Finding power in being single sounds a bit weird in our culture where most people are on the lookout for a partner. People often assume there’s something wrong with you if you don’t have one.
But there is enormous power in being single. Until you find it, you probably have no idea it's even there.
In the next few years, I fully believe that becoming consciously single for a chunk of your life will become a thing. As our species gradually develops a desire to fix our shit and look inward, we’ll become deeply committed to healing, self-work, and sparking up our own magic first – before we get out there looking for love.
In the not-too-distant ‘future’, being consciously single for a portion of your life will become recognised as a rite of passage.
Because that’s exactly what it is.
Before I get stuck into how this benefit works, here’s a little background of my old views on love…(sit down for a little fairytale…)
I had always looked for my soulmate – my true love – ever since I was a little girl. I didn’t consciously search like with a sign and a megaphone, but I sure as hell looked unconsciously. It was like half of me was missing.
I had this weird driving force cranking in the background. I always missed him – whoever he was, and I felt that he was missing me too. At night I’d gaze at the stars, and feel the ache of this weird, unexplained ‘missing’ (okay so this is embarrassing). It was like we’d had our souls split apart at some point in our past lives.
So I was always driven to find my ‘other half’, and when I found him everything would be just fucking perfect and we’d live in a bubble of true love forever.
Except it didn’t turn out anything like that….
Instead I just got caught up in the whirlwind of life. I’ve had many relationships, a number of them lasting longer than a few years, but not one was based on true spiritual union. None of them had any real soul connection, or even great communication.
All of my relationships had an unhealthy element of drugs, booze, sex, and some had more of a ‘friend’ vibe. Honestly shallow relationships are empty to me – I crave for a deep soul connection, and I never found it. Now I know the reason I couldn’t find it, was because I didn’t love myself.
After my dad’s suicide, my downhill spiral with addiction happened fast – all the way to rock bottom.
When you score a ticket to hell, it’s really only a trip for one. Sure you put your loved ones through hell, but it’s YOU alone who gets the full fucking tour.
During my rock bottom, I was grateful I was alone and single.
At this point I was wallowing in absolute dysfunction, confusion, grief, fear and I was glad I didn’t have a partner because I would have pushed them away. I needed to be alone to fully focus on what the hell was happening to me, and to work out a way how to get back out of the darkness.
In saying that, if you’re NOT single or you have kids and you’re thrust into inner work out of desperation or by choice – if your determination is strong, you WILL find the time and space to do the work regardless. Even if it means getting up at 5am or asking someone to mind your kids for a few hours a week.
A giant chunk of your inner work must be done on your own.
A year into my rock bottom, I taught myself mindful drawing.
Gradually I began to develop a genuine love for myself, which automatically happens when you delete the conflicting programs underneath. For decades I ran a monster subconscious program that I was unlovable (stemming from childhood trauma and rejection).
I also began to connect with qualities that were missing, from my ‘whole self’. These qualities are either deactivated or ‘split off’ and relegated to the shadows of the subconscious. They’re always there, but they’re just not active in your being.
Every human on earth today has had a chunk of their complete being ‘deactivated’ – unless you were raised in an exceptionally evolved environment (which ain’t most of us).
The qualities I’m talking about, are traits that are often symbolised by the divine feminine and sacred masculine. This has nothing to do with what sex you are in this life – to be a WHOLE being, we need them both.
Divine feminine qualities include the feeling and emotion centres.
They include qualities like creating, nurturing and nourishing life. It includes intuition, being vulnerable, compassion, gentleness, empathy and sensitivity. I’ve never had a problem with these aspects – I’m super tapped into my feminine qualities.
It was the other half of my entire being that was deactivated and lost – qualities that are symbolised by the sacred masculine.
Sacred masculine qualities include things like bravery, strength and asserting yourself. It’s symbolised by leadership, action, the ability to get up and do whatever needs to be done.
Sacred masculine qualities also includes the rational, intellectual aspects of one’s self. It means standing strong in the face of the biggest storm screaming the warriors scream. It means being fierce and fighting for what you believe in.
To exist as a complete, fully-efficient powerful WHOLE being - we need both of these halves activated.
Most of the population on Earth today is getting around with only half our qualities and abilities switched on.
One example is ‘powerful and strong’ male leaders who have deactivated sensitivity, compassion, vulnerability and emotion, because it is deemed as ‘weak’. It is deemed weak by others like them, who are functioning incompletely also.
Empathy and compassion are essential to make an excellent leader.
Without the feeling centre activated, it leads to suffering of all kinds – including war, cruelty and killing.
The lack of healthy emotional expression, as we see in many males today, leads to a decline in mental health, and is intrinsically linked to increasing suicide rates. Because half our whole self, is switched off.
On the other side of the coin, a female who is overly sensitive, overly emotional (hello old me) – but without the ability to use her voice to speak out, to take charge, to use her fierceness to take action and stand up and fight when needed? She has no effectiveness either.
How can she be effective when she has no voice, no steely bravely and no fierceness? She cannot go in and fight darkness. Half of her whole being is switched off.
This leads to an extreme imbalance and it also leads people to unconsciously ‘seek out’ these parts in another.
We literally are looking for our other half, but it’s not out there – it needs to be found in our own selves first. The same goes for love. It needs to come from within us first – rather than being sought in another person ‘out there’.
I still love LOVE of course – just as much as dreamy, romantic old me did. But my definition of what love is has evolved. Now I know the best relationships are between two complete people, who have done a big chunk of their own healing. People who have reactivated their dormant, ‘switched off’ parts, or are committed to doing so – within a relationship.
When you’re at this stage, you both know that this is a union that is able to fling open the door to further expansion of consciousness. This is how you open up whole new worlds to explore.
Now we don’t come together because we need someone to fill the void that we have not acknowledged in ourselves, or to ‘complete’ the other person. We don’t unite because we think when we find the ‘right person’ everything will be okay, or because we’re lonely. Or because ‘this is what humans are meant to do’.
You come together out of conscious choice.
Not unconscious need.
I’m a ridiculously, hopeless romantic – always will be, it’s in my nature. I think Love is SO awesome. But I’m still choosing to be consciously single for a while yet – because I’m getting so much out of discovering the layers of ME. Plus I’ve only got eyes and energy for my project at the moment. I’m in no rush.
So whether you’re exploring being single by choice or not, use this time to fall in love with YOU.
Go on the sacred journey to bring all your lost parts home and activate your powerful, whole and complete self. True love is about self-love FIRST.
