be loved in order to be happy because I felt I wasn’t loved by my father which left me unhappy and joyless. And since my narrative story was that I wasn’t worthy of love, my ego-mind came upon the method of attracting love by being useful to people. This then became an obsession.
“What,” you may say, “is wrong with being useful to people.” When you put it like that, nothing. But when being useful is implemented by thinking for someone, commenting constantly on what they are doing, then being useful becomes a thorn in the relationship because it undermines the self-confidence of the other person. By constantly commenting you seem to be saying that you don’t trust the ability of the other person to figure things out on their own. Not good.
When I had reclaimed my narrative story (see my post, “Reclaiming the Story of Your Life”), I knew that my life had indeed been filled with love, and that I was loved for who I was. And when I opened up my heart to embrace all aspects of my being and experience (see my post, “The Heart’s Embrace”), I knew that I had everything I needed inside myself to be at peace and happy. But I did not connect the dots and specifically address that part of my narrative that said that I need to be loved in order to be happy and that I needed to be useful to others in order to be loved.
The awareness of this “problem” surfaced after an altercation with a dear friend regarding something I had said and done which undercut his self-confidence. This was not the first time. For some reason, despite meditating on this, I had not been able to stop this damaging activity.
When I took a salt bath that evening to remove all negativity from my body, the first thing that came to me was the story that I need to be useful in order to be loved. That was the cause of my inability to control my wanting to help. Yet I knew that that story was not true. That I have always been loved for the person I am. And so I let the salt remove that toxin from my body.
The next morning when I meditated on this experience, I was immediately aware that the underlying aspect of my story was that I felt I needed love in order to be happy. Yet I knew that that was not true ever since I opened up my heart to embrace all aspects of my being and experience and knew that I had everything I needed inside myself to be at peace and happy. Everything. I neither needed anything from the outside nor could anything from the outside take my peace and happiness away unless I let it. This statement does not negate the nurturing value of someone’s love; it’s just that it’s not needed.
As I sat with this and imagined myself in various settings including ones where I was totally alone, there were no other human beings or animals, I understood that what it means to have everything inside myself to be at peace and happy is that that state comes from the positive energy and joy in my heart that radiates out from me. So whether I’m just surrounded by rocks, or bad weather, or whatever, I extend my joy to them, they become part of my family and nourish me because they are part of the cosmos.
Having removed the negative energy from my body I truly felt cleansed in a way I hadn’t experienced before. And after confirming that I had everything I needed inside myself to be at peace and happy, that I didn’t need to be loved by someone (other than myself), I felt free. I experienced a lightness of spirit.
In my particular case, I certainly felt that I needed to be loved in order to be happy because I felt I wasn’t loved by my father which left me unhappy and joyless. And since my narrative story was that I wasn’t worthy of love, my ego-mind came upon the method of attracting love by being useful to people. This then became an obsession.
“What,” you may say, “is wrong with being useful to people.” When you put it like that, nothing. But when being useful is implemented by thinking for someone, commenting constantly on what they are doing, then being useful becomes a thorn in the relationship because it undermines the self-confidence of the other person. By constantly commenting you seem to be saying that you don’t trust the ability of the other person to figure things out on their own. Not good.
When I had reclaimed my narrative story (see my post, “Reclaiming the Story of Your Life”), I knew that my life had indeed been filled with love, and that I was loved for who I was. And when I opened up my heart to embrace all aspects of my being and experience (see my post, “The Heart’s Embrace”), I knew that I had everything I needed inside myself to be at peace and happy. But I did not connect the dots and specifically address that part of my narrative that said that I need to be loved in order to be happy and that I needed to be useful to others in order to be loved.
The awareness of this “problem” surfaced after an altercation with a dear friend regarding something I had said and done which undercut his self-confidence. This was not the first time. For some reason, despite meditating on this, I had not been able to stop this damaging activity.
When I took a salt bath that evening to remove all negativity from my body, the first thing that came to me was the story that I need to be useful in order to be loved. That was the cause of my inability to control my wanting to help. Yet I knew that that story was not true. That I have always been loved for the person I am. And so I let the salt remove that toxin from my body.
The next morning when I meditated on this experience, I was immediately aware that the underlying aspect of my story was that I felt I needed love in order to be happy. Yet I knew that that was not true ever since I opened up my heart to embrace all aspects of my being and experience and knew that I had everything I needed inside myself to be at peace and happy. Everything. I neither needed anything from the outside nor could anything from the outside take my peace and happiness away unless I let it. This statement does not negate the nurturing value of someone’s love; it’s just that it’s not needed.
As I sat with this and imagined myself in various settings including ones where I was totally alone, there were no other human beings or animals, I understood that what it means to have everything inside myself to be at peace and happy is that that state comes from the positive energy and joy in my heart that radiates out from me. So whether I’m just surrounded by rocks, or bad weather, or whatever, I extend my joy to them, they become part of my family and nourish me because they are part of the cosmos.
Having removed the negative energy from my body I truly felt cleansed in a way I hadn’t experienced before. And after confirming that I had everything I needed inside myself to be at peace and happy, that I didn’t need to be loved by someone (other than myself), I felt free. I experienced a lightness of spirit.
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