diana iannarone

How do we define what is in opposition to love?  Sadly such a contorted picture of “love” has been given to us that we become numb to the truth of Pure Love.  To reside in this space of Pure Love, what is it that we have to walk away from?  How do we know when it is time to do so?

The answer is quite simple-what is the quality of life you are looking for?

It is possible that your life has been so infiltrated with abuse that you have no history of what Pure Love looks like? Yet in your heart of hearts, you do know.  You do know it is kind, you do know it is tender, you do know it supports, you do know it builds up.  Perhaps most importantly, you do know it is grounded in integrity and honor and, you also know it does not harm or diminish. Given you know, what if you chose to not live in contrast to Love, but instead Live in alignment with it?  Consider that this cannot be the standard you hold others to, unless you yourself choose to live from this space.

One cannot expect to receive, that which they are not willing to give.

And if one is willing to give it, walking away from anything in conflict with that which they give—is wisdom.

There is no need to ever settle in life, for life was meant to be lived in the fullness of Love. This does not mean you don’t work through bumps in the road, it means that you observe if the those you love, who claim to love you, will choose to love you with that honor. Words alone are not the marker, for words can be used to manipulate with promises to keep you believing—always choose to believe what you see, over what you hear. No effort is more exhausting than trying to mold someone into who you wish they would be, or who they claim they want to be. Look back across your life, how many years have been wasted in that act of futility? Life has always been meant to be easier than the path we have chosen.  Choose a new path now.

Can you see how once you make the decision, the decision to accept nothing in opposition to Love, there is a clear shift in your consciousness? In your mind’s eye as you considered these words, can you scan your life and think of the many things that would have to change for you to obtain this glorious manner of living?  And when you think about changing all those things that pass through your thought process, is your immediate thought that it is not realistic, that it can’t be done, that it is just too overwhelming?

The vision of Pure Love understands that it is not changing those things in opposition to Love that should feel overwhelming…it is living them.

People often ask what are the coping skills needed to avoid abuse, or remain steadfast against anything in opposition to Love.  Coping skills is an interesting thought because what is it exactly that you are coping with?

If you are coping with depression, anxiety, health issues, and the like, might it be true that those are a by-product of allowing things into your life that aren’t for your greatest good?  Once we are an adult we decide the quality of our life, and it isn’t coping skills that we need, it is courage.  Courage to stand alone, courage to stand against, courage to walk away…and then the courage to look into our inner core and define what we truly desire and then manifest it.

You decide the level of Love you wish to receive.  You decide the level of Love you wish to give.  Become that which you hope to experience, and you will.

Through all the pain that we have endured from those who claim to love us, many of us begin to redefine Love.  We decide that space of Pure Love, of Pure Acceptance of who we are does not exists.  We acknowledge, we need to settle for something less because it is unreasonable to decide there is something more, something that inflicts no harm and bears no pain. We begin to accept that there is something wrong with us, that it is true we are not good enough…not pretty enough, not capable enough, or perhaps just too sensitive. Adoption of these beliefs, allows us to see only through the lens of those beliefs, always feeling this sort of emptiness inside, seeking a solution to that emptiness outside of ourselves.

We go forth in the world seeking the person that can see us and love us as we are, ignoring that we do not reveal the truth of who we are.  We hide behind a facade, hoping no one will see our wounds inside.  We want to be loved and accepted as we hope they will see us, not as we truly are, as we ourselves will not even face that truth.

We cover any signs of our wounds as best we can, putting forth the illusion of who we are. We hope no one will discover the negative beliefs we have, the terrible things we believe about ourselves.  The scope of how negative we will be to ourselves is in direct proportion to the depth of the pain we endured and what we chose to believe as a result. We ignore the things we harshly say to ourselves, reminding us how we fail, how we are not perfect.  We decide we can do better, we can be better, and we strive to love better, praying our devotion will give us love and acceptance in return. We want to find that person who will see us different than those negative beliefs, someone that can instill in us a new truth, a truth that would remind us we are worthy, we are loveable, we are perfect as we are.

This search is futile.  The search if futile because no one can see us as more than we are willing to see ourselves. At least not for long. So we seek and never find, and so often settle into what feels comfortable, never asking ourselves if this is Pure Love, a love that inflicts no harm and bears no pain. We have released that thought into the ethers…that is just a fairy tale we tell ourselves.

Those of us that choose to stay committed to that belief in fairy tales, tend to fall into the trap of deception.  We are the people that believe we see in another, that potential to become who we believe they want to be. We believe our compassion and Love can heal them, and then we will have what we always longed for, unconditional love.

Yet, as we offer our love and ignore our pain, what do we endure on our path?

Suffering.

What if, the decision that makes us evade pure love, is in fact the decision to pretend we are invulnerable?  What if deciding to be vulnerable in the presence of another, and also deciding to immediately walk away from anyone that did not embrace that wound in love, is the path to find what you seek-Pure Love?

If you looked across your life and decided, that you will accept nothing in opposition to love, would you find that you must depart from those around you? Our societal preference seems to be that we decide we must toughen up, not be so sensitive, tolerate the intolerable…which creates our most tragic delusion, the illusion of invulnerability.

We allowed life to teach us that it is not safe to be vulnerable, not safe to show our wounds, therefore, we unknowingly make the one decision that is guaranteed to keep us from Pure Love. We decide to bury our wounds and use our stamina and endurance to prevail.  We decide we are invulnerable.

This single decision, for as long as we hold it, removes from our life forever, the ability to grant ourselves the one thing we have always wanted. Pure Love.

What if finding Pure Love, is as simple as being your transparent self? Revealing the truth of your inner fears and wounds and then observing how your vulnerability is received by those who claim to care.  Instead, we walk on egg shells.  We tip toe to avoid any negative reaction that might be cast upon us…all this, is in opposition to love.

If we are not willing to be Free, free to be our complete selves, then there is no safe place for us, not even alone with ourselves.  To find love, you must first embrace all aspects of yourself, lovingly embrace every wound, and know that you, must reverse all those beliefs that harm, by exchanging them for ones that reflect love. While healing yourself, only allow those who Love to occupy that space. The pain you allow another to inflict on you, is a reflection of your own grounding in unworthiness. Decide in this moment, you are worthy of complete Love and start by giving it to yourself.

Allow your fears of your failings to be transformed into the knowingness of Love.

Until you are whole and complete in yourself, a complete acceptance and love of yourself, you will never find the true essence of Pure Love.

All vulnerabilities simply desire to be embraced in love.

Decide you will accept nothing less.

The moment we are conceived, we begin the transition from the embodiment of the greatest source of all LOVE into the arms of “Our Family.” The arms of those that chose to bring us into existence, those that chose to have a child, those that decided for us that it was time for us to be brought into the world, and we chose to accept that offer.

From that moment, we know vulnerability.  We trust that it is safe to be vulnerable. We are helpless, having no choice but to fully rely on those around us, first to nurture us into existence, and then to comfort us in our pain, to nourish us with food, to clothe us, to teach us…but above all else to LOVE us.

When we are born, having previously been connected to the source energy that is Love, we have a knowing.  We have a knowing of what pure and complete unconditional Love is. We know. If we are delivered into Loving arms, into the arms of those that understand the sanctity and beauty of what a cherished gift we are, we flourish.  We grow up knowing Love, we know not judgment of another.  We value all life, we set out to love and not harm, we remain unwounded.

How many of us were able to experience such a path?  How many of us were born into the loving arms of those that understood the depths of this love, those that accepted all parts of us exactly as we were? And even in the most loving of environments, is it possible to escape all wounds? Acknowledging that no one can really serve all our needs, as no one can really know what all our needs are except us, makes us cognitive of the reality that even those with the best of intentions are likely to still cause us to wound. And, in order for someone to give us complete and total acceptance and love, they must have arrived to a place where they too have an inner experience of that level of Pure Love. How many of us are in that space, that space where we completely and totally love and accept every part of ourselves? And what is the cost to the quality of our life if we are not in that space?

As we enter the physical word, to this place we have been invited to appear…we soon often realize, that there is a great deal of experiences and words that are in opposition to LOVE.

We begin to see that there are conditions.  We begin to see there are expectations and demands.  We begin to see that our emotions or reactions seem unacceptable, that when we feel or express who we really truly are it is often rejected.  These messages act as guidance seeming to indicate it is not okay to feel.  It is not okay to be REAL. We begin to see that people sometimes wish to harm, hurt, or control instead of LOVE, and most painfully, we learn that often those people are the very people that chose to bring us into the physical world once again. They invited us here, and yet at times seem inconvenienced by our presence.  We do not understand why they don’t unconditionally love us. This is so confusing to us-and so painful.

We have moved from the safe vulnerability of unconditional Love, to the sometimes painful realities of life on the planet. And our wounding of our unprotected vulnerable selves begins.  We suffer, and we often quickly begin to experience that it is not safe to be vulnerable…because it hurts too badly when we are not embraced into the arms of unconditional love.

The rejection of ourselves, directs us to become our adapted self, the self we believe we need to become to be loved and accepted.  This conditional Love, born from our wounds, alters the course of every aspect of our life. We forfeited who we truly are to gain the love and acceptance of those that were unable or unwilling to love us as we are.  How much of ourselves we lose depends on the depth of the wounds that were inflicted.  The tight rope we perceive we must walk, to not fall, to not be rejected, is created, and as our world broadens with more people offering up what is wrong with who we are, siblings, relatives, friends, lovers and so on…our tight rope that we feel we must walk to remain “acceptable” gets more narrow with every passing day; or perhaps to defy the restrictions of  this path, we become rebellious, facing painful natural consequences.  Either way we surrendered who we were meant to be for who we felt we were driven to become.

In our wounded state, we may grow to become reactionary and defensive or we may silence ourselves, retreating into a space where we feel we can avoid the pain of the judgment cast upon us.  We no longer exists solely through the looking glass of Pure Love, we begin to accept there is something to fear, that our existence can be harmful. We learn it is not safe to be vulnerable, because the world often isn’t a safe place.

In this place of confusion we don’t know whether to let people in or keep them out. Our view of love becomes clouded and confused.  We begin to examine options to keep ourselves safe, in some cases looking to build a fortress that no one can enter. Depending on the depths of our pain, we may begin to loathe our vulnerability, and perhaps even loathe the world we entered.  We begin to fear letting people too close.  We then either choose to endure the impenetrable pain or we build the walls creating boundaries to protect ourselves from those who we most turned to for Love. We begin to forget what we knew, the blissful experience of Pure Love, and shift our emotions from our heart of Love to the thoughts of fear.

Sadly as children we are bound by the authority of those around us, as more often than not, we cannot escape the conditions of our life throughout our childhood.  However, once we are an adult we are responsible for the quality of our life.  It is at this time we need to decide whether to let our past define us or seek the wisdom within ourselves to remember how to live a life of Love.  It is in rediscovering the parts of us that we released so long ago that we can recapture our joy and live an authentic life standing in the truth of who we truly are.  We must choose to be our own authority, undaunted by the views of others in any form. In doing so,  it becomes possible to achieve pure love in this lifetime.

First you must realize that you can define all aspects of your life and love.  Are you willing to investigate your current beliefs and assess if they are truly in alignment with who you really are versus who you have felt you had to become?  Are you willing to release the adapted self, willing to walk away from anyone that bestows upon you anything in opposition to Love? Are you willing to redefine your definition of harm?  Are you willing to decide that you need not tolerate pain, that you have the right and ability to protect yourself from any negative energy, words and experiences directed at you? Are you willing to risk being alone if it could lead you to all you ever wanted? Are you willing to believe again in unconditional Love?