Longing

Life is nothing if not an adventure in contrast. Yesterday in the afternoon I felt full of love and truly alive. This morning as I awoke, my belly was filled with a stirring sense of dread. My heart was filled with sadness and longing, a kind of low-grade despair that fills my body with inertia. Being engaged in meditation practice with Pema Chodron's words at my side will surely be a useful tool today as I sit with this feeling, choosing patience and presence instead of reactivity and escape.

I breathe into my body, feeling the contour of this discomfort, listening for the messages of this feeling. I believe that these kinds of embodied feelings - as opposed to emotional feelings - are true north, pointing me to something that needs acknowledgment. In my practice of curious exploration through Nonviolent Communication, I would begin to face this feeling by making observations like this (or if there were an external experience, I might begin there). So, Pema's wisdom is getting me to stay here and present with this feeling, not fleeing into distraction, for long enough to begin embracing NVC. I am so lucky to have these guides for my life.

The next piece is to observe thoughts - jackals. I hate waking up feeling this way. Fuck, will life never just let me be happy day after day? Do I have to spend so much time feeling like shit? I am such a melodramatic narcissist. Why must I spend my days gazing internally, playing in this crap? I don't see other people feeling this way all the time, and spending hours upon hours of their lives gazing at their navels in hope of finding some sense of happiness. People just live, they wake up and go to their jobs and live. Why the hell does it all have to be so complicated? And what the fuck am I so miserable about?

I have a feeling emerging - loneliness. And more jackals, more thoughts. Lonely? Of course you are. You spend all your time obsessing about yourself! This little feeling, that little feeling, this or that isn't right in the world, this or that isn't right in your life. You are nothing but a dreamer, drifting in the realm of possibility all the time, and never happy with things the way they are. And now, the need behind the feeling - I am needing deep companionship. More thoughts continue - your life is filled with people! Filled with experience! What the hell are you lonely for?

What I am feeling now is a shift within me. Moving away from the violence of the jackal's judgment and attack - which here has been internally focused, trying to convince me that my feelings are not valid because I shouldn't be needing what I need. I am feeling like I have found the jewel within this morning's wakeful sadness.

I am feeling lonely because I am needing deep companionship. I am taking a pause now to just sit with that, breathing into it, accepting where I am this morning.

David Deida says that we attract people into our lives who are where we are, who are as open as we are, who show up as much as we are willing to. I am seeing the truth of this play out in my life right now. I am seeing how my own heart's deepest yearning has been blocked by my own hesitation and fear. At this point in my life, my heart's deepest yearning is for relationship, for intimate partnership. I could certainly continue living as I have lived, and life would go on as it has. I could continue to get wrapped up in my life's mission, and reinvest myself in my spiritual practice over and over again. But what I have been feeling with increasing intensity is that I have come as far as I can come along this path while alone. I don't want to do it alone anymore. I want my life's mission to be in partnership with someone I love. I want my spiritual practice to be in partnership with someone I love. I have had a million excuses in the past why I didn't want to go there. Men were distractions, and the highest form of love had little to do with romantic intimacy. Beneath that was a whole lot of fear that I wasn't worth very much, that I was not lovable, not really. But as I have faced these things and moved into healing, and letting go of the lies I have held to be true, I now feel just how strongly I have pushed away from one of the most beautiful parts of life. I can't even comprehend where my thoughts came from before, they make no sense to me now. And what I am left with is this deep longing.

I can look into every relationship I have ever had and see how I attracted to me only what I was willing to receive. I drew to myself relationships that never really blew my heart wide open because I was afraid of that, of losing myself in something so utterly beyond my control. And while there were beautiful experiences in each of those relationships, and in the moment I felt the gifts of what they were, I can see how I got exactly what I asked for. Relationships that weren't very deep, had no grounding, and had no room to grow. I don't want to be in a relationship that feels like I will be living in one room with a man for the duration! That makes me feel stifled, and want to jump out the window! But that is exactly what I have manifested in the past. Now, I want to dance with a man in every room in this spectacular mansion of life, and then jump out the window together and enter the wild world outside.

I am grateful for books that have been sent into my life right now, books that are feeding me with contemplation about relationship. Dear Lover by David Deida. Enchanted Love by Marianne Williamson. The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz. The Spirit of Intimacy by Sobonfu Some. Deida blows me away all the time in his knowing. You don't want a rigid man, but you want a man whose heart's courage and authentic truth runs deep. You want a man who feels you, listens to you, considers everything you have said, and then claims you, taking you to where you couldn't tell him to take you, even if you tried. He takes your heart to new depths of adventure and openness, and he shows you new aspects of life. You can - and should - give your man your fullest expression of feeling, offering him your feedback, your love, and your responsive heart's spontaneous expression of pleasure and pain. A really good man will embrace all the feedback and feeling you have offered him, consider everything you have showed him... Um, yes. And, How would you live and move right now if you were open in the fullest loving you can imagine? Right now, the only way you can know that you are not being fully loved is because you can intuit how it would feel to be fully loved. The only way you know that you are not open in divine bliss is because you can intuit a way of opening that is more divine, more blissful, than you are allowing yourself to open now. You already intuit your deepest divine love and gifts, right now. If you didn't you wouldn't yearn as you do. Sigh. Marianne Williamson gives me hope: We cannot remain who we used to be, once love has made it over our walls and begun to change our hearts. And that's where I sit today.

Once more, I am returning to the wisdom of sitting present and doing nothing. I feel all of this stirring within me. I feel the truth of Deida's and Williamson's words echoing within me. I see the ways that I have created relationships that have no longevity or possibility in the past, and I surrender them all to the fire. Sometimes, my Aries moon nature kicks around inside of me with ferocity, demanding that I move on to the next thing already, to cut ties with what feels so uncomfortable and just make a new beginning. Then, my Cancer sun nature clings tenaciously to the beauty of what I have been given, not wanting to let go. Both of these parts of my nature just want to be happy. So, today I breathe. I see, too, how the fears that I have carried have manifested what has come to my life now. I don't crave complication or drama, yet that is exactly what I have been given. Sometimes it's hard to know when to let go, and when to remain present through the challenges.

I am praying for clarity. I pray that the Universe will guide me in ways that are more clear than they are right now. I feel clear about what I want in a relationship, in the idea realm, anyway. I spent a long time recently getting clear about that in my blog, "Him." But in a more situational way, I am asking for clarity. I am not merely sitting here lonely, daydreaming of love in my life someday. Life has brought me experiences right now that are really requiring me to embody this question of relationship. What I hear very deeply in this moment is that I want to be with a man who is truly available on all levels. Whose life situation isn't too complicated to really allow me inside. Whose emotional situation isn't too complicated to really allow me inside. Someone who can freely and openly love me exactly as I am, and stand beside me and help me to grow while he does the same. Someone who can talk with me about the mysteries of the world and life, and who will not be too closed to sit and cry with me. Someone who has a lot to teach me and who is open to what I have to teach him. Someone who is courageous enough to enter my life and claim me as his, or to walk away if he knows I'm not it. Someone who is ready to commit to the beauty of a life together, in spite of the challenges. Someone who can make me laugh and smile and who can also hold my sorrow and anger sacred without retreating. I am here praying for life to send me a true intimate life partner. I am praying for clarity and courage.

One more thought from Deida: If you want a man who can offer his deepest consciousness and create a sacred relationship with you ... then feel, trust, and offer your heart's deepest yearning. Then, your love's most divine longing and deepest wisdom will choose the man you truly value and inspire. Your relationship will reflect your heart's most sacred light.