In my life, I’ve learned from personal experience that my biggest barrier to love is to be self-absorbed and feel separate from others. That is, being consumed by fear, worry, stress, etc. for oneself to the exclusion of the suffering of others.

Releasing Stories Around Fear, the Main Barrier to Love

One of the traditional definitions of awakening, or enlightenment, is it is a state of fearlessness.
The journey of awakening is above all a process of uncovering and facing your different fears. As you see with more and more clarity that they are not real, they begin to fall away. Then you are naturally more loving and more connected to consciousness, God, spirit, or whatever you choose to call the mysterious Power behind creation.
Together, the teaching and the practice equip you to face and move through your fears, eventually leaving them all behind you. Instead of shrinking from fear and turning it into some kind of monster, you meet it head on, like a warrior, and discover its real face. There’s an old Irish saying: “If you run away from a ghost, it will chase you and haunt you for the rest of your life. But if you stop and turn and face it, it will disappear, because ghosts aren’t real.”
On the path of awakening, you are learning to face not just fear, but every moment, in this alert and relaxed way. Years ago on my own journey, whenever I had a breakthrough, I found myself coming to the same realization every time. It involved letting go of some aspect of my past, my story-some pattern in my thinking or behavior which no longer worked for me.
Suddenly, I’d feel more relaxed, more here. I would say to myself: “Wow, my spiritual journey is all about getting here. It’s about being more present.”
You can probably relate to what I am saying. As you grow up and get caught up in your personal story, the account you inwardly write of your life, of your history of failures and successes, doubts and fears, hopes and dreams, you tend to start dwelling in this internal reality. You are not alone. We all do this until we learn differently. Yet it is the very attachment to this inner world of concepts, beliefs, memories, and images that keeps us from being present.
The deeper your awakening, the freer you get of psychological and emotional fear. You no longer worry about what might happen to you. You know now that you, as consciousness, will always be okay.
But even with awakening, biological fear, the fear of actual physical harm, still arises when danger threatens. It is a necessary survival mechanism. If someone moves as if to strike you, you are going to flinch or jump back. If you take up sky-diving, even if your realization is deep and mature, chances are your stomach will feel nervous and queasy as you are about to step out of the airplane at ten thousand feet.
But even survival fear loses its edge as you awaken to the consciousness you are and connect with the astonishing creative energy which is always here, underneath the surface drama of life.
The more conscious and free you become, the more you find even in the face of danger, hardship, or loss, you remain clear-headed and supremely aware as you deal with the situation at hand. When you stop resisting and fighting it, life has its own surprising way of coming into balance and harmony. This is how miracles occur. It all happens not in some promised future or some imagined after-life, but right now, in this present moment.
Rather than obsessing over what it takes to become enlightened, why you still suffer, or why you are not yet free, let go of the attachment to all your ideas and stories about enlightenment and suffering, and just focus on being fully aware, conscious, and present now. Then the experience of freedom will become more and more frequent, and the times of conflict and suffering will be fewer and briefer.
Eventually, as your internal gaze penetrates more deeply through the illusion of the world between your ears, the world you have for so long been referring to as “me, myself, and my story,” all fear of life and death will leave you. Then the liberation you have been seeking will be yours.

(From the book “end your story. Begin your life…” by Jim Dreaver, available at www.endyourstory.com.

To get to the point where you actually feel comfortable enough to do or say anything. Make sense?

An inability to receive it. I also think that for those who have only learned to love conditionally…there is a hindrance to openly express that true source of love hidden inside themselves.

If you are not first loving yourself then you are not able to give love to others. When you are not feeling worthy about yourself as a person, and struggling to forgive yourself for things you have done in the past it is difficult to openly love yourself.

I would say that the biggest barrier to love are expectations. Expectations, or, to be more precise, misguided expectations, trick the mind into distorting views of people or situations. With a distorted view of an experience, the flow of love and acceptance is diverted. Expectations act as a dam to block, restrain, or divert the pure course of love, which should flow over all equally. The flow comes through a heart at peace and a mind that is quiet. If you are peaceful and quiet within, there is an innate acceptance of situations and people. Carried deeper, this acceptance blossoms into love. Expectations such as “he or she should do this to please me” or “such-and-such needs to happen for me to be happy here” by nature separate our attention from the flow of peace, which is expressed as love. Expectations block peace and love by focusing on external experience, not internal experience, which is where peace and love are felt, and from where they originate. Love should flow through the channel created by peace without the obstructions of unreasonable expectations. To expect others to conform to our ideas is dangerous, because it allows us to shift the responsibility for our happiness externally, when it truly can only be internal. When our expectations lie only in our own actions and reactions, and not on the actions of others, we are naturally quieter and more peaceful, because there is a lessening of conflict, and we strive first to be at peace within. Then, love begins to flow naturally.

It seems to me that the biggest barrier to love is forgetting who we really are – not honoring or valuing our true magnificence. When we don’t acknowledge that we are unique expressions of divine light – that we created from love – the new tend to not love ourselves. We doubt our worthiness to be loved – by ourselves or by others – and so we don’t allow that. It is challenging to expect others to love us when we don’t even feel deserving of love from ourselves. And when we don’t love ourselves, we have little love to share with others. The key seems to be to realize that our reasons for resisting love are faulty, and to clear them out… and let love in.

Letting go of yourself and mingling with intent! Hit the nightlife or socialize in the right spots, market yourself thoughtfully, and go out of your way to mix with a potential partner. Don’t flirt like a fool, drink in excess, or act unnatural – instead get on an exercise regime, eat healthy and light, dress sharp, study to get smart enough to work out the right moves. You will know when you meet the right person to love, and the feeling will be mutual. Try until you become madly in love. If you follow these principals you’ll hit the right button, and be loved in return!!!

EGO

paura..fear..