by user_dd | May 9, 2019 | Community Conversations
Ever fall in love at first sight? Contrary to popular opinion, I believe that this happens more often than you give yourself credit for. You DO find other people attractive, right?
Researchers say “the most frequently mentioned factor preceding experiences of love was finding certain characteristics of the other person desirable.” So if I’m reading that right, when you have desires you’re well on your way to falling in love. Street knowledge tells us a lot gets in the way between that initial desire, and full-blown romance. So what’s getting in the way?
You believe in love
The first thing to get is that you’re wired to believe in love. You’ll follow your emotions like a fool into the dark chambers of our mind and get lost willingly. We love the drama and the suspense associated with trying to predict the other: what is he or she going to do or say? How will this person show up next time? Is this relationship going somewhere? Or are we just having some short-lived fun?
Even if you don’t like it, you believe in the damsel in distress and the white knight destined to save her (hetero-normative stories still affect queer people). It’s part of our cultural narrative, even if you don’t believe in it yourself. Many of today’s hottest movie releases and their classic predecessors contain a sort of love story that fits this model—not all, but many.
You believe in stability
People still strive for that white picket fence even while they pretend it’s not for them. I know someone’s going to argue with me on this point. Think about it: how many of you just want a steady job with happy hour every once in awhile? Or would rather not have the responsibility of generating your own income and would be content to cash in a steady paycheck? My point here is that we desire order and stability, even while we walk around in chaos, whether self-inflicted or systemic to our social systems.
And last I checked, unless you’re talking about your love for the Universal ONE you need two to tango when it comes to romance. That means what other people think, including the community you’re walking in, matters a whole lot. When was the last time you doubled-down on meeting genuinely new people? Expanding your friendships gets harder to do the more stuck you are in your current programming.
Free Your Mind
It’s time to free your mind and extract yourself from the matrix you’ve built up around yourself. Break down the structures that keep you small and hidden. Create structures that expand rather than constrict. Build relationships that incite growth rather than degradation. Love yourself and your life to generate more love. Let yourself fall in love…again and again and again.
Here’s a love offering for you: https://open.spotify.com/track/0F845nujLVqCb0XMZCh5Pc?si=sz0K7COJRTeJ6FYH02tyqQ
by user_dd | Feb 15, 2019 | Transitory Thoughts
I was recently at dinner with some friends and our conversation turned metaphysical. You know, as you do on cold, wintery Pacific NW evenings. Warmed by the glow of the fire, we immersed ourselves in the topic of growth and consciousness expansion. Particularly, we were interested in the nature of learning and how people integrate their consciousness-expanding experiences into their life from meditation, tantra, plant medicine and other entheogens, etc.
This topic is near and dear to my heart, having studied it tirelessly for the last decade. I think Brandon stated the point most succinctly: “You know it’s a wisdom teaching when you can’t unlearn it.”
And I thought, this is why Hermetics is an oral tradition! We tend to not write things down, because anything you write down will just be your mind trying to make sense of what your heart already knows. And when your heart knows something, there’s no forgetting it. That wisdom is with you always.
You’ll never forget a wisdom teaching
So when you hear a wisdom teaching, you’ll know it’s legitimate when you can’t forget it. Although your mind might forget it, your heart will always operate with that wisdom from that point on. It’s also another reason why wisdom traditions cannot be taught over the internet. At some point, there has to be a physical meeting of the teacher/student to get the energetic download of the information. It’s the living presence that is an integral part of the experience of the wisdom teachings.
Science Behind the Heart
Those of you who follow the Heart Math Institute already know that the heart’s primarily “language” is electromagnetic in nature. The electromagnetic field of the heart is exponentially bigger than that of the mind. This means that forces that are electromagnetic in nature can affect your heart. This has two practical applications: 1) your heart force is more powerful than your mind force—remember that next time you’re analyzing your partner, and 2) you are a generator of electromagnetic force! So pay attention to your impact on others’ hearts. This is also why presence is required to convey information to the heart. As an aside, please don’t try to convey messages that are emotional in nature over text message, it NEVER works.
Have you ever had that experience of wanting to fall asleep when in a retreat or teaching or some kind, even though you’ve had plenty of sleep? Forces that affect the heart can completely overwhelm the mind, rendering it kind of useless. This is why sometimes people want to go to sleep when exposed to a wisdom teaching, their mind becomes overwhelmed trying to process information that’s actually meant for the heart.
If you want to communicate to someone’s heart, you must speak the language of emotion or the heart will barely ‘hear’ it. I encourage you to put this concept to good use this week, and Happy Valentine’s Day!
Thoughts or comments on this? Please use the comments section below.
by user_dd | Oct 10, 2018 | Community Conversations
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Photo by Leonardo Sanches on Unsplash
Bringing love back into your life is a continual process of death and renewal. The world’s wisdom traditions suggest that we cannot know greater levels of love without knowing greater levels of suffering.
While some people are turned off by this concept, they still accept simple karma. There is always a give and a take. For every severe action, there’s a compassionate one to bring back the balance. And I don’t think these wisdom teachers of ages past are saying that we must endure suffering, or that we must suffer in order to love.
Transform suffering into Love
Transforming suffering is a well-worn path by most Buddhist scholars and teachers, so my intent is not to revisit the theory and methods here, just to remind us that other ways of being in the world exist.
We need a fundamental re-framing of what love is. For our purposes here, let’s say that love is an appreciation of everything that I have right now in this moment. The experience of love is connection…to everything at this time—experiences of suffering and experiences of joy are equally contained within my love when I don’t run away from them, but actually lean into the experience.
Our wisdom teachings are saying that there is an opportunity to transform the experience of suffering in this way. This is more available if we are willing to show up and meet the “negative ego” face-to-face. The negative ego being that part of us that blocks the full expression of who we really are. It’s that part that holds us back from expressing the true power of our divinity.
Everyday we are challenged not to be a Buddha as much as we are to relinquish what we think we know to make space for a new way of being in the world. It’s a choice. But it’s a choice we must make whether we’re conscious of it or not.
Not everyone relates to a missed bus or a thwarted attempt at a good night kiss the same way. It can ruin some people’s mental balance if another person cuts in front of them in line. A whole day can be rocked learning that your child got in a fight at school.
These are all teaching experiences. They are all the universe asking us a deep, fundamental question: How would you like to be (in love)? As a separated, self-interested consciousness, or an aspect of universal spirit collaborating with others for our collective greatness?
It’s all love. How would you like to experience it?
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by user_dd | Mar 18, 2016 | Announcements
About 4 years ago I met the man of my dreams, and honestly, I wasn’t even looking for someone new. I was just having fun, following my passions, and speaking honestly and openly about what I wanted.
You want to know the most surprising thing about it though? There was absolutely no question in my mind that he was (is) the right relationship for me.
Now, typically I analyze things to death, so maybe it’s not surprising to you, but I have a tendency to overcomplicate almost everything in life. It’s often better if I just shut my mind off before I get too crazy or otherwise get myself into trouble.
Maybe that’s the secret! Fall so deeply into love that you are dumbstruck, and then you won’t have to worry about your mind messing it all up!
Well, I’m sure you realize that I did go through a series of hesitations, wondering if this would all work out. The point is, I kept on coming to the same conclusion. This person is right for me. No question about it.
Here’s the lesson
What I realized in the four years since is that when I continue to deepen my relationship with MYSELF, other people deepen their relationship with me. As I know myself, other people know ME. When I can stand straight up and shout to the rooftops MY truth, the universe will shout it right back at me.
Wanna know how I did it? Come to the first of our exciting series of events called Finding the ‘ONE’ at Temple I Am on March 31st to find out.
by user_dd | Jan 21, 2016 | Community Conversations
You could say that I kind of ‘woke up’ this year after my grandfather died. He had wisdom that I’m just beginning to understand. The truth is, that death changed me in ways that I couldn’t predict. My grandparents were very involved in raising us. In high school, I would often crash at their house rather than drive the extra 30 minutes home after football practice and piano lessons ate up most of my evening. They were on speed dial as my emergency response team, and one night I completely ditched them for my friends without notice, not re-surfacing until the next morning. Maybe my early gray hairs are karma for that.
Beginning to See
Some relationships in life touch you more deeply than you give them credit for, and it’s for this lesson that I’m most thankful upon the passing of my late grandfather. He mattered to me, and over the last 12 years or so I saw him only on the holidays…or so I thought. What I really saw is what I wanted to see—a relative, an old man, one my biggest fans in high school (that was so LONG ago). I was still mired in my own life and perspective.
Last month, I had the privilege to spend many days with my bedridden grandfather. We chatted about the weather and food, and we chatted about life and family. He said, “Stay close to each other, love one another, that’s the most important thing. Everything else will take care of itself, but you all, stay close.”
Seeing
I really started to SEE my grandfather when he expressed his love for my grandmother. As she fed him or bathed him, sometimes they would sing together, remembering happier times, past times, times when things were different. Ironically, you could see the timelessness of their gaze on each other, like nothing else mattered, and…it didn’t. Each moment they got together, they cherished.
In each of our moments, we have a choice. The impact that we choose to have will reverberate out from that moment of creation. Your moment may seem insignificant, but those moments add up to a lifetime. So choose wisely in this moment, and you’ll build a lifetime of wisdom.
