Imagine you were hiking and got hungry. You had no idea you had on your back a backpack full of food, water, and even a really friggen delicious chewy vegan chocolate chip cookie.
As you got hungrier and hungrier you became more and more desperate to GET food. You would even TAKE food from another if no one was watching. You would pretend you were someone you weren’t, JUST to get food. You would get angry at God & the Goddess that they had forsaken you. You would resent other people who happily munched on their cookies. After days and days of frantic desperate seeking for food, you would feel sad, then hopeless, then resigned that you may never find food. You would question if you were good enough for food. Things would get very dark inside. You would eventually give up. Some might even starve to death.
Hiking not knowing you have a backpack filled with food… is like dating without knowing all you seek is inside your heart.
As an Intimacy Expert, I show my cherished clients that they have a backpack filled with food and it’s with them at all times, they’re just miswired looking in all the wrong places, becoming someone they’re not, getting farther and farther away from the Source of Their Aliveness … and instead living in hopeless aloneness unnecessarily.
When you slow down, sit in the fire, and begin to engage on the journey of self-discovery… what I call having an Intimate Relationship with Your Self… you discover that all the love, approval, attention, agreement, compassion, care, and kindness is found INSIDE rather than outside.
This is a real letdown for the ego that wants to control you by keeping you out of alignment with your true self and always questioning your worth, and continuing to desperately seek ‘the One’ so that you can finally be happy.
Yet it’s a real exquisite wake-up call for the heart to find its way home and ironically that is exactly what vibrationally attracts your ideal partner.
I guide my clients to see that the reason they can’t find the one, or think they found the one only to be ghosted, cheated on, used, abused, or taken advantage of… is that they are seeking someone to complete them, not COMPLIMENT them.
They are seeking from hunger, not living from a satisfied tummy, glowing in enoughness. They are dating to feel wanted and needed, rather than Becoming the One to Find the One, rather than being whole and finding a whole mate… I like to call this kind of healthy whole relationship a ‘HeartMate’… where two ‘fed’ hearts come together to deliciously ignite heart-centered aliveness in one another.
We’re lonely because we haven’t fed ourselves love, care, kindness, compassion, appreciation, and f’ing celebrating ALL OUR PARTS… not just the look good on social media parts… but the parts that we want no one to see… the parts that have us curled into a fetal position terrified to be hurt again… we need to love and accept those parts JUST AS MUCH as our impressive accomplishing achieving parts.
We’re hungry for our own self-love, self-care, and self-celebration. When we spend time literally talking compassionately to the Little You inside of our hearts… instead of starving them, judging them, criticizing them (and blaming everyone on the outside for our sorry ass lives)… we find a place of inner stillness, calm serenity, embodied forgiveness, allowance of all and judgment of nothing. We could call that being ‘Conscious’.
When we feed ourselves with walks in nature, meditation, dance movement, healthy boundaries, courageous communication, journaling with profound life-giving questions, become part of a conscious community of growth-oriented people, practice tenacity, dignity, and humility, sit in the fire and lean into our emotions to integrate them into wisdom… this type of Soul Feeding may result in being Alone but not Lonely.
These behaviors, practices, and choices result in feeling confident for no reason, appearing like that “IT” person, oozing sex appeal, and alluring high-quality partners because you’ve come to peace with the fact that life IS uncertain, and you’re OK with that. You have your own back no matter what. Sure you prefer not to get ditched or hurt again… yet you’re bigger than any circumstance. You are inwardly nourished in the face of any hike’s terrain or unexpected weather. You’re whole and complete… and choosing a partner vs needing one to finally be enough is super sexy. Magnetic in fact… yet not to everyone (that would be exhausting anyway). You become sacredly alluring to your IDEAL partner.
That’s how I’ve designed HeartMates… it’s a fertile ground for people that know that real relationships require real work. They love who they’ve become in the intimacy training discovering how the very worst has brought out the very best in them. They love practicing meaningful deep intimate vulnerable conversations with other HeartMates members on LIVE Conscious Connections Calls without the pressure of IS THIS THE ONE? And they love that everyone on the Dating App is DOING the work, not just there for a hookup or to use people then trash them.
They know couples who grow together stay together. And while they may be alone in their home, they are HOME in their Heart, with Source, with Conscious Community, and with their bold dreams of epic love becoming a reality. They rarely get lonely anymore, and if they do, they have a host of practices, tools, meditations, LIVE calls, and conscious people to reach out to and connect with. It’s safe. It’s Transparent. It’s a playground for spiritual grownups.
We were all born with symbolic backpacks of healthy food (and some naughty cookies for good measure xoxo). We were all born with the capacity to shift from lonely to alone…and from HOME inside to HOME with a partner. We were all born with the ability to rewire ourselves to stop seeking the One and instead do what works: Become the One to Find the One which of course is what’s required to KEEP the One.
I’m blessed beyond measure to have birthed an inclusive community where people become their own HeartMate first… then find their ideal HeartMate. And when HeartMates meet… it’s not a completion… it’s the beginning of a new reality where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. They give from the overflow to uplift Humanity. And wouldn’t you agree that now more than ever the world needs heart-based nourishment? Choose a new path to lasting love leaving loneliness behind forever, find nourishing peace in your alone time… and keep putting one foot in front of the other, knowing the path IS the destination… until you look into the eyes of your HeartMate, grateful you took the road less traveled.
About Allana Pratt
Allana Pratt is an author, intimacy expert, relationship coach, and the host of the edgy podcast “Intimate Conversations”. Her new dating app and intimacy training course is HeartMates.