*image: barton springs, full moon, sept. 21, 2021 © all rights reserved

Relationships may come and go. The relationship you have with yourself and your spirit (higher power, god, holy mother) is the only partnership that will never fail you. You can break up with yourself (it’s some form of depression or suicidal ideation) but for the most part, we have an inner voice that encourages us to move forward, to reach for the stars, and to NEVER GIVE UP.

At this moment, this morning, this sacred space I’m holding in my life, I am alone. I am swimming alone in the early hours of the morning. I am swimming under a full moon. I am playing tennis with many different people. And I am cultivating my inner monolog, from one of desperation and lack to one of curious emergence.

“What’s coming? Where do I want to go? What am I dreaming of, seeking, longing for?”

+++ Listen to this article on the podcast Love on the Air +++

+++

What Is Emerging In Your Life?

We can’t see or feel experiences outside of our hula hoop. We try. We project. We worry. We fantasize. We grasp for some “higher love.” Often, what we are seeking is an escape from our aloneness. When I’m struggling I don’t really want to be around people, but I also don’t want to crawl under the covers and isolate myself. What I think I want is a partner who can lean in with me during the good (highs) and the bad (lows) while remaining solid in their own power. We cannot fix each other. But we can be beside one another offering our hand to hold.

If you are exactly where you are supposed to be, imagine it, what is next for you? What have your pointed your arrows at? How would you like to feel in 3 months? Where is the beloved in all this chaos of 2021? How can we listen for the beloved in our own hearts so we can resonate with someone else’s inner frequency?

If you can get curious about what is emerging in your life, you can observe (mindfulness) actions and reactions of both yourself and others. A compassionate observer does not judge. By allowing yourself to experience the edge of the unknown, you are allowing curiosity and hope to enter your heart. Even alone, cultivating this curious awareness is critical.

We Don’t Know, We Can’t Imagine What’s Next

At times, I think I know: what I want, where I’m going, who I’d like to love, and how I’d like to aim for the stars with my arm around the waist of a lover.  I do not know. The “plan” of my God (higher power) is beyond my powers of comprehension. What is happening at this moment, the people, the synchronicities, the growing ambition and energy, the hopefulness that appears to be emerging in myself and most of the people in my community.

We’re fed up with this shutdown. We are going to emerge. We must transform from our chrysalis and morph into a butterfly. What kind of butterfly are you cultivating? The process of emergence can be difficult and painful. There can be false starts, misses, and broken promises. But if we realign with love, back towards ourselves, towards our inner “god,” we again return to self-love and self-reliance.

Self-Reliance and Self-Awareness

It is an interesting thought, this self-reliance ethic we’re all caught up in. We don’t want to be codependent. We don’t want to be too needy. We want to steer our own boat. AND YET, we’re don’t have our hands on the bigger spiritual steering wheel. This is both comforting (“Let go and let go.” and terrifying (“I am not in control.”).

If I am comfortable at this moment, alone, I am mindful that I am in a perfect place. If at the same time, I am interested in finding a partner, I am actively anticipating a phase shift. I love this me that I am. I love this moment as a swim, laugh, and sleep alone. I do not want to leave the comfort of my well-provisioned boat and plunge back into the icy waters of dating and relationship building. So while I am at peace and at one with my spirit, I know my physical heart is craving a touch that cannot be provided by the hand of god. It is only “in a relationship” that I have an opportunity to emerge both happy AND bonded (attached) to a partner.

As We Lean In Rather Than Away

I might hope that the perfect woman is going to show up. Perhaps she’s already in my life. And I might hope that our emergence will be instantaneous and miraculous, but in my experience, that is not how a foundationally secure relationship is formed. In a previous article, I wrote about the Hot Hot Heat Test. When the phase shift is too potent, it might be a warning sign, rather than a clear YES from the universe.

We can get ahead of our souls when seeking a relationship. We can let our physical desires and needs run the show. We can try to go slow, try to be mindful, and try to keep pointed towards our ultimate goal of finding a lifetime partner, AND we can still slip too quickly into the body and heat and chemistry that nature has fired up inside us. Our hearts, our bodies, our entire soul appears to be inflamed. But here’s the cautionary part: when the heat is surreally hot, something else, something less healthy, is at play.

Johnny En Fuego

A person you immediately catch fire with (if it takes place before you’ve really established a core connection) may be a teacher, but maybe not in the way you anticipate. The fire they are bringing is not the soul-soothing, nurturing, safe affection you are hoping for. When the body heats up too quickly and the booty is involved before the essential work of relationship-building, the relationship can get out of balance and out of integrity rather quickly.

You can find yourself enjoying the adrenaline rush and the high of the new love, new sex, new partner, new everything. And months later, as the fire cools, life and kids and jobs come back into focus, you might wake up to the lack of a deep connection with this incredibly hot and sexually charged lover. It’s great. Go for it. But understand that this kind of heat often does one of three things: 1. it burns up quickly and implodes when the sexual fires cool; 2. it triggers old traumas, old wounds, and lovers, and brings us back into our pain as we realize we’ve spent six months courting our hot sex partner, but not our beloved; 3. we blow out of the relationship still hot and bothered, but more triggered and exhausted than fulfilled and content.

Sex is Sacred

• I seek my “beloved.” (SEE: Becoming the Beloved)
• I am in no real hurry to find her.
• I write love poems, I try to conjure her up.
• I step back from the hot hot heat when I begin to catch fire and lose some of my objective reality.
• I monitor my heat, my energy, my restlessness and impatience, and I slow my roll, intentionally, and by request.
• I seek answers.
• I cool my jets in the water, by myself.
• I pray, meditate, and ask for “thy will” not mine to be revealed to me.

rumi – the poet of spiritual love says

This is the Way

This roadmap business, this constant listing and comparing notes, of my ideal partner, my perfect lover, my soul mate, my ONE, is all just a construction I use to soothe myself when I’m afraid.

I think we are all afraid of being alone. Maybe not at this moment. At this moment I am supremely happy alone. And yet… The largeness of my love cannot be self-contained. I can’t love myself enough to quell my inner lover. I am trying to love the holy spirit with enough intention to lessen moments of doubt or loneliness.

Today, I am actively waiting. I am dipping my toe back in the waters of “hello dates” and “what shall we do next?” moments. I am not in fight or flight mode. I am also not in hot pursuit. I am right where I am supposed to be.

I am available. I am open. I am seeking a oneness that comes from loving someone with every volt of energy in my body and mind. And I am waiting because my roadmaps are flawed and terrestrial-based. I cannot see what’s coming. I cannot anticipate the greatness of god’s plan. (Sorry if I’m woo-woo ing out a bit here. Please substitute your higher power or higher connection of your preference.)

Actively Waiting

I am shouting at the moon and telling the universe, “Here I am, fully awake and fully empowered. Show me a partner who can bring their empowered love to join with me.”

It’s okay. I’ll wait. I’m in no hurry. The urgency I often express in my writing and my words are more about enthusiasm and less about the urgency to FIND HER. She is already here. She may not be seeking me at this moment. But the arrangements and alignments will happen as long as I remain centered and pure in my heart.

The timing and synchronicity of the universe are continuously asking me to recenter, refind quiet myself, and attune to a higher love.

In this moment, I am doing just that.

A Meditation for This Moment

With every breath today, I can let go of my expectations, my disappointments, and my ambitions. There is a master plan. Just for today, I will stay centered, remain focused on my joy and listen for the sound of my future lover’s voice.

+++

when you said to me
“you are not so old”
did I know it then
cause I have just been told

i didn’t think I’d find you
so perfect in so many ways…

-m sweet