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The Search For Love in the Madhya

It is said that the universe is made of infinite love. An all encompassing, mind blowing, unconditional love, from which we come and to which we return. A love that vibrates through every cell of our being, and through every atom of the universe. Permeating richly, deeply, knowingly weaving its way through our lives, supporting, guiding, and observing. 


Infinite Love: The Source of All

This kind of love is the thing of poets, songs, paintings, of religion and nature. Something that we can only briefly touch at different times in our lives. Such as when we see our unborn child for the first time, a beautiful landscape, or natural wonder, experience religious awakening, or fall deeply in love. 

It's a love that makes everything feel connected, meant to be, and without harsh edges. Just by its very nature it is creative, expansive and beautiful. 

It takes away all pain, sorrow, and despair. 

It's the kind of love we are born with and spend the rest of our lives trying to find and get back to. An innocent, pure love. 

It's as accessible as oxygen, yet we spend so much of our lives feeling completely starved of it. Silently suffocating from the lack of it, not realising it is always with us, around us, and in us. 


Seeking Love Outside Ourselves

We spend so much of our lives seeking it, wanting to feel the wholeness of such divine love. We look for it in the approval of others, in our parents, our children, family, friends, animals, lovers, strangers, work, nature, religion, community - and in the current times, the wider world through media. 

We spend time looking for "the one", the person who matches us, who is our equal, our other half. So much time. But what we miss is that this love was with us all along. 

So often we forget to look for it in ourselves, in our own hearts. We spend so much time giving our love away to people and situations who don't respond in kind. Who take it for granted, who throw it around like a toy, or think it's an infinite well to draw from without giving any in return. 

We exhaust ourselves looking for love in others. We confuse ourselves, thinking something is love when it isn't. It's just another person seeking the same thing without first standing in their own love. 


The Confusion of Love

We mistake people's intentions, actions, and behaviours for love, leaving a feeling of emptiness and confusion. We shut ourselves down from receiving love, either believing we are not worthy, or fearing being hurt. 

We spend endless hours fuelled by the desire for love - thinking of ways to get it, how to keep it, how to throw it away.  We ignore our own inner voice, blindly stumbling forward in the pursuit of love, doing things that are completely misguided and out of character in the name of love. 

We start wars over love. We destroy others for love. We kill for love. We cry, laugh, scream, please, die - all for love. We are slaves to the endless need for the feeling of love. Or what we perceive to be love. 


What Are We Really Searching For?

And why this never-ending march, from the minute we are born, to feel love.
Is it for security, for safety, for sanity, for recognition, for realisation - just to feel wanted, needed, seen, heard, validated, vindicated?

Is it because deep in our soul, our psyche, the dark recesses of our mind we remember this unconditional love we once bathed in as infinite sparks of the cosmos?

Or is it simply that we are hardwired for our brains to light up with the sparks of hormones and neurotransmitters that love triggers - the immune boosting, DNA activating,  growth repairing actions of molecules powered by love, joy, and bliss.


Love Lost, Love Found

As we move through life, we can become jaded, worn out, disillusioned. Relationships rise and fall, succeed and fail. Friends come and go. Lovers love and leave. Family expands and contracts. 

Exhaustion creeps in. We find it hard to feel love. To see it in ourselves, in others, around us. 
Sometimes we even lose our love for life altogether, believing the burden is too great, seeking to return to some place of long forgotten peace and eternal love. 

Madhya is an intense time of reckoning for love. When the sum of all our experiences that brought us to this time and place converge and bubble to the surface, demanding resolution, recognition, and light. 


Witnessing the Pattern

I see now, in me, all the desperate scrambling for love - the many loves that have been present (and not present) in my life.

The narcissist, the gaslighter, the abuser, the selfish, the kind, the hungry, the faithful, the unfaithful, the misogynist, the absent, the neglectful, the soulmate, the twin flame, the kindred spirit. 

I have been witness, an active participant, a willing slave to all of them; craving Eros and Logos connection. Splitting myself apart in the endless search for peace, stability, attention, and priority. 

And now here, as I sit on the edge of another passage of relational upheaval, I am drawn to the reality of this time in my life. This time of Madhya, when I am intensely looking inward. 


A Child's Mirror

And I am reminded of something my youngest daughter said to me, after I questioned her about her time spent in front of the mirror:

"Mum, just because you don't love yourself"

Mum. You. Don't. Love. Yourself

You Don't Love Yourself

LOVE YOURSELF

And I am struck - with these words, over and over. The observation, the perception, the truth.

How I have poured myself into the quest for love, the idea of love, the experience of love - yet missed the most obvious point. 


Return To Self-Love

Love Yourself

And now, as I walk through the Madhya - as I pause, and take a Men-O'-Pause - I turn within, to the baby, the child, the teen, and the young woman who didn't learn, who ignored, and didn't believe herself worthy. 

And I whisper:
If not now, then when?

It's time.
Know your worth.

And I tell myself, all the versions of myself that have walked, run, crawled to this very point in time.

I choose You. 







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