by Hilary Bowring, Contributing Editor
Loved the song “Bring me a Higher Love” by Steve Winwood. Back in the seventies it filled me with excitement, a youthful expectation of mad passionate love. Only after much life experience did I understand the core meaning being to consciously attract in love aligning with our higher selves. Like numberless people I’d been rather blind in relationships, governed by the immediacy of chemistry and other inexplicable emotional attraction. After my husband’s sudden death, the song took on new significance to shift from the kind of love relationships I’d had, to become more conscious of how my behaviours contributed and affected by the words that shaped them.
As Within so Without
We’ve all heard of “As within so without”, holding the implication that our inner thoughts and beliefs attract our outside experience. I am referring to the beliefs hidden in the subconscious. Our intimate relationships mirror our deeper state of mind and indicate what we need to change to form a higher more satisfying love. Relationships can reveal a dance with our Soul Self, both deadly and exciting. In my case I have no regrets about the intense ‘Codependency’ I reached with my husband who I loved dearly. After he died, in intense grief I reflected deeply, appreciating the healing journey we’d been on. Healing our childhood wounds, as we grew able to love each other more strongly despite enormous difficulties. It looked bad, from the outside labelled ’Addiction’ and ‘Codependency’ and yet on the inside we were growing. Despite that understanding, do I want to do that particular journey again? No! I’m through trying to save another to save myself. I’d love to explore a relationship focused on our mutual flourishing, as I’m sure we all do.
Reflecting on the past helps us to become aware of patterns. Keep looking and see the teaching and learning even in dire circumstances. Often ‘dire’ ignites inspiration to move on.
The shift to Higher love…. Starts with Re-booting our inner computer.
Love lives have largely been governed by the subconscious beliefs. The re-boot dissolves old patterns from conditioning and past lives
- Conditioning. Family conditioning and home life, the words, and thoughts we use to explain ourselves to ourselves) can sow models around Love, as it were a destination, in our subconscious.
-E.g. My mother was widowed very young, so her model was of a powerful woman not needing a man! She was very reactive and emotional as she’d never expressed her grief. She was good flirt though! With my husband David I was dominant like his mother too–so that model was OK with him! Being over-emotional like my mom was OK to him too. However afterwards I discovered being over emotional can be frightening to many men who’ve been taught to avoid emotion! I worked through a lot of that! Now I’m less controlling, more cool, maybe too cool sometimes!
-Another example. A dear friend came from a family where Dad dominated, and her mom was a martyr. She attracted in a husband and a boss who suppressed her abilities, the powerful authoritarian pattern penetrated all aspects of her life with males. Eventually she asserted herself as a strong woman challenging the men and began releasing martyr energy, becoming free of family influences! It’s a journey. Love evolves. It’s not stationary.
Good to think about the dynamic in your family that you perpetuate.
- Societal factor.
It was not that long ago that marriage was the prerequisite to sex! Imagine virgins were sought for ‘proper’ marriage, like Princess Diana in the UK. A pre-requisite that didn’t lead to happiness for anyone involved. Among ordinary folk too, the virgin in a white dress was the hallowed ideal. Strangely there were no wedding photos of my mother’s wedding, and it turned out that was because she was pregnant with me—so shameful at the time.
Marriage secures legal rights over one another so pre-nuptial contracts are now used to avoid that level of financial commitment. It’s getting more complicated as we assert our independence within a partnership, potentially leading to a healthy evolution where we can be together yet separate in our power.
Here’s a wonderful extract from Kahlil Gibran’s poem on Marriage that summons up a Higher Love:
….. “let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
……..
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow
not in each other’s shadow.”
- Past life factors. We bring past life relationship patterns into this lifetime to potentially transform with our soul mates. Encoded in our subconscious so not immediately clear to us, let alone change. Powerful hidden factors drive what we attract into our life experiences.
The big ones are Betrayal, Persecution, Abandonment, Alienation, Abuse both physical and emotional, Suppression, Authoritarianism, Victim, and Caretaker.
Making the Shift to higher love requires us to identify the subconscious force driving the relationship without blame. We need to—Relinquish Old patterns, Old Core Beliefs about love and insert self-honesty,
Toxic relationship dynamics.
If we cannot see our role in a breakup; blame or shame energy is still operating at a sub conscious level—even from divorces long over. Blaming cuts off a different future and the possibility of higher love. A quiet time in nature or Meditation helps to engage with our soul selves and ask, what is prevailing? Then make a behavioural change.
-In a relationship with a man after my husband died, even after I’d become aware of spiritual expansion my emotional aspect was stuck. My old pattern of attracting in men who were wounded and not able to fully love, along with fear of abandonment were still present! My emotional response was to overreact to any slight sign of being abandoned. Jealous too. I’ve been training myself to be less reactive, allow a pause and breathe when the old buttons are pressed, before responding or not. It is an empowering feeling when I succeed. However sometimes a quick emotional expression is healing too.
Today I was on my bike on a cross walk, pressed the button to cross and as usual the advancing cars stopped. However, on the inside lane was a grey car ignoring the crosswalk lights proceeding at speed. He shouted, ‘Get off your bike!” I could hardly believe his audacity and immediately rebuked as I mounted and crossed on my bike, ‘I shouted f* off Asshole” and gave him the f off sign as he sped into the distance. Such moments clear emotions fast!
Empower yourself by seeing your pattern, without blaming anyone. See yourself as the source of this pattern. Contemplate what’s going on:
Why do I get ghosted/ disregarded? What does unfaithful mean? Said I was too controlling? Said I came on too strong? They were mean to me again? Why another person with intimacy issues?
Usually, these questions turn into revelations about us. Sometimes mirroring back exactly our own issues or uncovering a lack of self worth. In all cases requiring more authentic self expression. Dare to be you! More self care in front of caring for others or trying to impress others to cover a feeling of unworthiness.
Often a pattern is shared with our Ancestors. We are linked across time and space and these beliefs are encoded in our DNA. In the journey of spiritual evolution, we are on a sort of relay race, each generation spurring us on to greater understanding. As we change, we affect our ancestors back in time and future generations. So, we have the opportunity to clear these patterns in ourselves and our Ancestors benefit too.
Here is a meditation on YouTube: Ancestral karma clearing Meditation
And here’s a song from Fleetwood Mac about how true love starts inside us.