Why are many of us so hooked into old patterns of relating, and our apparent need to maintain the illusion of a love relationship when really there is no love and very little relating going on? Why do we focus our devotion and attention firmly on an unsuitable or unavailable partner and what makes us take for ever, or find it so impossible to fully let go and move on? What is the fear that stops you attracting your beloved to you? In this time around Valentine ’s Day and the plethora of clichés that goes with it, perhaps it is time to examine what your love relationship with yourself is really like.

If you were to think of your relationships and your patterns in the choice of partners as if your heart was a beautiful free runway for desire and love, your being an airport; are you in control of your airspace, do you honour the desires of your flight control centre and do you attract the kind of aircraft you’d really like to fly? Are you afraid to let the world know that you are open to receive incoming flights, open to receive love and relationship? Is your runway clogged up with ancient relics, engineless jumbos and burned out wrecks or planes that will never fly? Is your landing strip occupied by aircrafts secretly slipping in under the radar, or by planes that belong to other airlines or airports? Have you dug up the tarmac and smashed the signalling beacon in some vengeful act of righteous rage against a flying machine long since departed? Does your airport need re-furbishing and is your arrival hall out dated and in need of a big overhaul?

In recent years I have found this recurring theme that often appears as a tangled mess of complicated connections, deep places of wounding, and a great desire to stay in avoidance and co-dependency, in serious need of our attention.
Of course, the perfection of our love-relationship mirror includes the need to be stuck in sometimes very uncomfortable places for lengths of time, so that we eventually chose freedom with all the empowerment we can muster, and are willing to face the internal changes and shifts this requires. Fear is a great obstacle, and another of those uncomfortable places we prefer to pretend are not there and cover with all sorts of ‘reason for why not’ rather than feel fully and face.

All this contributes to us being stuck, staying with, being hooked on, or projecting expectations and false glamour onto a person or relationship that has us fixated but that never will lead us to fly. It’s hard and painful work to un-hook oneself, to become free of the perceived vested interest, to face that which we would love to keep avoiding and to be in the real with what is. It takes courage and a willingness to be authentic to commit to this kind of self-examination. We have to be brave to be able to laugh at ourselves, do the work required and dance with the recognition of our patterns with humour, gentleness and grace.

So often we occupy our runway with a person or relationship that does not serve us, who is not really interested in ever flying with us or enabling, enlivening, supporting and allowing the opening of our wings, in other words, someone holding the perfect mirror for our own inner fear, shame and smallness. We are therefore not available to, and are unaware of, all the other aeroplanes in holding pattern circling overhead, slowly running out of fuel or being re-directed elsewhere.

The fixation and hooked-in–ness of our own insufficiency patterns is challenged by the ultimatum any good airport manager has as a mantra: ‘Fly me or don’t occupy me’, despite the fear of having to live with an empty runway! This is big; allowing the possibility of that fear and experiencing the imagined feelings of emptiness, of not being wanted, of loneliness, as well as the sudden possibility of there never ever being another plane interested in landing or taking off from here again. This is a lot to be faced; much easier to keep the ‘dead bird’, the plane you do not actually want to fly with or which you know full well will never actually want to fly you, in place. Stranded on the runway and pretending that it possibly will take off at some point in the future, given certain conditions or specific circumstances, and that the flight (as faintly remembered or vividly imagined) will be fantastic. At the very least this fills the appearance of the empty hole of loneliness and allows the continued avoidance of things you just ‘cannot face’.

We have to decide to finally dare to ‘want to want’, which is an intense feeling, and one that will ask you to face your secret shame and places of fear of rejection. When we finally choose to want to want, the journey bringing you to, and through, all your self-doubts and beliefs of not being good enough, or of being ‘too much’, will start. These fear places have allowed you the luxury of staying small, of keeping the landing lights turned off and the GPS signal silent, have allowed you to not need to shine bright and to stay hidden. But the journey of facing these inner demons will lead us to get to know and love our own being fully and to claim our full desire. This journey is a commitment to promising our loving wild heart we will not ever compromise again, no matter how tempting. This is a true love affair, a committed loving relationship with your self.

Stepping into full ownership of our airspace and runways

During ‘Soft Power–Full Desire’ workshops, as well as the Priestess training courses, we have been working with the metaphor of ‘the airport’ to be able to get a clear view of our relationship drama-story and the places where we would undermine our self love through lack of self respect and self confidence. It is time to step into full ownership of our airspace and runways. Next month, around the point of balance that the Equinox bring us in the flow of the year, we will see the ‘Grand Re-opening’ of a number of airports in Europe. Refurbished, cleared runways and renewed arrival terminals will be celebrated, announced and publicly declared as open for business, open to love, open to receive love and to be authentic.

Perhaps you’d like to join us, there is still enough time to take a good look and the inventory of your ‘airport’ and start the required work. It is certainly time to get real and listen to your heart’s desire, to own your unique flight, the gift of your runway and to become far more conscious of what your love relationship with yourself is really like and what you are therefore manifesting in your love relationships with others. Not doing so is wasting your time stuck in old patterns that are not aligned with your greater good or facilitate the giving of your unique gift, the beauty of your flight. Patterns that instead allow the pre-occupation of your precious space with things that no longer serve you and that help you to stay in avoidance of your self.
The price to your own soul is just too great and we are worth daring the fullness of our desire, the softness of our power, to attract the joy of our destiny! Come fly, the air is good beneath our wings!