Falling in Love with ALL of Life (...and a few men along the way ;)

I am falling more and more in love with life daily. My heart expands and I don’t want to keep myself small anymore - so this of course brought up the uncomfortable and squeamish topic of romantic love for me.

Recently I was doing an exercise in our meditation class which had me looking directly into the eyes of someone I’ve had a crush on for ages! I have spent ages wishing and hoping that this stupid crush would pass. It hasn’t… In fact it got ‘worse’!!!! :(

This 'crush' (for want of a better word) is very confusing and weird. I don’t understand it because it is not a literal crush (i.e. if he was single and he ‘asked me out’ I’m 99.999% sure I’d say no), so I really don’t get it! I carry this guilt around with me about it and I find it really hard to meet his eyes a lot of the time, so I really had to pull myself together to do this staring exercise. I was standing there looking directly into his eyes and this huge wave of both anger and sadness welled up within me for feeling guilty for just being human. I do not want to be ashamed of who I am. I no longer want to be afraid and embarrassed by what someone may see in me and how they may judge it! I do not want to live in fear and be ashamed of ANY part of myself or feel the need to hide potentially embarrassing pieces of myself behind carefully constructed walls that I then have to waste energy keeping up. If the crush is still there and not going away there must be some kind of message or lesson in it for me. Even if it’s just to not be ashamed of myself - no matter what - and to accept all of myself (quirky inexplicable embarrassing crushes and all)! I have tried to find a logical reason for it and often wondered if he and I have met in many previous lives and so there is a deep caring within me there that feels all too similar to that sexual pull because that’s the only way my mind can interpret it! Is it because he’s male so it’s less acceptable to feel so strongly about someone that isn’t a boyfriend or family? Why is it that I can easily express my deep love of my awesome female friends and not remotely confuse it with wanting to sleep with them or being afraid of them seeing it that way and being afraid of me… There is such a deep desire within each of us to connect back to The One again - yet we are told to be PC, appropriate, careful and respectful of others by society and keep our distance. Then we’re also told that we are all One, we’re connected anyway and there is nothing to fear but fear itself! It can get confusing!

(It helped when I heard Ken Wilber describe once that the way you know who your guru is, is that you fall in love with them! But that didn’t alleviate the crush feelings). He’s a fantastic person though and truthfully I’d be lucky to find someone similar to him.

I have found two more wonderful men that I follow their awesome sharings on Facebook and I feel quite strongly attracted to them too. (Yup causing more squirming within and the need to make myself behave appropriately again). My turn-on and turn-off's are mental anyway. You could look like Brad Pitt, but the way to my heart is to fascinate and intrigue me mentally or else I walk away. Being on the same spiritual path as me would be an important factor in dating anyone anyway and it's nice to see some yummy straight unmarried men in this line of seeking, but it feels like I'd be breaking some doctor/patient boundary.

This line of thought then led me to thinking about a wonderful man I fell deeply and passionately for 6 years ago. He was separated from his wife at the time and our eyes met across the room and it was instantaneous and electric and profound. I had all but given up on love and nearly life itself. That evening I began to believe in magic again! He decided to give his marriage a second chance and I knew I shouldn't try to stop him. Deep down I also knew that my path was taking me back to South Africa, so I let him go. He didn’t return to me and I moved back home... I got back in touch with him again once I was strong enough to see him happy with someone else. His marriage did end and he is now engaged to a beautiful woman and seems so happy and I am truly happy for him. I will always be grateful to him for helping me wake up at the bottom of the pit! I was drinking and smoking myself to death and somehow he made it through the sozzled haze to touch a place in my soul and awaken within me the will to live! That is soul level stuff again! :D

Then there are the other types of love. I also have had my neice and nephew expanding my capacity to love to levels I had forgotten were possible! And I have amazing friendships in my life that are so supportive, encouraging, growing and inspiring I cannot help but love life when I look around me! Why would I want to limit my capacity to love?

Thinking about all these things together made me wonder about how we tell ourselves NOT to love too much or only to love appropriately, but yet love is all there is and there is nothing else and the more love we become the more love we are able to express and that’s freaking fabulous!! Isn’t that one of the purposes of life? I’m certainly not afraid of any of the people I love rejecting me because I don’t need them to love me back in order to just simply LOVE them!!!!!
If I'm going to fall in love with life then I need to be able to love every single bit of it... and how on earth can I love those that hurt me if I don't feel comfortable to fully and simply love the people that inspire me and the people that have supported me???

All I know is that I truly do not want to keep myself small and be afraid to be love or to feel love. Anyway love does not only equal sex!!! (even if that is a really awesome way of expressing love it, is not the only way ;) and I don’t want to limit or restrict my capacity to give or show love to anyone I come across for fear of what is appropriate/PC. 
(I’m not very good at being PC anyway and that I consider to be my best feature!)

Your critics help you define yourself

Every time someone questions who you are and what you believe (if you can look past the hurtful comments or mistrust) you - hopefully - do an internal check and you answer. You get to decide who you are in those moments!

If you go through life unquestioning, unopposed, you don't really get a chance to exercise your YOU muscle. So be grateful for your 'opponents', the doubters for they help you define who you are and EVERY time you state unequivocally to the Universe who you have decided to be you affirm YOU and you get more support for being YOU :)

This is not to say that those awesome people who support you play less of a role, I'm saying that everyone and everything has a purpose and don't throw out the stuff or people that seem bad without thorough examination. Then thank them for their lessons and, if you need to, let them go with blessings and gratitude for there is something awesome to be found in everything in your life!

So the next time someone gives you a hard time, remember that on a soul level we all wish for ALL of our highest!!!