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*Dear elephant reader: if you’re single & looking for mindful dating or conscious love, try out our lovely partner, MeetMindful.

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I believe in unicorns, but I have a hard time believing in love.

How can an alluring and illusively intangible feeling truly be described by a four letter word?

Love.

Bliss.

Complete.

Unconditional.

Acceptance.

Joy.

Warm-fuzzies.

Love is many things, but it’s hard to find.

Why is that?

We are often born crying, because we are alone the moment we take our first breath, even though we are surrounded by warm embraces and misty eyes. We come from the stars and we spend our whole lives trying to get back to them, to those bright sparkles in the sky. It’s funny because we’re always those stars.

Even in this physical human form, we are surrounded by the unknown, sometimes darkness, just like stars in space. The only difference is trust. The stars know their place in the universe. At least, I like to think they do. We often feel lost, without a real path or purpose. So we search. We search the Earth and beyond looking for what we had before birth—infinite love and trust.

I’ve felt it.

Once.

Maybe.

I think I did.

No, I totally did. I did. For a moment, I felt it.

But, it wasn’t because I was in a relationship. I didn’t get that warm, fuzzy, lost-in-bliss feeling from a man. Or any other person.

I don’t know if we’re capable of receiving that love from another person—not right away, anyway—not until our beloved has found it on their own, for themselves first.

I once heard someone say that love was a concept made up by Hollywood to sell tickets to Meg Ryan movies.

That’s kind of sad, I think.

Or bitter.

Or, they were just scared that they’d never find love themselves—they put up a defensive wall of disbelief, so they wouldn’t be hurt if they never did.

I haven’t found it.

Not for long periods of time, at any rate. I’ve seen glimpses of it, from time to time. Or rather, I’ve felt it.

Some days I wake up and before I even open my eyes, I stretch my arms out to feel my cool sheets, and I’m filled with this warmth and contentment. Sometimes, when I’m about to take a sip of my tea, I breathe in the steam. Just for a moment, I’m flooded with this all-encompassing knowledge that I’m exactly who I’m meant to be and every bit of my tension is released and I’m able to just smile and be completely happy.

Safe.

Happiness. Joy. Love. Bliss. Contentment. Acceptance.

We all know it’s there.

We see it in the movies. We see it in the world.

We can sometimes feel it for ourselves, but only when we’re open to it—only when we’re ready to accept it.

And how can we take any gift if we’re not present enough to see that someone is passing it to us?

I don’t mean just our boyfriend. I mean someone bigger than ourselves. The Divine. The God. The Goddess. The Father. The Mother. The Universe. Our Spirit.

It’s not enough to believe in love or even to just want it. We have to be ready for it. Our eyes must be open. Our hearts must be willing. Our minds must be quiet. Love is more than candlelit dinners and pretty rings. Love is our home. It’s our past, our future and it can be our present as soon as we remember it.

I crave it.

I already have it, but I forget all the time.

Until I remember, I can’t love you.

I have to find love for myself first, to hold it, to warm myself with it, before I can wrap you in it.

And you can’t love me yet either. Not until you can love yourself. Fully. Completely. Unquestioningly.

We just have to remember that we already have love—underneath all the rush, the doubt, that crazy monkey-mind and the flaws we think we have, it is waiting to be found. We just have to ditch the nonsense. We have to strip back the layers of ego. We just have to take it, because we deserve it.

We just have to believe: believe we deserve it, that we already have love, that it’s actually there.

That’s the real trouble: believing, when we can’t see it.

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Relephant:

This is What I Know about Love.

Author: Stacy Porter

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: courtesy of the author