Archive for Relationships – Page 2
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Love Your Enemy
So much of what I’ve been blogging about, especially since the election times of 2016 and the aftermath of what has followed in our political climate, the #MeToo movement, and many other divisive issues, has focused on dissolving the story of separation and bringing us back together in love—not a “spiritual bypassing” kind of fake love, but the real love that comes when you’re brave enough to ask “What’s it like to be you?” and really care about the answer, generously listening in a way that opens your heart and evokes genuine compassion.
At the beginning of 2018, I was seriously considering entering a monastic phase of life. After three divorces and five years of messy relationships, I’ve become weary of the energetic exhaustion I associate with romantic relationship. Having ended my last romance in September, just before my mother died, I felt so heartbroken that I had a strong protector part making a very valid, rational case about why I should just accept the invitation of celibacy as the next phase of my spiritual journey. I was aware that it was likely that this impulse was coming not so much from my devotion to monastic life but from the trauma of repetitive heartbreak, a distrust of my own discernment, and a feeling of hopelessness. I also had a part that was making an equally good case for how the greatest growth edge of my spiritual journey lies in exploring my sexuality and radical emotional intimacy with a deep, spiritually mature partner who has experience with sexuality as a spiritual practice. I do not consider myself sexually experienced. Although I’ve had plenty of sex in my life, I’ve never really had a partner who was simultaneously safe enough and curious enough and spiritually mature enough and powerful enough to hold the kind of sexual and spiritual energy that can arise in the right partnership. I’ve tasted that intensity with two different men, but neither of them was available to explore that kind of heart/soul/genital connection in any sustained, reliable, deeply intimate way.
Dear gorgeous, holy, radiant YOU,
Let me just start with the obvious. Darling…I adore you. You are the light of my life. Well…let me reframe that. As your Inner Pilot Light, I suppose I am the light of YOURS. But this is no burden for me! It is my raison d'être, my reason for being, my sacred calling—to love you unconditionally, to guide you on your authentic path, to remind you of your true nature, to love and accept and befriend all of the many parts of you, and to help you remember your wholeness, even when you forget.
The way I hurdled headlong into what I thought was love three years ago is so clichéd that I won’t even bother describing the intoxicating fireworks. It was a star-crossed, impossible relationship from the get-go, a doomed love affair heading for a crash and burn we both should have anticipated, but we didn’t see it coming. We both made promises we had no business making, and it felt so seductive to believe we could keep them. We were reckless and narcissistic, believing in magic and miracles, instead of facing the inevitable reality that would one day smack us in the ass.
What would happen on this planet if every single human had the capacity to reach out to someone very different and ask, “What’s it like to be you?” What if the oppressed black man who was unjustly imprisoned could reach out to the cop who wrongfully arrested him. What if both could ask, “What’s it like to be you?” and really listen. What if the woman who was harassed at work could sit down the boss that harassed her and both could ask, “What’s it like to be you?” What if both could open their hearts and hear the other? What if the blue-collar white man who voted for Trump could sit down with the bleeding-heart liberal woman from California and they could ask each other, “What’s it like to be you?” What if, instead of rushing to judgment or defensiveness or attack, they could simply be curious—and keep their mouths shut while the other speaks—and be genuinely interested in someone else’s point of view?
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