Bring Back That Loving Feeling

New Moon in Taurus conjunct Ceres & Mercury

Ready to get buzzing?

Join me for the free online Gemini Retreat to learn more about the sign of the bees and activate the hive. It’s on Sunday, May 24 at 12:00 pm Pacific / 3:00 pm Eastern/ 8:00 pm UK/ 9:00 pm Europe/ 5:00 am (Monday) Sydney. You can always watch the replay later, but join live if you want to dance 💃🕺💃

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There is something so natural about wanting to feel loved.

Perhaps this desire comes with us into the world the moment we are born, our bright eyes and chubby cheeks screaming out for affection. We know that love is a tonic for human growth, and it is - undoubtedly - the single most valuable thing a care-giver can offer to a child. Love celebrates your every step and stumble forward, and it wants nothing more than for you to expand into the fullness of your potential.

The kind of love I’m talking about is commonly referred to as “unconditional love”, but I’m no longer sure I need or want to use that qualifier. I say this because I want the word love to stay pure, clean, unadulterated. We do not say “I unconditionally love you” to children when we tuck them in at night, and I don’t think we need to. So for me from now on, love means unconditional love and I will make it clear when I’m talking about conditional love.

Conditional love is a different pathway to love. Conditional love does not say “I love you because you are here”, it says “I love you because you are doing what I asked.” And that asking might be conscious - e.g., “When are you finally going to go to law school / get married / start a family?” - or it might be subconscious.

Conditional love is a perceptual distortion of love, and that distortion is contagious. Because when we start jumping through other people’s hoops to feel loved, we disconnect from the source of love that is always available inside of us. And as we fall out of this once unquestioned state of self-love, we begin to assemble a series of laborious obstacle courses designed to help us win back that loving feeling.

The most pernicious perceptual distortions of love almost certainly come from our parents and caregivers, those who were there to welcome us to the world in all of our soft and vulnerable cuteness. I am so acutely aware of where and how these have sought to limit my own love for my children, and - much more recently - I have become aware of how my own need to feel loved by others is pulling them out of love with themselves.

This came into sharp relief earlier this week when my youngest child dove under the covers to avoid giving me a goodnight hug. I knew it was a game; he was giggling and burrowing in the cutest of ways. But it was not a game that I wanted to play. It felt like that age-old trick of withholding love to draw people closer in, a trap that many have set with great success.¹

And I fell right into the trap, because all I could think about in that moment was what I could do to lure him out from under the covers and into my arms. Could I tell him a joke he wanted to hear? Could I get him a book he wanted to read? Could I offer him a treat he wanted to eat? I knew that none of these questions would give me a right answer, and yet still all my heart wanted was the comfort of a warm embrace.

Some hours later, I suddenly realized that I was in fact playing a game but I was only playing it with myself. The reason I was trying so hard to get someone else to show me love? Why, it’s because I was so busy withholding love from myself. And this behavior was not only modeling the exact opposite of what I want for my kiddo, it was distracting him from the chance to love himself by asking him to love me instead.

I wonder whether we are all being invited to stop playing this game of withholding love. Or at the very least, tomorrow brings a New Moon in Taurus conjunct both Ceres and Mercury that is sure to awaken the playful patterns of looking for (self-)love in all the wrong places. Ceres opens a cosmic portal to consider the ways we give and receive nurturing; Mercury activates our lines of communication with its ticklish trickster energy; and the Taurus New Moon invites us into our next chapter with the embodied emotional security we deserve.

So I encourage you to bring awareness to the times you step outside of yourself to ask for love. Yes, it is wonderful to feel loved by someone else and perhaps especially so by those who nurtured you through your tender years. But maybe the reason it feels wonderful has nothing to do with how they feel about you and everything to do with how you feel about yourself. Do not let yourself depend on someone else’s love for validation, but rather let that love show you that it is safe to love yourself.

And if you’d like to join me in a (self-)loving community, mark your calendars for my monthly class on SURPRISES next Friday, May 22 at 8:00 am Pacific / 11:00 am Eastern / 4:00 pm UK / 5:00 pm Europe / 1:00 am Sydney (Saturday). A very wise woman once told m that human beings learn best through surprises, so we will fully embrace surprise as a superpower to interrupt patterns and change the name of the game for good.

My classes run for an hour and they love to time themselves with cosmic happenings, so we’ll come together just as the Sun is meeting celestial stunner Uranus in Gemini for the first time in 78 years. Grab a paying subscription and you’ll get a link to join live next week plus the recording after.

And please let us know how this New Moon is shaping up for you down below. New Moons are all about exploring possibilities, so know that sharing your vision makes it possible for someone else to see something more for themselves.

Love,

Patrick

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Who am I and How to Work with Me

I’m an astrologer, energy healer and intuitive life coach. I’m also a creative writer, and I used to be a human rights lawyer.

I help people tune into the magic that is always around us. Together we clear away the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual blocks that prevent us from making more conscious choices, and we create personal experiences of wonder and delight. My goal is always to have a good time, and getting in flow with Our Universe never fails to deliver.

I work with individuals, groups, teams and organizations. I work best with people who have some spiritual experience and are ready to step into bigger shoes. If this sounds like you, I invite you to check out my website and book a session. Or if you want to speed date, grab a 20-minute flash session for a bolt of insight that could change it all.

1. Like, for example, the approach to dating described in The Rules that encourages women to be “easy to be with but hard to get.”🤮