For nearly eight years I have done everything I could think of to release someone I loved deeply; someone who had helped me find myself again and let go of a dangerous relationship pattern. The caveat was that I created another unhealthy relationship pattern with this man to get out of the dangerous one. I learned, and continue to learn that "better" isn't always right... or best for that matter. There was an intoxicating pull between us, strong enough to be a factor in his relocation.
After confessing and repenting my sins to church elders I begun my healing journey and began my YouTube channel documenting my awareness and recovery around Love Addiction. I studied Psychology focusing on Somatics and Trauma as I became a Body and Energy Worker. My spirituality grew and this one thing continued to haunt me. Just when I thought I was free of it dreams would remind me I was not free. I had created an archetype of what I believed love should be and feel around this person. I faced that and worked at creating a new archetype but the dreams still haunted me. Then I discovered the idea of Soul Ties. I prayed as I performed a ritual around unbinding my soul from this person after first acknowledging the sinful, toxic way we came together (regardless of how much it helped me). This helped but the dreams started returning. I burned Mugwort essential oil with a candle last night before bed and after vivid dreams I woke up completely clear. I realized that the reason my unconscious and/or subconscious clung to this person, this idea that solidified him as an archetype for me was because of my own shame I refused to acknowledge. The more I think about it, the more I can see how pride blinded me from seeing my own shame. I did what I believed needed to be done and refused to feel shame in order to do it. After it was over pride kept me avoiding and/or denying that shame was an important piece I would need to reconcile. I had convinced myself on some level that if our love worked out, if we ended up together (regardless of how much my conscious mind knew we were all wrong for each other), it would make my choices "ok". It would fix any damage I had done by my actions, regardless of how necessary they seemed at a time when I was out of options (that I could see anyway). It's embarrassing how obvious it is to me now but it's not uncommon to push down unpleasant feelings, especially when life is testing you in so many other ways you just don't have time to do the work until it gets to the point that it refuses to be ignored. Healing the spirit is vital in any healing process. I had healed my psyche, I continue to work on healing my body but have released these traumas and experiences from my body and heart but my spirit needed healing too. Working with essential oils, creating custom blends for myself and others brings me so much joy. It connects nature to our spirit, offering a potent, concentrated piece of nature in healing our spirit and even our bodies. It's important to remember though, that first, something must be acknowledged. A wrong we have done, a wrong that has been done to us and most importantly, our shame, our self-judgement, our self-abuse, our self-loathing, our choice to remain a victim, succumbing to something that has ended. You have a choice to do the work. The moment you begin the work you are a Warrior, fighting to move from victim to victor.
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My ex-boyfriend Andrew and I made a video together about how to love unconditionally and how we learned how to do that after breaking up. I broke it up into parts (mostly based on topic) for the sake of time and because the recording got split somehow anyway. Even without fancy editing software that I don't have, I hope you appreciate the content. I believe it helps answer a lot of common questions I get. Feel free to comment and share! There are five total videos. I will update this blog as I post each video. Andrew and I broke up over three years ago but we remained committed to our own personal growth which kept our established friendship alive and taught us new ways to look at and experience love. This first portion is about what we have learned from failed relationships and how unconditional love can be developed. In this clip, we discuss how confusing different types of love can create expectations that our partner may not be able to live up to. Andrew and I discuss when it's necessary to cut ties and how creating a foundation in a relationship is vital to its continued success. This clip discusses learning boundaries as well as the difference between enabling and helping a loved one. We also discuss how curiosity with acceptance and compassion instead of expecting something helps build a healthier bond in any relationship. In our final clip Andrew and I discuss how we learned to handle when someone else is accusing, blaming or projecting as well as what to do when we feel triggered by someone else.
The first time I was called a tease was when I was a Junior in high school. I had never even kissed a boy, (none were ever interested anyway). Then all of a sudden a boy in a new school called me a tease because I wasn't interested in him. I had no idea where I was getting attention from all of a sudden and I had never heard the term 'tease' before so I had to ask a friend what he meant.
Over time I realized that being a tease was more like a super power. It can be used for the fun of interacting with the right kind of people who don't take themselves or you too seriously but enjoy a little playful banter. You can also be accused of being a tease by someone who has a specific intention for you in their mind, by absolutely no encouragement from you, and you make it clear there is no interest. You can learn a lot about other people when you don't show your hand too soon. I don't give this much thought really until someone comes along that I don't want to tease... unless he wants me to, of course. It's tough to intentionally tease someone you want, you crave, you desire with every fiber of your being. The tease changes and you end up teasing yourself. You wake up to the scent of him, the way he moves with you and your body tenses up and you just have to stretch out the memory of him. The whispers of his mouth, the frankness of his words, the determination in every touch, the way he listens with his heart and his body - he has complete control over you, whether either of you want him to or not. To meet your match in the art of the tease is an exquisitely painful karma; one I am all too willing to surrender to. "...the book was most helpful in approaching death because it describes in detail the deepening mental states through which the dying person passes and how to prepare for them... we pass through these states each and every day when we go to sleep or end a dream, as well as fainting, sneezing or orgasm." ~ Forward in 'Advice on Dying' by the Dalai Lama
I have spent the last few months making time to masterdate. You read that right. Earlier this month I took a weekend off of work to take myself on the perfect dates in honor of my favorite holiday, Dia de los Muertos. I grew up without holidays so I have no sentimental affinity for any holiday except this one because when I was experiencing the death and grieving process of the end of my marriage a beautiful Mexican friend introduced me to The Day of the Dead as it was her favorite holiday. Simply recalling the introduction to something I never knew before gives me chills. This resonated so deeply and I had yet to understand why. I didn't want to disrespect a tradition native to someone else's culture and not my own so I took my time getting to know it and understand it. There is a deep reverence and sacredness to this time period and I wanted to honor it with the respect it deserved. For now, I will explain what it has come to mean for me and my views of sex. In years past, when experiencing heavy grief or numbing from trauma I would turn to sex in order to feel something again. Desire came from a space of lack. In grieving sex offered not only an escape but also a palpability to the pain of my experience. When numb it was the only thing that felt safe to feel. These experiences offered a sanctuary from my own emotions, my heart, my mind and my spirit. I couldn't process life when I felt as though all I knew was death, death of my self, my ideas, my dreams, even my realities. I remained in the darkness but the darkness wasn't scary when I had sex. I will expand on this more in the future... Now here I am, years later, giggling with myself for calling my self care escapades "masterdating" (a Facebook friend deserves credit for that word) and feeling comfortable with feelings of discomfort. I have known various forms of death and as I rebuild my life on my own I find contentment in aloneness. There is a surrender required to truly heal and grow beyond your stories. So now I can be fascinated with the state of dying because I am not currently in that state (any more than any living creature anyway) but having known the closeness of it, having become intimate with it the fascination returns when I awake from a dream, when I catch myself falling into meditation or experiencing Yoga Nidra while riding the bus to work, but most of all I still experience that state in sex but much more so. When you release fear of death it becomes easier to drop into these states. When you are not a victim to your own drama anymore your choices become much more conscious as do the people you choose to surround yourself with; the more intimate the relationship the more particular you become. This is because you are acutely aware of your own sacredness. You don't forget your humanness and you are by no means close to perfect but life is manageable. When a majority of people you see struggle to manage their life and their own feelings as they are easily swayed by anything that triggers them (other people, social media, politics, etc.) you must fall in love with aloneness for your own sanity. This brings me back to sex. Now I can see so clearly when desire comes from a space of lack and not just sexual desire but any desire; decisions and choices are made from fear because the focus is on what one does not want and when I look into someone's eyes I can see it, it looks almost crazed to me and it's familiar because I know that space all too well. You see more of what you fear, more of what's "wrong" and less of what is a blessing, what has deeper purpose. When I am familiar with that empty feeling and can compare it to the feeling I have now after working so hard on myself so that I can be of service to others, those feelings I have of fulfillment and of gratitude, then how could I possibly invite that old fear into my space on any level, especially a sexual one? It's easier to have a stronger internal boundary when you have been blessed to know men on an intimate level that set the standard, they are the standard as opposed to men you find yourself assessing to see if they meet "a" standard. If you have to think about it then they don't measure up; either they are the standard or they aren't and I for one, deserve no less. This is the man that joins with you from a space of equality eager to share a spiritual awakening through orgasm with you. He doesn't come to take from you something he is lacking within himself, instead he knows that the experience will challenge you both to go deeper within yourselves as well as one another and he has the courage to allow the experience to unfold as it's meant to. Fear is overcome with courage as you explore the states of consciousness that join death and orgasm. Old patterns of needing to attach meaning to this shared experience can be tempting but then you remind yourself that you are both safe and allowed to explore different realms of consciousness together because that shared moment is why you are together. It teaches you to remain more present and to give up the need to control anything by defining it because you know that will limit this one thing that is meant to help you both transcend those old limiting beliefs; those old unhealthy patterns. These connections are what I wait for now. This has been a new layer of learning for my body who is used to getting what it wants when it wants. Now my mind, heart, spirit and body are beginning to have a mutual understanding and appreciation for what the sacredness of sex has the potential of being. Once you have this kind of shared experience with someone, just the presence of the other person has a profound effect on you, it can be unsettling but infinitely worth it. This is how a sexual experience can trigger the death of something you no longer need to hold on to in the healthiest of ways. Some deaths are welcomed. Saying 'goodbye' to the past seems to have been a theme this past month. Sometimes we hold on to people because they helped us remember who we were, who we are, or who we long to become. Over time though as we recover, heal, grow and expand we realize that we have outgrown these people and they may have even outgrown us.
When I began to realize how far I've come and as I accepted where I really want to be, only then did I begin to truly feel the "letting go" of the connections I held on to for so long. I had held on to people from my past as a way of pacifying the struggles I was going through. At some point however, I realized I held on more out of fear than out of love. Some people had grown and began moving towards a different path, our work together coming to completion; but most people remained the same. Years have gone by now and still so many people had remained exactly the same. It began to feel so strange to me that for so long I clung to these people I loved as some sort of safety net, a way to cling to hope and an identity... an identity that I was working so hard at evolving in the first place! This was no longer love, this was desperation. Why continue to hold on to the past? Because it's familiar? Out of fear? I am no longer desperate. I am no longer the person I was 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10, last year, last month, yesterday... So why hang on to a fantasy, and a fantasy based on fear, pain, lack, emptiness...? The one man that I knew had outgrown me is the one who loved most authentically. He showed me what it's like to love in the present. He showed me that there are men who choose to grow and evolve and are brave enough to be vulnerable, to be raw, to connect. We both outgrew the roles we were meant to play for one another along with the way our love was meant to be expressed for each other but a love that real, a connection that authentic is never outgrown, it expands, it invites others who are ready for that kind of love and who need that kind of companion who can share a vision and work to create that together. This kind of love is not what the above quote is referring to because that kind of love drops seeds everywhere it goes, even when lovers part ways. The quote is for the more common love, at least from my experience, the love born from pain, emptiness, loneliness, an aching need we hope someone else can fulfill. Maybe it's the Saturn transit, maybe it's because the moon is in Cancer, maybe it's mere coincidence but this has been a month of acknowledging the harsh Winters of all the empty love that never offered any real connection. That flower has grown tired of the harsh conditions, constantly fighting to break through the impenetrable soil. Seeds have been dropped though, potent seeds filled with potential that will remain alive and vibrant until the perfect conditions arise for it to bloom and flourish creating a mutual and balanced experience, creating new life. |
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