Remove the Barriers

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ACIM

This is one of my all time favourite quotes from ACIM.Your task is not to seek for love- I am love, I therefore have no need to seek it out, look for it, search for it. What I am to do is to be open and accept the love that is already there, both in me and through the every day ocurences in my life.

My task is to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it - how many conditions do we place on love? I'm not talking about setting boundaries which are healthy and necessary for self respect and respect of others

I am referring to the unrealistic expectations we place on our loving

The fear that we parade around in the name of what they should be doing, what they aren't doing yada yada yada

How many barriers do we unconsciously place on our loving? 

Denial - barrier

Unrealistic expectations - barrier

Lies - Barrier

Inauthenticity - barrier

Not opening your heart - barrier

Excessive drinking - barrier

Lack of intimacy - barrier

Retreating away from others - barrier

Picking fights - barrier

Pushing people away when you think they are getting to close - barrier

Think of a scenario, you have been going out with someone, a few dates and y'all are really digging one another. And then you start getting comfortable and a bit of fear creeps in, the person does something that reminds you of your ex. Something totally trivial like wearing the same type of shoes. You start having conversations in youe head, how could they? How dare they wear those shoes? Those are the shoes of a betrayer! And therein starts the beginning of the end. They come back with the same shoes and you get sour, which triggers the question "what's wrong?" and the answer comes "nothing"

Thechallenge is always facing up to the fact that we are usually the ones who place the barriers to loving

It is facing up to the fact that we are not ready to love in a way we want to be loved and by default build up barriers

ACIM says the opposite of love is fear 

and the worst one's behaviour is a really only a louder call for love

I also think about this when people I meet show me who they are, I just think about how many barriers they are building up to being loved

So, take a pause in looking for love and look at the barriers you are erecting or have erected to prevent loving - from self and others

Peace