What's In Your Mind?

Sharing disturbing emotions with one's partner?

Letter to my Love:

"Should we share our disturbing emotions with each other, or just deal with them internally? (…)

Before, I would not share, because I have mostly learnt to repress or not pay attention to my feelings (…), but I also did not have the tools to clean them out of my system, so I wouldn't. So they would just grow and grow. And ultimately destroy the relationship. That was the model. I guess this is what I am learning with you, with you with whom I want to share my life. Getting rid of my disturbing emotions. Gardening my yard. I think I learnt the tools in the past few months, as I awoke. Need to put them into good use.

Remains the question of at what level do we share, as a couple, about our internal battles, about when we find some junk in the yard of our consciousness. Or if we just throw the junk away and share with each other only about the fragrance of the flowers we find and grow there. Not sharing is also a separation. In the merging of our souls my trash is yours and your trash is mine and maybe we are stronger sometimes if we pick it up together. What do you think?

I think that a lot of what I just wrote answers a lot of your questions about my past relationships. I did not know about mastering my thoughts and emotions, choosing them, cultivating my yard. I keep telling you that I was not awaken, that I did not know who I was, that I had no tools to choose my inner (and outer) experiences. So, questions about my past relationships are almost irrelevant to knowing me. I was sleep-walking my life. My life would just be a series of unsolved mysteries and things happening to me. I see now, I understand. I can now see more clearly the territories that I visited as I was sleep-walking. But, back then, I was walking in some dense fog. Like, I think, most people do. Hence the streak of compassion and "wanting to help" that you probably see in me. I believe you have been walking in the light most or all of your life, which is why I refer regularly to that "sleep-walking" state I am not sure you know much of. When you know it, you really cannot help wanting other people to get out of it. (…)

I know you and I are together to grow our souls. I know being together is also exposing ourselves, it is expanding the area of our garden. Let me know if you don't like what you see in me. I will not hide. In fact, I do want you to feel as comfortable walking in my garden as you feel walking in yours. I do think that being together is sharing our consciousness, our inner self. Loving is to show the other that you know them. Loving is allowing the other to show you who you are. Loving is opening the gate into each other's inner garden. To smell the flowers, and pick up the trash together, and make a bigger, more beautiful yard. I think this is a wonderful adventure, and I am thrilled at the vastness of our playground :-).

I hope you will forgive my shortcomings, and gently show my soul the path ahead, and help me say less and listen more, and that you will have the faith that I can grow into the woman you love.

I love you sweet angel and my sweetest delight is to see you fly high in the sky with your wide wings and smile :-)"

The three great love-enders

I forgot exactly where I found this gem, I think it is in one of the Conversations with God books, in Friendship with God I think. What are the three great love-enders?

1. Neediness
2. Expectation
3. Jealousy.

Is it going to work between us?

The new girlfriend of my friend who has been fighting depression asks me whether I think it will work between them. Email to her:

"Everybody who has walked this earth and succeeded at something has done do for a single reason: they have had a VISION in their minds (often one that everybody else would have laughed at) and they have held that vision, unfaltering, and persevered and persevered to real-ize this vision, in spite of all the difficulties that arose.

This is true for a successful inventor, for a successful social worker, for a successful entrepreneur, for a successful actor, and for a successful love. Faith as some people would call this particular phenomenon. Or, I would say, avoid self-sabotaging (insecurity, fear, lack of courage, etc).

Do you have faith that he and you can live a wonderful love story and will conquer all the difficulties that you find on your path?

Do I have faith that I will be able to do (i.e. make a living from) what I feel I now want to do? (i.e. write about spiritual transformation / consciousness, etc).

Same question.

What you face with him, everyone faces with everyone and everything. The realization that it can be beautiful or that it can be ugly and that, at the end of the day, the decision is ours, we are the creators of our lives.

The true him is the one who loves you and who wants to make his life with you. The true him is the one who loves me as a friend. The true everyone is the one who is all-loving. Everything short of that is obscuration to remove as the Buddhists would put it. Inside is the diamond, the jewel, the Buddha. Everyone is a Buddha whether they know it or not as they say.

His illness is an obstacle. It is not an insurmountable obstacle. One of my friends just married a woman who suffers from manic depression. He was married to another woman who also suffered from manic depression for many years before that. The question for you is: do YOU want to surmount this obstacle? Life will always bring you difficulties and obstacles so that you can grow and learn and mature and evolve. I don't think it is fortuitous that he came into your life. Why did he come into your life, you think? Why him? Why did you fall in love with HIM and not someone else? I am sure you will find answers if you ask these questions. As we discussed the other day, a relationship is an interesting space where, first and foremost, we learn to know about... ourselves!

There are no incompatibilities between people -- there is only lacks of love, or fears of loving. Loving is accepting the other totally. This is our only hope to help them grow if we know they can grow. As soon as we stop accepting them, we also give up our hope to help them grow. This is my observation. Loving is accepting, understanding. There are no incompatibilities. Now there are people we select as life partners, and people we don't select as life partners. There are less people in the first category as there are in the second ;-). 

Anyway. Yes, look inside, through meditation or introspection or other tool (meditation is the best tool, it is like jogging for athletes if you wish), all the answers are there. Look inside of you and it will know what to do next - live this love to the fullest or go some other route. It will know what is good for you. YOU know what is good for you. And only YOU know this.

A last word on him. (...) When he is in a negative state, basically, he sees the world as a very dark place, he does not see the love, he feels unloved, he sees wrong behaviors from everybody around him, etc. So there is no point discussing with him on any of these "problems" that he identifies. What is needed is to remind him that he is sick and that this is the reason why he sees this or that situation as a negative (e.g. "darling, you are sick, this is why you are losing sight that I love you no matter which state you are in" or something like that). Generally this brings him back into his positive state (the real him) where you can spend a nice time together. I believe if we all focus on doing that he will fall less and less into the negative states (to which he is addicted, like cigarettes, exactly). He will, if you wish, rewire his neural networks to feel positive all the time. By the way you guys should go together see that movie What the bleep do we know, I think it will answer some of your concerns and you will understand better about all this. It explains in quite a funny way what is an emotion, how we are addicted to our mental states, etc.

As people around him, the WORST we can do for him is dwell with him in the negativity. This reinforces his habitual tendency (his addiction).

I believe he will get out of this, especially if we all love him and help him and understand what he is going through. I believe we are all getting much smarter in the process and learning a lot about ourselves!!"

Living with someone

News from Marco. He shares with me the way he views man/woman relationships: "I don't believe people are really meant to be together, live together the way we know it. EVERY bond, living together, demands a certain amount of COMPROMISE. And compromise is a source of no growth. I'm not saying there is no growth in "living together", but i'm saying that it expires after an amout of time. There is more potential growth outside this particular bond than within. Your growth is no longer "optimal"." I reply:

"Living together with someone is just one step closer to no boundary :-) [he just read, and loved, Wilber's No boundary]. As such, it is not less growth but more growth! it is expanding one's boundaries one big step further – I believe having kids is another step further. There are other ways to expand, for sure. But this is a popular one.

Loving one as a manifestation of loving all! (...What else? What would it have to do with otherwise??)

Another comment: beware of your beliefs. Beliefs are sticky – they have the tendancy to determine your experience (vs. the other way round). So, be careful about what you believe coupling is about, be conscious that your belief determines the outcome. So, is having a life partner, or a family, something that you want?"

What is our mission on Earth?

Here is a truly brilliant piece that I cannot help pasting here in its entirety. From the Conversations With God’s mailing list, it is Neale Donald Walsch's answer to a guy, Matt, asking him how to understand his mission in a world where everybody believes different things, and how to be with such people: tell them our truth, or make friends with them? Provides a glimpse of Neale Donald Walsch’s remarkable clarity of style.

"Dear Matt...You have asked a very important question. Thank you for your beautiful inquiry. I hope you will consider my reply carefully. 

The only True Mission is the mission of the individual soul. Every other mission is an extension of that. The mission of the individual soul is to know itself as it truly is, in its own experience. This is accomplished by creating itself as that. Life is not a process of discovery, it is a process of creation.

The hitch here is that, in Ultimate Reality, it is not possible to create anything, because everything that ever was, is now, and ever will be has already been created. So the Process of Creation turns out to be, after all, not actually Creation, but Perception. It is about seeing what has always been there, knowing what has always been true, and experiencing the Only Experience There Is. We call this, loosely, God.

The challenge here is that one cannot experience The Only Experience There Is if it is, in fact, the only experience there is. This is because in the absence of That Which Is Not, That Which IS, is not.

Put simply, in the absence of black, white is not. In the absence of cold, hot is not. In the absence of up, there is no such thing as down. None of these things can be experienced, save in relative terms. The same is true about God. And, for that matter, about the human soul. For the human soul IS God, in part. It is a holy and individuated part of That Which IS.

If there is nothing that is NOT That Which IS, then That Which IS cannot be known in Its own experience. Nor can any Part of It. It cannot be known in relative terms, but only in the Realm of the Absolute. And in the Realm of the Absolute, That Which IS cannot experience Its own magnificence. It cannot know the glory of Itself, the wonder of Itself, the Truth of Itself. This is the condition faced by your soul – and this is the reason that physical life as we know it was produced. 

Physicality produced a solution to the conundrum that is ingenious and spectacular: create an entire reality based on Illusion. That phrase in itself is a contradiction in terms, of course, but it gets across the idea. And so we have this Alice in Wonderland world (an Alice in Wonderland universe, really) in which we swear that what is So is not so, and swear that what is Not So is so. It is a "wonderland" in the sense that it allows us to experience the True Wonder of Who We Really Are. We do this by calling for the Opposite of Who We Are, and experiencing ourselves in relation to that. Suddenly, we have a point of reference by which we may know ourselves. (Remember that I said that the mission of the individual soul is to know itself as it truly is, in its own experience.)

All of this lays down the theological basis for my (finally!) direct answer to your direct question. That which is opposite to us, that which is "not us," exists for a very holy reason: so that we may announce and declare, express and experience, become and fulfill Who We Really Are. Therefore judge not, and neither condemn. Raise not your fist to the darkness, but be a light unto the darkness. 

Our "mission" vis-a-vis people of other faiths is to accept them exactly as they are. Not to seek to convert them, not to judge them, and certainly not to condemn them. 

Now Matt, you have placed your question inside a riddle that offers two choices – yet these choices are not, in truth, mutually exclusive. It does not have to be one or the other, as you have posed it. You have asked: "Should we try to show others what we consider "true" or should we only try to share with others, learn from them, and build reciprocal friendships?" I believe we can do both.

As we share with others, learn from them, and build reciprocal friendships, we DO "show others what we consider true." In fact, that is the most effective way to show it! Thus, we set people free from their own limiting beliefs about US. This eventually will set them free from their own limiting beliefs about themselves. Soon they, too, will know Who They Really Are.

And so, Matt, walk through the world not as one who seeks to convert or convince others of anything, but simply as one who seeks to know others as everything. When you know all of it as everything, then you know yourself as everything as well. You see yourself in every other person. Indeed, in every other thing that exists. Suddenly, the magnificence and the glory of Who You Are becomes apparent to you. It becomes part of your experience.

Many people have had this experience momentarily. They have had it in meditation, perhaps, or in a moment of pure silence, or in the midst of an impactful interaction with another (such as sexual union or laughing or crying together), or walking through the woods on a sunlit morning, or swimming in the ocean, or, simply, washing dishes. I call this The Holy Experience. It is when we know Who We Really Are.

While many people have had this experience momentarily, the trick is to have it continually. That was the path of Buddha. It was the journey of the Christ. It is the opportunity placed before each of us. Many Masters have shown us the way.

The way is for us to BE the way. "I am The Way and The Life. Follow me." This is what all Masters have declared. This is what all Students have understood. Therefore, do not look for your Master, BE the Master for whom you have been looking. Do not seek the Truth, BE the Truth you have been seeking. And do not attempt to change another, BE the change you wish to see.

That is your mission, Matt, and there is no other.

Bless you, Matt, with the knowing of Who You Really Are. May God be experienced through you, and the living of your life."

The one taste of life and the victory of love

OK, I was told my initial 4 posts for today were a little "raw" and personal :-), so I deleted them, and here is just a summary of the story: my boyfriend and I hit a rough spot in our relationship about a week ago and decided to take some time apart to think things through. This time was like a journey into the dark side for me with break-up-like symptoms: broken heart, obsession with the relationship, loss of appetite, and generally going through a variety of disturbing states of mind: fear, anger, etc, while defocusing from most of my own projects. [Note: we are now, April 18, all rekindled and back together!]

In the midst of all this, however, and here is the good news, I was able to also see in this an important milestone in my spiritual journey, like a "test", so I was also feeling a lot of joy at this opportunity that was presenting itself to demonstrate whether I have learnt anything useful on the spiritual path so far…

For example, practising deep relaxation through the past week showed me that, indeed, you cannot be deeply relaxed AND in pain. (Try it!) Also, I was able to practice equanimity to a certain extent. I wrote to a friend:

"I'm growing through this too – this is good. This is the good stuff of life. I am quite happy to see that I am managing to welcome my pain with as much equanimity as I welcome my happiness. I'm holding them both in my hand the same way – no preference for one or the other. Both are interesting (pain is actually even more interesting!) (…) I feel that I can see how much I've grown now... you need ordeals to know if you have grown spiritually or not! I'm very grateful for "being put to the test" here. I can really see that I am NOT the person I was before. That I hold to my center no matter what happens – I don't get lost. So this is good."

On Saturday, though, the pain reached a peak and was starting to blind me (all I felt like doing was letting him know how much I was hurt). Instead, however, I decided to try and get into a higher state of consciousness by meditating, see if I would be able to see things more clearly.

I started meditating, and an amazing thing happened: I entered into a sort of mystical state again, a state of great clarity of insight and bliss. And this time, for the first time ever, I started writing in my journal while in that state. It was pretty much "automatic writing": I didn’t really know what I was writing as I was writing it, it just flowed from my hand, like in a state of hypnosis. This experience of mystical insight and automatic writing was quite interesting in itself but, more importantly, it totally transformed the way I view the current situation. I can see how this situation, far from being a curse, is actually an incredible opportunity for my boyfriend and I to get to know each other better and deeper. The episode threw me back in a state of complete, solid joy. I totally quit my obsession with the situation, while it paralyzed me all through the past week, and am back doing my own business.

Also, in the state I am now, there is no attachment to the outcome. I know that my only job here is to love him, to do nothing but loving him, but the result strictly doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we both grow from this, which is the case. I can see how pain comes ONLY from non-loving. When you love, there is no pain. I trust (and know) that my soul and his soul will be able to realize their respective callings in this life – whether it is to bundle up, or whether it is not.

Some excerpts from my "cosmic writing" experience:

"All is nothing and nothing is all. When I move, the entire universe moves. There is all but one consciousness. I access it now. We are all the Whole. There is nothing outside of us. It’s all a big game that’s being played. There is only one of us. Wake up! It’s about seeing where it’s going. It can go any way we want. At any minute. We can change everything. Everyone of us can change everything. It’s enough to WANT it. (...) There's only one of us. (...) If you recognize the whole, then you ARE the whole, and you can move it the way you want. (...) The more you know, the more is asked of you. (...) Let go when you don’t know the answer. No need to torture yourself, let go, even if it looks big. Big or small is all the same, it is just to name things. In fact there is only one thing happening, all the time. It’s all the same so you have to go with the biggest act of love. (...) You can push things in any direction you want, through space and "time", at any time you want. There is only one moment, things altering each other. One change in one part of the web = the whole web changes. (...)

You cannot do everything. Just do what you can and leave clues for the next person. I mean, the rest of the web, to give them an incentive to move things in one direction or the other. Be the clue. Let your life be the clue. I think it is better, in this case, to announce the victory of love over doubt and gloom. (...) It is better to inspire with love than with discourses. (...)

It’s the concept of fractals. You move one piece on the game, and it is a different game altogether! We choose to memorize what we want. [What I’m trying to say is how we also impact the past from the present]. There is no reality. Nothing is real in reality. You make it ALL (in its smallest details) up completely right now. You choose everything. (...). You see, every action affects the whole. (...) You make it all up in your mind, there is no other tool. Your One Mind. How do I access the Whole? You let go. You trust the process, you relax. It’s OK whatever role you are playing. You are being them all at once. The victory of love. This is what to demonstrate. (...)

This is the victory of love. You must make love triumph inside of you because this is the only place there is. And the more you develop the love within yourself, the more you can alter the Whole. Because the more love you have, the further you reach in your embrace to include as many souls as possible, the more you become the One and then there is no choice, you must just play your role. (...) Love you will find in depth. Show your love! Dig in! It is in depth, not in variety. You stop being harsh, you start being loving. Act without regard for the outcome. Just do the most loving thing to do (often when it is painful it is it! But take only a pain that you can take). (...)

We are all one. Sometimes you see it when you look at a person. You see it in their eyes. There is a recognition. (...) If you gather, then it is stronger, you put more of alike energy together in one spot. So you get more power when you gather together. You must seek to gather with others. By definition you’ll get better results. (...)

Cultivate Love in yourself. This is the only work to do. (...) Know who you are (God) and where you are (God’s mind). You are God’s mind. I trust the process. Let me just relax into it and manifest more joy, more humor, etc. Why do I take everything so seriously? It is stern! Nothing is for real! Just relax! RELAX! Let this one happen, it will all be for the better, because you know where you are going. You are pulling the string of Love. You can select. There is the great quality. Being able to select which string to pull. All the strings exist for everyone all the time but not everyone picks them up. Most people can’t see many strings. They just see 2 or 3 that they can pull, the rest is in the dark. The more they go on the spiritual path, the more they know about skillful response to events, because they see more strings that they can pull. (...)

Reincarnation is obvious once it is understood that there is no time. Time is a dimension that we have invented and have forgotten that we have invented. So we pretend it’s real. While in fact it’s not. Same in space: we are one through space also. You are the Whole across time and space. You are everything that has ever existed. When you die, you think you die, but in fact you don’t die. You will just recondense at another time. All of space and time is within your embrace. For this you need to love more, this is the only path here. (...) The victory of love over non-love, this is all it is. (...)

The only path to Love is to love. (...) I am learning (slowly) to not act impulsively on my emotions. Emotions are not real, you make them up, so it doesn’t make sense to act on them, except if it is to express the Greatest Love. Use emotions, good and bad, only [as opposed to being used by them to do things you don’t really want to do]. (...)

When you hold love in your heart, and just love, YOU DON’T SUFFER. (...) Follow the light. Seek the light in others. Look for the light in them. And then listen. LISTEN! I need to listen to my love! Understand him! (...) Just need to understand – this is the only work. When you understand, you can change, i.e. deploy the power to move things the way you want. When you don’t understand, you are powerless. (...)

Don’t trust yourself when you feel down, you don’t see very much of what’s truly happening. Your view is totally distorted, you are looking at the darkness instead of at the light! Keep totally focused on the light, always!"

Alchemy: transform your anger into an engine of learning and growth

A good friend of mine shares with me her anger after a break-up she just went through. Listening to her, I can see myself 1.5 years ago after the break-up I went through then - how angry I was at first, or rather, how much I felt an urge to fix him, to teach him to be a better person. I know that I was liberated and happy again the minute I focused my attention again on my own growth, not his. I write to her:

"Now your job is this: turn your energy inward. Shift your focus 180 degrees, from HIM to YOU. Remember you can change yourself, YOU CANNOT CHANGE others (OR, THE ONLY WAY YOU CHANGE them IS BY CHANGING yourself).

So.
What is it that you can/will do better next time.
What is it that he came to teach you.
What message did he have for you.
What is it that is TRUE in his feedback to you (vs what is it that is NOT TRUE).
Dig in, down, down, down, further down.

This is about YOU, all about you, not about him. He was a mirror for you - and so are ALL people whom we choose to invite in our lives. What aspect of yourself did he come to bring to your attention?

Do this work, focus ALL your attention on this work. This is your work now. Buy a journal and start filling it with the answers to these questions.

It is alchemy we are talking about here: transmute your anger into an engine of learning and growth. (...)

Good luck with all this. Remember Richard and I. It took me 6 months to understand what I just wrote down. Hopefully it will take you less time than it took me :-) !!"

The art of sexual ecstasy

My boyfriend and I just got and started using a beautiful book: The Art of Sexual Ecstasy, by Margo Anand, "the most comprehensive and clearly written work on contemporary Tantric sex, an exceptional detailed program for both the beginner and the advanced practitioner." We also find it exceptionally comprehensive and well-written.

Hee hee yes, time to seriously embrace love-making as the highest spiritual practice that it is, a direct path to body-mind-spirit ecstasy! The book starts with reminding us of the basics: that the key to loving someone else fully is to fully love oneself.

We are planning to make this book a wedding gift to all our friends who are getting married!!