My Perception of Love
In my bubble of limited awareness, I’ve developed a relationship with love through my sense of self-value and rightness. I’ve found that when I’m right in my efforts to survive, I’m rewarded. That reward I define as love – a feeling of gaining value for being right.
My need to be right conflicts and competes with my relationships. Between my level of rightness and my innate value I look for love’s confirmation of support. All my definitions for love must support this association between rightness and value. When my associations don’t equate to love’s support, I feel I must act.
Each time I do what’s right I’m rewarded with value. Through repetition my value increases. What’s wrong takes from my values, which is why I need to defend against it. Fighting for right and against wrong then becomes my duty. Thus, I introduced an innate conflict into every relationship.
My Conflicted Relationship with Love
Because I may need love in my relationships, I must need conflict too. Instinct drives me to live to love and fight to live. Therefore, I associate my need to live with my need for love – and a need for fighting!
I defend the rightness of that conflict by comparing it with what’s wrong. To me wrong means failure and in nature, failure means death.
Love gives life purpose. Being without purpose is symbolic of failure and death. That purpose makes defense of what’s right necessary. I feel I must fight against wrong constantly. Thus, my definition of love may be killing me!
Love Competes for My Attention
Because I equate love with life, it has an edge in competition with many other influences vying for my attention. Each influence carries values for my attention in terms of gain and loss. With practice and experience, I learn to be alert to that which I pay attention.
In my competitive state of awareness, I boost love’s offerings by paying for its defense in the currency of attention.
When loss means death, it can also mean life
Within this competitive state, I allow to exist only what I choose to defend. When I lose a competition, I feel a distinct loss of love, value, and rightness. That’s why it feels painful and confusing when I hear my winning opponent claim, “Love is on my side.” I know love can’t be on the side of losers because I can’t be a loser! And yet, here I am! Conflicted!
The prospect of losing all I hold important about me feels devastating. For this reason, I feel that my perception of such loss must be challenged in some way. My confusion can bring about a desire for resolution.
Thus, my intention for one outcome can present another. This confusion of outcomes, in which benefits become threats and vice versa, can lead me to question my perceptions about love.
This awareness presents an opportunity – an invitation for movement in a new direction.
