Truth & Ugliness

Can you be truly selfLESS in Love? Is the root of this version of it that we practice, not the very basis of selfishness?

Because you make me happy, I love you. If you do not make me happy, my love may be withheld or withdrawn. To get the best out of you, my job is to give the best of myself but always in the hope of an equal exchange. To attain this I must show you the best of myself. What you want to see — to keep you. Honesty be damned. Failure to which I must try to control the parts of you that you happen to release to me.

There can be no mirroring. Mirroring comes into play when games do. At the point that Win and Lose become a part of the exchange.

Love requires sacrifice in popular culture. If you love me you should be willing to lose something for that love. Or at the very least give up something valuable. What could be more valuable than YOURSELF?

So it follows that for me to feel loved you must be more of what I want and less of what you are in order for me to like what I see. Forget the effort it takes to truly accept you as you are. To see you as you are. It’s easier to make you into somebody else. And if you fail in that, I can walk away saying “I tried.” Did I really?

Is there not more power in being naked and vulnerable enough to come as I am and embrace you in all that you are? Is there not more room to grow into the space we can hold for each other without the extra trappings of falsity?

I want to talk about being naked and vulnerable.

There are people who lead you to places inside yourself that you are unaware of. Make you look in the mirror and inch by inch uncover all your insecurities and cover them again with Love. It takes alot of trust to even stand in front of that mirror much of the time. But that’s how you know its real. The biggest part of Love is Risk.

But Risk is the thing we fear most. The thing we run from.

There is no place for the Ego beside Love. Lying to save face is about the Ego. Control and manipulation are about the Ego. All the things that complicate and sully Love are rooted in the Ego. But at the same time it is our Ego that tries the hardest and before all else to protect us from harm. This perpetual tug of war — struggle within ourselves — is what makes loving purely and honestly so hard.

What if all the buttons were turned off. What if there was truly nothing to lose; nothing to fear. Who would you choose? How would you show them? How far would you go? Do you know?