ART OF BEING

Loving

BY DEBORAH CHANDLER, PH.D
Posted 7/6/22

I grew up mistaking performance for love. When I performed, the audience applauded. If I did a really good job, I felt more loved. It’s a strange way to know oneself: as an object, a spectacle.

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ART OF BEING

Loving

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I grew up mistaking performance for love. When I performed, the audience applauded. If I did a really good job, I felt more loved. It’s a strange way to know oneself: as an object, a spectacle.

I had no idea who I was beyond the performance. What happened when I did a poor performance? I was now unloveable. Unfortunately, this conditional acceptance confused me for years.

Over time, I learned that my striving for acceptance was based on fear. I was afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing, being inappropriate. My fear was based on shame, the secret knowledge that, deep in my heart, I knew that I was not good enough.

This confusion between performance and my self-worth pervaded my life. I’d barter for love with performance, intelligence, acquisitions, throwing more into the arena, and wanting to be recognized and praised. 

What would happen if I knew and lived as if I were unconditionally loved; loved not for what I did, but for the fact that I existed?

So I started an experiment. I started living as if I were loved, unconditionally, not for anything I did, but for existing. At first, I would mechanically expand my chest, pull back my shoulders and let warmth pass from me. With these actions, my chest was more open to transmitting and receiving love. I felt my heart area expanding. I smiled more. I was happier. 

Doubts would arise. Did I do a good job? Did I say the right thing? I would focus back on my chest, letting my breath expand me. The uncertainty about my worth would dissolve, as I let the love exist within me.

I felt freed from others’ opinions. I just had to focus on the love at my core. When I would feel the shame rising, I would expand around it, leaving the darkness behind as I let love move through me. 

As a person who loves to analyze every nuance of my angst, this was new. I was mechanically side-stepping my history and my hang-ups and redefining myself in each moment as a person of love.

I like this new way of being. Not in love but of love. Even when I disapprove of my actions or words, I can find the warmth emanating from my core. I haven’t stopped trying to improve my actions and words, but I have stopped judging my entire being by every subtlety of my life.

Love really has no conditions. Love just is. The synergistic energy that creates our universe seems to have a glow of love. The very frisson of interaction emanates an aura of love. I don’t know why. It just seems to be that way. Makes me happy to be of love.

Dr. Deborah Chandler writes the Art of Being blog for riverreporter.com. For more essays, visit https://www.riverreporter.com/the-art-of-being/.

love, life, happy

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