I’ve been thinking a lot about broken hearts. LOL – Again.
At one point or another, whether it was the result of an adolescent crush gone awry or a mid-life divorce, most of us have gone through the experience that we tag as, “a broken heart.” We fall deeply in love with someone and they don’t love us back. Or they love us and leave us. Or they, “love us,” in such destructive ways that we end up in shreds.
It hurts like hell. Jeeeeezus, it hurts.
The 3 of Swords shows the classic broken heart scenario where two people were in love and one of them fell in love (or lust) with someone else. The heart is pierced with swords and the person who was betrayed is so deeply wounded that he feels that he may never heal from the pain.
So what do we do with our poor broken hearts after someone stomped them into a jelly with their hobnail boots?
One popular solution is to just jump right back into another relationship. “There are lots of fish in the sea,” we tell ourselves, “and I’m gonna hook me a big old flounder.”
Sometimes that works but a lot of times it doesn’t. The divorce rate in the U.S. regularly hovers between 45 and 50 percent, which means that an awful lot of serious relationships end up as flaming disasters.
One of the big problems with just catching another fish is that, “life is a mirror,” as Louise Hay says in You Can Heal Your Life, and we tend to catch the same damned flounder over and over and over. Whatever energy we’re radiating out into the Universe is the energy that’s going to come right back at us, in this case in the form of a lover.
If we’re really emotionally needy, clinging people, then we’ll probably attract other emotionally needy, clinging people and then – JOY OF JOYS – we can be needy and clinging together! Or, if you really hate yourself and you’re constantly treating yourself like shit, you’ll probably attract an abuser to do the job FOR you.
So, basically, unless we change our energy patterns, unless we change what we’re radiating out to others, we’re going to continue to attract the same kinds of people, the same lovers who broke our hearts, only in different clothing. (Hopefully stylish clothing, at least. It’s doubly tragic when your new flounder shows up in a rayon golf shirt.)
That can even happen to kind, loving people who’ve gotten therapy, who’ve done the spiritual work, and are really, sincerely looking for a healthy, compassionate partner. In some ways, people who are truly loving and on a sincere quest for genuine love may be even more vulnerable. Just take a moment or two to listen to this video from the wonderful Doctor Ramani about malignant narcissists and, “love bombing.”
Remember what it’s like when you’re really, really, REALLY in love with someone? You feel like – to use an old Southern expression – they hung the moon. Everything they do is perfect, everything they say is a glittering gem of wisdom, and just being around them makes you ecstatic.
The malignant narcissist gets to us because they can perfectly mimic that feeling of being in love. They praise us, they flatter us, they tell us that we’re smart and sexy and funny. Just like someone who really loved us would do. And then they destroy us.
Oops. Another goddamned flounder.
Hopefully, we go BACK to our therapist and he or she teaches us about malignant narcissists and how to spot them and how to build healthy boundaries. It’s all very complicated and it can take a lot of time along with a lot of emotional work and commitment.
In the meantime, in between time, we’re just hanging there with no love in our lives. I mean, we KNOW that if we just go back out fishing without cleaning up our own emotional messes, we’re just going to get the same fish again. And that’s not a good thing. Living without love is NOT a good idea. We NEED love. It nurtures us. It heals us. It grows us. So what do we do?
We can find at least a partial answer in the Ace of Cups. It shows love – pure, undifferentiated, unattached, unconditional love – pouring into the world.
Believe it or not, we can manifest that love in our hearts and in our lives without a relationship and without a mate. We all have a very special place in our energy systems called, “the heart chakra.” This is the place where we receive, store, and generate love.
We can sit down at any time that we choose, do a heart chakra meditation, and, “grow,” the love that is in our hearts. It’s not hard, it’s not complicated, and we don’t have to be spiritual masters to do it. There are heart chakra meditations all over the internet, so you can start loving TODAY, if you want to. (Here’s a nice one to get you started.)
The thing we frequently miss is that love exists. It’s a force in the Universe that’s out there, independent of people, and we can let it into our lives and our being anytime that we want to. Hell, we can set aside an afternoon for meditation and just BATHE in that energy if we want to. All we have to do is open our heart chakras.
That’s not to put down loving another person at all. Being in love can be one of the most magical, wonder-FULL things that ever happens to us. It’s really hard to beat snuggling up against your partners back on a cold, snowy night, right? (Well . . . neck kisses. Neck kisses might beat it. Of course, you could do both.)
Until that happens, though, until we can untie all of the weird, dysfunctional emotional knots that keep us from finding that relationship, we can remember that our lovers aren’t love itself. They are vehicles that get us to love, but we can still experience love without a relationship.
It’s right there in our hearts.
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Just the Tarot 