Smothering Love

It can be like the gasses in this photo, taken from the spaceweathernews.com channel, which are a canopy for a solar flare. Sometimes we try to place a canopy of love over those for whom we have affection, hoping that the canopy will protect them from all harm. It doesn't matter whether the harm comes from outside themselves or from inside, we want to protect them from it. The thing is....we can't. Here is why.

As humans we have been gifted/cursed with something that many in the universe apparently don't have....Free Will. That free will is something that liberates us from becoming drones in life. It is also something that can trap us when we have made the wrong decisions for ourselves. But decisions we must make. Even deciding not to decide is a decision to procrastinate.

So often we think as well that if we love someone enough, that person will of course make healthy decisions for themselves. This is untrue. To expect that to be true is to be using love to control and manipulate another's thoughts and actions. If we love them, we also have to accept that they have free will to do and think whatever they choose to and there is nothing we can do to change what they think or how they feel. We have to allow them to make whatever mistakes they are going to make, even if that means they will crash and burn like a solar flare. It is their journey, not ours. Yes, we can still be loving and yes we can still be supportive, but no, we cannot decide for them and no we should never enable them when making unhealthy choices. Love does, even when unconditional, have healthy boundaries.

We don't often think of love as being destructive. Yet love, when controlling, becomes smothering and does not allow the other party to breathe and experience life to the fullest, to whatever degree that person would choose to experience it. When it is truly unconditional, love allows people to make mistakes but does not judge them for those mistakes. It simply understands their mistakes and helps them to grow from the lessons that those mistakes bring into their lives. To protect them from those lessons serves no one at all. To help them through those lessons serves everyone.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com