We accept the love we think we deserve
What they describe as «the upper limit» is what we were used to from our parents as children.
Period.
When you are a child your parents are your universe and what they say and do becomes your world. Or as a friend of mine used to say: “The words you speak to your children become the house they’ll live in.”
Not only the words. The energy. The attitude. The care you received (or didn’t) create the house and subsequently what is known as «the upper limit».
I realised that one hot summer night in July of 2024 when I was pondering about a relationship issue.
There has been a man in my life, that has his heart tightly shut and I couldn’t get through to him and he kept shutting me out no matter what I did, or didn’t do. My love seemed to not reach him and consequently, no love was coming back from him in the physical.
On a soul level, he was flooding me with love. But that’s a different story.
Fully aware that this was an exact copy of the relationship with my father (in the physical), and therefore just showing me where my wounds are, I still felt a little stuck as to how to move through this. Whilst I understood exactly what it was mirroring me, I equally felt the missing piece to solve this puzzle.
Pursued on a soul level by this person’s undying and unconditional love, crickets and rejection on a physical level on the other hand. As within so without – yes, I believe that. But what I couldn’t understand was; why was my physical reality still showing me the complete opposite?
Frustrating.
The «obvious» answer would have been to let this dude go and move on. Of course. We all know that. We all know that it’s not always that easy. And here’s the thing very few people understand and teach; when a connection keeps coming back energetically, it’s because there is still something there that we are meant to learn from it. Unfinished business is calling.
Plus it’s hard to let someone go who we have a strong connection with and seems to be extremely devoted to you on a soul level but shows a different side of themselves in the physical.
We start to wonder why we can’t have that same connection in the physical. And to be honest, rightfully so.
Obviously, it exits in the ethers. So what’s holding it back from sinking down into the earthly plane and become a lived reality? Something between «there» and «here» is blocking the manifestation of it. And usually it’s yourself – or better said, an unconscious aspect of yourself.
While I was contemplating my situation. I was sitting outside under a clear dark sky full of stars (no kidding, that’s really how it was, heheh). When I realised, here, right now, I was hitting my upper limit – in love.
How so? And how was that my upper limit? Now remember the intro of this post, we accept as the upper limit what we were used to from our parents as children.
I could never make a heart connection to my father.
His heart walls have been too thick, my love didn’t get through to him. But the little, loving girl inside of me never stopped trying.
You see the unconditional love a little girl has for her father is beyond understanding and logic.
We love him dearly and we want him to love us back equally.
We make it our quest to restore that connection from our heart to his heart. And whatever flows back from there we understand and internalise as the benchmark of what we are worthy of receiving. In other words, it becomes our upper limit – until we break through the illusion of it.
Because it’s the highest we’ve received / been reflected back from the outside world (the relationship with the father is strongly connected to how we interact with the outer world whilst the relationship with the mother shapes our connection with ourselves, our internal world) it is what we perceive as the limit. Because at that time, it was.
Those first experiences decide over our hardwiring
Any more questions why worthiness is one of the biggest problems for women? Show me one woman who had a father with a loving open heart and I guarantee you she’s a queen at receiving because she got hardwired that she deserves it, therefore she never even questions it. There has been a healthy flow from the beginning of her existence.
The problem is, men have their own generational trauma and the biggest is, that they are not connected to their hearts anymore and have shut it down.
Unfortunately, in my case, my father is so deeply wounded I got literally back nothing emotionally. His heart walls have been and are so thick and impenetrable that I never successfully established a connection to his heart, and I got stuck in «trying and getting nothing back», and I mean nothing, at least emotionally.
This pattern has overtaken my life over the years. I’ve worked my ass off in my personal healing, my business, my relationships and yet. I didn’t even get the bare minimum. Even my finances were acting according to that dynamic. I had more expenses than income for years, despite being exceptional at what I do.
My whole life was mirroring my father wound. I could see it as clearly as the stars in the night sky.
Phew.
Gotta say thank you to my soulmate for not letting me off the hook. If he hadn’t been that determined on a soul level to continue to connect to me I would have moved on from him (because that’s what they tell you, right – find another person) and repeated the pattern for the rest of my life. But because the soul connection didn’t go away and had been affecting me in my daily life, and just got stronger the more I tried to escape it, I was forced to investigate deeper and get to the bottom of this.
And that’s what I have been doing for the last 12 months since his energy has come into my life.
And that night, I had a massive breakthrough.
Not only did I identify where my upper limit had been active (everywhere) and how it had been created – I managed to break through it.
Groundwork for this has been months if not years of inner work but at this point in July 24 I had already understood, healed, accepted and integrated that my childhood was lost. That I had been bereft of the parental love and care that I would have deserved and that there was nothing I could do to change the past. My inner girl – with the support of my adult self – has come to the place of acceptance that she would never get his love, care or protection she so deeply desired or that he would ever become the person she would have needed him to be. If he could have, he would have by now. And that’s the healing that needs to happen in order to create a different experience for ourselves. If that wound stays unaddressed, we’ll unconsciously attract similar situations to try get our needs met by a force outside of ourselves (the need of the inner child that still lives inside of you, aching for what she never got but definitely needed and deserved and still does!).
We have grieved and shed many tears over this over the years. This complete disconnect from my father has been my core wounding in this lifetime and at times, it was so difficult, that I didn’t want to be here anymore. The key is to understand these dynamics and close the gap.
However, back to that summer night, since my heart had finally found peace with my lost childhood and my father’s absence in it, I couldn’t quite understand why I was still hanging on to this person in my life. If he was a copy of the relationship with my father, but I felt like I had finally healed that, what purpose was this energetic connection still serving? Why didn’t it just vibe out or move forward?
I felt into my heart and, once more, I felt the pain and disappointment of not being able to establish a connection to their heart. Both of them. And as I allowed myself to go deeper into the pain of this and, once again, my heart was yearning to establish a connection that would send the same energy back to me, first I hit that familiar feeling of tapping in the dark, never finding the place that would ping back to me (hitting the familiar limit) but instead of dwelling on that I was suddenly guided to move further up, go beyond what was familiar, to go «higher», I was drawn to a different source – and I found it.
I broke through the «upper limit» and I found what I can only describe as God (disclaimer: I’m not religious, but I believe in a higher power). Not as a person but as a feeling. And not only was «his» heart fully open to my heart – he sent me back the same love I was giving «him». The connection I had been looking for was finally established. That unconditional loving heart of my inner girl finally found the source that loved her back equally. I broke the perceived upper limit by going above it and opening my heart to more.
And I understood that what we believe to be the limit, is just what we have experienced and grown accustomed to in our childhood. Because when you are little, your worldview shapes according to what you are experiencing, your first experiences form the blueprint of your life to come.
But that blueprint isn’t the universal truth, it’s a subjective truth. And subjective truths can be reshaped with new experiences.
I’m still integrating this and contrary to what we might believe, an experience like this isn’t an explosion that shakes life up overnight. It has been a gentle first connection with the source of unconditional love. One that I need to get used to and actively nurture. One that I need to practice allowing more of into my life.
But with this experience. My worldview has shifted. I have a new understanding of love – unconditional love, and I finally understood the role my biological father has been playing in allowing me to find that universal love of the divine father again. Here on Earth, and help anchor it onto the planet.
2 responses
Wait, so what happened with the guy who was in your life? How did you shift your relationship with him given your new understanding of unconditional love? What would you say to help someone with that same predicament given many say just leave. Thank you so much!!
Hey Tarisai,
Good questions! Although not physically in my life (the relationship hasn’t taken off), “he” is still teaching me how to love myself unconditionally and stop looking outside for love. With that I have also come to understand that “he” is just a higher aspect of myself that, once I embody it fully, will manifest into my physical reality in form of a person matching my internal energy as per law of resonance, and until then, I keep on healing the wounds that are blocking that, and they show themselves naturally once you have committed to the path and what your heart truly wants.
As for guidance, it depends on your individual situation and what the lesson is with the person. Sometimes it is indeed about leaving and moving on (I had to do that – let him go on a physical level – but yet I still feel the energetic connection between us as described), but when it is about leaving someone, you usually already know it on a deeper level. In that case it’s about letting go of the fears that create a bond of codependency in order to be able to move on.
Generally speaking, you can’t change another person, you can only change *your* energy, however that has the power to shift your relationship dynamics. So my advice would be look closely at what is being triggered within you and continue to address those triggers. If you want to stay because you feel in your heart there is more for you two – stay, but stop expecting him to fill or heal your wounded parts and instead, start realising that all expectations are unmet needs that you have the power to fulfill for yourself. As an example, if you want him to be more loving and protecting, it’s your inner child letting you know that she wants you to be more loving and protecting towards her. And so on. Once you embody the qualities you wish from another, others will start giving that to you too because you’re not available for less anymore. Whatever you decide, in any case, what no longer resonates after that will fall away or re-awaken and strengthen the love that is there, so you can do this work with or without him, if you are still together. Hope this helps!