It’s so easy to place conditions on the giving of our love. We have these bottomless wells of love in our hearts and yet so often, we can have the experience that Love is a scarce resource. From this mindset, it naturally follows that we need to be cautious and selective in how we give it, who we give it to, when we give it, how much we give, and on and on it goes.

I distinctly remember the moment when one of my most limiting and self-defeating rules about love became exposed. It was a couple of years back. I had just met someone and within a very short time of knowing her, I felt an overwhelming amount of love bursting at the seams of my heart. It was wanting to move through me with great intensity and velocity like water wanting to break through a dam. It was the first time in a long time that I felt such an affinity for someone and I was immediately confronted with the riskiness of sharing my heart and all this love I had to give.

My greatest concern was not an original or uncommon one, “What if she doesn’t feel the same way? What if she doesn’t want my love? What if she’s not into me?” And so with the force of a lifetime of conditioning behind it, my fear of rejection had quickly convinced me that it wasn’t safe for me to express my feeling, to let the love flow and be shared. No, instead, I had to protect myself and my tender heart from the possibility that my love would not be openly and lovingly received.

Well, thankfully that didn’t last very long. Thanks to the insight and guidance of a close friend of mine, I realized something about love that has changed the game for me ever since. Here’s what I discovered…

When we love someone, the first and greatest gift, is the experience of that love touching our hearts and moving through us. That’s the experience that we so often long for and desire, and it doesn’t in any way depend on the extent to which the other person receives it.

Now of course, having our love received fully and reciprocated can take the experience to a whole other level BUT the worst thing we could possibly do is close our hearts, constrict the flow and contain the love in our hearts out of fear.

The truth is that when we give love freely, we are touched by it as it passes through us. @ChrisAssaad (Click to Tweet!)

AND… I believe that it always comes back to us in exponential measure, it’s just not always in the ways or from the places we want it to.

What I also realized through that experience was that my fear of rejection was inviting me into a deeper level of love and acceptance for myself. The more I could be with and love the parts of me that felt unworthy, or afraid of how my love would be received (or not), and what that meant about me, the more I was able to liberate my heart and set the love free that was bursting up in me to be shared and given, regardless of the outcome.

And so began a deep and ongoing journey of self-love and heart expansion. Since then I have come to understand the importance of learning to love yourself, first and foremost. I’ve also experienced the undeniable truth that the more you love YOU, the more freely and wholeheartedly you will be able to share your love with others.

For the curious cats reading this, the story unfolded with a thousand rejections by that lucky girl whom I relentlessly shared my heart and my love with 😉 It was a deeply challenging and revelatory time in my life, and some of my most hidden insecurities and frailties came to the surface to be healed. There were many moments of relating to my unrequited love as confirmation that I wasn’t good enough while at the same time being strangely empowered by my choice to feel it and express it fully in the face of almost certain rejection. Most of all, it was a journey of reclaiming and loving back to wholeness the parts of myself that I’d given away to an idea that someone else’s love would someday come along to save me, confirm my value or make me whole. So despite the painful process, there was a deeply rewarding ending after all, because I got to have ME for the first time in my entire life. And the icing on the cake is that soon after that heart-breaking experience, I met the love of my life and was poised to engage in partnership from a WHOLE new level of understanding of what relationship is all about.

These experiences and insights were the beginnings of the inspiration for this new song, All My Love, and the video we created for it. It’s a portrait of love, self-love and connection that weaves together love’s many facets and faces. The video was shot at a cozy little studio in Toronto on a Saturday afternoon a couple weeks ago. Myself, along with my beloved partner, Emily, my amazing director, Miz Monday and an awesome little crew, created a safe, welcoming space and invited a collection of some of our friends, family and good peeps we know to come in. We asked them to come in for twenty – thirty minutes each, to come as they wanted to be captured and told them to expect a few questions about love, some playfulness and some art making.

We invited Love in and it poured through beyond what we could have imagined. We captured so much goodness that we’re now exploring making a mini-documentary to share the stories, voices and love of all the beautiful people that opened their hearts to us that day.

For now, this music video for All My Love shows a glimpse of the magical moments that unfolded…

Enjoy!

Much love,
CA

Chris Assaad is a singer-songwriter from Toronto who left a promising career in law several years ago to follow his heART and his passion for music. Since then, Chris has been sharing his eclectic blend of soulful roots music across the globe and actively using his voice to enCOURAGE others to live a life they love. Chris is also a writer, storyteller and inspirational force and is known by some as the author of a written quote that was recently shared, liked, and reposted over a million times on social media. You can connect with Chris and hear music from his latest album, I Won’t Die, at www.chrisassaad.com. We are also delighted that the world premiere of the official video for Chris’ new song, All My Love, debuted right here on Positively Positive.

Images courtesy of Miz Monday.