The Dark Side of the Whole Truth About Love: Receiving Love is the Other Side of the Coin
Part three of a four-part series on Big Love
Jennifer Finch, LPC, NCC, SEP
February 20, 2023
Did you know that love is a formula? C8H11NO2 + C1OH12N20 + C43H66N12012S2 in other words: Dopamine + Serotonin + Oxytocin = Love. Other complex chemicals are also involved but I find it interesting, silly perhaps, that neuroscience and the scientific literature has siphoned and deduced love to a chemical formula.
Not surprisingly, the research I have found exclusively studies the initial stage of love or what I call horizontal or animalistic love. The love tropes of a Disney culture. This is love in a contextual relationship that is bound in storylines and tethers us, even consumes us, with someone or something else. Transactional love. There is not much scientific research on what I am calling Big Love. Unless we work within the parameters of quantum mechanics. We must therefore go to the spiritual texts. So, this is the intersection of spirituality, and quantum psychology, folks. Absolutely don’t take my word for it. This is for the seekers, the curious, and for those few individuals that want to become better selves and experience the presence of love. Disclaimer: Big Love is long term, a life-long discovery, and is antithetical to a “quick fix.”
Big Love is a universal energy, a primary force that powers our motivation and movement toward awakened realization. It reflects spiritual illumination. But you will have to make up your own decision about Big Love. In my personal experience as well as my patients’ and students’ experiences, (and a host of leaders, teachers, erudite Sophoclean scholars, and gurus dating back to 500 B.C.), somatically exploring Big Love has been incredibly healing to all of us. And we collectively exhausted most of the scientific, psychological, and self-help pathways. In my opinion we cannot leave spirituality out of the healing voyage equation. We can’t fool ourselves into thinking that scientific formulas are going to explain the entire scope of a complex human experience of love. Therefore, to open psychologically is to open spiritually. I see no difference. Neither did Albert Einstein, so I feel my theoretical convictions are in good alignment.
The love formula above is in fact a “form of blindness, a form of madness.” This love that we crave and that we want, is not the truth. It is a mythic quest. It is short lived, leaving us craving and grasping for more. And scientifically it has been proven that “the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which neuroscientists think is responsible for critical judgment, de-activates when we fall in love.” Hence the reason that “love is blind.”
Jack White speaks this scientific truth in his song, “Love is blindness.” “Love is blindness, I don’t want to see; a little death without mourning, no call, and no warning; baby, it’s a dangerous idea.”
Many of us might agree that it is a dangerous idea to be blind in love, especially when it is horizontal love, bound up energetically with someone else. We get blindsided and feel unprepared when we start to see who someone really is after that chemical formula wears off. Ouch!
When we have a screwed-up idea of what love is, we have veils over our heart, and most likely the one you are in love with does too. As we learned in post two in this series, Big Love cannot get through and allow us to see clearly if we have veils covering our hearts. If we know Big Love intimately within ourselves, then we can see clearly. We can see if others have veiled hearts. We can feel our hearts closing when we are in another’s presence because it feels like a familiar but unhelpful pattern. If we cannot be our full selves in the presence of our intimate lovers, family, or children, then something is off. True, deep, boundless love cannot be given or received in such an environment.
The other side of the coin is examining the part we play in why we don’t feel love, loved or lovable. If we want to get off the carousel ride of formulaic blind love, we need to see how we have become Ouroboros eating our own heads.
When we don’t open to Big Love, when we don’t want others to fully see us, yet we somehow request to see all of them, we stand in this hypocrisy and inevitably block ourselves from feeling love. We become the exact reason why we cannot access a feeling of love. This is dangerous, as Jack White sings, as it leaves us chasing after love or grasping at other addictions to fill up the void inside. We are putting ourselves on our own desert island. Yet, we easily point the finger and blame others for not loving us perfectly. Blind spots are also blinding.
We must examine our part in it and look at the other side of the coin. Are we erecting our own obstacles?
We are all looking for love. But we have restrictions to how much we allow love in, or let it seep out. Everything is hinged on if we are getting love or not, and how much and in what way? This is essentially an eternal cycle of destruction, until we realize that love isn’t out there. It is within us and surrounding us. Love is a meta expression of consciousness, a vast energy field, that we can access quite palpably. As strange as this might sound, I have come to know this felt-sense of Big Love, I know how to access it, and how to open my life up to live richly in it. I once covered my heart, just like most of us do. Too much pain, betrayal, hurt. How could I open myself up to be in harm’s way again and again? But what I realized is that keeping my heart protected constricted me from living my life AS ALL OF ME. I was only living my life from my wounded, restricted self. Essentially, I was walking backwards into my future, unwilling to expose my heart, therefore I kept it hidden and shielded from view. I became an emotional blackhole whose only contact with life was through cutting sarcasm. I learned that to let Big Love in, I had to turn around and face my whole Self, including my heart, forward. This took some persistence and training and a lot of courage. At least initially.
Big Love is like oxygen—without it the soul can’t find the energy or drive to develop and grow. Horizontal love is participation in perpetuity playing a game. Pulling on Adrianne’s thread in an unsolvable labyrinth. We are stuck in a Johnny Lee song and “Lookin’ for love in All the Wrong Places.”
We haven’t yet discovered that love is an intrinsic part of who we are. This is the preliminary teaching. We won’t move forward unless we understand this.
We, like the Tin Man, already have a heart, but we have covered it up, repeatedly out of defensiveness and our wanting to protect it from getting hurt. But even with all these defensive structures and scaffolding over our hearts, how far do we really get? How much safer do we feel? Is the scaffolding really making the building behind it stronger and more self-sustaining? Is it really protecting us? Despite all those arduous efforts, we still get hurt, don’t we?
We don’t have to have a think on it, it feels like an illusory tale. Extraordinary magical thinking with great expectations that if I try harder to not feel hurt, cover up my heart, then I absolutely won’t get hurt, I am untouchable. Or invisible. Or so numbed out that life turns gray. Or red.
We believe we are protecting our hearts, but it is not stopping us from feeling hurt or scared or angry. Why? There is no way to walk this earth, free to be you and me, and completely escape being hurt by others, or by life itself. I guarantee that we will continue to get hurt by others and by life. Life is suffering. It’s how we navigate these insufferable waters that makes the difference.
So, what do we have to lose if we slowly titrate the removal of the veils over our hearts? If we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t, then in my experience it feels so much more freeing and robust to live in the open spaciousness of Big Love. All the colors and all the feels return to full vibrancy and vitality.
So, this is a path for the brave. It is boldly vulnerable. It is for those that are willing to walk straight into that unexpected uncertainty knowingly. It is a trail for those no longer willing to risk themselves and stay in a constricted way of living with a covered-up, clamped down, hardened heart. It is no wonder we have a nation of rampant cardiovascular diseases. We are quite literally creating blockages in our own hearts. But we must examine the part we play in it all. How are we blocking our own hearts from feeling love?
The hard truth is that we have set ourselves up to feel unloved. This isn’t our fault. We live in a culture that delivers unachievable messages and myths and false promises of love. We have looked to the outside to feel love because that is how it begins in human co-dependent birth. It is animalistic, mammalian, by design to care for our young. But if we stay here in this co-dependent horizontal model, we remain an infant. We keep reacting to the world from our child parts. And we are tantrum-ing that we are not getting the love that we want, or we didn’t receive the love that we needed.
Maturing and fully coming into our adult selves requires an opening to a vertical path. A differentiated stance apart from others and our limited ideas of what love is.
When someone loves you, it feels like they are really seeing you. They can’t help but love you. Real love is directly connected with the perception of the truth about who you are. But if we block that from others, we don’t want others to see all of us, for fear of them finding out we have shame, or guilt; we did something bad, we are bad; we are riddled with fears and anxieties or imperfections; we are gigantic posers, and we don’t feel we amount to much. Or we are just down right scared to let others in for fear of getting hurt. When we block others from seeing us, it is impossible to feel and receive love. The truth eventually tumbles down the entire relational infrastructure. It usually collapses into one destructive break, a defining moment that tears the whole thing down. D-Day. We are trying to manufacture and architecturally design perfect love, horizontally. Horizontal structures only amount to Motel 6’s. All remarkable architecture is tall, strong, monumental, and majestic. We have to look up, climb up, build up.
We want love, but we don’t dare risk uncovering our heart. We want relationships where we feel loved, but we can remain hidden and unexposed. We can’t possibly let them see all of us, because then they won’t love us, right? By doing this, we are causing harm. To ourselves, and to others. We are not being honest, and the light doesn’t shine here. We are cultivating an environment that withholds love from our own selves, and one that is ripe for dis-ease. We are creating a deserted landscape, a black hole, and we are doing this to ourselves. We are constricting ourselves from accessing and staying open to love. So, what right do we have to tantrum about feeling unloved.
When you are loved, you feel all kinds of things, even scary, naked, and exposed things, but you remain open to being seen. We allow all of ourselves to be seen. We can’t chicken out here. But if we leave parts hidden, it won’t work. It will never work. Others will struggle to see you, even though you are demanding to be seen, heard and validated. As I said before, even Superman cannot see through lead!
To note: I am talking about being seen in our most intimate relationships. Relationships where love is wanted by all parties. Not being seen by the wide, open world. I am not a fan of radical vulnerability. We reserve the right to remain private and professional.
Whether or not you can receive love even in these most intimate relationships is so important and is often the other side of the coin that we don’t examine. It is much harder to take the crucible approach and examine the part we play in it all.
If I ask, “Tell me a way you have felt unloved?” We could fill a room full of whiteboards and then some.
But if I ask, “Tell me all of the ways that you tend not to see love ---all the ways that you reject and deny love –all the ways you block yourself from love – all the ways you close down your own heart?” The monologue becomes much more contemplative, and interesting. But definitely harder, right? Just watch your defenses go up. The yes-butting, the blaming arrives quite quickly and predictably.
If I hold my finger right there on the hot button and press further by asking you to consider both the present and the past, because the past is a key to the present; we can see how we block ourselves from receiving love. Our restricted receptivity to love is usually a continuation of how we blocked it early on. Love felt finite. If you are squirming a little that is good. It is through inquiry that we change and spiritually grow.
You also might not allow yourself to feel love in a certain situation because you will open yourself up to relentlessly feel all the pain and hurt and deprivation around not getting love in general, or in the way you wanted or needed to be loved. This is a huge barrier. Grief needs to be allowed to clear the arteries blocking the heart. All that cardiovascular disease, remember.
We hold love with tight parameters. Conditions like waiting to receive love and approve of how we are receiving it before we will give it back. Withholding love goes both ways. To receive love means that you are willing to feel it and experience it. If you are not willing to experience love, you cannot give it. If someone loves you, it should feel like they love you. But if you love someone else, it should feel to them that you love them. So maybe ask around. Do others feel loved by you? Or is it horizontal love with conditions? Expectations?
We all have a gigantic blind spot here and hold a very bloated idea that we are so loving that of course those around us feel our love. But, they most likely feel love from you how you feel love from others. Distorted, confused, limited, and unrequited. If it feels like their love is being squeezed through a sieve and we only get one drop at a time, this is the horizontal love formula that keeps us blind.
Real love feels at the very core that you welcomed and embraced with open arms exactly how you are. Big Love contacts all of you, your whole body-mind-spirit, all at the same time. It sees you. Like the mountain sees you. If our horizontal love relationships didn’t provide this, then discovering Big Love can be the healing salve.
When we are held in Big Love, we can be our fullest self, large, big, and emotional. Nothing is too big for Big Love. We feel cherished and held in a container of Big Love that is Universal and boundless. We don’t need to constrict ourselves to fit in any longer. But, to open to Big Love, a requirement is to inquire how we are blocking ourselves from it.
If you are waiting around for love out there, I wish you the very best. But for the hardworking few, there is hope on the horizon. We can end this debilitating and soul crushing horizontal love cycle. We can wander vertically, begin to tear down the scaffolding, rend our veils that cover our heart and begin accessing Big Love.
And, secondarily, when we access Big Love, giving love to others is no longer a problem. When we rest in Big Love, we don’t need to DO anything. Love is as natural as a sunflower turning toward the warmth from the rays of the sun. Nothing is required. Love is simply transmitted and to others it feels like love. Pure Love. Pure Love that embraces a Whole Child, or a Whole Lover. This is not blind formulaic love, this is wide, open, clear-seeing love. Our love paradigm can change to one where we are open to receiving Big Love. We can cease blocking ourselves from it, out of an old archetype of our original yearning. Even though others and life might continue to throw us in harm’s way, we cannot get hurt so easily when we can sit in our own hearts and feel the presence of Big Love.
More on this Big Love topic is coming, so stay tuned. And if you are interested, please get on the waitlist to express your interest in my upcoming training certification program: Sitting In Love Together (SILT). You can complete a quick form to get on the VIP list: https://www.beherenowmindfulness.com/silt-training
