No, the title does not refer to hotel accommodations! Loving without reservation means loving totally, fully, without suspicion or mistrust, with kindness, compassion and conscience. Many people fall in love with lust instead of love, or fall in love with idea who do you think the loved one is. That kind of love is so different from real love that it’s not even a pale comparison. To love consciously is to love with eyes wide open, knowing the faults and faith of the other person and still loving them. To give love fully one must also love oneself in the same way … can you do that? Can you love yourself totally, completely and consciously, Knowing all your faults, faults and failures?
Most people have no idea how any of that makes sense, unfortunately. The problem with love is that we all love it so much and yet it is what we fear the most. We want the other to give us complete, unconditional and amazing love, but we resist opening our hearts to receive that kind of love. Like a pinch of a penny, we slowly open the purse of our hearts, which screeches and releases tiny moths. The moths of doubt, fear of failure, fear of rejection, betrayal, anger, heartache, depression; they don’t go very far. Those moths fly around, waiting for the first hint that the heart will allow them to re-enter.
All the previous pain that has ever caused heart ache can be recovered in an instant, as long as the situation is even a little like what happened in the past. The person may look nothing like the previous person who caused the pain, but will suddenly be treated as the same person. Alas, nothing good comes from such things. Honestly loving is a different matter and involves total honesty both within and with the other person. Dealing with another person honestly and honestly takes love to a much deeper level. Only with that degree of depth can true love flourish because it removes doubts and fears.
Not everyone is ready for such a commitment to the truth, not even within himself. Finding someone willing to give at that level is so confusing to most people that they run in the other direction … unless that’s exactly what they’re looking for. When two of those people meet, the relationship becomes a true lasting boat … of love. The only way to prepare for such a deep love is to love yourself deeply, to know the Self so fully and completely that one is ready to share that depth of love with another.
© 2010 Dr. Valerie Olmsted All rights reserved
