Many people have locked down their hearts due to various reasons, but they all come back to the same thing: fear.

Love is an addictive feeling. It is highly pleasurable and life takes on new meaning when our heart is full and we feel unstoppable and on top of the world due to love. It is wonderful when we have found someone who we can direct our loving feelings toward.

But if they disappoint, reject or leave us, we can be left feeling devastated as we no longer have someone to help us generate this love and to focus our attentions upon. We can also feel as though we wasted our love and time on them and that love is to blame for the withdrawal state we go through when a relationship ends.

The reality is, we do not need another person to be able to generate love. We need no one but ourselves. Even if there was not another human being on this planet, there is still a limitless amount of reasons to feel love. When we are able to see love as a uniquely individual act, and one that needs no other person’s involvement, all the fears that are attached to it will dissolve, our hearts will be full, and all of our love will naturally spill out.

Love is not ours to own. When we radiate love, it is just energy that we have narrowly channeled that actually belongs directly to the universe, of which we are part of, but do not possess. All we are doing is recycling energy and sharing it around. It really is that simple.

The heart knows nothing of boundaries, separation or judgment. Its sole purpose is to absorb universal energy and generate it into a positive, light but very intense energetic flow. To love in this way can feel painful in some ways, especially when we have a longing to connect our love with another person. The sensation of pure love is like a burning ache in the heart center and it is constantly growing. We can either try to dampen the fire when it rages or we can allow it to rage out of control so that it spreads and touches everyone and everything that we come into contact with.

When relationships break down and fade out it is not because love chooses, quite the opposite. It is fear that decides: irrational, unreasonable, unfounded fear.

Our primal instinct, along with our egotistical driven fears, are afraid of emotional pain and we associate that pain with vulnerability and the feeling of being in love. Mostly, this is because we love the feeling of love and hate the feeling when it ends. However, we don’t always realize that it can never end. Even when a relationship ends, we can still continue to send gratitude and love to the person and for the experience, whether it was painful or joyful. We have sole control over our ability to love; it is in no way determined by another person’s presence or appearance in our lives.

This can be tricky to understand when we meet other people and feel love bouncing between our hearts, igniting embers of flames that may have been desperately waiting to relight. The intensity of this feeling is intoxicating and we want it to last. We fail to realize that we can experience high vibrational love at any moment of any time, regardless if someone remains in our life, as everything we need to feel love is within. Some people just enter our lives to remind us of the capabilities of our heart and it is then up to us to recognize this and keep that love flowing constantly, regardless of who is around us or what encounters we happen upon.

We are often afraid that we are unable to generate love without another person with whom we connect strongly. In the heady throes of love we may temporarily forget these fears as our mind is intoxicated with the powerful, overwhelming side effects of drug-like chemicals and hormones, such as dopamine and oxytocin that are being released, so that we acquaint, bond and copulate for evolution purposes. This is basically so that our species—ultimately our DNA—continues and creates a new generation of people. We may want to trust this other person and badly want them remain with us throughout our lives so that we do not have to put in the hard work, of removing our fears, and live in a high vibrational frequency of love at all times. The biological reason is so that we raise offspring, although we consciously or subconsciously override these evolutionary impulses.

However, we don’t always rationalize what is occurring within the dynamic of the relationship and how it moves through various stages and once the effects of the initial high wear off, we are fueled with fear. Our old emotional wounds can be triggered to surface whenever we feel any kind of threat to our safety and security and we can react and respond in ways that are unpleasant and ways that build barriers around our hearts. Our fears are like a self-protection mechanism and they believe that they are keeping us safe and away from emotional, mental or even physical harm.

When we experience love, we also experience the fear of losing love. That is, until we raise our awareness to a height that enables us to keep recharging love, regardless of whether the love is returned or whether the person who we are directing it toward is even aware that it is being sent. The real key to loving pain-free is to just love, without direction and without control—freely, openly and vastly. When we love in this way, our fears will have no place to reside. They will literally become redundant as we realize there really is nothing to lose or risk through feeling love. We only need to love and not worry or care as to whether it is returned. That is where the real beauty in love is found. Anything else that causes us pain is not love. It is our basic survival instinct and unhealed wounds and it is essential that we stop associating these things with the ability to love.

Many of us find that we block ourselves from radiating love just to make other people feel comfortable. Not everyone will respond well to high vibrational love, and for some, it can make them feel uncomfortable, and this may result in us feeling ashamed for freely emanating love. Some people may perceive the ability to love freely as a need for a deeper connection. If we tell someone we love them, they may recoil fearing intimacy, believing that what we really meant is that we want to form a lasting mutual connection with them, and so they back away. Free love is not about attachment. It is all about giving without the need to receive, allowing love to expand and re-energize so that there is an abundance of it and so that it can reach far and wide without limits or conditions.

Radiating love, unlike what is often believed, is not a risk. There is no need to fear opening our heart and exposing how intensely we love, as love has no expectations whatsoever, so we can never lose from giving out love.

The real risk is associated with fear, not with love. Our fears will try to sabotage our ability to love and it will cause layer upon layer of worries and excuses so that our heart is locked away tight and unable to function. Suffocating our heart due to our fears is what causes us pain. We are blocking a very strong, graceful, but forceful energy from being able to radiate outwardly. The heart’s energy has nowhere to circulate but within and rather than growing, love is contained and frantically trying to look for an escape route.

Love doesn’t cost anything; it is free, and its only need is to feel free. It doesn’t matter how much we give out, whether the person we are radiating it to loves us in return, or whether the love we are sending is not even felt when we send it. All that matters is that we don’t block the powerful energy center in our heart by having expectations, fears or conditions. We can love someone without them being in our lives. We wildly overcomplicate love, when it really is the simplest thing to do. Love is infinite. It cannot run out. As long as we breathe, as long as the universe exists we are capable of constantly generating love.

Love is pleasurable and the intensity of the sensations can feel very similar to pain. Release it back to the universe and notice how the pain immediately dissipates and leaves behind the most incredible and indescribable feeling of joy. Be love and love freely.

And watch how life transforms.

~

Author: Alex Myles

Images: Flickr/Andrea Santoni

Editor: Travis May