Love is not rational, love is not transactional, but we get so caught up on giving and receiving love that we forget we are love.

We are so fascinated with our own thoughts and beliefs and the lies we tell ourselves around what a relationship should and shouldn’t be, that we ignore the beautiful experience of our souls’ true nature. Our souls are desperately trying to love. That is what it does, that is what it is. But instead, we chose to love conditionally, hold grudges, blame others, hold expectations and hold onto commitments that no longer serve us.

The adamancy to hold onto negative emotions comes from so many places – fear, pride, wanting to serve justice – but in reality, all these material conditions are just suppressing love. We want to express love, but we withhold from doing so.

But the interesting thing is that whatever negative emotion you are feeling, also has its counterpart in positive. It means that holding on to negative emotions is really just the resistance of positive ones. We literally stop ourselves from feeling good.

Something that helped me in relinquishing these thoughts is a technique I learned from David R. Hawkin’s book, Letting Go and I hope you can try it too.

Next time you find yourself wanting to love but unable to do so, next time you are feeling and holding onto a negative emotion try thinking of the direct opposite of that and begin to let go resisting it. Step away from circling the negative and focus on bringing in the positive.

Say, your partner has a close friend of the opposite sex, this makes you feel a little uncomfortable. They have an honest heart to heart friendship where they show gratitude for one another in many ways.

This may make you jealous or conjure up false assumptions on the nature of their friendship. This may make you feel a little inadequate as if you have to compete or your relationship is in jeopardy.

Possible negative emotion: Detest, jealousy, unforgiving

Positive emotion (opposite): Admiration and forgiveness

“I admire their capacity to love and recognise beautiful qualities in everyone. That their heart is open to building true friendships, and they have found a safe container just to be and to let their appreciation and respect for another be known. I admire their courage and openness by not shying away from making another soul feel appreciated.”

This is a very personal experience that came straight out of my journal, and I have so much more it’s unbelievable. But in continually practising letting go of resisting positive emotions, you can reflect back and observe your life objectively. You learn not to take things so personally, and it can help elevate you from sinking into victimhood mentality. Nothing external is ever about you anyway.

We can learn to love from our soul by always choosing to see a person’s humanness by putting ourselves in their shoes. It is a beautiful cycle in that forgiveness and love for others means we can forgive and love ourselves. And when we forgive ourselves, we can truly let go of the conditioning and the negativity we carry along so unnecessarily.