I love you because of me

“If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, “I love you,” I must be able to say, “I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.”

- Erich Fromm “The Art of Loving” ”

We don’t realize that our lack of knowing what love is and our lack of belief in it as a moving state of being and of power in our lives comes from the fact that we are still trying to love people because of them. I don’t love you because of you I love you because of me. If I were to love you because of you then that’s conditional love. You see when we love others based on who they are we are loving based on conditions and expectations that are met or unmet. It’s based on an external circumstance. It’s only because its you and that you are meeting my expectations that I love you a certain way.

In loving conditionally we give up ourselves in a way where we acquiesce and relinquish ourselves to willingly make room for other as a means by which we can disappear. We are too afraid to face ourselves and our problems so instead we abandon a part of who we are or our Self completely. We live under the assumption that we don’t possess the power of naming or getting what with need without being dependent or without demanding it.

There is nothing in us that we are meant to discard in the process of loving. When people I feel wronged, hut, or impacted by another’s actions the invitation is to find new ways to love instead of breed hate or disconnection even with that person. I do so because I need to take a stand for who I am and what I believe. I believe that you are good and I believe that my love isn’t conditional. It’s bigger than both of our expectations and limitations.

We live in a culture where we have to abandon ourselves all the time to meet the external criteria of success. 

We as people don’t want to love conditionally but we lose sight of why we do things. If I’m not in tune with me then I don’t know where I end and you begin. If I am not in tune with myself then I lose sight of that. I lose sight of why I love. We make choices based on values or we react from a place that dictates values that are inherent due to our conditioning.

One of the most important things to understand is that chronic or toxic shame comes from instances where we were loved conditionally repeatedly as a child. We know from studies around attachment theory and affect theory that when a child is not able to create attunement or appropriate connection with their caregiver/s when they are in distress or in need for connection then that child begins to internalize the belief that they are inherently broken or flawed. They start to see their parent’s opinion of them as some kind of blatant fact of their deficiency. The internalized shame is then something that they carry until they learn to see that they are not defined by the very conditions they believed were their defect as children. To heal, they have to come back to a sense of neutrality by understanding that other people’s emotional experiences are actually just an opinion of them not a fact in determining their worthiness of love. They move into secure attachment from witnessing repeatedly that possibility somewhere with someone and from themselves. Through both internal and external means they learn to love themselves without the conditions that were present when they were young. This is why therapy can be so effective because it models a different kind of presence and care.

As children we seek for safety and to be loved so that we can survive. We don’t blame our caregivers for not loving us well, we blame ourselves for not being what we believe could make us more lovable to our caregivers. So remember when we get upset at a child and revoke our love we are training that child to see that they are only lovable when they are good and fulfilling our expectations. They don’t get taught that they are loved simply for being. Later when they try to love they can’t love because of who they are they love because of who someone else is and what they can get from them, which ultimately is approval. Or worse as an adult they will believe that love is not real and they only have themselves to count on. This highlights how much we lose when we play this drama game of punishment and reward. It becomes an unpredictable gamble for the child and creates anxiety and desperation until the child activates and tries to take control or the child ends up shutting down their emotional system and withdraw from any emotional need or experiences. We need to learn that teaching a child consequences for actions doesn’t require, nor should it require, changing our approach to loving them. Kids still need boundaries, limits and to understand how to operate in the world. We can do this while showing them we love them still even when they fail. Remember we love them because of who we are not because of who they are or what they do. Caring for people doesn’t require a reason.

To move into secure attachment we need to show up and be around people who show up for us in ‘extraordinary ways.’ Frankly, I hate having to say it that way. The truth is I seek to normalize the belief that showing up isn’t extraordinary we are just out of practice. The very act of showing up allows for people to build safety, they creating opportunities for people to be seen and validated, and teaching approaches to soothing so they can do those things for themselves in a secure way. (I’ll illustrate this further in future posts.)

We give people everything because we believe they require something of us in order for us to be worthy of their love, in order for them to want to give their love to us

Since childhood is where we form those core beliefs that shape our adulthood, maybe our deep values that we’ve just assumed are about the depravity that we have felt. We never readily made a connection between what we beleive about ourselves, our values, and what how we are hoping to live. We abandon ourselves because if we carry core beliefs we are not in alignment with then theres no need to be in this body. This is not my life we say. Instead we avoid the value that might be directing our course unconsciously. And this value is high on the priority list. Higher than the ones we might believe direct our lives. We dissociate because of the incongruence in ourselves.

…I want someone to love me (that one is a bigger value that arises without your consent)

…I need to be needed

…I want to be validated

…I want to be seen as successful and receive approval. 

The truth is here is where ego takes over. We judge others based on the moral standard and imperative is that we have created. We are forcing others into the very shackles we have struggle to free ourselves from. An interesting note here, the anchor isn’t what keeps a boat in place it’s the chain spread out over the bottom of the sea. We are then weighed down by the many repetitive experiences that were part of our reality. We use these easy set of ideals and values to drive our life. Sometimes when we wake up to the fact that we are not living our life but someone else’s, by way of values we don’t agree with, we resist and rebel from anything that seems conditional. Yet we quickly learn that seemingly so many things are conditional.

Stop taking the bait by following the norm:

Stop abandoning yourself for the sake of showing up to me in ways that don’t serve either of us. I need to own what is mine and you need to own what is yours and only from that place of equality can we build something. If I ward away my responsibility and my truth and stay small and others have to go searching fo us then time is wasted and our truth is squandered 

Stop focusing on conditions and focus on your needs. If your needs are not met then establish expectations, boundaries, or end the connection. Find ways to thrive and to live your truth without pushing to make someone else relevant or worthy. Your life is not meant to make others feel special. Thats a cop-out to you and to them. Your life is meant to share your love from where you are while respecting others from where they are.

Stop playing into victimhood and into a drama about content never really do we stop to realize that the context of our story and how we frame it is everything. If we frame it in the context of pain, or of scarcity, or of the outcome that we are craving then there’s really little opportunity for success or satisfaction. Lean into the surrender of not being able to control where you love goes or how it is received. It just is. 

Learning to Receive:

Sometimes we are not ready to love big and often I think it important first to get better at receiving. How do you receive? Are you ashamed when someone compliments you or celebrates you? 

You don’t stop loving because others have stopped. This is what leaves the world idle and without hope. Hope is created by those who take a stand. Those people who dig in and believe in something larger than themselves. When we take a stand for what we believe we are practicing our values and able to illustrate for others what we envision. This is crucial as creating and propagating a new narrative of how to love is all of our responsibility. We all have that capacity.

• So here’s to your unconditional love.

• Here’s to rounding out your capacity to show up to yourself and to others.

• Here’s to being more readily who you are and to finding out who that is daily.

How to listen versus how do we speak :

To love well we have to actively listen without listening through our filters and projections. If we aren’t listening and acknowledging ourselves then there’s no room for someone else. We get angry at the very idea of needing to listen. Stop running away from listening to yourself. What is still in need of healing? We are running away because it may be daunting. I often hear my clients say this is hard Francisco. I often reply back I know it is. I’ve been trying to do it. This is a practice not a destination you arrive at. It’s about direction and believing in the direction we’ve set ourselves out on. It’s not forcing an outcome for ourselves or others. 

When we wake up to resentment we often think that we never wanted to do this. We never wanted to take on other people’s problems but in fact I think that’s a lie we like to tell ourselves. We use other peoples issues as a means by which to escape our own. We vilify others. We make them the villain in our stories and in our perspective in life when in reality it is our actions that impact. Regardless of what a person has done to you they do not own you so don’t let them preoccupy or own your thoughts. Don’t let the memory you have of them and all our contorted ways of justifying their villainy in the landscape of our story to make a regular home. Compassion and empathy lead us to new possibilities where we can just respect their struggle and release the tether they have towards our own unresolved narratives. (more on this topic in an upcoming post)

I invite you to make a commitment to love people based on your values. That is to say treat them kindly, with compassion, with empathy. Find common ground. Offer forgiveness. Lean into the discomfort of not immediately making the other person wrong for the impact of their action but allow them the opportunity to break free of their own fear of shame and imagined insufficiency. Allow them to be enough in your eyes and in the space you create to listen to them. At the same time challenge them to not back away from the struggle and the fire that can purify them. Allow them the space to voice and express. Learn to receive. You can start by sitting in the uncomfortability of receiving and befriend the disbelief you have that there’s an ulterior motive. Just receive for the sake of receiving. Give yourself permission to be seen and to be witnessed so that you can see and witness others.

Taking radical responsibility

It’s incredibly important to also add that loving unconditionally requires loving to not be transactional or a damaging obsession of keeping score of other people’s flaws. It requires us to instead realize radically what is ours to own and to sit in the awareness that it’s likely more than we would normally like to accept. Especially if we are just starting the practice of making amends and learning to apologize. Apology and forgiveness in the context of love are not really available without the ability for us to take ownership of how we made significant impact the the situation we are in.

The invitation is here is to surrender into the process of being loved as you find yourself today.

Welcome the negative voices and ask them to sit. Go into the room where the shattered glass remains and make a plan to create the healing art piece that is your stained glass window. First before you envision possibility, take time to witness the shattered glass and hold yourself into a new reality. By that I meant sooth yourself. The goal here isn’t the outcome you’re normally striving for but learning how to sooth the pain by not running from it but witnessing it and most of all witnessing how it impacts others in your life. Healing is both internal and external. We need both. 

To summarize…

I leave you with these questions and prompts for your own inquiry and reflection:

How do you struggle to love?

Name the ways that you are conditional.

Can we stop romanticizing love and instead start normalizing unconditional love that comes from being grounded in who we are and what we are about?

To do that we have to go beneath the surface and get to the struggle and the not so beautiful or brilliant parts. Healing and soul work aren’t glamorous. They are messy and overwhelming at times. Give yourself space and time to unpack but don’t hide from it altogether. Just take your time. Every journey and process is sacred, remember that.

I celebrate you and I don’t have to know you to do so, I do it because of who I am not because of who you are. Stay wise and light your fire today. 

Depression: the unwelcome guest

No one can understand depression unless they've gone through it. Yet it gives us all pause to consider how we may have found ourselves in similar spaces at various stages in our lives. Depression's reality to those who have not experienced it is uncomfortable at best and suffocating at worst. To be honest, much the same is felt by those well acquainted with its grip. The unwelcome guest turns the sweetness or vibrancy of life into the experience of eating an overcooked tasteless meal that requires you to chew it until your teeth fall out. That is to say, it's a dull senseless emptiness that simply takes away any zest or vibrancy to your day.

Recently, as I was reading old journal entries, I came across something that speaks to this experience: 

I dreamt last night that I was restlessly laying in a bed attempting to count animals to snooze but to no avail. It was the middle of the night and I was coaching myself to sleep to try and avoid moving and inadvertently disturb my partner from her slumber. The room I was in seemed to be located on the second story of a house. The whole dream was covered in a haze. As I lost count of sheep, I sensed a presence come into the house. I lay in bed curious about this sense and immediately heard someone in the kitchen rustling things around. I could tell the noise was coming from the dining room. I ran downstairs with no other motive than to confront the intruder and protect the safety of the home. In my dash to protect my partner, I paid little attention to the fact that I was awash with fear. From the top of the stairs, I yelled, "who's there?!?" Only silence and a stale taste of uncertainty greeted me. Simply, no answer. As I landed on the floor where I felt the unwelcome presence, I approached the dining room. It was there I could make out shadows that resembled a person under the dining table. It was hiding. Quickly, I moved closer to remove the shelter that the creature had settled behind to shield itself from confrontation. I tossed the table by throwing my weight in the opposite direction to an exaggerated degree causing a ruckus. Plates and a vase fell to the ground. In all the commotion the figure scurried farther away from me into the corner. I attempted to raise my voice in my fright. I wished to demand an answer as to why this person had entered. As my mouth opened and air expelled from my lungs no sound was audible. I couldn't raise my voice. All that came out was a whimper. The whimpers I managed to get out were, "get out. leave." The figure shrunk down further. It wore only tattered clothing and sat shaking in the fetal position. My fear grew as did the silence. Long drawn out moments of looking at it scared in a corner and me scared to confront it. It was during that standoff that I awoke. I realized when I came out of the dream that the figure that had been cowering against the wall, on the floor, cold, beaten, and tattered was me. I was too afraid to reach out and acknowledge that the pain was mine. I was too scared to face and own my pain.

Depression is a hard pill to swallow. It instantly makes you want to retreat for the hills like an infected carrier. It makes you want to spare others your suffering. Yet it is the distancing that causes us to fall deeper into the hole. The difficult task is in standing up to it and not letting it gain further ground. It easy in our feeling defeated to think that we aren't innately worthy and gifted. 

In confronting its presence, we are not meant to fix something that does not ask to be fixed. Instead, it asks to be seen, to be known, and given a chance to be understood. In acknowledging it for what it is we call out the elephant in the room. It is in that courageous moment that we claim the reality of our suffering and what is causing us distress. This pain has no easy answers. It only holds that we need more attention to our process. It is in that suffering that we are called to a simple attentiveness and to not push away our pain. In living we are constantly amid a myriad of complex demands and emotional connections. We aren't meant to fix it just notice it.

Not all depression is the same and each person experiences it and manages it differently. Also, every person will seek help and support in their own way to gain the solace and amelioration that they feel is necessary. Yet regardless of circumstance, when we make an effort to understand depression, ours or someone else's, we principally make way toward understanding the grief that is being felt. This grief comes from loss and hurt in our lives. The loss of joy, of hope, or of feeling nothing at all. We learned to manage loss by way of invalidating the pain it causes. In life, we are told to choose hope and "be positive". We are made to believe we gain something by making a choice and having agency or power over our lives. However, when you make a choice you intentionally, if not inadvertently, say 'no' to other choices and options. To say yes to something means you say no to something else. In the end, what you gain is being able to make a choice that suits your desires and motivation. 

Yet in depression, it all seems like a loss because there is no desire or at times motivation for anything, regardless of having agency or not. The gain of being able to make choices dissipates because theres no evident view of possibilities. No pulling yourself up by your bootstraps can help you here. This sense of loss is made manifest by the reality of living a life in what feels like confinement. It's the heart's pleading that has exhausted the means to know what to do and how to feel about anything. That is to say that the heart resigns for lack of impetus.  

As I think back to that dream I struck with the notion that the intruder was an unwelcome guest. It was a guest in the house of my being struggling to make sense of loss, abandonment, hurt, and the escaping subtleties of living. It was the guest that kept me up. It was the other part of me that was asking to be acknowledged.

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"Sometimes what we need is to give ourselves permission to break free of the conventional. In order to power the zest and vibrancy that has been missing from our lives."

My cultural background as a Venezuelan has a rich history in hospitality. There was never such a thing as an unwelcome guests. Family members and friends could stop by at any moment and greet us. We would have to be flexible and also have something to serve and host them with our time and attention. Yet in mainstream American culture, I always knew it was different. There was something missing, the relational part of living. There would never be anyone unannounced. Which made life less spontaneous and less creative. Everything was calculated. The excessive structure and emotional distance that people needed for 'personal space' came into conflict with my initial cultural experience of appreciating anyone and host the uninvited as if they were right where they belonged.

Depression, I believe, communicates something to us. It's a signal and we must learn to be in a relationship with it to learn ways to move with it not seek to abandon it. Yet depression is a process like any worthwhile journey. It is not a goal to be completely overcome. Its a destination and a story. It might not dissipate so the end result can't be our focus because we will mourn the expectation that isn't met every time we set a gauge for our success away from depression. We move toward it not away for it. 

Much of what makes the zest and vibrancy fall away is our rumination and the many stories we tell ourselves. We fall into the trap of believing that our feelings are the whole of reality. Our thoughts get tied into 'all or nothing' binds. We essentially limit fluidity and creativity. We begin to over-generalize and paint everything with the same color brush. Life becomes very bland. In doing so, we minimize our value, the value of others, and the value of the potential that life has because we aren't living only preparing for the worst from it. In preparing for it we lose the opportunity to live it. What if we would reach out to that part of ourselves, to welcome what was once exiled just for the sake of going deeper to where the saturation of color seemingly makes everything dark? 

With hospitality, we can observe each individual color and that we are not just the emotions and feelings we hold. It is in that new vision or the landscape where slowly learn to dissolve the blinders limiting our sight that we can finally find our footing. I'm not saying that these feelings go away. On the contrary, we will likely be more aware of our hurt. However, when we know what we are experiencing and confront it we can cultivate daily practices that repeatedly seek our best next step. What is important in this endeavor of hospitality is that we listen. We don't bury what our bodies and hearts are communicating. We may realize that depression is a guest and that there is more to us. In being human, we are invited to understand all the guests in our house and to give each of them a space to be heard and acknowledged. The hope is that we can be courageous enough to recognize the grief some of those guests carry without being consumed by it. We attribute meaning to our emotions. Our emotions do not define us. Being hospitable is crucial in cultivating wholeness and integration. 

“This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”
”

— Rumi

Practice of the Precipice

We often go through life unconsciously putting experiences and people in boxes. It seems quite natural, since everyone we know does it to one extent or another. We measure everything by previous learned experiences and expectations that fit our own easily recognizable understanding of the world.

What examples come to mind for you? The reality is that we don't know what we don't know. We make sense of life only through what we do know. Let me give an example: If I meet someone, I might remark on how they remind me of someone I knew or of an experience that reminds me of my childhood. It's all self-referential. We run circles around our way of seeing the world because it's comfortable if not dependable. This familiarity gives us the ability to know what to expect as it provides assurance to operate in a particular. This assurance lessens in our eyes the amount of turbulence or conflict that we are likely to experience when entering into new or unknown territory; be that with either new experiences or relationships of any kind.

Ultimately, boxes are categories we fashioned through our world view and personal cosmology. They surmise by projecting out how we wish to engage and relate to the world. Some boxes are rather black and white with titles and functions. Others are complex boxes all themselves, containing fluid ideas to provide context and insight on how to engage when ambiguity arises. These categories hold varying levels of significance in our lives. We dictate how far we are willing to engage or invest with each person based on their type of box. We do this for any number of reasons: convenience, safety, habit, dependability, assurance, trust, curiosity, risk. Individuals then have no room to grow and we have little allowance for change for them once categorized.

In the end, we spend so much time relating to the person we knew yesterday. We don't receive people in the present or everyday as if it was our first time meeting them. True context is built over time and it helps us make sense of how important one relationship is to another. The assumption that what someone has to offer you can only be within the limits of the small knowledge of your experience with them is short sighted. We lose something that is unique to them and every person to believe in something different. We omit witnessing the present truth of the person. This thinking complicates an otherwise simple process of receiving someone as they are where they are when they come to you. Instead, for the sake of security and convenience we demand and expect that a person be who we envision them to be so that we can react in the way we have prepared. Life in this approach can be dull and lifeless. We might as well be numb to living if we only seek to secure all variables and suffocate possibility.

It’s typical for people to quickly make assumptions initially when encountering a person. The ambiguity during the infancy of any relationship keeps us guarded but engaged, curious and hesitant. The quicker we give black and white boxes the more readily we lessen the opportunity for us to see their innate complexity. These pictures we paint dictate how we interact with others, sometimes limiting both them and ourselves. However, it is the curiosity of the unknown that allows us have desire to know someone in their complexity and holistically at every encounter.

When we don’t listen attentively enough and sense where those changes are in every encounter, we get wrapped up in a context that doesn't always serve us or the people we care for. Instead, we are invited into the subtle reality of possibility that the person is currently seeking to create for themselves. Every person is constantly changing. We are never in the same river twice. We don’t spend enough time in knowing the person presently. We do not pay attention or observe what's on the precipice of who they are in their becoming.

Many people would say that the practice I describe about categorizing people is necessary. I would agree that we all do so but I'm questioning if the easy way to identify commonalities keeps us from being curious about the differences or even embracing them. Do we celebrate difference as much as we celebrate commonalities as resonate aspects of our humanity that can draw us closer together?

The heart of my question concerns our capacity to see that we limit people through our assumptions. What have we yet to see? How can we be curious? In what ways can we present with a curiosity that seeks wisdom not absolutes?

Each person carries wisdom, we just belittle their truth to nothing more than gibberish before witnessing it. Openness requires us to be flexible and be moved by the present experience with the other person. How do we receive what the other has to offer without letting our fear dictate how we give way to possibility?

So the simple question comes up: what can we do?

Initially, it would be incredibly beneficial for you to assess how you listen and what gets you to listen for old information that confirms your limited view of the person. Then assess how you might be more attentive to new information that requires more patience to pick up on. In therapy with couples or individuals, I often see them struggling with how to stay patient and present to the new and subtle information their partner is offering. We are all bound to the cycle that restricts our options for action and understanding because we are perpetually trying to validate what we think and know about the person or situation.

As we practice listening with curiosity, the second step then is to not view things as always having to be about us. We need to get out of our own way from limiting our insight and experience. If preoccupation and worry are at the center of every encounter we grow anxiety and stress over variables that we can't control, namely how others view us. When we stop being the center of everything. We can see the lay of the land and observe others as they are and gives us the ability to be more objective. This way we can make decisions that are based out of understanding others instead of obligation and coercion.

It takes a great deal of courage to let go of the comfortable familiarity of what we expect in order to know what is - both possible and available.

The precipice is that place where the invitation to stand and jump from the high dive of your knowing into the uncertainty and risk of possibility simply by greeting another's wholeness and humanity. It's that moment where the lack of security gives way to new freedom on how to love others and by doing so love ourselves by no longer seeing ourselves in the same way.

The invitation to this kind of relationship is most importantly personal. How do we meet ourselves and see ourselves in a new light every day? How does approaching the unknown, help us encounter ourselves and others newly? How does this practice of falling presently at the precipice of constant rebirth give us a chance to create the type of life that we would love?

Control & Freedom

People like categories. They want everything to be in an identifiable box. This way they can manage it and control it. However, control is really just a way for us to manage our anxiety and stress around the insecurities that are prompted by ambiguity.

The things we most care about in life cause in us the greatest amount of chaos. This is due to the fact that things we love most seemingly cannot be contained. They have no structure and cannot be easily boxed in. We suffer when we try to contain them. When we finally do capture some part of the magic, it disappears. We grow tired of it and want to move on.

In connecting with others and living out of a place of routine that doesn't speak to us we are seemingly carted around from one gray circumstance and emotion to the next. Yet, we don't take into account our singular existence in the presence of a much larger whole; locally or globally. We think ourselves independent because society says so, but we don't rely on the truth that we are interdependent. Instead, we often experience a need to commandeer these situations of anxiety and rise to the challenge and blaze our own trail toward our success.

We are intimately connected to one another.  We rarely hear the core of our dreams and aspirations and tend to what we feel drawn to. Ambition use to be that place that would allow us to follow those creative dreams. However, someone else's definition of success and selflessness drives the motivation for ambition. Yet both do not have to be mutually exclusive. We can think outside the box and still find safety in routine. We merely have to be willing to be stretched and challenged to ask ourselves what we are willing to let go in order to gain some joy back by why of freedom.

We are made to think that we must be independent and control all the things that plague our lives. We don't have the capacity to hold it all. Action is a necessary part of any endeavor, however, we have a difficult time finding stillness long enough to truly know what we should engage. We are so caught up in the drama of our anxiety that we cannot distinguish between our stress and the yearning we feel for something more.

I believe the tension that we must struggle with is held in control and freedom. It is engaging in a control of safety whereby we acknowledge our worthiness. Then the freedom lies in making choices that provide us opportunity to let go of the need for a certain outcome. This is what it means to be interdependent we are not the sole caretakers. Everything does not rely on just our shoulders. Its important then to look at what we need not hold on to or try to control.  

"I was once on a retreat and the retreat facilitator asked would you rather clench your hands and not let anything in or would you prefer to have them open, ready to receive?"

I would say that both are useful and necessary. My hand needs to be clenched to hold the rope that holds things together but my other hand is open to receive what may come. This is the complexity of being human; living in the tension.