Thoughts on Polyamory

Tonight my business partner asked me if I have really considered that polyamory may not be part of who I am right now. I have considered it, very deeply. What I am experiencing is excruciating at times. I have asked myself many, many times if it's worth it. And I absolutely believe that it is, not only because I believe polyamory is an authentic expression of who I am and what I know about love, but because I also know what I know about fear.

My emotional reactions to Knight's new relationship are all based in fear. The topsy-turvy feeling in my belly is fear. I will not live a life based on fear, especially in my relationships. I have already lived fear, contraction and making myself smaller than I really am. I have watched the people I love choose fear. My mother died at the hands of her fear. My ex-husband lives his life through a computer because of his fear. When any of us hurt ourselves or each other, it is always in fear.

I choose love and I am willing to do whatever it takes to get there. I will sit through the fear, the heartache, the bellyaches, the memories, the insights, the breakthroughs and everything else in order to have love. I will work, like I have worked all my life, to create a life of joy, intimacy and creativity with Knight, my tribe and all the loves who come into our lives in the time we are together.

I know that once I work through the fear, I am capable of compersion. I know what it is to be desired and loved by Knight. It's a gift and one that should be shared. I cannot possess it. I cannot ask him to hold it back from others, to diminish his light when he feels drawn to shine it in sexual and/or emotional ways. If the relationship turns out to be long-term, rather than fear Knight's new lover, I would like to get to know her and to understand the opportunity in her for his capacity to love to deepen.

I believe in love. I know with all of my being that love can overcome my fear. Not just the love between Knight and I, but the love for myself that I am slowly growing, and the love from my friends as they bear witness and support me where they can, and the love of the Divine that flows through me when I am not afraid to let it. I believe that God, my community and I can love me into healing. I believe that the light that Knight shines in his love for me inspires me to burn brighter in my capacity to love (and vice versa). I will not walk away from it in fear.

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As I consider the work of my heart, I keep coming back to something a spiritual teacher told me a few years ago. I was in a state of self-pity about how much trauma I've had to endure in my life. He told me that he felt that my purpose was to learn how to live through these traumas and heal them so that I could help others navigate their way through. Instead of going to university to become a psychologist, I am living the life of healing so that I can share my story and the tools that I am learning to use along the way.

I have overcome so many things: emotional abuse and a neglect as a child, a mentally ill mother, an alcoholic/drug addict stepfather, sexual molestation at 11, teen pregnancy/motherhood, single mothering, a gun to my head, rape resulting in another child, more single mothering, Borderline Personality Disorder (and all the consequences of acting out), and an extremely unhealthy and violent marriage.

What I am experiencing now is nothing in comparison to those traumas. This isn't trauma, this is fear of trauma. I can overcome this incredible fear that came from all of those things I have experienced. What I am afraid of is what happened before, not what is happening now. What is happening now is that I am in the most loving and healthy relationship of my life (even with its issues). What is happening now is that I have found someone willing to give me everything I have ever wanted -- to be known and loved for everything that I am, light and darkness, and to grow consciously together towards less fear and deeper love.

Sitting with my fear and feelings while my lover has a joyful, loving experience with another person is not the most horrible thing in the world. Facing my fear so that I can have compersion for his other relationships is something worth working towards. I believe that all relationships have spiritual purpose--that we are drawn to people who can help us wake up to greater love, if we do the work in relationship to them. If this is true, then every woman that Knight is authentically drawn to has the potential of waking him up to more love, which then allows him to share more love with me. The same goes for me and my other relationships when they happen.

I have been looking for love, and actively desiring to overcome the fear in my heart and home, since I was 14 years old and started reading every book that Leo Buscaglia wrote. I have known about and believed I am poly since I was 21. If you look at my bookshelf you will find many titles with the word Love, or which have ideas about how to experience more love in life. My life is about love, experiencing it in every possible way, as deep as it can possibly go. I can't and I won't choose anything else.

I believe that everything about who Knight is, including his authentic desire for polyamory, is here to wake me up to greater love. I believe that what I am going through right now is absolutely necessary if I am to have the vibrant life of love and creativity that I desire. I also believe it's absolutely necessary so that I can help my community move into lives of vibrant love, too.

I had the thought today that maybe there are other people who struggle with emotional and mental health issues that desire to be poly, but maybe having a more difficult time like I am because of brain chemistry or really fucked up childhoods or whatever. When I read resources about polyamory, what I don't see is someone addressing the deeper issues that result in intense jealousy and fear-based reactions to our partner's other relationships. Some of us have psychological (and spiritual) work to do in order for poly to be workable. I wonder how many people might be giving up too soon because they don't know what they need to make it work?

Just questions for now, but possibly another piece of the puzzle. There are a lot of serendipities pointing the direction towards me doing work with people around emotional-mental-spiritual health.

A Prayer for Union

I was the "Valedictorian" at our Graduation Fire on Sunday and read this prayer to the circle. I read it every morning as part of my regimen of radical self-care:








A Prayer for Union by Daphne Rose Kingma
(From the book The Future of Love)

God of light Who calls us into being,
Who guards us on our way,
We pray for peace in our hearts in this season
Of the transformation of our relationships,
Of upheaval, of crumbling, of falling away.

As our relationships pass like sand through our fingers,
May we be blessed with the grace to know,
That this falling apart is, in truth,
Our journey of coming together,
Of finally returning home.

May we be startled awake by the memory of love,
The One Great Love that called us into being,
And is our only real destination.

May be have the strength to give up our search
for the "one"
Because, all together, we are The One,
And You are the True Beloved,
The ever-awaiting One,
Who allows us to move from love to love,
Knowing that You, our true selves,
Will always be there to meet us.

May we be released from the agony
Of wanting, hoping, dreaming, expecting.
May we instead be brought into the present moment
Of acceptance, grace, and simplicity,
Knowing that the sweet breath of love we breathe
In each relationship
Is the breath of the One Great Love.

Allow us to see that love is eternal,
Show us again and again
That love is larger than all its forms.
And may we go through these seasons of change,
In a state of surrender, of joy,
With the exact and perfect trust
That every step is ordained for a beautiful reason.

God of light Who calls us into being,
We pray for joy, for wisdom and compassion
In the relationships that we do have.
We pray for the willingness to grow,
For we want to be grander than we already are.

We pray for the sacred water of the One,
For our baptism, for our cleansing,
And our healing,
For our melting, for our joining.

We pray for light, for both inner and outer
illumination,
For the brilliance to see, to know, and to feel,
To imagine and to remember
That You are with us each step of the way,
That we are not alone.

We pray for appreciation, acceptance, and forgiveness
Of all the steps, and missteps, and sidesteps
That we have taken on the long journey
That will bring us to our sweet reunion,
That will finally carry us back home.

Speaking the Truth & The Work of My Heart

Ronna Detrik, who writes insightfully about women and truth-telling, shared this last night...

"I’m going to do the work that I know I need to do, that I must do, that I’ve been waiting my whole life to do, without waiting for an audience...I’m not going to care anymore whether people like me when I speak my truth. I’m never going to ask for permission again. As Eve Ensler said, “I am going to hold who I am in the face of anything.”" Patti Digh

Wow!

I feel the power in those words. I feel it from the the heat in my heart and flutter in my chest to the goosebumps moving across my skin. I am feeling the call to do the work I've been waiting my whole life to do.

Tonight I had dinner with someone who spoke of her need to stop making herself small, and how she has always felt like her heart is bigger than her body can hold. I know this feeling. It's time to stop making myself small because it's too sissy-woo-woo, hippy dippy to be vocal about my passion for living a sacred and conscious life. It's time to stop being afraid that people will find me ridiculous if I share what is meaningful to me. It's time to stop being so damn quiet and timid.

How is this for ridiculous? I have been feeling embarrassed for how passionate and big I feel about this transformation that I am going through. I'm talking about the shift in my relationship to Knight, but I'm not really talking about the other significant shifts happening for me. I feel embarrassed when I am around my friends that I am blissed out for reasons I can't put into words other than I am so incredibly in love (with everything). I am having mystical experiences, but I am not fully trusting them or myself. When I am on my own I am often big and expansive, but when around others I make myself small again. I am afraid to talk about my excitement for this process. I haven't been telling anyone how I think that sitting down with this blog every night is helping me create the life of my dreams and that through my commitment to speaking my truth I am going to find My People and the work of my heart. This is BIG, EXCITING stuff and I have been too afraid to trust it or myself enough to share it, and afraid to trust my tribe to hold space for it it.

Havi talks a lot about finding "your people." Your people are the people who resonate with you, who believe in you and your ideas, and who like whatever it is you offer from your most authentic and quirky self. Today I found one of my people. Someone who jives with what I'm sharing here in my blog. Someone who is excited by the fact that I identify as a mystic. Someone whose life is touched by my story and who is touching my life with hers. I need to trust my relationships can hold me, and if it turns out we don't resonate anymore, I need to trust my people are on their way to me.

Today Kelly Diels came out with the work of her heart and she is inspiring me in ways bigger than words can describe, especially since there are commonalities in what turns us on. Ronna and Havi also inspire me. They have created the work of their heart and they each radiate love through their work in their unique and quirky ways.

You must lead with your strengths. You must choose the things that light you up so that you can light the way for yourself, and for others. Kelly Diels

This is my bliss: Relationship. Intimacy. Connection. Empathy. Sharing our stories. Learning and evolving together. Creating together. This is what I want to be doing all the time, relating to people who resonate with me, both personally and professionally -- through writing, through art, through working with people one-on-one and in small groups, and through community leadership.

I believe that my work with the Imps has been leading me toward recognizing my bliss work is intentionally working with people around sacred and conscious relationship. When I pull all the threads of my life together, it all leads to sacred and conscious relationship...with my children, my partners, my friends, my community, my world. Growing towards deeper, richer, and more consistent experiences of love is my passion. I love Love. I love to love. I desire to be a walking embodiment of love, every minute of every day with every being that I interact with. That's what makes me a mystic. I am in love with all of existence. I focus that love in my relationships to other people. I see and feel the Divine Spark in others and I desire to get closer to it, to feel the warmth and bask in the brightness of light that each person has to share with me. I facilitate events so that people can feel free and open to express their Divine Spark through their creativity, sexuality and relationship. I build community because I know that we feel safest in expressing our Divine Spark when we're with people who support us. Mysticism is the driving force behind my work with the Imps and yet I've been hiding it in the closet as much as possible.

The pieces are coming together. The Universe is talking to me through all of these amazing women (and many other teachers) and I am listening. I am finally beginning to see what the work of my heart looks like and I am finding the courage to speak my truth as the ultimate act of love.

For more inspiration, check this out...




***Image source aussiegall

Sacred Relationship

I am too tired to write my own words tonight and I am being kind to myself in regards to my commitment to self care. It's been a full day of work. I have done enough. So I share the words of others that resonated with me today as I contemplate sacred relationship.

From Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening, the entry called "Love at First Sight":

"We all walk around within the numbness of our habits and routines so often that we take the marvels of ordinary life for granted. It is first sight that opens the freshness of each moment, unencumbered by any of our habits and routines. First sight is the moment of God-sight, heart-sight, soul-sight. It is the seeing of revelation, the feeling of oneness that briefly overcomes us when nothing remains in the way.

At its deepest and most real level, the notion of love at first sight is spoken of in every spiritual tradition as the reward for being fully awake. Such seeing anew restores our sense of being alive."

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"As soon as we look beyond both duty and pleasure for a deeper meaning and purpose in relationships today, we start to move in the direction of the sacred, which we could define as coming into deeper connection with our true, essential nature, behind all our masks and facades...

Although "awakening to the sacred" might sound esoteric, it is, in fact, quite ordinary -- for it only involves learning to respond more deeply to what we already experience, and to appreciate what we already essentially are. If the bad news is that we can know another, and be known, only as deeply as we know ourselves--and coming to know ourselves can be a long and arduous journey--the good news is that love helps and inspires us to develop this deeper self knowledge. How we relate to someone we love provides an extremely clear and accurate mirror of how we relate to ourselves. For this reason, relationships can help us face ourselves and understand ourselves more rapidly and profoundly than any other aspect of worldly life. Seen in this light, love becomes a path of awakening--rousing us from the sleep of old, unconscious patterns into the freshness and immediacy of living more fully in the present, in accord with who we really are. This is the source of a deeper kind of happiness, which goes far beyond pleasure and comfort, and is the only real basis for healthy and satisfying relationships.

~ John Welwood, from Love and Awakening