Thursday, December 29, 2016

How do we become a Heart based society?

How do we can overcome the negativity, division and strife between us as individuals, neighbors and cultures?  The key is in our hearts.  After many hours of meditation and contemplation, I have come to the conclusion that our society must evolve into a heart based society. We must learn to live in our hearts and love each other.  And we must live that love through our actions. Everything must start with the individual. When we take personal responsibility for how we interact with the world, it changes us as well as those we interact with. 

A tool to help stay focused in your heart came to me in the form of a question:  Do you allow your mind tell your heart what to feel or do you let your heart tell your mind what to think?  

It is a pretty important question because it determines what kind of world we live in. Only you can answer that question for any given circumstance in your life.  It is a question we should be asking ourselves every day about all of our decisions, not just about relationships.  In our work and all our interactions with the world, 

Love is the most powerful force in all of existence.  The ability to love is the birthright of every human being.  Love starts wars and ends wars.  Love creates life and destroys life.  When humanity wakes up and begins to respect this awesome power that we have, the earth will be transformed into paradise.

Namaste,

Edward

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Additional thoughts on Polyarmorous Love

A few weeks ago a friend invited me to dinner because he wanted to discuss the original post on Polyarmorous Love.   We never really talked much about Polyarmorous relationships but our time together did spark some additional thoughts that I wanted to share.

What comes to me is that we are all polyarmorous to a certain degree.  What the term means is many loves.  All of us have many loves in our life.  Not all of them become physical but there is a degree of intimacy in all relationships that are based on mutual love.  We human beings are very capable of loving multiple people.  Sex is a natural expression of love so it is easy to see why so many relationships include multiple sex partners.  The beauty of an open polyarmorous relationship is that there is no need for the deciet that often dooms relationships.

Unfortunately, many relationships that involve multiple sex partners involve cheating on the other partner because it is not an open relationship.  Even in open relationships, one partner can become jealous which creates tension and can threaten the relationship.  If you have a tendency to harbor jealousy, polyarmorous is probably not a good fit for you.  

The truth is, jealousy has no place in any relationship.  Jealousy is a cancer that will eat your insides out. Jealousy is a form of fear.  Fear is the absence of love.  Love is based on trust.  If you have no trust then you cannot love. 

Polyarmorous versus Monogamy

The only reason to choose a monogamous relationship is because you want to have that experience with your partner.  Not because of jealousy or because it is what your partner wants.  It has got to be an experience that you want.  There is no other viable reason.   If you want monogamy from your partner, he/she must also want it.  Not out of fear of losing you but out of desire to have that experience with you.  Otherwise, you are setting yourself up for potential problems down the road when the relationship becomes routine.

I do not judge poly relationships and would never rule out being in that type of relationship, however; for me personally, my preference is to be in a monogamous relationship.  I spent 28 years in a monogamous relationship and never gave it a second thought.  I believe it provides the greatest opportunity to me for personal growth.  I have a sense of what is possible in terms of exploration in relationship and I find that I can delve much deeper into myself by having a single mirror to reflect in as opposed to having many mirrors.  But I remain open to all possibilities.

This journey we call life is about understanding ourselves so each of us have to find the type of relationship that will help us grow into becoming the beautiful diverse beings that we are. 

Fear destroys relationships

Fear is the greatest destroyer of all relationships.   The most powerful fear we all face is the fear of not being loved.   I was nearly destroyed by this fear over the last year and my salvation has been in learning to love myself.   It was only when I started loving myself that I started seeing how much I am truly loved by the people in my life.  Having a partner to dive deeper into the abyss with is my greatest desire but it is not my salvation.   Loving myself is my salvation. 

Love is the antidote to fear.  Make sure all of the people that you love know that they are loved so they don't have to experience fear.  

Namaste,

Edward

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Where do we find courage to love?

“Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of love.”   ― Delmore Schwartz, Last and Lost Poems

In a previous post titled 'The Courage to Love", I said that you could contemplate this quote for a year and still not exhaust its endless supply of understanding.  I have another insight to this quote that I would like to share with you.

I recently made the following statement to someone that is dear to me in an email.

"It takes a lot of courage to love but you cannot have courage without love.  Sometimes your heart takes over and you are swept into a raging river that can be treacherous and deadly.  That is when you really need courage to survive.  Balance the boat with love and just go for the ride and see where it takes you.  That is how you survive."

I don't know why I made this particular statement at this specific time.  I even regretted sending the email after I sent it but that is another story.  After some contemplation, I began to gain an understanding of this.  The statement, which ties back into the Delmore Schwartz quote, is that in order to really love someone, it takes a lot of courage to allow yourself that freedom.  To really let go of the controls and give your heart free reign to enter the dangerous waters of love, it takes a lot of courage.

If you need love in order to have that courage, where does the love come from?  Once you are in the current rushing down the river, where do you find the love to balance your boat?  It must come from you.  You must learn to love yourself.

Acknowledge that you are worthy of being loved, regardless of another persons choices.  Once you recognize your own worthiness, you will soon realize that there are a lot of people out there that love you just for being you and no other reason.  Look for that love coming from your friends and associates because it is there.  If you can tap into that, you will soon find that your boat is stabilized and you can maneuver any rapids the river of life takes you into.

Learning to love yourself is the greatest gift you can give yourself.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  Go where the love is.  Go within.


Sunday, November 6, 2016

Polyamourous - A beautiful love story to share with you.

Hello everyone.  It has been awhile since posting here.  During the summer I was absorbed in soaking up as much sun as possible and that moved right into my most busy work season.

A very wonderful friend recently shared with me her story of love with many different people at the same time.  I found it fascinating and asked if she would be willing to share with my readers.

Love really is a wonderful thing.  Enjoy.....

And, Not Or
I have a different lovestyle than most: I am polyamorous. This means that I love many: “poly“ coming from the Greek, meaning many, and ‘amorous’ coming from the Latin ‘amor’, meaning love. I know, Greek and Latin, right? But it actually makes sense to me: my poly mantra is “And, not or.” I can love this person AND that person; it doesn’t have to be this person OR that person. I don’t have to choose—provided that the people I love are open to being in a relationship with someone who loves more than one.

How did this begin? After my divorce some years ago, I found myself pondering relationships and their formations. I had nearly always dated monogamously (except for that one wonderful time where I realized I was in love with two men—which felt so natural and joyous—but then I felt internally pressured by society to choose one to “get serious” with). A few years later, I married someone, monogamously. After my marriage ended, I tried dating again. I grew dissatisfied with trying to find one person who had all the qualities I was looking for—I have so many different facets to me that it was really hard finding a single person to resonate with all or most of those facets.

Then I had a conversation with my sister about polyamory…about the possibility of having multiple, simultaneous romantic relationships. I had heard of it years ago—one of the LiveJournals (yes, LiveJournal!) I regularly read mentioned that the author had a husband and a boyfriend. But I thought that was just a fluke—I didn’t know of anyone else who had such a relationship, and I forgot about it. Until that conversation with my sister. People do this? This is a thing? Yes, Virginia, it IS a thing! It really appealed to me—being able to date this man, that man, and possibly that man, too! And hey, this woman (I’m also bisexual)! Not to just casually date them, but to potentially be in love with them, with all of them, too. I was regularly hanging out with a lot of jazz musicians in my 1920’s crowd, and I had crushes on a few of them. I imagined having relationships with them all at the same time, and everyone being cool with that. I’m not sure if I am wired this way or if I chose it because it feels right, but I was down with it, no matter how I came to it.

I never did date my jazz musicians, but I did reconnect with an old high school acquaintance via Facebook, at about the same time. He was 3000 miles away, and married. Not a snowball’s chance in hell of us being together. We began chatting, every day, and found companionship in each other. He said how he had always had feelings for others while he was married, though he had never cheated, but that it never changed his feelings for his wife. The emotions all existed simultaneously. I said to him, have you ever heard of polyamory? He hadn’t, so I told him about it. People do this? This is a thing? Yes, it’s a thing. About 6 months later, he was divorced from his wife. And he came to visit me, 3000 miles and 25 years later. And somewhere in hell, there is a snowball, because we did get together. I moved to the state he lived in (which was my home state), to live with him—we joke that doing this was my mid-life crisis, as I was 41 at the time. And we are still together, five years later. He has other partners (he also lives with one of them, as well as with me), and so do I—we both have online dating accounts. And I wouldn’t change this lovestyle for anything.
I love our life! I knew I would never marry again, or never be in a monogamous relationship again (you can be married and be polyamorous). Our life fits me perfectly, and fits him perfectly, too. My other partner is amazing, as well. We don’t live together, but we sometimes spend the night and we are in love. He is very different from my live-in partner, although there are similarities, too (both of them are nerds, both of them are very giving, sweet, highly intelligent, funny and generous). He has another partner as well, and we get along wonderfully, too. And someday, I’d love to be with a woman, as well. Another area where I don’t have to choose one or the other.

We have a small polycule (us, and our respective partners—all of our connections), We have all met, and while we don’t all communicate directly every day, we know about and care about each other. One of his partners (my metamours) I talk to every single day, who is like a dear sister to me. He brought her into my life, for which I am so grateful. Other metamours I talk to every so often, but there is still a sense of caring and camaraderie between us. I love having one big, happy family, so I love how we are warm with each other. We are a strange and wonderful little family. People have come and people have gone (relationships do break up, and other ones form), but we accept the changes as they happen (eventually). And we are there for one another—recently, my other sweetie had to go to the ER. I went with him, stayed with him for the five hours he was there. His other partner was in another state and she was glad I was there with him (he ended up being fine). At the same time, my live-in partner went to be emotional support for one of his other sweeties, who’d had a horrible fight with her husband. We were supposed to be together that night, but instead, we went and supported our other loves, unquestioningly, because they needed us. We also supported each other doing this, unquestioningly. And our metamours checked in to see how everyone was doing, as well. So much love!

We are a family of choice, a tribe of our own making. This is what love looks like, to me.  

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Love is the key to understanding who we are.

I do not like to prescribed to the notion of beliefs because beliefs lock you into a pattern of dogma which is the foundation of our religions.  Dogma does not require you to understand through experience, it only requires you to follow the pattern of someone else's experience.  There is nothing that inhibits the evolution of our mind like beliefs.   What I prescribe to is understanding based on experience.   As my experience evolves, so does my understanding.

Meditation has been a useful tool for clarifying my understanding.   The greatest clarity comes when the mind is silenced.  Our wonderful logical tool (our brain) must be silenced or ignored in order for our true self to be recognized.   What I have experienced is that the seat of the soul is within the heart. The essence of who and what we are is pure love.  Conscious love.  There is nothing else.

Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is within.   It is not out there somewhere.  One of the great ironies of humanity is that we are the God that we so desperately seek.   Each of us have a spark of the divine consciousness within us and the only way to find it is to look within.

Love is the key to understanding who we are.  Once we understand who we are, why we are here begins to be revealed.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

The courage to love

“Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of love.”   ― Delmore SchwartzLast and Lost Poems


This quote has many facets. You could contemplate this quote for a year and still not exhaust it's endless supply of understanding.

When you love someone, they become a mirror that allows you to see your reflection.  That is,  if you can allow your ego to step aside and take a clear look at what the other person is reflecting.  In the tranquil still waters of unconditional love, you can see clearly who you are.   Sometimes,  the reflection is not something you want to see but if you are seeking to truly understand yourself, you will see what you need to see. Allowing someone else reflect back to you something within yourself that does not resonate with, who you want to be, requires a lot of courage. The first inclination of your ego is to flare up and fight back or to feel hurt. But if you truly love yourself and want to become the best version of who you are, you will take control of the ego and look squarely into the mirror that is being held up for you. Having just had this experience, I can assure you that it requires a lot of courage. Loving yourself becomes the difficult and dangerous form of courage spoken by Delmore Schwartz.

Finding the courage to face yourself in the mirrors of life, requires a desperate and noble kind of love. There is no more desperate or noble kind of love than unconditional love. Desperation often drives people to escape being controlled by their own ego which is necessary if you want to embrace unconditional love. There is nothing more noble than to love unconditionally. You certainly cannot embrace unconditional love without courage.

Loving yourself will give you the courage to look into the mirror and courage will allow you to see the reflection of love.









Tuesday, July 19, 2016

The greatest thing in all the world is to love....

Nat King Cole sang a song that says "The greatest thing in all the world is to love and be loved in return". What happens if you are not loved in return?  It can be devastating and destructive.  Some people end up destroying themselves or others over being rejected.   Love is a very potent energy.  It can make you do really stupid things.  

How does one find the courage to love again?  Based on my own personal experience, you must learn to love unconditionally.  Sometimes people need something different in their lives and if you really love them, you will understand and accept what is best for the person that you love, no matter how painful it may be to you.  Another term for this is selfless love.  

I am still very much in love with my first boyfriend.  We came to understand that there is no way we could be together and parting was very painful.  I carry him fondly in my heart with the understanding that we each need different things in our life.  Accepting this does not invalidate our love for each other but it does free us up to love again.  

Unconditional love is not an antidote to the pain you feel when you must let someone go out of your life.  But it is the key to forgiveness and forgiveness is the key to loving again.  When you learn to love unconditionally, you begin to understand that your love is not based on being loved in return. The greatest thing in all the world is to love.  That is where the song should end.

It takes courage to love but you cannot find courage without love.  Here is one of my favorite quotes.  Perhaps fodder for another post?  Will see.    

“Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of love.”   ― Delmore SchwartzLast and Lost Poems


Thursday, July 14, 2016

How will we live tomorrow?

A little over a year ago an acquaintance was planning a cross country bicycle trip.  He sent out to a number of his contacts a question that he asked us to respond to and his intention was to explore this question with the people he met across the country.  The question, "How will we live tomorrow?" was provocative so I wanted to share my thoughts here.


How will we live tomorrow?


To answer this question we must first define living and then define tomorrow.  Living implies having a life as opposed to mere survival.  To the spiritual mind, living implies being awake as opposed to just going through the motions of life.  If we live in a wakeful state of consciousness, the physical conditions in which we experience life are merely that, experiences.  In my youth, I read a book by Kilgore Trout (aka Kurt Vonnegut) called Venus on the Halfshell.  The premise of the book is that the last living human on earth is left with a spaceship and a robot programmed for sex.  Their mission was to travel the universe asking the primordial question of ‘Why was man created to suffer and die?’  Man was not created to suffer and die, man was created to experience creation.  Once while pondering these thoughts of purpose, the following comment came into my mind.  ‘Your awareness allows me to experience my creation’.  I wrote this on my mirror so that I would see it every morning.  Then I received an overwhelming feeling that the statement was wrong.  The correction came as “My awareness allows me to experience my creation.  So back to the original question of ‘How will we live..’?  We will live in a state of awareness of who we are.


So the second part of your question concerns tomorrow.  How will we live tomorrow.  What is tomorrow for there is only now.  Quite an esoteric statement that has become a cliche.  We are living in a linear, time based consciousness and therefore there will be a tomorrow within this reality.  For the mystic, even if we destroy the world, mankind is destined to wake up to the reality of who we really are.  That is the tomorrow we are all waiting for.  So how we live tomorrow will be dictated by how we live today.  If you believe in the eternity of the energy we identify with as being human, then we will never cease to have experience but the experience of tomorrow will be determined by our actions of today.  There is a meme that pops up in my Facebook  feed occasionally about the wisdom of the old man that plants a tree whose shade he will never sit under.  The real wisdom of this meme is that the old man is planting a tree that will provide shade for a future incarnation of himself.  We are the children that will inherit the earth we leave behind.  This is the irony of tomorrow.  

Perhaps your question should be ‘How will we live today?’

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Understanding intention is the key to forgiveness

We have all been hurt by someone that we love.  Sometimes the hurt is so extreme that we find it hard to forgive.  We may say that we forgive but the next time you find yourself in a similar situation with this person, the anger and pain of the previous hurt compiles on top of the current hurt until there is an underlying seething that is always ready to surface, sometimes at the most minor incident.

How can we get past these feelings?  Forgiveness.  I don't mean the kind of forgiveness that someone says they are sorry and you say, "okay, I forgive you" and you move on but place that hurt in a folder to take out next time it happens.  True forgiveness comes from not just letting go of the pain but also letting go of the incident that caused the pain.  Not putting it into a folder to save for the next time.

The key to forgiveness is in understanding the intentions of the other person.  You can only do this through Agape - unconditional love.  Agape is the purist kind of love because it transcends the ego.

When you love someone unconditionally, you can easily forgive because you can see through the persona of the person into their core.  You can see their heart.  When you can see someones heart then you know their intentions.  If there is no malice with intent to hurt you then how can you not forgive?

Love has many flavors but love in the purist form is unconditional.  It will not shield you from being hurt but it will allow you to forgive and continue loving.  Love is the most precious and valuable experience a human can have.  All the riches in the world cannot buy love.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

What the fuck is Love anyway?

So what is love?  

Love has so many different meanings. I love my parents, I love my children, I love my siblings, I love my apartment, I love my life in Boston, I love you. We use the same word to describe something we cannot measure with an instrument, cannot see, taste, smell or know in any other way other than our feelings. While we use the same word to describe how we feel about people and things in our life, are we really describing the same energy? Is the energy I feel towards my lover the same energy I feel towards my children or my parents or my dog? First reaction is of course it is not the same energy but actually it is. It is the same energy that has been flavored differently by us. We add the flavors through our feelings. 


So what is this energy that we feel?  It is the creative force.  It is the energy we use every day.   We use this energy to do creative things.  We can also use this energy to do destructive things. Even when we do destructive things, it is the same energy that is being used.  It is the consciousness level of man that determines if we live in a creative society based in love, or a destructive society based on fear.  God, Consciousness, Source or whatever you want to call it does not discern for us what is good and bad.  We make that determination.  Some want to latch hold of a book or doctrine that has been passed down over the ages and claim that it alone determines what is good or bad but I disagree.  It is the evolution of our consciousness that determines what is good or bad and it starts with choosing for yourself.  I do not lie, cheat, or steal.  Not because of a law or doctrine against these things but because my consciousness tells me that it is not who I am.

When people's consciousness transitions and becomes aware of the bigger picture, they cease to do destructive things because that is not who they are.  In the spiritual community,  this is known as waking up.   Everything that man is learning and discovering already exists in Consciousness.  The new things people invent and discoveries  already exist and are revealed through the combined intuition of the teams of people working together.  We accumulate knowledge of that which exists through the revelations brought about through our intuition.

Our intuition is about feelings. Feelings are about love. Feelings are the tools we use to manipulate the love energy to create different things. It is the creative process for everything. When two or more are gathered in my name, I am there also. Words from Jesus.

Two or more people put their heads together and the creative juices will begin to flow. This flow of creative energy will not happen without love. All creativity comes about through love.
There are only two emotions that drive our every thought, love or fear. So what is fear? Fear is the absence of love. People do awful, horrid things to each other and the environment.  This would not be possible in a state of love.

Since fear is the absence of love, love is all there is. That is the state of being we all seek. To be in love.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Tragedy brings people together in and act of love.

This article was sent to me today.  When I read the article, I literally wept over the love and compassion that was displayed by a group of Orthodox Jewish men towards their gay brothers after the Orlando shooting.  They actually went to a gay bar to express their brotherhood and the response they got was beautiful.  This my friends is a beautiful example of love.  I hope you will take the time to read the article.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/06/15/what-happened-when-an-orthodox-jewish-congregation-went-to-a-gay-bar-to-mourn-orlando/

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

The River




Today is a beautiful day.   Since I had no work, I decided to go to my favorite nude hangout in Vermont.   It is such a beautiful place.  The scenery is beautiful but what makes this place special is that it is a place where people can be themselves.   Only a handful of people here today but I have so many wonderful memories of the various characters I have met here.  This is a place where there is no shame and everyone is accepted and respected.  If someone gets sexually aroused, nobody cares.  If you want to go up into the woods and explore your sexual urges, nobody cares.  This is a place where judgment, prejudices and intolerance is not acceptable.  Everyone is welcome.


I needed to come to a place like this after the horrific events in Orlando.   On Saturday I marched proudly with the gay fathers and there were hundreds of thousands of spectators lining both sides of the streets cheering and clapping and generally showing their support of us.  It felt like they were cheering for me personally, for finally embracing who I am.   It brought me to tears to experience this.  Then as the news came out about Orlando,  I had many more tearful moments, balanced between the extremes of love and hate.  Then to see all the hateful posts from my conservative background popping up on Facebook just made it more painful.   I had to get away and this is the perfect oasis to collect my thoughts.





This is a place where love can and does manifest.   I am not referring to sexual play, but the love respect and comeradery that can be found among the people that come here.  All walks of life, all income brackets, all age groups, all races, all body types and all types of professions are represented here.  It is a microcosm of the type of world that is possible.  No shame in your body, no shame in the sexual nature of our being.  No shame in being and expressing yourself.  This is a safe place.


This is a place where you don't need to be anyone, just Be.  If this is not an expression of love then what is?

This will be the last post that I share to my contact list.  If you enjoy reading what I have to say, please subscribe to my blog.  

Monday, June 13, 2016

Orlando we cry for you. We cry for all of us.

On Saturday, June 11th, Boston celebrated Pride.  The highlight event was the parade.  I marched in the parade with The Gay Fathers of Greater Boston.  The parade route was 2.7 miles long and there were estimated to be over 25,000 participants with 200 groups represented.  The streets on both sides were packed with people all cheering and shouting out their support.  It was young people, old people, mothers, fathers and children all out to lend their voice to acceptance.  It was emotionally moving to walk down the street to this cheering crowd.  One estimate I heard that has not been verified is that there were around 700,000 attendees.

Then Sunday morning we wake up to the news of the carnage in Orlando.  This violence was born out of hatred for the gay community.  The family of the gunman said that he was distraught over seeing two men kissing.  A simple act of kissing created the rage that took 50 innocent lives?

Such a juxtaposition of love and hate.  Two men showing their affection towards each other brings about so much death?  How can that be?

Where is the love in the world?  Where is the love between people?  For that is where it starts.   We must learn to love each other.  How do we do that?

It starts by looking within your own heart and rooting out the prejudice.  Oh but I am not prejudice.  Yea, right.  We all are.  We were taught from an early age to be.  Pay attention to your own thoughts and you will see it.  We are all guilty of intolerance.  Find yours and root it out.  That is where we start.

What it's all about.

Recently I went through an emotional trauma when the person I fell in love with did not fall in love with me.  After shedding many tears and sending numerous emails to the other person, he suggested that I write a blog.  My retort was "what kind of blog"?  His reply was, "Edward searching for love".

Needless to say, I was pissed at this suggestion and informed him that "Edward found love but love did not find Edward".

In the aftermath of the Orlando shooting, I have decided that indeed I should write a blog and call it "Edward searches for love".  Not necessarily about my search for "the one" but for the love within humanity.  Where can we find love in this insane world.  How desperately we need to find and embrace love in order to save humanity.  If you find this blog and agree with me that our world needs more love, I hope you will join me on this quest.  Share your own stories of what love is to you.  Help me find love in this insane world.

Edward