Love & Intention

It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m home with a phenomenally nasty cold, the type where breathing freely seems a distant, cherished memory. When single on Valentine’s Day, I still like to celebrate love in one way or another, and most options are simply out of my reach at the moment. If it involves anything other than laying around missing my previously-unappreciated capacity for breath, it’s just not happening today. So, this blog post is my gift to myself this year. I hope it in some way is a gift to anyone reading it as well, but…really, this one’s for me.

My friend and I decided recently to do the “Calling in the One” book together – it’s a seven week thing, focusing mainly on clearing out any of your old limiting thoughts about love and the possibility for love in your life. The great (and challenging) thing about it is that it really asks you to look intensely at the ways you’ve been creating your own experience. They call it “Self as Source” for short, and I find looking at it in my own life both horrifically painful and wildly liberating.

No longer do I get to wander around complaining that I’m having a tragic day at work… instead I get to ask myself exactly what I’m doing to create a tragic day for myself.  The upside is that I’ve been creating some pretty magical days lately (before the killer virus, at least), and when I don’t, I’m spending the time to figure out why. Liberating, beautiful, hard.

On to love – for years I’ve had an inner mantra going: “I’m too fat, no man will ever love me.” I’m not going to go into why, cause it’s irrelevant at this point, but just know that this particular mantra has been playing in my head for most of my lifetime, and continues to do so even when I’ve been quite thin and there are men in my life who deeply love me.

If I added flutes, it would be the world’s least empowering love chant, and I’ve been railing against it for years. I’ve spent periods of time hating men for being so shallow, and periods of time trying to find evidence that it is not true (if, as a woman, you ever have doubts about men being attracted to your body type, I strongly encourage you to spend some time surfing porn online. I promise you, there are likely men paying to see your own personal version of unacceptable naked. Purely for research, of course  )

Back to the book – on the first week, one of our ‘assignments’ was to create an intention for what we want to create in partnership, and here’s mine:

I intend to create a deep spiritual partnership with my beloved, with each of us seen and cherished for being exactly who we are; a safe haven of affection and encouragement to live our lives to the very limits of our souls; a center of peace and grounding for our community.

My first thought upon finishing this was “Well, hell, I would date myself”, and it hit me like lightning – who, exactly, is shallow here? It’s not men – it’s ME. Who has been reducing all that I am, everything I have to give, the depths of my own soul to “I’m too fat, no man will ever love me”? Really, Liz?? Really??? Suddenly it has all the sense of “I can’t type, no one will ever hire me.”

My Valentine’s gift to myself this year is this – no longer will I lead my romantic life based on an ancient thought planted by a lunatic. I’m leading it from the whole of who I am, a woman perfectly capable of creating the type of partnership I intend and committed to doing so, a partnership that I suspect many men would be incredibly happy to create with me.

A question for you – and for myself – is what area of your life are you holding back from due to some absurd belief?

“I’d love to start a business, but I don’t know how to create a website.”

“I’d love to raise a child, but I’m too old.”

“I’d love to travel, but I can’t afford it.”

Whatever it might be for you – even if it seems 100% true – I’m inviting you to just put it down for a moment, and craft an intention about what you truly want to create. Then step back, and see if the original belief isn’t sounding a hell of a lot like “I can’t type, no one will ever hire me.” Throw that stupid belief into the stinking pit from whence it came! Do it as your own Valentine’s gift to yourself!

I hope that you, too, are celebrating love today – celebrating all the love in your life, and the infinite amount of love within you to give. Happy Valentine’s Day, friends.