What is True Love?
What is True Love? Not the true love of movies and fairytales (great as the The Princess Bride is), but real world True Love.
Love often gets confused with attachment and desire. Attachment and desire are based in need and fear. True Love is soul or Spirit based. True Love liberates. It uplifts, it frees, and it holds dear, but does not hold on. True Love is based in self-responsibility, not blame, and to love others in this way, we must first open to loving ourselves this way.
Abraham Hicks calls this seeing someone through the eyes of Source. This is when your capacity to love is not contingent on what the other person does, but comes from your alignment to Source Energy within you, and you take full responsibility for how you feel and meeting your own emotional needs.
I think Abraham would define true love as having this intention: “It’s my absolute promise to you that I will keep myself in vibrational alignment with who I really am. I promise to align with Source first, so that whenever I turn my attention on you I will be showering the eyes of Source all over you.“
Relationship coach Annie Lalla has this to say about True Love:
True Love is not for the faint-hearted, it is a gladiator sport and very rarely attempted seriously in most romance. Why? Because it takes immense audacity, faith & the courage to play it full out.
True Love is the epitome of what’s possible between two people. I believe it is the highest game available to us. And to live your entire life never having known what is possible there, is to miss out on the most exquisite aspect of being a human being.
For those who value self-actualization more than their defensive personas, True Love becomes an excellent opportunity to ascend the developmental spiral towards greatness.
Love’s question is this: Are you willing to do the challenging shadow work, using the relationship as a mirror for your hidden blind-spots, letting it sculpt your block of marble into your future David?
Some people expect their relationship to make them happy and seek to escape when it doesn’t. Relationships that optimize for happiness, comfort or ease are often codependency in disguise. The actualization aspect of Love optimizes for aliveness which encompasses the full range of human emotions. This includes happiness, delight and ecstasy, but it also includes pain, sadness, anxiety and despair. Like a glass prism that breaks light into it’s latent rainbow wavelengths, relationships expose True Love as the white light of emotions. Inside of Love lives all feelings, at every level of intensity. This is an aspect of its infinitude.
Annie Lalla
True Love is not about feeling the feels, or being ‘in sync’ with someone, or even sensing a deep energy connection. True Love is about holding space for someone as they are, while at the same time uplifting them to be all that they can be. True Love is when someone commits to standing with you through all that is needed to grow in the way that is necessary to develop the relationship.
True Love is a contact dance of mutual self-actualisation.
Love and relationship coach Layla Martin says this about True Love:
“True Love is for the courageous.”
It’s not reserved for princesses and princes who are lucky enough to be born into royal families and off-limits for the rest of us.
It’s for those of us who turn ourselves into Queens and Kings and non-binary royalty through the sheer force of loving ourselves so deeply that we reveal our true power and nature.
True Love is for the courageous.
People courageous enough to let every heartbreak make their heart stronger.
People courageous enough to look into the abyss and be honest with themselves.
People courageous enough to leave when it’s time to leave and to stay no matter what if that’s what is true.
Courage comes from the Indo-European root for “heart.”
It means to have consciousness of the heart.
Each of our paths to heart consciousness is so distinctly different.
What you need to have courage is different from me.
I overcame (and am still overcoming) a wall of terror that blocks my heart consciousness.
True Love is for people on the path of heart consciousness.
Layla Martin
What is a Soul Mate?
You are the only one I’ll ever love . . .
Justin Bieber – Anyone
Yeah, you, if it’s not you, it’s not anyone
It’s a beautiful romantic notion that there is one mazing person in the world that is meant for us and when we meet them we will never love anyone else. This is linked to the belief that when you find your soul mate, when you find “the one”, then you will have true love. It is a wonderful idea and makes great movies and songs, but it is not reality. The reality is that there are many people who would be suitable partners for us, many people we are attracted to and many people we will love. The other reality is that even when we are with someone we deeply love, we will still be attracted to other people and love other people.
I don’t believe that soul mates exist in the sense that there is one person (soul) we are destined to be with; the one as chosen by a divine power for us. I don’t think we find the right person for us, I think we create them through our desire, beliefs, needs and level of expansion and growth. This may mean, not always, but maybe, that the right person for us changes as we grow and evolve. This is especially likely if our chosen partner does not grow and evolve with us in the same way.
Love is an emotion, relationships are a choice. Love is based in your heart, relationships are based on decisions and choices. True love is continuously choosing to do what is necessary to honour yourself and the other person. A soul mate connection is when two people choose to love each other in this way.
I would define a soul mate as someone you see high enough compatibility and value in, and who sees high enough compatibility and value in you, to commit to doing the necessary work to evolve into who you both need to be to create a True Love relationship together. A soul mate is someone who will lovingly keep you accountable in your growth and evolution. They will love you and trigger you, and love you and challenge you.
A soul mate connection is one that creates a safe haven for complete honesty with openness and acceptance, and it is also a soul haven that uplifts us to evolve as we need to.
Soul mates come together to remind us of our purpose, and help us awaken to the reality of who we really are.
Soulmates have strong empathy and intuition
They have a very strong bonding and know how to create an open and vulnerable space for communication between them.
You are best friends and can be your authentic selves with each other.
They’ll love you for who you are and also challenge you to grow into your highest possible version.
Soulmate relationships . . . happen between two individuals who are complete and whole on their own.
The Minds Journal
To borrow words from Annie Lalla, you are with a soul mate when you can look into their eyes and see access to your greatest version of yourself.
You are with a soul mate when you are with someone you believe can and will stand fiercely for your growth, even risking your approval for it.
A soul mate serves as a refuge for your soul and a springboard for your dreams.
There is an other-worldly sense that this person was custom-made-by-the-universe for you, both in their greatness and in their darkness. Their very “flaws” produce the best opportunity for you to transcend your own.
In True Love, the basic needs and emotional wants of our partner demand a certain level of expansion and development in us. One way to look at it is this: Would the person my partner is asking/needing me to become, be a more extraordinary/ powerful/ freer/ truer/ actualized version of myself? If the answer is yes, then they are the ideal gymnasium to develop those very muscles you would never be able to access, far less grow in any other context. Love is a zendo, a spiritual dojo.
Choosing a long-term partner is selecting the highest leverage/ least pain/ maximal growth path to self-actualization you can find. We fall in love with (ie: hire) the sexiest, smartest, most advanced version of the parent we have the most wounds with in order to heal & transcend the hidden shackles from those wounds. It’s the most important job we ever interview for and should be taken very seriously, so never settle.
All shadow work has to do with reintegrating fragmented parts of ourselves. Our wounds were formed in-relationship and therefore can only be healed in relationship. No amount of meditation on a mountain can solve your mommy issues. That’s why comprehensive shadow work cannot be done alone, we need a partner, a blind-spotter, an intimate mirror. One we trust to reflect back the painful but important truths, without which we cannot get to our next level of maturation.
Annie Lalla
“If she’s amazing, she won’t be easy. If she’s easy, she won’t be amazing. If she’s worth it, you won’t give up. If you give up, you’re not worthy… Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.”
Bob Marley
How Do I Find My Soul Mate?
Finding a soul mate has nothing to do with luck, or searching for someone outside of yourself. We do not find a soul mate, we create them through who we are being and who we are wanting to become. To create a soul mate and a True Love connection with someone you need to take full responsibility for your role in what you are creating in yourself and in your life. You need to practice radical self-love and self-honesty and be open to healing your deepest emotional wounds. You need to be willing to open to another with great vulnerability and courage.
You need to choose to be on a path of heart consciousness, and be willing to stand in the purifying fire, as well as open to the light of love.
There is a kind of magic to it, but magic we create.
For those willing to take the risk and do the work, experiencing True Love with a soul mate transforms you into higher versions of yourself. There is an aspect of alchemy to it. It transforms your base elements into gold, and is an elixir for living life more fully.
It is a call to something more; to be more and have more and create more in the world as a result.
How would you define True Love? What are your thoughts on the concept of soul-mates?
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