Our beliefs impact our ability to love.
Let’s do a simple meditation. Find a quiet, comfortable place to sit and take 3 breaths in slowly, and out slowly.
Now visualize by imagining someone you love someone you care about. Bring them into your awareness, your presence. Imagine how it would be to spend time together, not wanting anything from this person. Not wanting them to be at all different. Not defending or protecting your heart in any way just be in a simple space of appreciation and shared heart space. Notice what this feels like.
One of the most powerful ways to cultivate unconditional loving is to notice , even if they are fleeting, the moments when you are simply appreciating someone, not feeling defended, not having an agenda, and noticing what it is like. “Tara Brach’s course on Loving Relationships with Mindfulness.”
To have this awareness takes a flexibility of thinking. Sometimes we hold beliefs that cause our brain to develop habitual ways of responding. This is common in humans,
Whatever you think about regularly is how your mind gets patterned. “Buddha” “All that we are is a result of what we have thought.” In relationships hard wired beliefs and mind sets don’t allow us to be flexible, or recognize the traits/differences/similarities of our partner as human and who they are. We want them to be a certain way. We get stuck and are unable to open ourselves to what is in the present moment, ‘It is in the present moment where we have choices. Stuckness’ suggests we are bound by these beliefs and have no alternatives. Why do we do this? Often these patterns are set up by us to protect ourselves from being hurt.
When we look outside ourselves to blame others we are unable to change. Defending ourselves on a regular basis pushes partners away. We tend not to see them but only ourselves.
Ask yourself if you remaking assumptions about what the other person is thinking or meaning in their statement or actions. Question whether you are angry, hurt, disappointed or even scared.
Now do the meditation above again and ask yourself what do you prefer, a connected heart space or a disconnected painful space. Awareness brings change and we are capable of change because we can make different choices.