Dealing with the Illusion of Disconnection in Love

“If you knew the real me, how could you not love me?”

This question – this wisdom – set in motion the arrival of an unravelling of the beautiful truth of my being, which turned my understanding of life upside down, grounding me into my human body as if it were engaged in a gentle dance with reality. In this phrase, I heard something different; something I had never heard before. It is profound, and yet so simple at the same time.

I’ve spent my entire life feeling disconnected and alone, living in my story as an ‘abandoned little girl, whose dad left when she was four’ and whose relationships have been a non-stop battleground of running and chasing ever since. I’m married now, but I’ll apprehensively admit that my wedding felt like the worst day of my life. How so? Well, beautiful soul, I simply forgot the profound truth of the question at the beginning of my article; and, if I’m guessing correctly, I imagine you, too, my beautiful dear, can resonate…

Why My Wedding Felt Like The Worst Day of My Life

On the build up to what was meant to be the best day of my life, it felt like everything that could possibly trigger the very core of my pain was thrown to me. Disconnection was the theme. Major arguments with everyone close to me, being told I was no longer part of the family, losing friends, and my mother-in-law-to-be telling me she had ‘always hated me’ will probably help make sense of how it edged that way; but there’s no need for detail. Just know, that in every sense of the word, the universe was sending me a lesson; but all I could see was that I thought I was out of my body experiencing trauma and it felt like I just couldn’t hop back in. I was numb, I felt trapped, and I don’t really remember anything else, other than what felt like a gaping hole in my seemingly broken, black heart.

After the wedding, I took myself off to Bali – alone. I wanted to escape. I was running. Running from whatever seemed externally wrong. Running from my husband.  Running from my family. Running from my mother-in-law. Running from pain. Running – anywhere. I just went. Where I landed seemed happier, more peaceful, and I felt at ‘home’ – for a while, at least. I had arrived to what I thought was my state of inner peace. All was well.

Until I arrived home, after my travels; back to the same place I’d started. I attributed this initially to the fact that the ‘external’ was still the problem. I’d still argue with my husband, running away every time we argued (shoes were thrown, tables turned, shoes retrieved, and off I ran). This was my pattern. This was my truth, right? Wrong.

How Life Really Works: Remembering the Truth

In the feeling of my constant pain, I was going to leave for good; newly married or not. Propped up with dewy dreams from quotes about how “a strong woman will automatically stop trying if she feels unwanted – she won’t fix, or beg, she’ll just walk away” – and all the other absolutely ridiculous quotes that we absolutely should not base our life decisions on (but often do!) – I packed myself off to London, and thought that was going to be it.

Then, one day, I came across a profound understanding about how life really works – which shifted everything. Like myself, you might be familiar with the idea that the universe is guiding us on a journey that we are meant to trust – I was hugely into self-help and I resonated with yoga, and meditation – but somehow I never really understood this until I heard something different; something deeper. I heard that, as humans, we operate in the feeling of our thinking, moment to moment. This means that our reality is entirely thought-created and internal, and not necessarily truth. We live in the feeling of whatever we are thinking; and yet the truth sits underneath this, waiting for a space to appear, in between our thoughts, in order to be heard.

As soon as I heard this, I wanted to know more, but it’s not something we have to do anything with to ‘learn.’ My subconscious heard it, and the more I stayed in conversation about how life really works, I simply began became aware of my thoughts as just ‘thoughts.’ I would notice my want to run and think “oh, interesting, where is my thinking about wanting to run coming from?” Then I would leave it to wisdom to reveal the answer. It turns out, underneath all of our thinking is a universal wisdom that is accessible to each one of us; that guides each one of us – without us having to do anything. Underneath all of our thinking is the truth.

The ‘Checklist of Love’ Illusion

The answer (that dropped into my head when I let go of my thinking about this issue) was that I had learned to run. To me, love looked like running and chasing.  I thought about love as ‘someone running’ and ‘me chasing’; and that someone should chase me when I ran. My husband didn’t chase me; therefore, he didn’t love me, really, did he? He didn’t fit into my tightly constructed check-list of what love looked like! Wrong again. One day, curious about my rapidly unravelling insights (which just arrived as if I had held onto the end of a piece of string and dropped the ball), I asked my husband “why don’t you chase after me when I run away?” – and his answer unveiled an unblinkable-away amount of tears in my eyes. He said “because that’s not love.” I was astonished. To me, this was hearing something different: I didn’t even know that there were different thoughts about what love looked like. To him, my ‘checklist of love’ didn’t make sense. His checklist of love said that staying was love (actually I don’t think he even had a checklist); and – really – he was right. My truly loving husband had been there, all along; I just couldn’t see the truth through my thoughts.

I had learned from my early experience that running and chasing was love; but it wasn’t. What this did, though, was unravel even deeper wisdom about my feelings of disconnection.

Deeper Wisdom About The Disconnection Illusion

In the moment that I heard that running wasn’t love, I realised I had always identified with physical presence in human form as being connected.  I determined my whole connectedness on the presence (i.e. not running) of others who ‘loved me’ being there. When they ran, I thought they didn’t love me, and I felt disconnected. When they chased, I thought they loved me, and I felt connected.

What I didn’t ever really see, until this insight appeared, was that I was connected all along; whether or not someone’s human form was even there. From people’s disappearance, I learned that whether or not they were here with me in human form, we were always connected because we were part of the same universal energy. We were one in the universal spirit that guides us through life. Whether someone ran, chased, stayed, loved or hated – or danced with me under the moonlight – it meant nothing. I was attaching meaning to it all, just with the creative power of my thought-in-each-moment. In one moment, it looked like being ‘abandoned’ was someone not loving me; in another moment, ‘abandonment’ was part of the process of love, and in another moment, being ‘abandoned’ meant nothing because I couldn’t be ‘abandoned’ if we were all part of the same universal vital energy. How can I be ‘abandoned’ if abandonment doesn’t exist? How can I be ‘not loved’ if ‘not being loved’ doesn’t exist? How can I be ‘not loved’ if loving, universal spirit is all that does exist?

Remembering the Truth

In each moment, as a human, what we see depends on what we can see! If it doesn’t occur to us to pull a door to open it, then we will stay trapped in the box of illusion until we can see the way out. Or, in my case, until I could see that it’s sometimes absolutely OK in the box and that they aren’t trapped at all! All thought – good or bad – is an illusion. The only truth, underneath all the creative illusions of our mind, is the energy underneath it: our connectedness as universal, loving, oneness.

And so, I arrive, full circle, back to the beginning; back to the innate wisdom underlying all of the thought in this written word. If the only truth is that we are always connected as a loving universal energy; if we knew the real us, how could we not love us?

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