The Ugly Side of Frightened Love

Question: (From Italy) These last two years I tried to know myself, love myself and hoping to understand that if I don't love myself nobody can do. I tried to practice the path of love and truth and understanding. Everything was ok until I fell in love. After the first part, romance, paradise etc, things went wrong, he vanished literally, then I became the worst person I ever met. I cheated, lied to friends, cared for nobody else but my feelings for him. I lied to him too just to stay with him. Am I a person who lies, who can kick friends just to have what she wants? How can all my work on my ethic disappear in two months for something like love? I felt despise for my behaviour but I still did it. But I also discovered I'm not the good girl I thought to be, maybe I don't deserve love till I don't change. I'm not only confused I don't know from where to begin. Answer: rnIt wasn’t love that brought out that desperate behavior, it was the ego’s fear of losing love that pushed you to do and say those things. It’s important to recognize that while we are responsible for our actions and feelings, that isn’t who or what we are. You are not a bad person because you lied and cheated, those are actions you displayed. This behavior can be instructive for you to understand how susceptible you are fear and upset, but it doesn’t tell you anything about your worth as a person. rnFor knowing your true essence, look to your experience of your silent Self in meditation. To understand how to deal with your ego fears and pain, look at how you are interpreting your life situations—what stories you are imposing on events—to see where you need to change your belief systems to find more adaptive ways of dealing with your relationships. For instance when your lover left, look at what make you believe that if you lied, cheated and mistreated your friends, you would get him back. That is a kind of story your controlling ego tells you. What happened in your past that led you to believe that? Imagine another way of being in the same difficult situation where you remain kind and respectful to others and to yourself. What would you be believing in according to that story? Are there people you know and admire who are like that and whom can model your behavior upon? rnThis is how you can use this situation to develop the kind of responses to life challenges that are more aligned to your true nature. rnLove,rnDeepak