View this post on Instagram
*Warning! Naughty language ahead.
I love love.
As a kid, I would watch the movies with the prince striding in on his white horse, rescuing the princess, and giving her a kiss that turned her into some sort of magical unicorn being—instantly making her fall in love with him, and start farting glitter and shitting rainbows.
“To spend a life of endless bliss, just find who you love through true love’s kiss.” ~ “Enchanted”
The movie always ended with a marriage (or implication thereof) and the words about how they lived “happily ever after.” I grew up watching these movies, reading those books, and my idea of how love should look was shaped by those stories. I’m certain I’m not alone on that one.
So, is it any wonder that as adults we are so disappointed when it comes to love?
In reality, sure, people do beautiful things when they are in love. Sometimes grand, sometimes subtle, but are these things really the definition of what love is? Is the ultimate goal or destination really marriage, and then we just live happily ever after?
What these movies and books taught us is that love has a destination. A happily ever after. But, I had the marriage. I had the white picket fence. I had the checklist to-do’s ticked off. My life was inoffensive. And yet, I walked away from it all, seeking something so much deeper. Knowing that there was much more depth to love.
This past fortnight has seen me shift some heavy AF stuff. My breaking point came last night as I spent two hour in tears, reaching out to friends crying, “What if the fairy-tale doesn’t even exist?! What if I broke up my family for something that isn’t even real?”
This is the “fairy-tale fallacy” or the “Disney Delusion,” as my homeopath calls it. Apparently, I had no idea how deep this fallacy could run, and how many areas of my life it has affected. See, it’s not just romantic love that I had applied this fallacy to, it’s been affecting my health, friendships, and connections of any description really.
When I set my intention at the start of the year, that I wanted abundant health and big (romantic) love, I had no idea that this fairy-tale fallacy was even sitting there—let alone that it was serving as a big fat roadblock to both.
I was quite clear when setting my intention exactly who I wanted to attract in a partner. Their interests, passions, depth of character, and their nature. How the connection with them felt. How they could make me laugh until my belly hurt, and match my cheek with their own. How they think, their perceptions, their willingness to not only share their fears with me, but meet those fears without the need for me to fix them. How they held space without judgement or reactivity when I had my trigger moments. How they could stand up to me, and stand up for me. I wanted someone who stood back and watched me do my thing, saying “that’s my human,” always encouraging me to fulfill my heart’s desires.
I’m really good at manifesting shit, or bringing what I want toward me. But this one has taught me more about myself than I ever thought possible. I saw a preview of exactly what I had put out there in terms of the “who,” but other circumstances are not an option for me right now.
And through this back, forward, back, forward process, I’ve uncovered so many beliefs that were sitting there. I have struggled to let it go—like, big time. But the realisations that came last night have helped me to understand the why. It’s not the person that I was hanging onto. It was the idea I attached to the person, the fairy-tale fallacy—this fallacy that creates an expectation.
I wasn’t expecting the white horse/farting glitter story, but I was expecting things to progress. Like, now. And when they didn’t (for the 160th time), it fucked with my head a whole lot. How many times have you done that? Been disappointed by your own expectations, I mean. We create false beliefs around how we expect things will play out, or how people should behave, and when they don’t live up to those expectations or the things don’t happen, we get upset or angry—disappointed even.
It was Buddha who said “attachment is the cause of all suffering.” It is the attachment to the expectations that we create in our own minds that ultimately leads to our own suffering. We do all of that in our own heads. We literally make ourselves miserable by living in an idealised state of how things should be.
In terms of this causing a block in healing my physical body, it is again the idea and subsequent expectation of how that should look and feel that is causing me suffering. The fact that I “should” be healed by now. I “should” be able to eat the food by now (it’s always a bloody time frame issue with me when it comes to expectations! If it doesn’t happen now my mind believes it never will).
I was talking with one of my closest friends today and we laughed at how we have known each other around five years now, yet have only hung out a handful of times (due to our locations). We discussed how we met through us both having food issues with our kids, as a mutual friend introduced us thinking I could help her. From that meeting, a beautiful friendship has emerged. Neither of us could imagine life without the other in it now. What struck me was that if our kids had never had health issues, we would likely never have met. At the time we met, I was so focused on the outcome, on healing my son, that I missed the fact that I had met this amazing human. I was so focused on the pot of gold, the healing, that in those early encounters I missed the rainbow that is her. I couldn’t tell you much about our early conversations, as I don’t remember anything that wasn’t about healing the kids.
With my journey of returning to health, I have made amazing friendships along the way. I am grateful for the people I have connected with, initially due to their own health issues, as well as the talented health professionals I have found. This whole journey has enabled me to put myself back together how I want, so much lighter for leaving the heavy luggage of beliefs that don’t serve me behind, and striving toward actual proper health, rather than just “skinny” like I’ve previously done.
“People should fall in love with their eyes closed.” ~ Andy Warhol
The ending isn’t the point. It never was. Love is not a destination. It is a feeling state. I’m not talking only about romantic love. I’m talking about living a life that you are in love with. Appreciating every aspect of it and perceiving it from a place of “as is” not “as it should be.” Living from love, not fear.
We should fall in love with our eyes closed because love is a feeling, and anything we see with our eyes an illusion, or, at best, a perception. All the movies we watched as kids, the books we read—they sold us a lie. And in that lie, we’ve been short changed. We were taught to look ahead, to set goals, and to hope.
Hope (noun): a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.
Hope keeps us reaching for future events. Hope is the carrot dangling in front of you. It is the idea that things will somehow be better in some future event or place in time. Never in the now though. By definition it creates expectations, and we have already established this is where we trip ourselves up and we create our own suffering. It takes us away from the beauty that is in the now. So, let’s try another word to replace it—faith.
Faith (noun): complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
What would happen if you just accepted that this moment, this situation, is exactly as it should be right now? Because that is truth. This moment is as it should be, because it is how it is. It can be no other way.
What if you could look at this moment and see it as perfect, no matter how painful it may feel or how wrong or unfair it may seem? Those, by the way, are perceptions—judgments that you are attaching to it because you believe it should somehow be different.
How often do you look back on something that felt so shitty, and you can see with great clarity exactly why it played out the way it did? Did I want to be as unwell as I was? Hell no. But can I see the amazing connections I have made along the way, and the fact that I would likely never have met those people had this happened? Absolutely. Can I have faith that my physical body is in the state that it needs to be in right now, and that state is perfect right in this moment? Well, yes, I have to don’t I? Because that is fact. Any other perception will only cause my suffering.
As for the romantic love, I was so focused on the happily ever after that I missed the important bits. I met someone who, from what I’ve seen so far, is shaping up to be what I said I wanted. Someone who accepts me exactly as I am, at full volume (vulgarity and c-bombs included), and who says, “I think you’re fabulous for just being you.”
Those things in themselves are beautiful. I don’t know how that will play out because that is not the point. I have detached from any expectation or ideas about it—I’ve pried my fingers off the hope I had from that situation and I am just letting it go.
As my friend tells me, “What’s meant for you won’t go past you.”
I have gratitude for the experience. I have faith that things are exactly as they are meant to be in this moment. I have faith that such a person exists, whether it be this one or the next. I am confident that “what you seek is seeking you,” as Rumi says. I don’t know how that looks yet, but I don’t need to.
Years ago I said I wanted to write a book. Weeks ago I started. The interactions and all that I have been shown about myself throughout this process with this man have not just shaken these heavy beliefs out of me, but they’ve written half the book. How amazing is that?
Regardless of what the future brings, I am in gratitude to him in the now for serving as a mirror to my own bullshit. I am grateful for the experience—the perceived “good” bits and the perceived “shitty” bits. They have all served a purpose. The pot of gold isn’t the point here. Look at all the rainbows.
“Love is a song that never dies.” ~ “Bambi”
So my realisation: “what if the fairy-tale doesn’t exist?” was accurate after all.
The pain that I felt with that thought was simply a belief being dissolved. Releasing beliefs always feels painful for me. It’s a little like when you’re digging a splinter out of your finger. It hurts in the moment, but the relief that follows makes it absolutely worthwhile.
Today I am grateful I have seen that the fairy-tale doesn’t really exist. Because I said I wanted big love. And the fairy-tale is only an idea of the mind. It is not big love. Love is a feeling state that we can choose in any moment, and apply to any situation. Miracles happen when we get out of our own way and see through the eyes of love.
“How do you spell love? You don’t spell it, you feel it” ~ Winnie the Pooh
Read 3 Comments and Reply
Read 3 comments and reply