The Love lV (Artwork)
The Courage to Love. Christopher Howard
I have throughout my life held back in ways of the heart. I had built walls around my heart that prevented anyone from coming in because I didn't want to be hurt. I conditioned myself to even becoming convinced that I didn't care about affairs of the heart, and to avoid dealing with the repressed feelings of fear and loneliness I threw my self into achievement. I threw myself into earning black belts in martial arts and writing best-selling books, and building companies and making millions. The relationships I had along the way were very one-sided. I lived my life for me, and not for others on the outside but deep down at a place that I didn't even know I existed I lived my life attempting to prove that I was good enough to be loved and to win the approval of others through my achievement. This drove me without any conscious awareness. I was cold and calloused to love on the outside but craved it more than anything else on the inside.
Many people go through their lives in this way. The core wound shared by multitudes is the core wound of not feeling "good enough to be loved."
Different people compensate in different ways. And the ways that we compensate externally are often to develop strong suits or strengths in life. Mine was to achieve. Some people develop a strength of being "intelligent," or "being a hard worker who brings value to the table therefore love is 'deserved," others look to control their environments or their relationships in order to "guarantee that they are in charge and cannot be hurt," still others look to dominant the opposite sex to be in control..... anything to avoid being hurt.
The challenge with all of these paths is that they are driven by fear or even terror and they distract and prevent us from ever dealing with the real issue, and because love is not found in achievement, or control or domination or admiration underneath everything we are still just terrified and lonely. No matter how much we achieve or how many material goods we accumulate or how much prestige or power we have, or sexual conquests are under our belt deep down we never feel whole, deeply fulfilled, happy, good enough or loved. Just look at Elvis Presley, or Marilyn Monroe, or Howard Hughes or Tiger Woods to name a few.
This lack of what we really yearn for, whether we acknowledge it or not, more than anything in the world causes not only underlying heartache but erratic behavior and oftentimes destruction through drugs or alcohol or promiscuity and the undesired results, or emotional outbursts and destroyed relationships. So beyond the lack of fulfillment the tangible results that we produce can be devastating. And the most destructive part is we convince ourselves that the ways we live our lives are actually fulfilling. Carl Jung said that we must by necessity project that which is unresolved at the unconscious level out onto the external world so that we might gain resolution of it.
The problem is that for most people instead of looking at what is happening in the world as being a result of their internal projections, they try to change and manipulate the external world to solve the problems they experience and therefore never resolve the issues that are occurring as a result of their very very deeply repressed unresolved negative emotions.
The journey is an internal journey, this is why our external relationships are always a reflection of our internal relationship with ourselves.
The journey of healing involves recognizing the real cause of our problems, our heartaches, our terror, our sadness, our loneliness and the underlying lack of fulfillment in life. Then having the willingness to go to the place that we've feared the most - moving out of our head and into our heart. Being present, allowing ourselves to love, allowing ourselves to risk being hurt. And realizing when we do get hurt that that too is a part of the process of loving.
Love is not all joy and roses. Love sometimes comes wrapped in harsh wrappings. An argument can give us the chance to learn to love unconditionally. A challenge in a relationship can cause frustration or sadness and also the opportunity to learn to heal. Sometimes a partner or loved one can be far away which can cause us to feel loneliness and experience an even greater opportunity to recognize the value that person holds in our heart upon their return and all of this is part of love. Love can sting, love can hurt....but when we allow ourselves to go to that place and risk all of these feelings, and learn to even ride through these feelings we learn how to really live. How to really be whole. How to really know what fulfillment is.
By not allowing ourselves to feel hurt we also rob ourselves of ever feeling REALLY fulfilled, happy and loved.
It is only through finding the courage to face our deepest fears that we find the ultimate reward in life. The reward of no longer having anything to prove. The reward of being present. The reward of being whole. The reward of knowing God. The reward of true happiness and fulfillment. The ability to stop running. Stop sprinting through life. Stop drowning out your sadness in alcohol or drugs or overeating or meaningless and empty promiscuous relationships. The reward of finding this kind of courage is to finally claim your life as your own.
So in finding the courage to love - first yourself - and then others - you are set free.
After spending 27 years imprisoned on Robbin Island Nelson Mandela said that whether you are a prisoner or a free man it's all just a state of mind. So it all begins inside.
It's time to find the courage to be free!
With Love and Respect,
CHRISTOPHER HOWARD
The Heart of The Mind. Christopher Howard
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Several months back, the mother of my daughter Eva approached me and said, "Chris I had a dream last night and in it I received a message that I knew I was supposed to tell you." "What was it?" I asked her. "I was supposed to tell you that you are supposed to get out of your head and get into your heart," she replied.
Interestingly enough that message had been bombarding me left right and center and from multiple sources. Interestingly enough, what she was telling me was not news to me, but rather, exactly what I already knew was where it was time for me to go.
Yes I knew that I had to get out of my head and into my heart, which also scared me to the marrow because it seemed like such a weak place to be setting an intention to head. I had PRIDED myself thoughout my life on who I had become. And now I was saying I actually WANTED to become the polar opposite of who I was...I wanted to become.... a touchy-feely person. To me that was the epitome of sloth and laziness - lack of productivity and lack of effectiveness; in short all of the things I despised most. I prided myself in my ability to achieve and create and get things done.
I had spent my entire life in my head - having built fortified brick walls around my heart. Quite simply I made a decision when I was very young that I wasn't going to feel, so that I wouldn't ever get hurt. And I then compensated by achieving in the material world. Doing, doing doing but never being.
This had not just a ripple effect but a tidal wave effect throughout my life that I never associated to the original decision. I stayed dissociated and unconnected in my relationships, which made intimacy impossible and destroyed most of them. If sex in relationships was good it was by occasional sheer luck, because I wasn't present there either.
I lived in my head over-analyzing situations and bouncing around in the world of self-talk creating stress for my self; I was really dissociated from life itself. I was never present, always someplace else in my mind. Either rehashing the past or worrying about the future. I had trouble trusting my own intuition because instead of processing negative emotions and allowing myself to FEEL them, I had repressed them so much that they totally mucked up my own internal guidance system.
And I had a deep seated sense of loneliness and sadness that was ALWAYS present underneath everything else, no matter how much I succeeded in the material world or how many "breakthroughs" I had from a personal and proffessional development standpoint. That sadness and that loneliness would resurface from time to time and I would wonder why I was feeling that way.
Because I was repressing the sadness and the loneliness, and more than anything sheer terror that I would be left or unloved or that I wasn't good enough to be loved, it would express itself outwardly in controlling behavior of both my environments as well as the people I loved. If I didn't have things my way I wouldn't outwardly express it as sadness or loneliness but rather angry outbursts.
I had become so dissociated and the emotions were so repressed that had you asked me if I had negative emotions I would have said "No. That's a terrible problem for the people that are dealing with them." I would then look to distract myself from the constant deeply rooted "unease" that I felt underneath it all. I would distract myself by succeeding massively in life and the material world, by being admired, by giving back, I'd distract myself with women, with traveling, with martial arts and succeeding there, with going out and abusing my body and partying, by indulging in too much food or feel-good foods.
So it was time to get out of my head and into my heart. 36 years after I made the decision to put brick walls around my heart. Yeah I'd say that's enough time.
So I made some huge decisions to do some things differently. The whirlwind of changes that occurred after that are stories for another time and another place. But what I can say is this, as a result of the changes I made, including actually picking up and moving to Bali on the other side of the globe, I found myself on a journey that would bring things together for me from a personal standpoint unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life. I can say that the life I am living now is truly a blessing. I used to feel blessed because I was living the life of my dreams. And that I have always done. But now my dreams have expanded to actually include ME. And that is magical. It's magical to actually feel, to actually be present. To actually be able to slow down and enjoy. To have the ability to connect with another human being or other people. To be able to get out of my head and into my heart.
It's still a journey. It's not like there isn't still much discovery to do. But it's the journey that's the magical part. The strange part about it all is that it is in recognizing the fear, and the hurt and the loneliness and the sadness where TRUE STRENGTH lies. And even though I'm embracing my fears at the same time I can say that I actually feel more FEAR-LESS than ever.
Being in a heart space makes it far easier to make decisions. Nothing to think about, just listen. Being in a heart space makes it far easier to create, no worrying or stress - for me at least. Being in a heart space makes it far easier to detach from any particular outcome in business and negotiations, because whatever the path it will be O.K.
Both ways the pendulum has swung have been necessary for me in my life, and I wouldn't trade them for anything. As the pendulum settles back in the middle I feel blessed to have experienced both parts of the journey as well as all those that await me.
Think about this........How do YOU relate to my experiences or the things I have shared?
CHRISTOPHER HOWARD
Feeling Good. Christopher Howard
"Birds flying high you know how I feel. Sun in the sky you know how I feel. Breeze just drifting on by, you know how I feel. It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It's a new life for me. For me." - Feeling Good
I feel best when I'm free. Free from attachments, freel from struggle, free from strife.
When I'm free I can appreciate all the things around me that I would usually just take for granted.
Most of us are simply running so fast through life that we don't ever take the time to "stop and smell the roses," as they say.
I feel incredible when I am able to set aside my fears of initmacy and slow down and connect with a partner, a child or a group of friends.
Intimacy, connection, slowing down, appreciation, feeling great.
The above-mentioned 5 states lead to: trust in relationships, deep bonds in relationships, rapport mastery, an attitude of gratitude. In other words they lead to happiness and peace of mind - for me.
I also feel great when I'm appreciating even my negative states of mind and emotion, and contextualizing them by realizing that they too are a part of life.
Where and when do you feel great?
Love Deeply and Shine Brightly,
CHRISTOPHER HOWARD
The Love (Artwork)
Thank you to Christopher Howard for these excerpts.
Thank you to outside source for photographs. Darkroomed by Amera Ziganii Rao
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