Tag Archives: In Quest of Love

Avoidance Strategies

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When love arises, it clears anything unlike itself. All fears, worries, false beliefs rise from the subconscious. Feelings of turmoil surface when fearful emotions and self-sabotaging thoughts start to arise in your awareness. Emotional pain can be acute causing you to use behavioural strategies to avoid difficult thoughts and emotions.

Set your intention to become aware of the avoidance strategies you employ to suppress feelings. It may be unhealthy habits such as overeating or food obsession, overspending on clothes, accessories or household items. Dependence on harmful substances such as drugs and alcohol are often used to mask emotional pain. Control issues such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or escapism into fantasy are attempts to numb the feeling body. Whatever your avoidance strategy, it affects your behaviour and those around you. Perhaps you are not aware you are using avoidance strategies. In many cases addiction is used to avoid your inner truth. Addiction is not the root of the problem, it is a symptom. The stronger the addiction is, the greater the pain beneath it. Guilt and shame compound addictions. Identifying with your habit or addiction strengthens its hold over you to the point where you are not even aware of it. Ask a trusted friend to help you identify your avoidance habits. Deeper issues such as substance abuse require the guidance of a professional. Once you see your avoidance strategy, set your intention to break the habit. Know that it is a learned behaviour pattern, it is not who you truly are. It is a temporary mask to cover the real you.

As fears come into your awareness, it takes vast amounts of energy to avoid them. Through ego, you use all kinds of distraction to avoid seeing truth. You want to avoid painful feelings arising from your past. Each time you identify with shame or guilt, you lock up the feelings energising them. Memories charged by fear, anger, or guilt have been shut in the emotional closet for too long. With positive intention and commitment to creating a new reality, avoidance habits rise into your awareness. When a feeling reaches the universal field of awareness, it can no longer operate in you through unconscious habits. You receive an inner nudge when you are reaching for another slice of cake or pouring one more glass of wine. At this point you can no longer blame your habit; you have an opportunity to make a choice to align with your intention for healing. You can ignore your behaviour or use the prompt to sit with arising feelings. Choose the present moment to overcome fear, expand your vision and create a new reality.

When you commit to being present, feelings associated with the past can be felt and released. Each time you acknowledge your avoidance mode, its grip weakens. Whether you feel attachment or guilt to the behaviour pattern, remain present to the feeling. Distracting yourself from the feeling only serves to strengthen it. To dissolve difficult feelings of guilt, shame, jealousy or anger, allow it to be present in this moment. Through your presence, these feelings can be absorbed by the universal field of awareness and transformed into free-flowing energy.

Collette O’Mahony

An extract from my book In Quest of Love

Click on image for availability.

In Quest of Love by Collette O’Mahony

Relationship Myths

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When we develop an intimate crush on a person, we see only fragments of who they are. The gaps are filled in by our imagination. Two people seeking an ideal partner, meet on a crossroads of desire and expectation. Any small sign that indicates the person fulfils one or more aspects of our mental criteria is enough for us to label them as the ‘one’. The rest of our wish list we project onto them. When we see someone as an ideal candidate for a relationship, we create little fantasies in our head about the future. We expect the desired person to slot into this role.

Investing in a fabricated story of a relationship ties you to the outcome, so that when a split happens, it feels like tearing strips of fiction from your skin. The pages of the relationship come undone when you realise that your partner is not the person scripted into the story. One or both of you awaken as complete strangers, and in some cases enemies, from the love story.

If you pay attention to people and really listen to them, rather than using interpretation, it allows their true essence to shine. After all, it is the initial feeling that attracts you to a person. Rushing in with needs and desires places a big expectation on a partner. Expecting someone to fulfil a role you place on them is a form of emotional blackmail. If they have low self-esteem or other emotional issues, they can feel love is only shown to them when they meet the conditions placed upon them. Many of us are conditioned from an early age to believe in romance and fairytales. Yet the experience for many is of hurt, betrayal and disappointment. When we are unfulfilled in love, we are constantly waiting for the fairytale to work out, choosing illusion over reality. Taking responsibility for your emotions frees you from blind romance and chasing after impossible ideals. When you see a person for who they truly are, accepting their light and shade, they start to blossom, just as you begin to blossom when you are accepted exactly as you are. People grow in the light of acceptance as the natural characteristics of a person begin to shine through.

Someone who you find attractive usually has qualities you wish to emulate. They serve as catalysts for undeveloped emotions to expand and grow. An emotionally inexpressive person may find they are attracted to a nurturing, caring person who encourages free expression of feeling. Someone suppressing shame and guilt about their physical body may find they are attracted to a sensual person who encourages them to embrace their sexuality. The quality you admire in others indicates the part of you that requires expansion and growth.

As you mature emotionally, any suppressed emotion within you tugs at your feeling body and impresses pain upon the mind. This energy is reflected in the dynamics of a relationship. Therefore, a loved one can simultaneously exhilarate and frustrate you. They push your buttons to release knots of energy that may have remained dormant for many years. This is the purpose of an authentic relationship, to help you grow and mature in love. We enter relationships to share information and experiences that enhance our journey, and the feeling of extending and receiving love. Not all relationships last forever, but the experience we gain from them does.

Extract from my book ‘In Quest of Love’ – A guide to inner harmony.

Collette O’Mahony

In Quest Of Love by C.O’Mahony

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The source of love is where confusion and misunderstanding arises. Looking for love outside of ourselves is the cause of much pain and suffering in the world. Tapping into the source of love within sets you free of the continual cycle of looking for love and clinging to a partner in the hope of fulfilment. Until you resolve your relationship with yourself, you can never be fully in a relationship with another. It is by putting your true self at the centre of your world that you can give up the need to be rescued and achieve full responsibility for your life. When you allow love to be at your centre, it flourishes in you. When love flourishes in you, it flourishes around you.

Love is expressed in relating, but the source of love is not the relationship. The source of love is within. Love grows in deep solitude, in the bliss of simply being.

‘In Quest of Love’ is a powerful pointer in the direction of emotional maturity and fulfilment. It shows the reader how to positively change their life by resetting outdated beliefs held in the subconscious mind.

‘In Quest of Love’ is a manual to make the most out of life, regardless of age, current relationships, status or any other labels that restrict growth and development.

To purchase paperback click on book image.

Emotional Fears

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Resisting feelings of unease causes agitation and anxiety. Suppressing feelings over a sustained period leads to depression and illness. Suppression of feeling occurs when you try to avoid facing your shadow side. This is the unseen, unfelt emotions within you. These emotions constantly play out fearful scenarios in the mind, and attract matching experiences.

To dissolve the darkness, light must be brought in. Set your intention to shine the light of awareness on your shadow side. Once you become aware of your fears and fully acknowledge them, they loosen their grip on your psyche. It is the unseen within us that causes fear. The unfelt emotional past within you is the source of your fear.

Collette O’ Mahony

‘In Quest of Love’ available on:

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Emotional Responsibility (Extract from book ‘In Quest of Love’)

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When you set your intention for emotional wellbeing, you grow out of the habit of dependency on other people for your happiness and security. This transition may take some time to assert itself until you find a clear and healthy way to express emotion. The question then asked changes from ‘what can I get out of this relationship?’ to ‘what can I bring to this relationship?’

You can choose to bring in emotional security and self worth. This ensures you will no longer crave affection, praise or attention from a partner; and become sullen and withdrawn when it is not forthcoming.
It will end the obsessive behaviour of craving a relationship to make you feel secure and complete.
Bring to a relationship the qualities that you would like to see mirrored back to you. You are the person with the power to be whole and complete unto yourself. Like attracts like; become the type of person you wish to attract.
Sometimes you can lower your expectations because you don’t believe you are worthy of a loving relationship. This false belief keeps the love you really wish to manifest out of reach.
If you aren’t sure of what type of person you would like to attract; look around you at the people you meet, see what qualities magnetise you to another person. Look deeper than outward appearance; what qualities do you find attractive in a person. Is it respect, loyalty or trustworthiness? Could it be emotional intelligence, kindness or an independent spirit?

When you see the traits you wish to attract, set your intention to bring forth those qualities in yourself. By exuding these positive traits in yourself, you attract on the outer level people who reflect it back to you.
By changing your mental framework to accommodate a broader spectrum of ideas and options, you will have a lot more opportunities, not only in your relationships, but in all aspects of your life.

Once you begin to trust in your feelings, you can use emotion to gauge how you feel about an event, a course of action or a person who comes into your life. You will no longer be dependent on mental interpretation to give you an answer. In fact egoic thinking can never give a clear answer because it constantly throws up questions rather than solutions.

Being over reliant on mental strategies can leave you indecisive and over reliant on the advice of others. As well meaning as those you seek advice from may be, they can only advise you from their frame of reference. This depends on their upbringing, influences and how they interpret information from the world around them. Unless they are truly empathic, they cannot feel your feelings. At best they can point you in the direction of your truth; at worst they can confuse you due to an unpleasant experience they may have had.

Use your own emotional guidance to show you how you feel about someone, something or any given situation. Take responsibility for your decision making. Keep your intention strong to make decisions that give the best possible outcome for you at this point in time. This helps you achieve emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence helps you to develop your intuition; the access point to Higher Self’s wisdom.

~ Collette OMahony

https://colletteomahony.wordpress.com/books-2/

kiss

In Quest of Love

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Mindfulness is the art of being aware of your thoughts and observing them.

Initially this can be difficult to do because thoughts can be like a runaway train, depleting your energy. With daily practice you can begin to create awareness of your main thought patterns. By setting your intention to become mindful, you will become aware of the thoughts that negatively impact on your life experiences. What you consistently think about you bring about in your reality. When there is unawareness of thought patterns such as blame, judgement, self‑criticism; there will be a constant feeling of unhappiness and incompleteness. Continue reading →