Hey VJ,

That’s a good question and I remember having this conversation a while ago. The reason why people say to love oneself first is varied but in simple terms it just means – we accept the love we think we deserve. If you don’t love yourself, you will put up with all kinds of shit and also attract people with poor boundaries.

Leaving that bit aside, how to find love?

Hmm I don’t know. I never looked for it per say. It just happened somehow when I was least expecting it. I kept my heart and mind open to the experience though but had clarity over time about what a good partner would mean. I met my current boyfriend at a time when I wasn’t ready for a relationship but we somehow fell into place together. Funny how fate works.

As for friends and family…well one friend found it online through a book review site. Another met the one through a friend on a social occasion. Another met the girl during a badminton tournament, someone else on a flight lol. My parents had an arranged marriage.

Currently I do have one friend who is looking for love. He is very happy with his life though – got an awesome job, good friends, supportive family but now he wants to feel a different kind of intimacy. So he seeks love but doesn’t actively look for it. There for many ways for him though – through common friends, events, arranged marriage route etc. Usually people find the person during college or office life. Some wait it out. It’s different for everyone.

So yeah I know my perspective is more skewed towards twenties age of finding love. But i am sure the other posters will have much to add.

I do believe in one thing about love – “Each failed love story is an important lesson about oneself.”

Seeking love doesn’t mean we aren’t complete in ourself, it’s just that we are human and it’s a very basic need to feel connected deeply to someone. Staying in love though is the bigger challenge ironically”

Regards
Nina

‘Fish don’t know they’re in water’ likewise Humanity don’t know they’re in ‘love’

Love has many leaves and so experienced in many ways. I suspect one of the lessons of becoming is to discover that love exists in all of our experiences even those that are painful. Sometimes I wonder if setting up a goal like finding love is what keeps us from finding it. We become seekers lost in the seeking failing to see the water we are swimming in, failing to become finders.

How to find Love? Be open to seeing with eyes anew.

Perhaps rephrasing our question might help?

What you seem to be looking for is the experience of a journey of love within a personal relationship with another individual.

How do experience Love in relationship? Be open to seeing yourself and the other with eyes anew. Be open to experiencing love in all is simplicities and complexities.

The difficult portion is for its practical application, and which is why so many people end up frustrated on what to do for finding a life partner.

Yes, my question is only specific to a personal relationship with another person hence the wordings in my post which started the thread – “How to find a soulmate, a life partner?”

Watched the movie ‘Collateral Beauty’ over the weekend. It was interesting how the philosophy, theology, apologetics, platitudes about Death, Time and Love do not comfort in the times of anguish. For myself I would have wrote the letters to Life and Love but I suppose that Life would have been played by the same character as Death, probably, Love as well. They are all part of each other.

Anyway your right understanding and even experiencing Love at a universal level does not at first glance help the practical application in a personal relationship. Understanding is not wisdom

I do however feel that understanding love at the higher levels creates space in which we might respond to love as a practical application of a personal relationship.

I start from the premises that each of us is the meaning of our life and so our task is in becoming and that Relationships are the crucible in which we discover ourselves and become.

So what does this mean at a practical level?

Psychologically by the age of 5 by nature, nurture, karma, sins of the “father” (however you want to identity it) how we are going to experience relationship is pretty much set and we will spend the rest of our lives working on healing.

What this means is that we will set up and replay scenarios in our relationship, usually unconsciously, so that we can work through them and doing so heal. As in all things the possibility for growth or getting stuck exists.

In a healthy relationship each helps the other work through there scenarios, become more conscious, and end the loop. (The show ‘This is Us’ shows how this is done).

In relationships that become co-dependent instead of working through the scenarios the scenarios remain unconscious and so feed of each other and the couple become stuck. In such cases Love often requires the pain of a relationship ending to push the process forward.

Love/Life always pushes upward to the light. Though it is painful it is still love.

This is just my opinion. Life will put into your path people who through relationship will push you to become as you are ready. By ready I mean open to seeing and letting Life/Love happen. We work for that which no work is required. It might sound easy enough but being open to being loved as we are is very difficult. It is easier to give then to receive.

Understanding and respecting the many experiences of Love as it is, Life as it is, while in relationship you create space to respond instead of react to the lessons you need to learn and heal the hurt and transcend karma. In this space you learn to pull back projections, recognize your shadow, and in doing so learn to see and love the other and yourself as they and you are.

When you and your partner participate in the process of growth and becoming I think is when you discover you are in relationship with a soul mate.

Dear VJ:

What a delightful thread!

1. “What does ‘learn more about who you are’ include?”- for example: I want to learn the nature of anger. Studying the Ocean instead of the Fish would mean googling Anger online and reading articles and viewpoints; views of anger in science, different religions, law, etc. Studying the Fish would mean examining my own anger.

I heard and read people say that when they are angry they don’t mean what they say, and that their intentions are good when angry. This is an input about anger that I received from the Ocean. Once I challenged this input about the nature of anger and examined my own, the Fish, I found out that when a person is angry and expresses it abusively, he/ she intends to hurt and means for his/ her words to hurt the person they are angry at. I then looked at animals where you can observe nature undiluted or distorted by thoughts, and there it is: animals proceed to hurt other animals when they feel angry- anger motivates them to fight/ to hurt another.

2. “What does ‘work’ in No. 10 mean?” # 10 being: “With #9 (studying and learning about the Fish) worked on over time, you can “SEE who a potential love partner is: loving? – proceed. Not loving- go to (do not proceed).”

The work I refer to is the studying of yourself, of the Fish. Back to my example: once I studied and learned that a person angry who expresses her anger abusively intends to hurt the object of their anger, I gain the understanding, when interacting with an angry, abusive person, that such abuse is intentional and must not be tolerated. If I didn’t understand this, if I believed that angry people don’t mean what they say, I may tolerate such abuse. I may think there is something wrong with me for being hurt at all by what they don’t mean to say. I proceed with the understanding that although anger is a natural feeling, expressing it abusively is not an option for me when interacting with another, and I reject it from another.

3. “say for example, I or anybody looking for a life partner have realised that ‘Yes I did not get the love from my parents during my formative years’ – Then what after this? Will this realization be sufficient enough to find the love of my life?”

Such an intellectual realization, a rational realization is far from being sufficient. It is only the beginning of healing. The realization that is sufficient for better, effective living, is a combination of rational understanding and emotional understanding. The emotional impact of being unloved and abused by one’s parents takes a lot of time, help and guidance to heal from. It takes unlearning things we believe in, things stuck in our brains with the glue of emotion.

Do you find my answers clear and useful? Let me know.

anita

Beautiful list to find Soulmate 🙂

And i dint challenge Peter but i got confused and wanted clarity.
Because it was pointing out duality.
That is to seek or not to actively look for Love?
but i think he was saying about Peace within.

Lot of people have manifested Soulmate:) For some its easy.
but than being in default mode we can consciously choose that’s what i was trying to say:)

But now i think i should be the person i seek( i should be the Love i seek:) )