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.

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.  

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.

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 Schwartz, Last 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.

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 Schwartz, Last and Lost Poems

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?’

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.