The Estuary of Big Love Horizontal vs. Vertical Pathways
Part two of a four-part series on Big Love
Jennifer Finch, LPC, NCC, SEP
February 8, 2023
In my work, the central wound is people not feeling loved, by themselves and/or by others. This is the central wound! Each time we did not feel loved, a wound was inflicted, a scab was picked. Every re-opening of a wound this deep, chances higher risks of infection and viral spread. It carves in a scar that leaves a permanent mark. Every time we felt a separation from love we wandered farther away from ourselves and from our ability to heal ourselves back to our inherent wholeness. Every time we feel unloved, we believe it is proof that we are unworthy of being loved. These hardened but untrue stories and voices in our heads fragment us more, and we just become more aligned with what love isn’t.
We encase our beliefs that love is limited, conditioned, distorted, inconsistent, and has all kinds of restrictions. These false beliefs have been hardened with Gorilla Glue in our bodies. But these bonds can fortunately be unbound with a little gritty soap (grit), warm water (self-love and compassion), and using an exfoliator with a gritty texture (effortful and deliberate practice).
These cold-hearted beliefs are not our fault. It was how we mirrored love in our caretakers and in the world. In many instances we had to clamp down and constrict the instrument of our being, our body, to limit the impact of painful, overwhelming, confusing experiences in our relationships with these very important people in our early lives. We developed defensive structures and psychological holding patterns out of necessity as it was how we had to organize ourselves in the world to get our needs met, as horizontal as they were. These organizations and ways we learned to be in our families, and in the world, constricted our body and limited our ability to inhabit our body. It left a footprint of a constricted sense of self, and a very limited view of love.
The way we understood love to be is a myth. Our soul learned to recognize when we got nearer to love and when we travelled farther from it. The litmus test: the farther we are from love, the more we feel depressed, lost, alone, and abandoned. Ultimate loneliness. For others it registers as anger, blame, hate, spite. We might not have the slightest inkling how far off course we are from Big Love, we put up strong walls and defenses to block ourselves from feeling such things; but we do have the capacity to recognize when Big Love is within proximity. Comedian George Burns once described love as something like a backache: “It doesn’t show up on X-rays, but you know it’s there.”
Recall a time when you felt a love affair. Lost yourself in love. It feels boundaryless. It is nondual and we are merged in the atmosphere of love. We feel attached, tethered, and connected to something even though we cannot quite name it. This chemical reaction makes us protective, and we will knock others out of the way to protect what we love. We want to see into the other person or child or pet, or forest, ocean, and mountain range. We want to see it, know it, and feel all of it. Be engulfed. Intimately. Deeply. And, without thinking, we open ourselves up widely to also be fully seen by him/her/them/it. It is a mutual exchange of openness and bold vulnerability. Even though psychologically and rationally it is not, it feels safe and contained. Why? Because it is held in an all-encompassing space; a vast, endless energetic field of Big Love.
Horizontal love, which is relational love in context, is one way we can access vertical love. Until we learn as mature adults that we can access Big Vertical Love without a relational context, the only way we tend to experience love is horizontally. We are born co-dependent relying on others to survive; this is a horizontal exchange. It is usually unidirectional. Infants cannot do much on their own. Horizontal love, or what I often refer to as animalistic love, can however, also be a way to open us to Big Love. If the environment is rich and compassionate, then we can flourish and open and sprout.
It is the opening of ourselves that allows Big Love to be expressed through us. When we are in love with something or someone, this opening up is naturally part of the process. If we open a window in our heart, Big Love will send in the breeze. When we catch the fragrance of this summer breeze, we know that Big Love is present. It is noticeable because we feel open, light, and free. Disentangled. Love seeps out like mist on a beautiful, still morning in the valley. We feel the presence of Big Love within us and outside of us. Even the world looks more beautiful, hopeful, and promising when we are IN love. Not always is this the case in every relationship, but in true love, in those times when we are absorbed into another, in a boundaryless kind of way, when our eyes widen and pool with expressions of love, when we put the milk in the cupboard and the cereal box in the refrigerator, you have given Big Love the key to your heart. There is a profound opening within your whole body-mind-spirit.
The only thing Big Love requires of us is to open to it. That’s all. And then we can feel it anytime, all the time. We have access 24/7. We can live our life in Big Love if we choose.
Is this hard to do? Absolutely. Why? Because many of us had confusing, and distorted depictions of what love is, and it was necessary for us to stay covered up and unseen. We had caretakers, even the ones with the best intentions, that were also functioning out of a limited palette of love.
Love implied constricted behavior protocols that must have been followed to be in the family system. Some of us were loved because we fulfilled a certain expectation of greatness or toughness, or emotional void of our parents. “We don’t cry at funerals. You will learn this constriction is love. And that is what we do in our family.” We catered ourselves to be just like them, shrunk ourselves to fit, because this felt like the only way to feel loved or get our needs met and belong. Any other way and we would have risked becoming an expatriate exiled from our own family.
Even unconsciously we mirrored our family and our habitual, even intergenerational, patterns of closing our hearts. Mirror neurons are powerful and a way to assure us that we belong with our kin.
Or we blocked ourselves from opening out of fear of not receiving what we wanted, or fear of getting hurt. Or we learned we could only show the good parts, the parts we or others were proud of. The parts that learned to sit still, look proper, not be too emotional, get straight A’s, and tread lightly. Be seen and not heard. If we learned these MacGyver skills, we got “love.” This is horizontal love, and it is not Big Love. Sometimes it is not love at all, but we conflated it with a category of conditional limited love. We closed the window, built a wall, and choked out the ability for Big Love to get through. As necessary as this was in our lives at those times, we can open to Big Love now. No matter how bad it was then. But we must be courageous despite our fear. We must mature and gain inner confidence and travel vertically. And the good news, we can learn to access Big Vertical Love with or without a horizontal relationship.
In Big Love, we show all of ourselves, and we willingly do so, because it feels so good. Big Love is outside the context and storylines of horizontal, relational love. Sometimes it can be there within our relationships, but only if we are being embraced as our whole selves. No conditions. Our whole loud, rambunctious, emotional, dirty, grasshopper catching selves is being seen and held by our mother, father, caregiver, friend, lover, environment.
So, accessing Big Love is possible in relationships, but it must be one where we can be entirely ourselves. It really has nothing to do with the other person. It has everything to do with us being wide open and receptive to a bigger platform of love. If the environment is rich enough, safe enough, open enough, good enough, then Big Love is there. If we are in a relationship that we find ourselves closing, or cutting off parts of ourselves, we are catering ourselves to fit, we need to examine why, as it is constricting your heart. If we are in a relationship where we feel our intimate partner is hiding parts of themselves then we need to examine why, as this can build up defensive structuring. Spite and resentment constrict the heart. The amount of conversation exchanged, and knowledge of one’s activities varies within everyone and every relationship, as some people are okay with not knowing everything about the other person. But that in and of itself needs to be known, “I’m okay with not knowing.” This understanding needs to be agreed to by all participants in the relationship. Hidden agendas, secrets, lies, addictive lives, all block everyone in the relationship from having an open heart. We aren’t taking just ourselves down, we are taking the whole system down when we live in relationship with veiled hearts.
On the positive side, when we have moments of horizontal love that is true love, open and honest love, they might be rare and short-lived, but they can give us glimpses of what Big Love feels like. They are still vignettes of love and how good it feels. But imagine Big Love more like the wide mouth of a river, an estuary, that empties into a huge body of water, and those moments of horizontal love are just the source, the very tiny beginning, and the furthest point on the river from its mouth. Many rivers are formed when rain flows down from the hills. Sometimes the source is a lake, or a marsh, or a bog, and sometimes it is a spring where water comes up from the ground. Those are our dotted histories of horizontal love. Get as metaphorical as you would like to, as I, myself, have had several relationships that began in a bog and didn’t progress much further. But, each experience, every encounter are glimpses of the soul maturing. We can learn in each external relationship about what love is, what it isn’t and with each experience we are getting closer to our true nature. This is how we begin moving toward Big Love.
I am proposing a new movement of love. One where we can travel the path all the way to the mouth of the river. A difficult road with rough terrain, one less travelled. A road for the courageous, for the maturing soul-seeking adult. A road that will not and cannot protect us from pain and suffering, because its only requirement is for us to open boldly to it. Go at your own pace. Yet, the trek is worth it, because, upon arrival from this vast source of Big Love, we can experience the feeling of love itself. A love without prerequisites. A love that doesn’t require horizontal success, constricted behaviors or limited emotional schemes.
When we know what Big Love feels like then our contextual relationships become much more workable. We know instantly if we can bring our whole self to the love coliseum. We will feel when we are blocking ourselves from Big Love, and/or if our intimate partner is meeting us wholly in the amphitheater as well.
What would it be like if we could gift others, our partners, our children, our friends, this substantial love? If we could just be an open, empty vessel for Big Love to radiate. We could stand before others and encounter them wholly. And in return we allow them to see us, wholly. A connected divine space of the holiness of Big Love. Nothing is hidden from view. A space where we are okay with being entirely seen. A loving space where we can rest and be completely ourselves; and a space where we allow others to be completely themselves.
What would it be like if others could gift us the presence of this unwavering, indestructible love? What if we could just stand blatantly in the reservoir of love and let it do its thing without any requirements of us except to just show up and be fully ourselves?
So, as you can see, Big Love can be sparked by being in love with someone else, but you will inevitably see that this source of the river, it has nothing to do with that other person. It has everything to do with how willing you are to be open and connect to the field of Big Love. To let your guard down, penetrate the veils, uncover your heart, abandon your barriers and be seen. Big Love says, “Open up, I want to see you.” And you do, without a thought, because you are bursting with love. It is you. You are love because Big Love includes you. And in that vast space, you are held in love. Nothing else matters, you are in the estuary.
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
