For much of my adult life I didn’t believe in ‘the one’ or ‘romantic love’ or ‘happily ever after.’

I have opened over time, to exploring what love and romantic relationship has meant to me. My own lived experience has of course been the biggest teacher. I learned to open to love with my first love. Followed by heart break and hardening my heart for many years. Then, I learned and grew through the perfection of the shadow relationships … you know, the dyfunction, messy, and distorions that plague most of us at some juncture in our lives. My guess is many can relate.

The transformation of relationships came when I realized I wasn’t going to find what I was needing from outside of me, but instead, it was about coming into a deeper relationship with myself, first and foremost.

As I stepped back into relationship at that time after an initial phase of focusing on self-love, in my early to mid-thirties, I was blessed with three wonderful, healing & healthier partnerships, even though I still shunned the idea of romance. Each relationship brought about growth in healthier dynamics, in succession. The last being my ex-husband, married for 16 years, who is still one of my closest friends now for 23 years.

Presently, this month, as I turn 60 years old, I’ve been single for the longest time ever since I began dating. Through the years there have been many revisions of what relationship, romance, and love is for me.

As I’ve healed my own heart, I’ve softened into qualities of vulnerability, innocence, and receptivity. These were some of the very qualities that were shut down at my first heartbreak. I imagined that the hardening of my heart would protect me from future pain, which of course wasn’t true. But it did prevent me from both loving and being able to recieve love fully.

In the subsequent phases of opening myself up once again, I began to sense and feel that I no longer felt romantic love as childish or fantasy or dangerous. Instead I’ve grown to see romance as Higher Love, as a divine expression that is birthed through the Divine Mystery of Soul, not riddled with heart break or loss, but courageous and deep.

From a spiritual perspective, it is mystical and magical, when it happens. It tends to lack accurate words of description, as it’s felt through the body/heart/soul connection.

I’m not referring to the trigger of wounds that turn into an experience of ‘if it hurts this much to be apart, it must be love.’ I would term this a karmic relationship experience, that is a part of our healing and deeper developmental stages. These are what we’ve known mostly as ‘normal’ relationships in society. We see them oftern in younger phases of life or continued patterns of childhood wounding still seeking resolution, later in life, all in varying degrees.

And without labeling them as good or bad, I consider our karmic relationships as powerful vehicles for deeper healing when we can approach them consciously.

One of the primary experiences of karmic relationship, is the chemistry that brings about the need or attachment to be filled from outside of us, to be seen, to be loved, to be needed, etc. They are important, necessary for healing, but in my perspective, not romantic.

I believe that the phases and stages we’ve gone through over generations of condiontioning, be it familial, cultural, religious, and certainly the culture of media and entertainment, in addition to the deep wounds we all carry, love relationships have been profoundly complicated and confused.

In the past I’ve seen romance as being limited in its definition of strong attraction and of course, love for a specific person.

However, not there is another level that for me is what true romance is, which can be described as mysterious, full of wonder, and a language of Soul which can’t necessarily be articulated.

I have begun to see romatic love as holding the frequency/consciousness/energy/ qualites of Higher Love, of honor, vulnerability, innocence, devotion; a desire to express tenderness, intimacy, and passion. There is an unconditional, non-attachment that enables freedom for true selves to emerge. And yes, idealism, however not born out of naivety, but out of intention, presence, and maturity.

As humanity is awakeing, we are moving into a New Earth consciousness, that holds humanity in a vision of healed and whole individuals, that are able to pull from thier own well of self-love, self-knowing, and self-honor, to give freely to one another, from their connection with Divine Source.

This isn’t a paradigm of trying to take from another, in order to be loved, to prove love, fill voids, rescuing, saving, or fixing losses or hurts. These dynamics are what is now being healed by the many via karmic and conscious relationships, in preparation for this new experience of Sacred Union.

It is about accessing and living from higher conscious presence. It’s a dimensional shift that takes place through an open and spacious heart, bringing beloveds together to learn lessons of increasing Joy, Magic, Love, Interdependence, Peace, Harmony, Reciprocity, Generosity. It is an intimate connection with the Divine, through Soul-Soul loving.

New Paradigms for Romantic Relationships on Youtube.

In falling in love with oneself, we begin to fall in love with Life. This is a stepping stone so that we are able to return to that original blueprint of trusting our vulnerability and innocence, to only bring us closer to self, which enables us to be closer to our beloved and always in connection to the Divine.

For thos who resonate, Feel your Heart-Soul Wings Open!

Living In Love,

Lotus