For nearly 20 years, I was perfecting a mental reality. It was the wrong strategy.
Through positive thinking, affirmations, scripting, visualization, and various practices, I was perfecting a world where I controlled my experience. If I wanted to feel something, I first saw it as a potential. Then I conjured the feeling as a bubble within myself. Then I stepped into the bubble and had the experience.
In this mental reality, feelings weren’t surprises or mysteries. They were something I called forward on demand, only when I wanted them.
The Zombie Robot Problem
Then I was confronted with a situation where I was no longer in control.
I wanted to fall in love, but I couldn’t figure out how. And it made me feel like a zombie robot.
My mental processes, creative visualization, and wishing upon stars could get me about 90-95% there, but something still felt missing. The DESIRE was there. I had a partner who was beautiful and kind and loving and everything I could have wanted in a soulmate.
But I couldn’t access that “falling in love” place from my carefully constructed mental reality.
Letting Go of Control in Relationships
So I projected it onto her. If I wasn’t feeling that “in love” piece as fully as I thought should be possible, then maybe she wasn’t the one?
Surely that was it, because my control over reality was so polished, right?
Wrong.
I’m learning what may have already been obvious to everyone else: falling in love isn’t something you control. It’s something that happens to you. Letting go of control in relationships is the only way to actually experience them.
What My Control Was Protecting
Since I was unwilling to give up the tightly-knit control I had in my mental reality, I couldn’t discover the gift that true love really is.
So I blew it. And I ran away.
But in running away from true love, I lost all the control I’d spent so long crafting. The emotions that came over me for leaving an opportunity at perfect love completely eradicated any control I thought I had over my feelings.
It’s been a beautiful train wreck.
The Defense Mechanism
My mental reality was a defense mechanism against ever having to feel anything yucky. It was a brilliant bypass device for only experiencing the upper register of positive emotions.
And it didn’t allow me to go to the place where true love exists. So I didn’t recognize it when it was right in front of me.
What Happens When You Surrender
A strange thing happened. The conflict of having a block to breaking through that mental wall PAIRED WITH a deep burning desire to experience love created enough internal friction to actually break something wide open in me.
It was tragic and chaotic.
So I turned myself over to that chaos and jumped on the emotional roller coaster to see where it led.
Come to find out, my mental reality control system was designed specifically to keep those nasty feelings at bay.
The Unexpected Gift
But now that I’ve simply allowed those feelings to RISE UP and be felt, the feelings that no longer serve me can also be released. And an interesting thing is happening:
Yes, there’s so much grief and hurt and guilt. But there’s also so much LOVE.
And the love is so much more powerful.
That love I was trying to conjure in my mental reality is HERE, NOW in this feelings-based magical mystery tour I’m on.
And that falling in love feeling I was trying to CREATE with my mind is now being delivered to me without my needing to consciously conjure it up in every moment.
It’s just present and alive within my heart and soul.
Long for truth. Love will find a way.
Long for love. Love always wins.
Feel every feeling. Love knows your heart.
This is shadow work in action.
If you’re ready to process what’s been running your life, explore the Shadow Work practices.