Stress must be viewed as a disease-causing entity - Herbert Benson/ Harvard Medical School researcher

Researchers revealed that the death of a loved one or a traumatic breakup of a love relationship can unleash a flood of stress hormones that can stun the heart ~ causing sudden life-threatening heart spasms in otherwise healthy people.

But what the researchers do not answer is why the loss of a love relationship can be so devastating .

The answer is simple and obvious. Being separated from love is like not having air to breath because a state of love and soul consciousness lies deepest within us .

The basic underlying and uniting force of the Universe is a psychic energy field of love and soul consciousness ( The Unified Field ) which lies not only beyond time and space but also beneath our deepest fears.

The problem lies in the fact that the ego externalizes love so that when the relationship ends ~ the surviving partner seemingly has nothing to hold on to and thus major aloneness, despair and stress can effect the heart.

Even the FEAR of a love relationship ending can bring about despair and stress to the point where the fear will override the love and the heart will close ~ which is the ego's way of protecting ourselves from potential psychic pain, even when it has no connection to reality.

In essence, the ego is created for two reasons ~ 1. To protect one self from psychic pain ( the seeming separation from love )  2. To stay in control versus surrendering to our deepest feelings and emotions.

As Jerry Champolsky once wrote ~ Love is making friends with fear because fear is the constant companion of intimacy ( into-me-see )

As such, great love can both take hold and let go ~ for in letting go of the relationship ( but not the love ) you are embracing more of yourself.
When we internalize our love it is easier to let go because we still have ourselves to hang on to ~ for, after all, it was us that was feeling and loving that deeply .

As such, I firmly believe and know that those who we love deeply become part of us forever for each one has played a role in the journey of our heart ~ regardless of the pain and trauma of separation.

That most certainly has been the case in my life and love relationships.

The advent of the science of mind-body medicine in recent times has been a blessing in that it provides clear documentation of the effects of the loss of love on our health.

The scientific evidence goes all the way back to the 1940's.
For example, Dr. James J Lynch, in his classic , The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness, cites an early study at Cornell Medical School on the effect of sudden severe interpersonal events, such as the loss of a loved one, on the human heart.

In every case , the onset of the patient's cardiac problems could be traced to a specific traumatic interpersonal event in the patients life.

The emotional events all seemed to involve the loss of some type of human love or the loss of security gained from human contact. The lack of love or sudden loss of love, they pointed out, acted like the straw that broke the camel's back.

In this landmark book, Dr Lynch concluded that, "there is reflected in our hearts a biological basis to form loving human relationships. If we fail to fulfill that need, our health is in peril."

Recently, in his very important book , Love & Survival: 8 Pathways to Intimacy and Health, Dr Dean Ornish declares, "that no other factor has a greater impact on our health than love and intimacy."

As we have seen, strong evidence suggests that separation from love can lead to illness, death or self-destructive actions.

Separating from the Unified Field of love and soul consciousness begins in our earliest childhood, in our most primary relationships with parents and caregivers ~ who are often themselves profoundly separated from love and their own authentic feelings.

The pioneering psychologist Arthur Janov vividly communicates this commonplace scenario in his classic, The Feeling Child:

" Actions and interactions between parent and child are only important insofar as they reflect feelings. Loving a child should be as natural as breathing air . Children take both for granted, but when love is missing there is a frantic and usually unconscious struggle . Imagine the desperation, the panic, the unbearable pain that would occur if breathable air were suddenly not there. It is no different for an infant or a child when love is not there. Love, as primally defined, is necessary for life."

It would appear that the pain of not being loved for oneself and being seemingly separated from our original state of soul consciousness and the Unified Field ~ is of such deep psychic proportions that processes are triggered in the hypothalamus which result in a left brain imbalance and dominance as well as the denial, mistrust and forgetting of our original connection to the Unified Field and the love, joy and a state of soul consciousness deepest within us all.

It is from this dark tunnel of pain, aloneness and apparent death that the ego and ego consciousness is born ~ for survival and protection purposes only.

Think of the ego as a protective cocoon which is eventually meant to be shed.

The only way to emerge from the black tunnel of fear and pain , from which the ego is born, is to fully open our hearts, stop being victims, and take full accountability for our original pain and the decisions we made from that pain.

Only then can we reach what I call a place of choice.

Only then can we finally choose love in the face of the original pain that caused us to close our hearts.

Only then can the butterfly of self-love, joy and delight emerge from the ego cocoon of unworthiness, anger and repression.

The ultimate stress is a closed and broken heart ~ but the ultimate joy is a full and open heart.