In many spiritual and personal development circles, there is a lot of talk about compassion and love, but there is a culture of avoidance when it comes to confrontation.
As a Love Renegade I believe that confrontation is sacred. It is an opportunity to stand in your truth and confront the parts of yourself, your life, and your relationships that are in conflict with your inner compass of integrity.
To heal we must be willing to engage in confrontation. The confrontation does not have to be you verses someone else. In fact, it is most powerful when the confrontation is between you and you. This allows you to build a foundation of self-trust that allows you to make wise choices on your own behalf—which then allows you to receive and attract love in all of its forms.
To me, these are the most empowered aspects of self-love and self-compassion. Listen to my first beginnings of practicing self-compassion and self-love through confronting my own limiting beliefs in this interview on the “Compassionately You” podcast.
Have you ever felt like it was time to give up? When you hear the phrase, “give up” what comes into your heart? Do you feel angry? Does it make you want to fight harder? Does it enlist a feeling helplessness?
If you are…
Single and have been in the process of finding your best relationship for awhile now
Feeling heartbroken from a breakup
Experiencing frustration at the dating process
Yearning to heal your relationship karma
Desire your best relationship with your partner
It could be time for a different type of reaction and new types of choices. Perhaps it time to experience surrender instead?
Whatever your response or situation, know this: Giving up does not mean giving in. Instead, reframe “giving up” as a conscious choice of surrender. When you choose to surrender, you are choosing freedom. When we are free in our relationships, we reclaim our personal power. This allows us to be our most recharged selves in our relationships.
In order to free yourself from negativity in your love life, you must be willing to heal. As this is not the easiest thing to do, I have created a video to assist you in the following:
Acknowledging frustration, anger, pain, and heartbreak that you are feeling
Using these emotions as a gateway to healing
Transforming personal fear into love for optimal healing
Healing is an act of love. Love is the greatest healer. When we heal, we are empowered to have our best relationships.
How does this video make you feel?
And just to shed a little more light on how we can choose love and an empowered path of healing—even with the most recent current events…
Even in this time of tragedy and senseless violence, I am making a conscious choice to acknowledge the highest potential and love spark in humanity.
In times like this, it is not always easy, but know this: no matter how heartbroken and maybe even hopeless we may feel by current events, please know that you matter.
While it may feel small or like it is “not good enough,” each time you smile and allow yourself to fully experience the beauty of the moment…for every hug you give and receive, for every time you choose love over fear, you are acting as a part of the solution. You are powerful, loved, and lovable.
Betrayal is a bitch. It’s the poison that ruins relationships, the catalyst of a self-esteem plummet. Once we are betrayed…well shit, life just never looks the same again.
The rose color glasses have been stomped on. Paradise? Lost.
Some of us, the softies, cry. We keep our heads down and distract ourselves as we pray, beg, and even plead with God that we will never, ever be betrayed again.
Then, there are the badasses, those of us naturally dominate folks, who become hardened, jaded, and skeptical. As badasses, we will remove anyone who we perceive as a threat. For this group, any Judas/Brutus is identified immediately and self-protective actions are promptly taken.
Regardless of whichever camp (team softie, camp badass, or flip-flopper) that you are in, you vow to yourself…never again…never will I ever allow this happen!
You plot revenge. You cry. You fantasize about being vindicated as you lie in your rose-thorned-adorned bed.
This is heartbreak.
It’s impossible for betrayal not to result in some type of heartbreak. When we are heartbroken, our defenses are up. When our defenses are up, our fear is ignited.
Fear is the opposite of love.
If part of you craves being in a loving intimate relationship, a physical expression of love, fear is pretty inconvenient.
When our fear is ignited, we go into self-protection mode. Self-protection can look like myriad of ways. For some of us, self-protection looks like we are trying to outrun something. We distract ourselves with big projects at work. We numb out with partying. Some of us might create petty drama.
Those of us, fed up with those aspects of self-protection mode, claim that we are done with relationships and dating and that we want to focus on ourselves, first and foremost.
The choice to love yourself is always a wise choice, right?
Yes and no.
Yes in that self-love is a huge component in creating a healthy and fulfilling relationship. No, because highly conscious people like us can use this as an excuse to keep us from having what the relationship that we desire.
Having mixed intentions will never give us what we want, but it does a great job at keeping things as they are.
An intention is a word for whatever motivation (conscious, subconscious, maybe even unconscious) is behind the actions that we take. Let’s talk about intentions in the context of dating.
Dating is simply a mechanism to craft a relationship.
What if we are afraid to date? What if the people we attract to go on dates with are total duds or psychos?
What if we are really busy and dating just doesn’t excite us or feel worth it anymore?
What if we are super traumatized by past experiences that our fear has helped us substantially to live fully functional lives and dating is a huge unknown?!?
This is where intention comes in.
Intention plays into what we desire, what we fear, and how we see the world. Intention is based on what we believe is true, what we feel we deserve, and what we think we can get.
What do I believe is universally true?
What do I feel I deserve?
What do I think I can get?
Everything we attract is a result of our intention. If our intentions are love-based, we are going to make love-based decisions. If they our intentions are fear-based, then we are going to make fear-based choices.
Fear is not the enemy here. We experience fear to guard our hearts and keep us safe from treachery and betrayal. Fear mucks things up when it muddies our intentions and causes us to make fear-based choices that result in us never experiencing what we desire.
You are the catalyst of change.
If you do not like your current circumstances or if you are ready to experience your deepest desires, change is in your hands.
So let’s acknowledge our fears. Let’s honor the circumstances that gave us this wisdom.
The Solstice, the darkest day of the year is upon us. From a purely physical and superficial perspective (and using the words of Blog.Dictionary.com) it is a time in which the sun touches down upon the southernmost point of the Earth’s equator.
Let’s take a moment to really feel into this from a place of love and wisdom with the gifts of symbols and sight.
The Solstice encompasses darkness and light. The opposite of darkness is light. The Sun is the ultimate source of light on our planet.
Right now, I invite you to go deep with me…
Picture your entire body and everything that you are experiencing (the status of your relationships, your choice of career, your financial circumstances, and your overall health) as the Earth.
Your Soul is the Sun.
Your Soul is a source of Divine Light. Without your soul, your body would not exist. Without the Sun, the Earth would not exist. (Your Soul is an integral part of who you are!)
Your Heart represents the bridge—the atmosphere between these two worlds: heaven and Earth, soul and body. Your heart:
Communicates with you through your emotions, passions, and feelings
Shows you who you are through your most intimate relationships
Signifies your relationships: your intimate relationships, friendship, your relationship with yourself and the Universe.
Sheds light on your passions, creativity, and of course: your relationships.
Through the heart, you will know how a situation feels. You will know your passions.
If your heart is blocked:
You will feel depressed, heartbroken, devoid of creativity.
Your relationships will not satisfy you.
You will feel empty.
It is not uncommon to put up walls around heart. Some of us even choose to put up barbed wire while others wear their heart’s wounds loud and proud. As another form of pushing love away, they will speak often of their suffering, wearing their pain as a badge of honor, to anyone who will listen.
Your heart is the gateway to healing your love life and aligning your life to match your Soul’s true magic.
The Solstice calls for healing, introspection, and spiritual growth. If you desire a love life that reflects your Soul’s true magic, you are being guided use this time to heal your heart from the inside out by conducting major soul-level healing and through mastering your relationship karma.
Karma is simply a matter of choice and consequence. Every choice you make has a consequence. Your love life as it is right at this moment is a consequence of choices that you have made. This does not mean that you or anyone else is to blame. It simply means that if you desire a new reality, you can do this through healing your heart and making new choices.
When we master our relationship karma, we do so without attempting to control another person. We realize that just as the Earth is our body, the Sun is our Soul, the heart is healed when we love and embrace ourselves and others as whole complete. We do this by tuning into our heart and listening.
Get started by answering the following questions:
What does your dream relationship/love life look and feel like?
On a scale of one to 10, with one being the lowest and 10 being the highest, how fulfilled are you in your love life? (How much of your current love life mirrors your dream relationship?)
It is essential that you choose to be completely honest when answering these questions.
Once you allow your heart into your life, the Universe will give you plenty of opportunities to heal your heart. It will do this in the form of bringing people and circumstances into your experience that are not pleasing to you.
If you are not experiencing anything like that at this moment, think back to times through which you have declared that something “always” or “never” happen to you in your relationships and love life.
Now you get to look to look at how you respond to these less-than-satisfactory circumstances.
If your go-to is to just walk away or never talk to that person again, maybe it is time for a new approach.
If your go-to is to lose control and send text after text with each one becoming more and more increasingly nasty as you fail to hear back from them, maybe it is time for a new strategy.
How long will you let these patterns hold you hostage?
Right now, notice how you feel. Tired? Numb? Judgmental? Angry? Are you dismissing this information as something that you never do or may have done years ago, but not something that you would do now?
This is actually the mind coming to your heart’s rescue.
Your mind is simply responding as it would to any intruder. Divine Truth, Light, and Love can be unwelcome visitors. They are unwelcome as aligning to these usually come with impending changes.
Let me explain:
See, just as your body signifies the Earth, the Sun represents your Soul and the Divine, your Heart symbolizes love. This love comes in the form of relationships, creativity, and healing.
The Mind is in another realm. It symbolizes an external authority figure—the protective older brother or warrior—of the heart. The Mind represents the man-made laws and structures we have on our planets. Its job is to keep the heart “in-check” and keep the heart safe.
The Heart is the gateway, the bridge, between Heaven (our Soul and the Divine) and Earth (our body and physical/superficial circumstances.) Often times, the Soul’s wisdom’s and heart’s desires go against the man-made structures and systems—the status quo—here on Earth.
When we get our heart broken, the Mind responds with either wanting to protect the Heart by attempting to control it. But your heart is a rebel. It is the keeper of your Soul’s magic. It represents change as it lets you know when you are out of alignment with your desires and with your Soul/Divine.
According to the Mind—who has fought very hard to control you and keep you safe and secure—the heart cannot be trusted. It must be stopped and controlled…If the heart had its freedom, it might urge you to make changes—changes that your mind does not want you to make!!
Think about it:
If you truly allowed yourself to connect with your heart—if you honestly allowed yourself to go deep and told yourself the truth—your heart could very well show you how your current way-of-life, your relationships, your life circumstances are NOT representative of your soul’s magic or your highest potential.
Picture a jail cell with just a little bit of light trickling in through the bars on the windows. This is the Solstice—that sliver of the Sun/the Divine and your Soul—shedding light on what is most kept in shadow.
This jail cell might even represent your life, your relationships…It is anything that keeps you in a box or feeling limited. Have you ever found yourself starting any sentence with:
“I can’t do this because______”
“Well no one is really able to have their dream relationship. That is just wishful thinking!”
If your answer is yes, then perhaps you are living in your own symbolic prison right now. Perhaps you are allowing your mind to hold your heart hostage and your physical circumstances (your relationships, personal fulfillment, etc) are reflecting this choice.
Your rebel heart wants to heal. It wants to break free of this prison! You can ignore your heart as much as you want, but get this: if you do not listen to it, your shadow might step in on its behalf.
As the darkest day of the year, the Solstice calls our attention to the shadow. Our shadow is what we do not want to see or cannot see but yet it continues to follow us around relentlessly.
We can recognize the shadow is observing self-sabotage patterns of others. If you can see these patterns in someone else, then your shadow is calling you to look inward at your own negative habits, or actions that cause you to feel powerless. This is any type of addiction—whether to substances or beating yourself up with how you talk to yourself and treat yourself. Your shadow might also cause some drama for you.
Your shadow represents the parts of you that you cannot see, your secrets, or what you hope that others do not see. The shadow makes itself known through self-sabotage and relationship sabotaging behaviors. Examples of relationship-sabotaging behaviors include lashing out, blaming others, projecting your fears on others, stopping all communication without warning, texting obsessively, cheating, and any kind of neglect or abuse.
When you find yourself engaging in these behaviors or when you strongly observe in someone else, ask yourself:
What am I afraid of?
How am I keeping myself from experiencing love and joy?
As the Solstice is a very introspective and emotional time with lots of big healing energy being conjured up, let’s talk about emotion…
As our heart is the gateway between heaven and Earth, it is going to communicate with us through our feelings and emotions.
Emotions that we would often categorize as “negative” can be wonderful indicators of healing and new choices that we get to make to create a loving reality that we desire.
For instance, anger is a sign that the heart is begging to be heard and freed from its prison. Use the mind, your own inner warrior, to by using this anger to create positive changes in your life. If you are feeling angry or holding a grudge against someone, your heart can very well be alerting you to set some loving boundaries for the upcoming year.
Another “negative” emotion, resentment lets us know that the heart has a desire that it is afraid to ask for. It may point to that we want someone else to give us permission to have the experience that we want.
These can be unpleasant emotions to feel and many of may try to push these emotions away at all costs. They are told that it is not spiritual to have these feelings. For the Solstice, listen to your heart’s wisdom and transmute these “negative” emotions into creating positive outcomes for yourself and your relationships.
Your shadow can also shed light on your most powerful attributes or parts of your heart and your soul that are begging to be heard and acknowledged. Your shadow can communicate with you through these “negative” emotions. It could very well be begging you to see yourself in a new light and to allow yourself to heal and manifest the loving experience that you deeply desire.
Pure joy and fulfillment are other emotions through which we feel when we perceive ourselves as being one with our Soul.
We may feel bits of this without having a life and relationships that mirrors our heart’s desires or our soul’s inner magic, but in order to really change our physical circumstances, it is essential that we are willing to dig deep and free our heart from our self-imposed prison.
Remember, your heart is a rebel. When you can unite your heart with your soul, you stand the chance of unleashing your inner Love Renegade.
Your inner Love Renegade challenges you to dismantle and destroy any limiting beliefs and circumstances that keep you in the status quo. It is an aspect of your highest potential that you embrace through healing your heart and mastering your love life.
A Love Renegade is someone who:
Embraces her shadow
Listens to her heart
Has the guts to create a life that reflects her soul’s true magic
Breaks free of the status quo destroy all illusions and limitations
If you choose to listen to your heart, you stand the chance of putting your mind on the defensive. Therefore, healing and creating with your inner Love Renegade is not for everyone. The battle between the mind (man-made structures, rules, and laws) is not for the faint-of-heart.
Will you live your life as you have been living it? Will you stay in your prison? Or will you commit fully and completely to healing your heart, creating your dream relationship, and embracing your highest potential?
When we do not make a choice, we put ourselves in a very painful position. Through making a choice, you are choosing to love yourself.
If you choose to embrace your inner Love Renegade over this Winter Soltice, then I invite you to take it one step further have a Love Renegade Connection Session with me.
For 2016, I am taking applications to work with me one-on-one or to be a part of my group coaching program. This is for deep heart-healing and soul-inspiring Love Renegade work.
This session allows us to get to know each other and shed light on how I can assist you in making 2016 your year to heal your heart, master your relationship karma, embrace your highest potential, and shine. Apply for session by clicking here.
In many spiritual and personal development circles, there is a lot of talk about compassion and love, but there is a culture of avoidance when it comes to confrontation.
