Loving Differently

Something strange happens once you begin to outgrow an old way of loving. You still get triggered. Your nervous system still reaches for familiar defenses. The old personality still knows exactly how to argue its case, but somewhere in the middle of the conflict, another part of you quietly says, "We've been here before." You can already see where this road ends. Once you know, you know. The old way of loving no longer fits. Even if you momentarily fall back into familiar defenses, you can witness the impossibility of where they lead. The dead end is no longer invisible.

There is an ancient story that knows this territory.

There was once a queen named Inanna who ruled the upper world with confidence and grace. One day she heard a knocking from below, from the Great Below, where her sister Ereshkigal ruled in darkness and grief. Inanna decided to go. At the first gate she was asked to remove her crown. At the second, her robes. At the third, her jewels. At each gate she asked why. The gatekeeper answered the same way every time: Such are the ways of the underworld. By the time she reached her sister, Inanna had nothing left, no title, beauty, nor defense. She stood before Ereshkigal naked and small, and Ereshkigal, who had never been visited, who had only ever been left alone with her grief, looked at her sister and wept. It was the first time anyone had come down to meet her where she was. Inanna was released. She rose back through the gates, reclaiming what she had surrendered, but those who knew her said she was never quite the same. She had learned that the way to the other is always down, never up. Always through surrender, never through victory.

Bert Hellinger, who spent decades witnessing what heals and what doesn't in human systems, said it simply: a solution requires humility.

These are the three descents.

First, return to yourself. You reach out and hug your inner child. You ensure yourself that you are safe and supported. You have your own back. Loving yourself in the midst of not liking yourself is essential. Many times it is difficult to access that love, but connecting with the Divine presence at your center, with that glowing ember within you, is the key to unlocking an outpour of love and appreciation. When you feel loved and valued, you are no longer ruled by the fear of feeling small, rejected, or abandoned in the presence of another. The lens from which you perceive the world becomes embracing and hopeful.

Second, return to the other. You see their hurts and protections and focus on their inner child and the sacredness of their soul. By doing that, you are not abandoning yourself, but offering them enough space to feel safe and seen. From there, they can open up to their vulnerabilities and begin to see the tragic pattern both personalities are trapped inside. It is two false personalities bracing for survival, each trying to secure a victory that never truly satisfies. The hungry ghost will continue chasing the next victory, and the love will fade and the resentment will blossom. This is an unbearable way of relating.

Third, return to the field between you. You apply the law of three to the scenario. The affirming force is the validity of what you feel, the denying force is where they stand, and you allow the third force to arise naturally by giving it air. That means you surrender the tight grip and the need to prove yourself right. You stand in neutrality. Then there will be room for the reconciling force to appear, and something new arises between you, a way of relating that is more conscious, more intentional, more liberating, more generative.

What is obvious in this order of steps is that your ego steps aside. It is no longer the director of the orchestra. Your Essence quietly takes its rightful place and softens everything it touches. You become willing to see yourself, the other, and the living field between the two of you through the eyes of the soul rather than the personality. There is no longer subject and object, the duality has dissolved or at least it doesn't prevail. There is only the desire to be loved, to love, to give and receive. Your whole vessel of Being is open to the world of possibilities.

While writing, I realized something that surprised me. None of these movements began with discipline. They began with love. Love had already arrived before my decision to love.

Reading Valentin Tomberg, I realized I had not discovered something new. I had simply stumbled into a truth others had articulated long before me. What I experienced in the midst of conflict was precisely what he describes: love did not arise because I chose differently. My capacity to choose differently arose because something deeper than my personality had already begun to love.

As I sat with this realization, I found myself wondering which Major Arcana card best expressed it. Naturally, I landed on The Lovers. Tomberg, in Meditations on the Tarot, declares that love precedes choice. Love awakens first. Then choice becomes meaningful. Without love there is only calculation. Love illuminates what is worth choosing.

The Lovers reminds us that wisdom is relational. It arises from love, and not merely from intellect. Partnership is not merely companionship. It is a school of transformation. Each partner becomes a mirror through which hidden aspects of the self become visible. Love gradually transforms attraction into care, honesty, forgiveness, and a willingness to be changed by the other. Forgiveness not as power over another, but forgiveness as liberation from the weight of what was done. A release that frees both people equally. The relationship becomes less about finding completion in the other and more about discovering how love reveals what in us still longs to grow.

The Lovers is not fundamentally about romantic love. It is about the birth of conscience. Conscience is where truth and love meet. It is the capacity to recognize the Good inwardly rather than merely obeying it outwardly. It is making choices that honor the soul.

In that sense, The Lovers is about choosing the kind of consciousness from which all other choices will be made. Once that center is transformed, the individual decisions of life begin to take on a different quality.

Every conflict quietly asks the same question: from which self will I choose to love? The frightened one that longs to win, or the deeper one that already knows love is not something we manufacture, but something we remember?

Love has always been waiting just beneath our defenses, moving ahead of our choice, asking only that we become spacious enough to recognize it.