Do you want to know what love is? Then be careful of what you ask for, because you will get it! What most of us don’t realise though, is that in order to make room for love to rest and live inside of us, we are inviting our subconscious mind to bring to the surface, everything unlike love.

This will show in up your life as experiences, situations and people that bring up your feelings of being unworthy, un-loveable, not good enough, angry, empty and afraid of being abandoned and rejected. Why? Because this is where you are blocked to love, these are the emotional walls that you use to keep love out, and keep yourself locked safely away. These are the places inside of you where you have settled for something you may believe is love, when in reality it is simply, good enough. “Our barriers to love are rarely consciously chosen. They are your efforts to protect the places where the heart is bruised. Somewhere, sometime, we felt as though an open heart caused us pain or humiliation. We loved with the openness of a child, and someone didn’t care, or laughed, or even punished us for the effort. In a quick moment, we made a decision to protect ourselves from ever feeling that pain again.”

So what does this have to do with being ready for love? One of life’s laws is ‘you will create what you need to defend’, because you have made an agreement with life that something is in fact true. Unfortunately, we will do more in life to avoid feeling our pain, than we will do to gain pleasure. Think about something that you really want in your relationship; trust, open communication, intimacy, respect…. Now think about an emotionally painful experience that you would do almost anything to avoid feeling, for example, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, loneliness. If you have had an experience of betrayal in the past and it ripped your heart wide open, then you most probably made a decision to never again feel that feeling at all costs.

When you are faced with trusting your partner once again in a relationship, you will automatically be sensitive to betrayal of any kind, and you will do more to protect your heart, than you will to create trust in the relationship. This will play out as insecurity, control, jealousy, and an inability to be emotionally available to your partner. This will continue to show up in your relationships until you let go of the need to defend those hurt places inside of you with your emotional walls. It is the law of mind; As you believe, so shall it be. For most of us our greatest fear goes something like this, “if I show you who I really am, if I show you my fears, and my vulnerabilities, if I show you that part of me that even I am afraid to accept, will you still love me?’

Being ready for love requires intimacy, in-to-me-you-see. It takes courage to show your partner who you really are, especially when you struggle with your own self love and acceptance. Learning about love involves personal growth and self discovery. As long as you are willing to settle for a good, but not a great relationship, and for a life behind the comfort zones of emotional walls, you will never know the vulnerable depth that is required in order for your heart to reach open and really know what love is. When you are ready to know love, life will always send you someone with whom you can work through the places inside yourself, that need to be healed. He/she will shine the brightest light on every part of you so that you see all the games you play to keep love out, and also show you, how far you have come in your embrace of loves presence in your life.

Love brings both joy and pain. Offer love your heart, mind, body and soul, and be ready to learn what love teaches you. No matter how painful the experience “remember the eyes of the one’s you have loved, and don’t forget their mark on your soul”. They have been great teachers for you on your path to knowing love, in all it’s forms. Most importantly, know that being ready for love is learning that love is the practise of being your most authentic self, and loving and accepting who you are in every moment, no matter what .  

Lani Neilson