Monday, February 29, 2016

Choosing to BE with what IS



Byron Katie says
Stop Arguing with what IS -
she even has a book (which I haven't yet read) called: Stop Arguing with Reality.

This encouragement from her has been an essential in my meditations,
in my spiritual healing and growth.

It doesn’t help anything or anyone, to be in:
  • Resistance - Digging-in my heals
  • Judgment - Making it or them or us wrong
  • Denial - Pretending that what is, isn’t so

These practices and energies don't work in this world;
and they don’t work within us either.
(This doesn't always keep us from practicing ; )

But, we can shift if we choose to.
We Can shift If we Choose to.
What if we start choosing to be with what is?


What if we choose to stop, telling:
  • ourselves,
  • our bodies,
  • our friends and family,
  • our work and play,
  • our world at large,
  • our Earth-game, and
  • our Supreme Intelligence / All-That-IS…
how it should be.
And instead start to notice how it is.

What would happen -
  • in ourselves?
  • in our relationships?
  • in our world?

As we be with what IS,
we get the gift of what IS.


Again:
As we be with what IS,
we get the gift of what IS.

And:
then (really only then) things can start to shift:
  • from the inside-out
  • from the foundation-up...

.
Here is one example -
Regarding our emotions we could:
  • stop telling them that they aren’t what they are, or
  • ignoring them, or
  • trying to cover them over or exchange them for something else.

BTW - emotions have job to do!
They inform us: what is going on with our body? what does it need? what is the communication?


If we won’t honor our emotions, they stick around Forever
- and they build up (get dense, sick, attract vermin ; )
- and they trip us
- and they get in the way of us experiencing and appropriately acting in the here and now…

Whereas, if we say hello to our emotions
- they have informed us, and
- they can waft away on the next breeze.

Yup, it can be that easy!


Here is a great application of the power of being willing to Be with what IS.
How it can shift everything, with a little miracle we can call Forgiveness.
I shared this on my Ascended Master blog a few years ago:
Forgiveness: Not by might nor by power, but by Spirit

in Life!
Wendy


BTW, I have a Sweet workshop coming up, playing with this theme
second Monday in March, near Seattle Center:

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Saturday, February 20, 2016

Seed a Love Revolution!

I have been teaching soul tools and supporting spiritual healing and deepening for over a decade.
My students receive amazing value: shifting their inner experiences and their outer lives in extraordinary ways.

Meanwhile, I have been shifting myself.  I stand in a very different place now.
And, I recently received revelation to share the amazing adventure of opening to our spiritual senses,  aligning with our Source, and following our unique path
- in a whole new way!

I am more excited about sharing the possibility of
Who we ARE, and How we can BE, and What we can DO in this world,
than I have ever been before:



Dare to BE Love!

In this class series, we will Practice Spiritually BEing the Love we want
  • BEing the Love we want to receive from Out There.
  • BEing the Love we want to see in our world.

We will Deepen in Love, within ourselves, to the place where:
  • We don’t have to look, act, perform, strive, or succeed in a certain way to be immersed in Love.  Love just IS.  
  • When we are overtly enjoying lots of connections and intimacy with others… or all alone.  It doesn’t matter. We are IN Love.
 
We will Open our ability to connect-with others, from a place of:
  • Powerful Centeredness: sure of our boundaries, honoring our space… and theirs.
  • Comfortable Safety: operating from as much of an open-hearted place, as we choose.
  • Love-Richness: with the foundation to act boldly, authentically in our relationships and in our lives.

We will Play IN Love:
  • We will allow the Love that we receive from our Source, from the Earth, from the Universe… around us and within us.
  • We will allow this Love that we Are, to uncover and to Shine. 
  • From our overflowing fullness, we will Dare to Share our true selves, and splash Love courageously throughout our world.
  • As we are awash in Love, All around us will be blessed: Our lives will beautifully shift.

Our transitions will be as safe and as gentle as you allow them to be:
  • We will incrementally shift from fear to love; from hiding and stopped to open and in action.
  • Our changes start within (regaining our spiritual freedom) and we will morph Love into our lives, as we are ready - not before!


This series: Wednesday evenings, starting February 24th, near Seattle Center.
Please mark your calendar and invite your friends.
(Contact me to figure out how you can join this vibe, even if you can’t make this class)
  • Of course we will learn dozens of tools and distinctions for operating in freedom and safety as spirit in bodies, in this world. (When I teach, this just comes... like grits at breakfast in the south ;)
  • These soul levers are powerful and effective for whatever we choose to co-create.

So, my vision is, over the next few months, WE will Seed a Love Revolution!
  • We will gather as a group, and week after week, attend-to our personal healing, growth, opening, and transformation in the context of Love. 
  • Each week, we will shift more - personally and as a group - into Love Consciousness.
  • This will create a vortex of Love.    

  • Love will flow in, through and around us all week, wherever we go. 
  • My intention: we will become a Soul Love Movement, right here in our communities, in our city, in our country, and in our world.


Dare to BE Love!
Learn more about this class series.


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Saturday, February 13, 2016

Invitation to upcoming class series: Dare to BE Love!

Dare to BE Love!
A Magical Manifestation Meditation Class Series with Wendy R Wolf

Come to enjoy a high-energy class series;
Full of information, practice-time, sharing, and inspiration;
As well as, meditation practices to help you learn your unique Way, and shift your life.

Realize Spiritual Oneness, in Meditation and in your active, daily life:
  • with All Your Relations – within yourself, with your friends and relations, with sweet Mother Earth, with your Source/All-That-IS
  • consistently accessible, not just a fleeting mystical moment

Experience that you are Whole & Complete, as a Soul Practice:
  • there is nothing wrong with you or them: I'm ok, you're ok, it's ok.
  • you can be in Forgiveness, Trust, Gratefulness... yourself, and with all your relations
...

Create a Life you Love – from the Inside, Out!

Heal and Create from your Heart, as well as your own True self-expression:
  • give easily from overflow, not from striving
  • access in a new way: your unique gifts to the world of creativity and healing

Deepen in your ability to connect-with others:
  • comfortably & safely, from an open-hearted place
  • already Full of love, so able to act boldly, authentically – meeting them where they are
...

In addition to all the facets of our usual Soul Tools Class Series...
We will say hello to, and begin to unpack and heal-around:

All our main chakras – but particularly the ones related to Love:
  • Heart Chakra (Affinity),
  • Root Chakra (Reality) and
  • Throat Chakra (Communication)
Many vibrations/spiritual blessings, but especially the ones particularly related to Love:
  • Affinity (experiencing the spiritual-reality of Oneness) and
  • Validation (experiencing the spiritual Truth: all is well and will be well)
Releasing the uncomfortable experiences and limited beliefs that trip us, particularly around Love.


To be clear:
  • We aren't specifically focusing only on Romance in this class-series – as fun as that is! But, if you want to, you can let Yummy Juicy Romantic Love be a cherry on-top of your experience of your multifaceted experience of love!
     
  • Basically, we will be intending to shift, personally and as a group, to Love Consciousness.

Are you in?

Details, regarding upcoming class series: Dare to BE Love!

Dare to BE Love!
A Magical Manifestation Meditation Class Series with Wendy R Wolf

Create a Life you Love, from the Inside-Out, Utilizing our Powerful Soul Levers
Learn and Apply the Basic Tools and Distinctions of our Soul Tools 101 & 102 – with a focus on Love:
  • Loving yourself,
  • Loving your Neighbor,
  • Living IN Love,
  • Manifesting through Love, and
  • Creating a Life you Love...

First 6 weeks – 101: Dare to BE Love: within You!
(this will will utilize the Basic Tools & Distinctions of Soul Tools 101 – and so much more!)

We will be doing so much in this class, but it will include:
Continually open to your spiritual experience of these and many other Spiritual Blessings:
  • Affinity (oneness),
  • Validation (I'm ok, you're ok),
  • Wholeness (completeness).


Practice these (and Many other) meditation techniques:
  • GroundingConsciously connecting w/ the Heart of Momma Earth – Supported, Belonging.
  • CenteringConsciously Being Neutral / Spiritually-focused & the Captain of your Body/Life.
  • Releasing to the Earth - Consciously letting go of what you're done-with, making room within.
  • Receiving from the Earth - Consciously filling from the River of Life, energy support for your body.
  • Receiving from the Cosmos - Consciously saying Yes! to Blessings, filling-up your soul batteries.

Second 6 weeks – 102: Dare to BE Love: in your World!
(this will will utilize the Basic Tools & Distinctions of Soul Tools 101 & 102 – and so much more!)

We will be doing so much in this class, but it will include:
As spirit in bodies, BEing Love, we interface with others and our world.
We will learn and practice:
  • Taking Love to our world!
  • BE-ing ourselves, DO-ing our thing, from a Safe, Empowered, Energy-Rich Place.
  • Positively influencing others and our surroundings, energetically.

Enjoy learning and practicing the straightforward, bare-bones of Conscious Creation, from a foundation of Love:
  • Realizing the ABUNDANCE we live-in, and the positive power of GRATEFULNESS.
  • Allowing ourselves to HAVE our desires.
  • BEING what we want to have in our world.
  • From THIS place: Applying the law of manifestation (like attracts like)
  • CLEARING the path to receiving
  • Employing Powerful TOOLS for Creating as SPIRIT

Do you Dare to BE Love? See the dates, registration info, etc.

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Logistics for upcoming class series: Dare to BE Love!


Dare to BE Love!

A Magical Manifestation Meditation Class Series with Wendy R Wolf

If you choose: in only 3 months:
  • your life will shift,
  • your inner world will transform,
  • who you are being in the world will be changing, and
  • you will be connected to a spiritually-focused community, living in love.

After this 3 month extravaganza of Consciousness-shifting, Awakening and Growth,
You will walk away with 4 Dozen Inner-Tools & Distinctions that are like levers to:
  • Support your delicious inner experience of Love.
  • Empower you to live boldly into your life as Love-manifest.
  • Inspire and equip you to create a life that you Love!


Invest in yourself, your relationships and the world you want to live-in!

Starting Wednesday, February 24th – 7-9pm, at The Blue House, near Seattle Center
(If you are interested but cannot make this class series, be in touch to see how we can get you this life-changing opportunity.)

This class series will include the Information & Practices from 2 of our traditional classes, Soul/Psychic Tools 101 & 102, and so much more.
(If you have enjoyed Psychic Tools class already, come again: You haven't had THIS class!
Utilize the tools with intention and focus to shift your experience of Love!
Come participate for a fraction of the original cost. Be in touch, so I can plan for you.)

The investment for this class series is 12 Wednesday Classes and $497 (usually $540 for 12 weeks - I am offering a discount on this series - because I want you IN)

We will take a break every few Wednesdays - giving us a chance to  R&R and Integrate our shifts.
(if you need to miss a week or two, I will get you an audio of the class and invest some personal time with you to integrate the energy tools from the missed class)

This class series will fill fast, please be in touch so I can:
  • answer your questions,
  • know you are coming,
  • complete your registration and deposit.


(And there's more ; )

Although the class is 7-9 pm,
to fit-in all I would like to accomplish,
I ask that you come at 6:30pm, or as soon as you comfortably can after that; so you can:
  • Receive at least one complimentary ~15 minute individual Aura Healing, over the course of this class. 
  • Enjoy the chance to validate yourself, share with your classmates what you are experiencing in your life.  Our class-time will be quite full, and I & they will want to Hear From You.
  • Bring your dinner, eat, chat, hang-out with folks on this Love-Journey with you.

 Please be in touch so I can:
  • answer your questions,
  • know you are coming,
  • complete your registration and deposit.


(And there's more ; )

If you register with a deposit before the class begins,
and pay in full for the class series, on the first night of class, Feb 24th - you will receive a voucher for 2 workshops, as an extra gift for you. ($70 value)

 Please be in touch so I can
  • answer your questions,
  • know you are coming,
  • complete your registration and deposit.


(And there's more ; )
Students in this class will receive a significant discount on private sessions
– if there is some deep healing or integration of your new way of being that you would like some professional assistance with:
20% Discount on sessions with me, or
25% Discount on sessions with one of my Healing Team.


Please be in touch so I can:
  • answer your questions,
  • know you are coming,
  • complete your registration and deposit.


Still not Sure?

If you want a taste:
This series will start with a Meditation Workshop
Ask & Receive: Love! - check it out, invite your friends...
(if you are not registered for the class, you must register at the link above)

and/or
You can commit to only the first 6 weeks for only $270

Please be in touch so I can:
  • answer your questions,
  • know you are coming,
  • complete your registration and deposit.

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The Theory behind the Practice, regarding my upcoming class: Dare to BE Love!

This post is regarding the essay
Absolute and Relative Love by John Welwood

It is hard to believe how aligned I am with this guy’s theories about Love.
He utilizes some different terms and concepts, and we aren’t an exact belief-system match;
But I find it exciting and validating to read what he has to say.

The upcoming class Dare to BE Love! will be:
  • providing a lot of Tools and Distinctions to help us leverage the concepts he addresses,
  • helping us to experience (what he calls) Absolute Love for ourselves, and
  • inspiring us to shift, heal, get-free to enjoy (what he calls) Relative Love, in our everyday real-life & relationships.

He does a much better job than me, laying it all out in an orderly way, in print;
so if you are interested, please read on.
It is a wonderful essay to meditate-to, IMO.

Below is a useful long-quotation
if you would like to read the entire essay (which I highly recommend), keep scrolling down or download here.

When children experience love as conditional or unreliable or manipulative, this causes a knot of fear to form in the heart, for they can only conclude, “I am not truly loved.” This creates a state of panic or “freak-out” that causes the body and mind to freeze up… It affects our whole sense of who we are by causing us to doubt whether our nature is lovable. As Emily Dickenson describes this universal wound in one of her poems: “There is a pain so utter, it swallows Being up.” 
  

This wounding hurts so much that children try to push it out of consciousness. Eventually a psychic scab forms…

What keeps the wound from healing is not knowing that we are lovely and lovable just as we are, while imagining that other people hold the key to this. We would like, and often expect, relative human love to be absolute, providing a reliable, steady flow of attunement, unconditional acceptance, and understanding. When this doesn’t happen, we take it personally, regarding this as someone’s fault—our own, for not being good enough, or others’, for not loving us enough. But the imperfect way our parents—or anyone else—loved us has nothing to do with whether love is trustworthy or whether we are lovable. It doesn’t have the slightest bearing on who we really are. It is simply a sign of ordinary human limitation, and nothing more. Other people cannot love us any more purely than their character structure allows. 




Fortunately, the storminess of our relationships in no way diminishes or undermines the unwavering presence of great love, absolute love, which is ever present in the background. Even when the sky is filled with thick, dark clouds, the sun never stops shining.
  

The problems in relationships begin when we imagine that the warmth ignited in our heart isn’t really ours, that its transferred into us by the other person. Then we become obsessed with the other as the provider of love, when in truth the warmth we feel comes from the sunlight of great love entering our heart…

Imagining others to be the source of love condemns us to wander lost in the desert of hurt, abandonment, and betrayal, where human relationship appears to be hopelessly tragic and flawed. As long as we fixate on what our parents didn’t give us, the ways our friends don’t consistently show up for us, or the ways our lover doesn’t understand us, we will never become rooted in ourselves and heal the wound of the heart. To grow beyond the dependency of a child requires sinking our own taproot into the wellspring of great love. This is the only way to know for certain that we are loved unconditionally. 


 In emphasizing the importance of not looking to others for perfect love, I am not suggesting that you turn away from relationships or belittle their importance. On the contrary, learning to sink your taproot into the source of love allows you to connect with others in a more powerful way—”straight up,” confidently rooted in your own ground, rather than leaning over, always trying to get something from “out there.” The less you demand total fulfillment from relationships, the more you can appreciate them for the beautiful tapestries they are, in which absolute and relative, perfect and imperfect, infinite and finite are marvelously interwoven. You can stop fighting the shifting tides of relative love and learn to ride them instead. And you come to appreciate more fully the simple, ordinary heroism involved in opening to another person and forging real intimacy.

 
  


::::::::::


Absolute and Relative Love

by John Welwood


Love is what we long to receive and to give, yet our intimate relationships are conflicted and often painful. Psychologist John Welwood looks at the difference between absolute and relative love, and the wound within each of us that no other can heal.



**




Again and again it defeats me—


This reliance on others for bliss.



—from a poem by the author





While most of us have moments of loving freely and openly, it is often hard to sustain such love where it matters most—in our intimate relationships. This creates a strange gap between absolute love—the perfect love we can know in our heart—and relative love, the imperfect ways it is embodied in our relationships. Why, if love is so great and powerful, are human relationships so challenging and difficult? If love is the source of happiness and joy, why is it so hard to open to it fully?
  


What lies at the root of every relationship problem is a core “wound of the heart” that affects not only our personal relations, but the quality of life in our world as a whole. This wounding shows up as a pervasive mood of unlove, a deep sense that we are not intrinsically lovable just as we are. We experience ourselves as separated from love, and this shuts down our capacity to trust. So even though we may hunger for love or believe in love, we still have difficulty opening to it and letting it circulate freely through us. 




Absolute Love




If the pure essence of love is like the sun in a cloudless sky, this clear and luminous light shines through relationships most brightly in beginnings and endings. When your baby is first born, you feel so graced by the arrival of such an adorable being that you respond to it totally, without reserve, demand, or judgment. Or when you first fall in love, you are so surprised and delighted by the sheer beauty of this person’s presence that it blows your heart wide open. For a while the bright sunlight of all-embracing love pours through full strength, and you may melt into bliss. 
  


Similarly, when a friend or loved one is dying, all your quibbles with that person fall away. You simply appreciate the other for who he or she is, just for having been here with you in this world for a little while. Pure, unconditional love shines through when people put themselves—their own demands and agendas—aside and completely open to one another. 
  


Absolute love is not something that we have to—or that we even can—concoct or fabricate. It is what comes through us naturally when we fully open up—to another person, to ourselves, or to life. In relation to another, it manifests as selfless caring. In relation to ourselves, it shows up as inner confidence and self-acceptance that warms us from within. And in relation to life, it manifests as a sense of well-being, appreciation, and joie de vivre.
  


When we experience this kind of openness and warmth coming from another, it provides essential nourishment: it helps us experience our own warmth and openness, allowing us to recognize the beauty and goodness at the core of our nature. The light of unconditional love awakens the dormant seed potentials within us, helping them ripen, blossom, and bear fruit, allowing us to bring forth the unique gifts that are ours to offer in this life. Receiving pure love, caring, and recognition from another confers a great blessing: it affirms us in being who we are, allowing us to say yes to ourselves.
  


What feels most affirming is not just to feel loved but to feel loved as we are. As we are means in our very being. Absolute love is the love of being. 
  


Deeper than all our personality traits, pain, or confusion, our being is the dynamic, open presence that we essentially are. It is what we experience when we feel settled, grounded, and connected with ourselves. When rooted in this basic ground of presence, love flows freely through us, and we can more readily open up to others. When two people meet in this quality of open presence, they share a perfect moment of absolute love.
  


However—and this is an essential point—the human personality is not the source of absolute love. Rather, its light shines through us, from what lies altogether beyond us, the ultimate source of all. We are the channels through which this radiance flows. Yet in flowing through us, it also finds a home within us, taking up residence as our heart-essence.
  


We have a natural affinity for this perfect food that is also our deepest essence, our life’s blood. That is why every baby instinctively reaches out for it from the moment of birth. We cannot help wanting our own nature. 
When the value and beauty of our existence is recognized, this allows us to relax, let down, and settle into ourselves. In relaxing, we open. And this opening makes us transparent to the life flowing through us, like a fresh breeze that enters a room as soon as the windows are raised. 
  


This is the one of the great gifts of human love, this entry it provides into something even greater than human relatedness. In helping us connect with the radiant aliveness within us, it reveals our essential beauty and power, where we are one with life itself because we are fully transparent to life. When life belongs to you and you belong to life, this sets you free from hunger and fear. You experience the essential dignity and nobility of your existence, which does not depend on anyone else’s approval or validation. In this deep sense of union with life, you realize you are not wounded, have never been wounded, and cannot be wounded. 
  


This is the bottom line of human existence: Absolute love helps us connect with who we really are. That is why it is indispensable.




"Relative Love




Yet even though the human heart is a channel through which great love streams into this world, this heart channel is usually clogged with debris—fearful, defensive patterns that have developed out of not knowing we are truly loved. As a result, love’s natural openness, which we can taste in brief, blissful moments of pure connection with another person, rarely permeates our relationships completely. Indeed, the more two people open to each other, the more this wide-openness also brings to the surface all the obstacles to it: their deepest, darkest wounds, their desperation and mistrust, and their rawest emotional trigger-points. Just as the sun’s warmth causes clouds to arise, by prompting the earth to release its moisture, so love’s pure openness activates the thick clouds of our emotional wounding, the tight places where we are shut down, where we live in fear and resist love. 
    There is good reason why this happens: Before we can become a clear channel through which love can freely flow, the ways we are wounded must come to the surface and be exposed. Love as a healing power can operate only on what presents itself to be healed. As long as our wounding remains hidden, it can only fester. 
  


This, then, is relative love: the sunlight of absolute love as it becomes filtered through the clouds of our conditioned personality and its defensive patterns—fearfulness, distrust, reactivity, dishonesty, aggression, and distorted perception. Like a partly cloudy sky, relative love is incomplete, inconstant, and imperfect. It is a continual play of light and shadow. The full radiance of absolute love can only sparkle through in fleeting moments. 
  


If you observe yourself closely in relationships, you will see that you continually move back and forth between being open and closed, clear skies and dark clouds. When another person is responsive, listens well, or says something pleasing, something in you naturally starts to open. But when the other is not responsive, can’t hear you, or says something threatening, you may quickly tense up and start to contract.
  


Our ability to feel a wholehearted yes toward another person fluctuates with the changing circumstances of each moment. It depends on how much each of us is capable of giving and receiving, the chemistry between us, our limitations and conditioned patterns, how far along we are in our personal development, how much awareness and flexibility we each have, how well we communicate, the situation we find ourselves in, and even how well we have each slept the night before. Relative means dependent on time and circumstance.
  


Ordinary human love is always relative, never consistently absolute. Like the weather, relative love is in continual dynamic flux. It is forever rising and subsiding, waxing and waning, changing shape and intensity. 
  


So far all of this may seem totally obvious. Yet here’s the rub: We imagine that others—surely someone out there!—should be a source of perfect love by consistently loving us in just the right way. Since our first experiences of love usually happen in relation to other people, we naturally come to regard relationship as its main source. Then when relationships fail to deliver the ideal love we dream of, we imagine something has gone seriously wrong. And this disappointed hope keeps reactivating the wound of the heart and generating grievance against others. This is why the first step in healing the wound and freeing ourselves from grievance is to appreciate the important difference between absolute and relative love. 
  


Relationships continually oscillate between two people finding common ground and then having that ground slip out from under them as their differences pull them in different directions. This is a problem only when we expect it to be otherwise, when we imagine that love should manifest as a steady state. That kind of expectation prevents us from appreciating the special gift that relative love does have to offer: personal intimacy. Intimacy—the sharing of who we are in our distinctness—can happen only when my partner and I meet as two, when I appreciate the ways she is wholly other, and yet not entirely other at the same time. 
  


If we look honestly at our lives, most likely we will see that no one has ever been there for us in a totally reliable, continuous way. Though we might like to imagine that somebody, somewhere—maybe movie stars or spiritual people—has an ideal relationship, this is mostly the stuff of fantasy. Looking more closely, we can see that everyone has his or her own fears, blind spots, hidden agendas, insecurities, aggressive and manipulative tendencies, and emotional trigger-points—which block the channels through which great love can freely flow. Much as we might want to love with a pure heart, our limitations inevitably cause our love to fluctuate and waver. 
  


Yet our yearning for perfect love and perfect union does have its place and its own beauty. Arising out of an intuitive knowing of the perfection that lies within the heart, it points toward something beyond what ordinary mortals can usually provide. We yearn to heal our separation from life, from God, from our own heart. When understood correctly, this longing can inspire us to reach beyond ourselves, give ourselves wholeheartedly, or turn toward the life of the spirit. It is a key, as we shall see, that opens the doorway through which absolute love can enter fully into us.
  


We invariably fall into trouble, however, when we transfer this longing onto another person. That is why it’s important to distinguish between absolute and relative love—so we don’t go around seeking perfect love from imperfect situations. Although intimate connections can provide dazzling flashes of absolute oneness, we simply cannot count on them for that. The only reliable source of perfect love is that which is perfect—the open, awake heart at the core of being. This alone allows us to know perfect union, where all belongs to us because we belong to all. Expecting this from relationships only sets us up to feel betrayed, disheartened, or aggrieved. 




The Genesis of the Wound 




Riding the waves of relationship becomes particularly difficult when the troughs of misunderstanding, disharmony, or separation reactivate our core wound, bringing up old frustration and hurt from childhood. In the first few months of our life, our parents most likely gave us the largest dose of unconditional love and devotion they were capable of. We were so adorable as babies; they probably felt blessed to have such a precious, lovely being come into their lives. We probably had some initial experiences of basking in love’s pure, unfiltered sunshine. 
    Yet this also gives rise to one of the most fundamental of all human illusions: that the source of happiness and well-being lies outside us, in other people’s acceptance, approval, or caring. As a child, this was indeed the case, since we were at first so entirely dependent on others for our very life. But even if at the deepest level our parents did love us unconditionally, it was impossible for them to express this consistently, given their human limitations. This was not their fault. It doesn’t mean they were bad parents or bad people. Like everyone, they had their share of fears, worries, cares, and burdens, as well as their own wounding around love. Like all of us, they were imperfect vessels for perfect love. 
  


When children experience love as conditional or unreliable or manipulative, this causes a knot of fear to form in the heart, for they can only conclude, “I am not truly loved.” This creates a state of panic or “freak-out” that causes the body and mind to freeze up. This basic love trauma is known as “narcissistic injury” in the language of psychotherapy, because it damages our sense of self and our ability to feel good about ourselves. It affects our whole sense of who we are by causing us to doubt whether our nature is lovable. As Emily Dickenson describes this universal wound in one of her poems: “There is a pain so utter, it swallows Being up.” 
  


This wounding hurts so much that children try to push it out of consciousness. Eventually a psychic scab forms. That scab is our grievance. Grievance against others serves a defensive function, by hardening us so we don’t have to experience the underlying pain of not feeling fully loved. And so we grow up with an isolated, disconnected ego, at the core of which is a central wound, freak-out, and shutdown. And all of this is covered over with resentment, which becomes a major weapon in our defense arsenal. 
  


What keeps the wound from healing is not knowing that we are lovely and lovable just as we are, while imagining that other people hold the key to this. We would like, and often expect, relative human love to be absolute, providing a reliable, steady flow of attunement, unconditional acceptance, and understanding. When this doesn’t happen, we take it personally, regarding this as someone’s fault—our own, for not being good enough, or others’, for not loving us enough. But the imperfect way our parents—or anyone else—loved us has nothing to do with whether love is trustworthy or whether we are lovable. It doesn’t have the slightest bearing on who we really are. It is simply a sign of ordinary human limitation, and nothing more. Other people cannot love us any more purely than their character structure allows. 




Searching for the Source of Love




Fortunately, the storminess of our relationships in no way diminishes or undermines the unwavering presence of great love, absolute love, which is ever present in the background. Even when the sky is filled with thick, dark clouds, the sun never stops shining.
  


The problems in relationships begin when we imagine that the warmth ignited in our heart isn’t really ours, that its transferred into us by the other person. Then we become obsessed with the other as the provider of love, when in truth the warmth we feel comes from the sunlight of great love entering our heart. 
  


“Those who go on a search for love,” D. H. Lawrence writes, “find only their own lovelessness.” Here is a simple way to experience for yourself what Lawrence means. Fix your attention on someone you’d like to love you more, and notice how it feels to want that. If you observe this carefully, you will notice that looking to another for love creates a certain tension or congestion in your body, most noticeably in the chest. It constricts the heart. And as a result you feel your own lovelessness. 
  


Imagining others to be the source of love condemns us to wander lost in the desert of hurt, abandonment, and betrayal, where human relationship appears to be hopelessly tragic and flawed. As long as we fixate on what our parents didn’t give us, the ways our friends don’t consistently show up for us, or the ways our lover doesn’t understand us, we will never become rooted in ourselves and heal the wound of the heart. To grow beyond the dependency of a child requires sinking our own taproot into the wellspring of great love. This is the only way to know for certain that we are loved unconditionally. 
  


In emphasizing the importance of not looking to others for perfect love, I am not suggesting that you turn away from relationships or belittle their importance. On the contrary, learning to sink your taproot into the source of love allows you to connect with others in a more powerful way—”straight up,” confidently rooted in your own ground, rather than leaning over, always trying to get something from “out there.” The less you demand total fulfillment from relationships, the more you can appreciate them for the beautiful tapestries they are, in which absolute and relative, perfect and imperfect, infinite and finite are marvelously interwoven. You can stop fighting the shifting tides of relative love and learn to ride them instead. And you come to appreciate more fully the simple, ordinary heroism involved in opening to another person and forging real intimacy.




Loving Our Humanness 




Although perhaps only saints and buddhas embody absolute love completely, every moment of working with the challenges of relative human love brings a hint of this divine possibility into our life. As the child of heaven and earth, you are a mix of infinite openness and finite limitation. This means that you are both wonderful and difficult at the same time. You are flawed, you are stuck in old patterns, you become carried away with yourself. Indeed, you are quite impossible in many ways. And still, you are beautiful beyond measure. For the core of what you are is fashioned out of love, that potent blend of openness, warmth, and clear, transparent presence. Boundless love always manages somehow to sparkle through your limited form. 
  


Bringing absolute love into human form involves learning to hold the impossibility of ourselves and others in the way that the sky holds clouds—with gentle spaciousness and equanimity. The sky can do this because its openness is so much vaster than the clouds that it doesn’t find them the least bit threatening. Holding our imperfections in this way allows us to see them as trail markers of the work-in-progress that we are, rather than as impediments to love or happiness. Then we can say, “Yes, everyone has relative weaknesses that cause suffering, yet everyone also possesses absolute beauty, which far surpasses these limitations. Let us melt down the frozen, fearful places by holding them in the warmth of tenderness and mercy.”
    In his book Works of Love, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard points out that true love doesn’t embrace others in spite of their flaws, as if rising above them. Rather, it finds “the other lovable in spite of and together with his weaknesses and errors and imperfections.… Because of your beloved’s weakness you shall not remove yourself from him or make your relationship more remote; on the contrary, the two of you shall hold together with greater solidarity and inwardness in order to remove the weakness.” 
  


The same holds true for loving yourself. When you recognize that the absolute beauty within you cannot be tarnished by your flaws, then this beauty you are can begin to care for the beast you sometimes seem to be. Beauty’s touch begins to soften the beast’s gnarly defenses. 
  


Then you begin to discover that the beast and the beauty go hand in hand. The beast is, in fact, nothing other than your wounded beauty. It is the beauty that has lost faith in itself because it has never been fully recognized. Not trusting that you are loved or lovable has given rise to all the most beastly emotional reactions—anger, arrogance, hatred, jealousy, meanness, depression, insecurity, greedy attachment, fear of loss and abandonment. 
  


The first step in freeing the beast from its burden is to acknowledge the hardening around our heart. Then, peering behind this barrier, we may encounter the wounded, cut-off place in ourselves where the mood of unlove resides. If we can meet this place gently, without judgment or rejection, we will uncover the great tenderness that resides at the very core of our humanness. 
  


Our beauty and our beast both arise from one and the same tenderness. When we harden against it, the beast is born. Yet when we allow the tenderness, we begin to discern the contours of a long-lost beauty hidden within the belly of the beast. If we can shine warmth and openness into the dark, tender place where we don’t know we’re lovable, this starts to forge a marriage between our beauty and our wounded beast. 
  


This is, after all, the love we most long for—this embracing of our humanness, which lets us appreciate ourselves as the beautiful, luminous beings we are, housed in a vulnerable, flickering form whose endless calling is to move from chrysalis to butterfly, from seed to new birth. As earthly creatures continually subject to relative disappointment, pain, and loss, we cannot avoid feeling vulnerable. Yet as an open channel through which great love enters this world, the human heart remains invincible. Being wholly and genuinely human means standing firmly planted in both dimensions, celebrating that we are both vulnerable and indestructible at the same time.
  


Here at this crossroads where yes and no, limitless love and human limitation intersect, we discover the essential human calling: progressively unveiling the sun in our heart, that it may embrace the whole of ourselves and the whole of creation within the sphere of its radiant warmth. This love is not the least bit separate from true power. For, as the great Sufi poet Rumi sings: 




When we have surrendered totally to that beauty, 


Then we shall be a mighty kindness. 



Copyright 2006.
John Welwood

Friday, February 12, 2016

Valentine’s Day: Lies & Truths

It’s Valentine’s Day again:
Visions of candy hearts, and chocolates in a heart-shaped box, and Valentine’s Day cards dancing our heads...
Some hate Valentine’s Day, some love it, some ignore it, some all of the above ; )

But, on some level - Valentine’s Day gets our attention.
For many of us, Valentine’s Day and the idealized pictures related to it -  grabs us in funny ways - and shakes:
Who should I be? How should a relationship be? How should a beloved be?…

I was speaking to a friend the other day, we were agreeing the only thing worse than not having a partner for Valentine’s Day is going Alone to a Wedding - ugh.

It doesn’t have to be that way,
being un-partnered for some is a calling, a gift,
for most of us, it can be a blessing at different times of life.

There’s a lot I could say about That.
For now, I want to bring up the LIE:
that once we are partnered, then the ideals of Valentine’s Day,  the ideals of wedding pomp and circumstance,
are ours forever…
Once we find the ‘right’ partner, once we tie the knot…
Two become one, we become a couple and the sun sets over the ocean, the credits roll - we live happily ever after…

WHAT?!

WHO do we know for whom this is Actually True?
Maybe for a Month, a year (maybe even a decade) - hello infatuation (another conversation for another day)

The fact is, after a year or so - the rubber really starts to hit the road... unless we find a sneaky way to remain in unreality.
BUT, most of us still hold onto our romantic notions - about ourselves, our partner, our relationship: How a relationship should be, and how they should complete us - make us whole

So, when we don’t have this ideal experience of a partner, a relationship;
after a while, most of us are tempted to get an upgrade:
FIND someone who actually will meet our ideals and meet our Needs - forever and ever, amen.

Valentine’s Day hearts and flowers tell us this is how it’s supposed to be
- but it is not how it IS,
- and it really isn’t how it is Supposed to be…

WHAT?!

The fact is - the experience of “I’m ok”, “all is well”, “Oneness” can be experienced with another person, or without another soul around.
We can have this experience once or twice: in a cathedral, in the deep woods, in a park playing with kids...
Or consistently, as the essential fabric of our lives...



I, for one, want the expereince of Love to be central to my life. 
But, at the same time, I don't want to be dependent on anyone else for it.
I have been in this conversation since my teens - living Love's questions, facing these challenges, learning the hard way, and finding interesting results.

If you are interested in Living Love,
I hope you are enjoying your Quest, as well.

Blessings, Wendy

Read more: posts about Love

Thursday, February 11, 2016

The Awesome Experience of Love: Romance is just a Doorway

Most years, i find myself frustrated about Valentine’s Day:
- It sets-up Expectations that almost never get met.
- It stimulates Lonely-pictures for many who are not partnered.
- It feels Invalidating for many long-term partners, who are not in the "constant fireworks" phase…


Here’s a bit of my perspective: Romance is a little pink spoon of Love.
Have you ever gone to an ice-cream shop, and the flavor of the month is interesting, but unknown?
You can ask and receive a little taste, find out it is Delicious, and order More.

In one popular shop, the taste comes on a little pink spoon - and that is how Love is.
We get a taste, and we want more.
More love is great, a never-ending flood of ice cream... ahem, I mean Love, is Great!

Meanwhile, we tend to trip around Love - here’s one way we get off track:
Many of us experience Love when we see puppies playing, children sleeping, our Beloved coming toward us in the moonlight. YUM.
But here’s the rub - these outside connections, relationships, experiences are not the thing - THEY are not the thing - They are fingers pointing to the moon…


Let me be clear: Our connections, relationships, experiences are not Love.  They are a doorway to Love.
We forget this, and we try to Own, to Protect, to Control, to put a Ring on it...
But in the end, we do not end up with the idealized promises of Valentine’s Day.


So, I tend to get frustrated about that, and the sadness and striving many humans in our culture experience around this.
But, funny enough, this year I am appreciating Valentine’s Day more than I ever have.

Why? 
Because behind the Hallmark, Whitman’s, and FTD….
Valentine’s Day helps remind us of the Reality of Love.

Romance is just a Doorway.
Love is sweet, delicious, fulfilling, awesome… and fortunately ubiquitous.
Every day, every minute; Everywhere in/with/for Everyone; Love IS.

We don’t need the perfect partner to savor Love, actually we don’t need a partner at all! 
We can overtly enjoy lots of connections and intimacies with others… or we can be all alone.  It doesn’t matter.
We don’t have to look, act, perform, strive, or succeed in a certain way to be immersed in Love.

Love just IS. 

And we can enjoy it, savor it.
It can lead us, and fill us.
We can be it, share it, and act through it…

So this Valentine’s Day, yes, let’s appreciate the folks that we love, the intimates we savor - yes!
And let’s remember these connections are truly doorways - fingers pointing to the moon - through which we access an experience of Love.
And I pray that we dedicate ourselves to learning and practicing the experience of the True, Boundless, and Awesome Love - in which we Truly live and move and have our Being.

May we be Inspired In Love, this Valentine's Day.
Blessings on your Unique Path!
Wendy

Read more: posts about Love

.

Monday, February 1, 2016

Love is in the air... let's spiritually breathe it in


Blessings of Amazing Abundance & Possibility
are in and around us, all the time and everywhere.

One of these energies we can consciously invite IN:
True Love without bounds.

Now wait a minute!
Many of us are not experiencing Love in ourselves, in our lives, in the world - it seems in short supply!
What is going on with that?

Whether in a long-term relationship or single, many of us deal with the same issues:
  • a story of loneliness,
  • unfulfilled desires,
  • an experience of UN-wholeness.

Our desires are amazingly similar among many of us:
  • We want to feel complete and connected.
  • How do we get someone to Truly love us and validate us for who we Are?
  • What do we have to do, to savor comfortable companionship?
.
I believe so many of us share these UN-LOVEly experiences,
because most of us aren't actively inviting the spiritual energy, the vibration, the blessing of Love,
into ourselves, into our lives.

We have been taught and trained
to cast about outside ourselves in the world, for what we want - to get what we need from others.
But, That Does Not Work... at least not for long!

I strongly believe, I have found for myself, and seen in many others:
The Secret is:
We can spiritually:
  • LET-GO of the blocks to Love, that get in the way of us experiencing the Oneness that IS, and
  • LET-IN what we need, invite / welcome / remember the Love we desire!
  • THEN everything starts to shift within us... and in our world.  

For example:
1)
If we spiritually stay in the flow of Love, we are filled-up with Love - all the way UP!
Which takes some time for most of us, because most of us are SO empty!!

2)
WHEN we say YES to the spiritual Blessing of Love - which is always available to all of us...
At the Same Time, the Love blessings splash all around us as well - Blessing others and blessing the Earth with Love.
Everyone and everything we are in contact with, is invited into the spiritual song and dance of Love!
The more we say YES to love, the Bigger the flow, the More flow for us, and the more everyone and everything around us is blessed-with Love!

3)
As Love pours in and through us continually... as we overflow with Love…
Love pours out from us to others, to the world
.

4)
When we rest-in the FULLness of Love,
when we bask and bake in it;
everything that is not Love within us washes away.

As we BE in the energetic blessing of Love,
we become Love, we remember that we ARE Love.
Not just full of Love, spiritually we become more and more the vibration of Love - our true essence.

.
All this happens, and more, when we say YES to the spiritual blessing of LOVE.
And We totally WIN!
Life is Amazing.

Meanwhile, of course, like icing on the cake:
then we naturally magnetize Love in our outside life, as well;
our experience in our lives and in the world shifts to an expereince of Love.

I am not making this up, this is not a mirage:
As we allow this practice of Love to transform us,
our experience of love in the world,
our satisfaction in our relationship(s)

can completely blossom.

But we must have the cart behind the horse.
We expereince love - spiritually, within.
From there we expereince love - everywhere.

Love is in the air... let's spiritually breathe it in.
I encourage you to practice being / saying YES to the Unlimited blessings of the Universe - including Love.
I am sure, that your life and your world will never be the same!

Kowabunga!
Wendy

Read more: posts about Love

This song took up residence in my head as I wrote this blog (hope you enjoy it ; )
"Love Is in the Air" is a 1977 disco song sung by John Paul Young. The song was written by George Young and Harry Vanda.