a fresh yellow rose in the closed pages of an old book
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In This Article:

  • How does love connect to self-awareness and fulfillment?
  • Why is freeing yourself from roles essential for deeper love?
  • How can nature help dissolve attachments and limitations?
  • What daily practices foster wild-hearted living and loving?
  • Why is self-love the foundation for transformative relationships?

Beyond Roles and Attachments: Love as the Source of Bliss

by Mara Branscombe. 

Discovering love as the source of bliss is often initiated through our relationship to others. It may be formed in childhood through our caregivers, and later sparked by the innocence of our first crush. We begin to form roles and identities inside our love languages and expressions. We may take on specific roles without even being conscious of them.

The caregiver, the nurturer, the provider, and the problem solver are relationship archetypes within themselves. We seek meaningful relationships, and our impressions of what “love” means becomes embedded into our psyche.

As humans we are meaning-making machines. We play chess with life and love, most often based on moves in our past. Our experiences then become the stories by which we identify ourselves.

However, this approach to love dwells in the surface realms of life. We play out inherited or adopted roles and box ourselves into fixed identities. These often leave us hungry for a more evolved, intimate, and universal kind of love.


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In any love relationship, when the initial romance settles is there still poetry that stirs the soul? What is your relationship to love beyond the crush stage? How do you let it evolve beyond the fairy tale romance?

Projection or Liberation

When we no longer project our unresolved personal work onto others, we can open our awareness and feel love as a unifying force that goes beyond the realm of relationships. This is the seed of liberation inside the field of love, and yours to be planted.

A deeper understanding of love requires a transcendence of fixed roles and identities. It’s as if the roles that you play in your relationships or your career become so sculpted that they harden you. These fixed roles become barriers to your capacity to evolve beyond the hardships of the past. They limit your potential to transform the way you love.

When you set yourself free from being “only this” or “just that” you generate space to grow. You return to the source of who you are—which is love.

Freeing Yourself from Fixed Identities

Freeing yourself from fixed identities to source a fluid, universal essence of love requires conscious self-awareness. Be it as a daughter, sister, wife, lover, friend, mother, grandmother, professional, provider or caregiver, you generate personal and collective stories within each role. When imbalanced, you cope by overcompensating and limit your potential by playing the victim, martyr, or power-over roles. And when you don’t live up to your own expectations, guilt, shame, blame, and repressed anger start to drive your thoughts and behaviors.

Whether it’s inherited or adopted, when you discover where you block your own sense of freedom inside the role, your ego becomes spacious. You generate a liberated, less dependent kind of love within.

To feed the fixed roles that your inner child perceived as the “pre-destined” life perpetuates a narrative that is static and essentially lifeless. Yet, as humans we are always evolving. Your relationship towards who you are and how you love also needs to evolve.

There should be no limitations on how you manifest love in your life. To release the stories, roles, identities, and attachments is to generate love as the place you begin and end your days, and ultimately your life. The two largest events in existence are birth and death. The power of love lives inside each breath you take.

Imagine yourself free of predefined roles.
Who are you now?
How do you see yourself?
How do you feel love without these roles?

Connect to humanity and the ones who cross your path
as the soulful messengers to evolve both of you.
Go beyond thinking about what you get or don’t get.

Rather than thinking
“I am in this situation or relationship,
and I have to make it work,”
tell yourself
“This is an opportunity for growth,
I will do the inner work with love for myself and others.”
Instantly the pressure you place on yourself and others falls away.
There is more space to feel into
what wants to come through.

The daily undertaking of the attuned Lover is to consciously understand when the ego controls, motivates, and manipulates. You begin to take things less personally and accept that everyone has work to do on how they love. You have more compassion. Self-love and self-awareness inside relationships is perhaps the deepest, most essential work to be done in your lifetime.

Over time, you become more conscious of the effect of your words and actions on others. You wake up and take responsibility for who you are and the effect you have on those around you. You become aware of where you place your attention, the way you choose to spend your days.

You become the channel for how you want to live. This is the path towards wild-hearted living and loving. It takes devotion, grace, and an understanding that surrendering to what no longer serves is a daily undertaking.

Choosing Love

This is your life to live, and the more you choose love, the more love will grow. You must be willing to let go of your old self in order to change how you generate love in your life. And when you feel hurt or angry and the desire to regress into your inner child presents itself, soften to feel the bodily sensations. Notice the thoughts that arise and the actions that want to come forward.

Do not respond until you are calm. Take some deep breaths. Engage in mundane tasks, drink a glass of water, get some fresh air. Lean into the frequency of goodness.

Nature as a Source of Unattachment

Being in nature can help dissolve your attachment to roles or identities. Immersing yourself in the beauty and simplicity of nature, in the natural cycle of the seasons, allows you to be embraced by the wondrous source of life itself.

Observing plant and animal life takes you out of seeing yourself as the center of the picture. It gives your ego the space to become less attached to your story. Dwelling in the mystery of the earth’s cosmology brings surprise and awe into your energy field.

Nature becomes the quintessential force to free you of personal limitations, jaded perceptions, excess material desires and past wounds. The symbolic heart of the earth becomes an anchor point for our own physical and mental transformation. Love is a unifying force. The disparate parts of you are embraced by something larger, as if you are being held and taken care of.

Trust in the human potential to be enveloped by a potent force of love that goes beyond theories and romantic sentiments. Give yourself fully to the dance of love; let it be a ceremonial journey. Let the winds of change replenish your vision and soften your heart. The boundless sky is waiting for your return.

Self-awareness is the key and a deep-seated self-love practice
is the door to a loving, sovereign, and fulfilled life.

Copyright ©2023. All Rights Reserved.
Adapted with permission from the publisher,
Findhorn Press, an imprint of Inner Traditions Intl.

Article Source:

BOOK: Sage, Huntress, Lover, Queen

Sage, Huntress, Lover, Queen: Access Your Power and Creativity through Sacred Female Archetypes
by Mara Branscombe.

Journey through the archetypal wisdom of the divine feminine to reclaim your authentic self and to follow your soul’s longing. Embodiment teacher Mara Branscombe takes an intriguing look at the seven feminine archetypes that prevail in the modern psyche—Maiden, Mother, Sage, Huntress, Lover, Mystic, and Queen—and traces their continuing influence throughout different stages of our life, sometimes dormant, sometimes prominent.

As she explores each archetype’s beneficial qualities, its connections to the physical-emotional-mental body, and its shadow aspects, Mara highlights the positive impact these models can have if we embrace them and live them consciously. Step-by-step creative practices, guided visualizations, mind-body rituals, and soulful poetry allow you to embody each archetype, inviting in the light aspects as well as integrating the shadow.

Click here for more info and/or to order this paperback book. Also available as an audiobook and as a Kindle edition.

About the Author

Mara Branscombe is a yoga and meditation teacher, writer, mother, artist, ceremonialist, and spirit coach, who finds great joy in leading others along the path of self-transformation. She is passionate about weaving the art of mindfulness, self-care, mind-body practices, and earth-based rituals into her offerings. 

Visit her website at MaraBranscombe.com  

More Books by the author.

Article Recap:

Love is the source of bliss, transcending roles, identities, and attachments. Through self-awareness, we can evolve love practices that transform relationships and cultivate freedom. Nature provides a grounding force, dissolving ego-driven attachments and enriching our capacity to love. Choosing love over old narratives and responding with compassion allows for wild-hearted living. Self-love is the foundation for this path, fostering a sovereign and fulfilled life rooted in grace and devotion.

#SelfAwareness #TransformativeLove #LoveBeyondRoles #WildHeartedLiving #SelfLovePractice