The Razor's Edge

The last 36 hours I have been struggling to hold my ambition for love and my habitual patterns of fear, resistance and withdrawal within myself simultaneously. I have been feeling shame for being "weak". But then I read this today:

"But that's what makes love so intriguing: Losing it -- letting go of old, confining identities -- is totally exciting and totally frightening. This makes for a most interesting situation. I am pulled in opposite directions: expanding and contracting, wanting to go forward and wanting to maintain my defenses at the same time.

This is why intimate relationship can be such a potent vehicle for wisdom and awakening. It allows us to experience both sides of our nature -- the call of our larger being and the fear and insecurity of our false self -- at once, right next to each other. On this threshold where part of us wants to expand and part of us wants to pull back, we stand on a razor's edge -- the boundary for the unknown, and the frontier of a whole new way of being...

Since it is easy to start doubting ourselves when we encounter our darkness and demons, it is important to understand that a wholesome logic operates here: The brighter love's radiance, the darker the shadows we encounter; the more we feel life stirring within us, the more we also feel our dead spots; the more conscious we become, the more clearly we see where we remain unconscious. None of this need dishearten us. For in facing our darkness, we bring light to forgotten parts of our being. In recognizing where we have been unconscious, we become more conscious. And in seeing and feeling the ways we've gone dead, we start to revive and kindle our desire to live more expansively." John Welwood, from Love and Awakening

I am walking the razor's edge and it is such a fascinating experience to witness, even though it is heart-achey. I am sitting on the fence between ego-reaction and witnessing-Presence, having funky feelings but able to step back and hold space for them instead of getting overwhelmed by them or acting them out.

After such an incredibly rich weekend of relationship with Knight, I have been struggling with the silence and lack of contact. Since our magical time together Tuesday we've had two text exchanges and one five minute conversation. I've sent a couple texts from a place of vulnerability and received no response. It's crazy how fast the old stories close in on the communication void. It's all circumstantial on his side, but The Invisible Girl tells me that if he doesn't acknowledge me, I don't matter. She tells me that he's forgetting me, that he's really happy being single and free of me, as if I've been some kind of obligation and weight rather than a desired addition to his life.

I feel childish for having hurt feelings about minimal contact for two and a half days. It's only 60 hours for heaven's sake! And the truth is, it is childish. It is my wounded child, The Invisible Girl, who tells me the fear-full stories.

This is where my addiction and habits lie. I do something that is an authentic expression of my love -- like a text -- and then instead of just being in the joy of loving, I find myself waiting for validation that I have been seen. I start sulking because I've had an unconscious expectation that he'll respond. Sometimes I allow my joy and open-heartedness depend on whether I "know" I've been seen, and our love acknowledged. I do not seem to trust what I cannot see or hear on a daily basis. I do not seem to trust his love is sustainable, which really means that I am not trusting my own sustaining lovability.

Through the last 48 hours I have been feeling increasing resistance to my intentions for choosing love. When the fear thoughts take hold, I am struggling to do what is needed to bring it back to love. I know love is right there if I am willing to pick it up, to focus my attention, but my ego wants to be lazy and allow the fear-demons to come play. My ego and demons tell me, "This feels like hard work and it hurts. It's easier--and safer--to be fearful. It's easier to withdraw and close up my heart. It's easier to build walls than to keep the love flowing through emotional discomfort and fear. This choosing-love stuff is a waste of time because either I'll fall back into the old patterns anyway or I'll never find people who really love me as I am. All these authors and teachers who say they are living passionate and love-filled lives are lying and are still living misery and drama behind closed doors. It's not really possible to live vibrantly in love and be happy every day."

Yuck. I don't like the way my ego and demons talk to me. They aren't nice.

I feel the shadow, I am ashamed of it for arising, and I am tempted to project my frustration with myself onto Knight. Instead of sitting with the discomfort of my own darkness, me ego wants to make it about him, tell myself that he's doing something wrong and I should stop reaching out. The Invisible Girl says, "He must not love me as much as he says because he doesn't want to talk to me every day anymore."

Withdrawal is my primary shadow response to heartache. Rather than confront what I feel, I withdraw from others and justify my withdrawal with stories about how they don't care and how I am better off without them because they're just going to keep hurting me. I also withdraw because I'm afraid to expose what I'm ashamed of.

A dear friend posted this on Facebook today:

"Confronting what comes up is the precursor to moving through it to get to the healing that is available to you now. Be honest about your pain with loved ones instead of hiding behind it and putting up walls or defenses for protection. Building walls only make you feel more alone. This is the opportunity to connect from a deep, raw, vulnerable space. Connect with your Self first and foremost- and with others who can be a healing balm to your Soul." (from Divine Harmony)

Today, choosing love looks like accepting the conflict in myself rather than resisting it, and reaching out for support rather than reacting out of shadow.

Instead of continuing to feed the stories, withdrawing and hiding what I'm experiencing from Knight, I reached out to him today and asked for a conversation. He held space for me to express my feelings and shared his own experience. One of the most remarkable qualities of our relationship is our mutual ability and willingness to talk things through and to deepen intimacy by being completely vulnerable about our feelings, even the darkness.

I asked for what I wanted and love responded. I am ever so grateful for it.


"Trust life to do it's magic. It's about surrender to not-knowing how it will look like when it is healed. It is beyond our hands and beyond our willing. There might be moments that feel scary or unprotected, but it is life at work, moving and changing....Life is always flow and cannot be tied down." ~ http://www.zegg-forum.org/guidelines.phtml

Emotional Poverty Consciousness

One of the insights I've had into our relationship experience is that we were living in emotional poverty consciousness (the Ethical Slut calls it starvation economy). We behaved as if we believed there was not enough time or love and we needed to horde all the time, attention and affection we could get. We clung to every possible moment we could squeeze out of our schedules to be together. We suffered with longing when we had to be apart. We struggled and compromised ourselves when we desired to be doing different things but didn't want to give up time with each other. We were jealous of other relationships, including friendships.

We couldn't seem to experience a sense of enough-ness. It wasn't enough that we had someone amazing to share our lives with. It wasn't enough that we were present when we could be and witnessed each other regularly. It wasn't enough that we were having the deepest, richest and most passionate experience of love that either of us had known. It wasn't enough that we did our best to support one another. It wasn't enough that we were as open-hearted, honest and communicative as we could possibly be.

I could never get enough witness from Knight. My Invisible Girl archetype would show up regularly with her stories and convince me that he wasn't seeing me. She would take everything he did personally. Every time he was self or other absorbed rather than focused on me, even when appropriately so, the stories of invisibility would be reinforced. It didn't matter how much he did witness/honor/support/appreciate me, I focused on the stories of invisibility.

Knight had his equivalent to my Invisible Girl who could not get enough in his own ways.

We both have emotional wounds from our past that keep us believing we are not enough and that we are not worthy of the abundant love that surrounds us (not just our love for each other, but the love in our friendships and community as well). These beliefs are so deep that we neglect ourselves, which indicates that we believe we are not even worth our own self-care. We have both been living in so much fear that we can not trust the love we are given. While we grasp and cling to every external sign of love, we are actually unable to really see and feel the immensity of love that others have for us. I know that we underestimated how much the other loves us and how committed the other was to sharing a life. I know we underestimate how much our friends love us and how much they desire us in their lives. How can we experience the reality of love when we are so busy wrapping ourselves in our fears?

I am cultivating a new gratitude practice in hopes of nurturing abundance consciousness and rewriting my stories of not enough. There is so much beauty in this world and in my life. I have more abundance in friendship and love, resources and money, than I ever have before. Why would the Universe give me more if I can't appreciate what I already have?

The Tight Rope

I feel as though I am walking a tight rope. I must strike an intricate balance to take full responsibility for my fear based choices and the resulting consequences without falling into shame, humiliation and regret. I must allow the grief for what is lost to move through me while maintaining a bigger perspective on the perfection of what is unfolding. It is an unsettling teeter totter. I start to fall and try to lean back into a more loving story. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I lose my balance, fall into the dark and then have to do the work of climbing up the ladder to the light again.

Last night's revelation that I have become that which I most fear, and that which I have been unable to forgive in others, weighs heavily on my heart today. For as long as I can remember I have said that I do not want to become my mother. I have consciously worked on my mental-emotional-spiritual health for 15+ years so that I do not become my mother. And yet here I am, making similar fear-based choices. I spent so much time fearing that Knight would choose something or someone else over his love for me, that I couldn't see how I was choosing to live in my fear rather than my love for him. I am astounded that I've lost control of my emotional life to this degree.

It seems like it should be easy to choose love, but it isn't, not when you've been living a fear-story since birth. Choosing love takes incredible intention and attention. Right now it requires nearly minute-by-minute vigilance as I witness what unfolds in my mind and heart as I go through my day. And isn't just about choosing love in my relationship to my self and Knight. It's about choosing love in every interaction at work, at home, and in my community.

Right now choosing love means forgiving myself, Knight, my mother and my ex-husband for choosing love over fear. Because of this experience, I have a new depth of compassion for all of us.

Choosing love means actively rewriting my stories, both past and present. It's time to transform my wounded stories into something more empowering. When the stories start looping in my head, I must be vigilant about stopping them in their tracks and redirecting them toward love.

Choosing love means holding back from reaching out through text or phone call every time my heart longs for him because I need to learn how to act from love rather than yearning and habit. It means trusting that just because we no longer talk every day, or share life the way we did, we are still connected and he still loves me.

Choosing love means believing I am lovable.

Choosing love means trusting that remaining open-hearted and vulnerable despite the heartache will bring healing.

Choosing love means taking action towards self-care. To care for my body I am walking every day. To care for my mind I am writing. To care for my heart I am giving myself permission to grieve without turning it to suffering. To care for my soul I am nurturing my relationship to the Divine through prayer and paying attention to the abundant sources of guidance and support being offered on my behalf every single day.

Choosing love means walking this tightrope until it transforms into a comfortable walking path towards my growth and healing.

Choosing to Live a Love Story

"That same circuitry is active in your brain today in the amygdala, hippocampus, and related structures. It's hard-wired to scan for the bad, and when it inevitably finds negative things, they're both stored immediately, plus made available for rapid recall.

In contrast, positive experiences (short of million dollar moments) are usually registered through standard memory systems, and thus need to be held in conscious awareness 10 to 20 seconds for them to really sink in.

In sum, your brain is like velcro for negative experiences and teflon for positive ones.

In the moment, this built-in bias puts a negative spin on the world and intensifies our stress and reactivity. Over time, these experiences build up in what’s called “implicit memory,” casting a glum shadow over mood and outlook, and darkening one’s interior landscape. Yes, these hard-wired inclinations have been evolutionarily successful, but Mother Nature cares about grandchildren, not about dukkha."

- Rick Hanson, psychologist, and Rick Mendius, neurologist

Something I have known intellectually for years is finally sinking in experientially -- where we put our attention defines, and even creates, our experience. The way to cultivate attention is to live with intention.

I spend far too much time putting my attention on shadows. Rather than intentionally cultivating gratitude and appreciation for the abundance of goodness I have in my life, I have been focused on not-enoughness, disappointment and other negative judgments of myself and the people in my life. Especially within my changing relationship.

(Oh goodness, I need something to call the man I love with all my being but is no longer my "partner." From now on I shall call him Knight. In many ways he has been my Knight in Shining Armor, even if we may not live happily ever after from a traditional perspective. We are rewriting the fairy tale and redefining "happily ever after.")

Knight is a truly good man. He is a good provider who makes a living doing something he loves, which is serving and facilitating healing for others. He is dedicated to family. He is fun and made me laugh a lot. He has a strong masculine/feminine balance and is overall a great communicator. He is remarkably accepting and non-judgmental of mine and other people's quirks and shadows. He is smart and creative. He works toward his own evolution and encourages others in their work. He is curious and adventurous. He is incredibly sexy and a wonderful lover. He is definitely a great catch. I had so many moments with him where I consciously thought about how blessed I was to be in the closest possible relationship to him. I was consistently surprised by the beauty in him -- his openness, his tremendous capacity and desire for love, and his insights into the human condition. I could see the Divine Spark in him and it is so very beautiful.

And yet as his quirks and shadows emerged over time, I took them personally and paid them too much attention. I allowed them to feed my fear stories. I became emotionally volatile. When a situation with him would set off a trigger, I would sink into the fear and shut him out. My communication would become violent -- passive aggressive, blaming, criticizing -- which would set off the fear triggers in him and send us into a tailspin as we tried to inflict pain on one another in some twisted sense of self protection. Our shadows weren't dancing well together and we didn't put the needed intention into learning how to dance with grace. We protected ourselves right out of our relationship. Funny how I don't feel any more safe or secure now.

Instead of focusing on how Knight was choosing me as a life partner, to the point of making compromises for me, I focused on my fears around his desire to be polyamorous. Instead of maintaining gratitude and appreciation for all the consistent ways he supported me, listened to me, encouraged my growth, and expressed his love and desire for me, I tripped out on him when I misunderstood him or he was self-absorbed or fell down in his own fearful stories. Instead of practicing compassion and holding space for his experience, which would have deepened our intimacy and strengthened our bond, I became self-absorbed in my fear and pushed him away.

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I believe that I have been too focused on my own shadow. While we cannot bring our shadows into the light without paying serious attention to them, I believe that we can focus too much on our "deficiencies" and live in a consistent fear of fucking up. We pay so much attention to our fears that we bring them to life. I have seen this pattern in others, but I have never consciously experienced it in my own life like I am now.

In recent months I have had to face the shadow of violence within me. I have become aware of how I communicate violently and how I sometimes hurt people I love with my words and my tone. And it has made me afraid. I am so very afraid of hurting anyone ever again. I am judging and blaming myself for the pain I've caused. I am perceiving judgment all around me, believing that people see me as a fraud, incapable of living the love I claim to be striving for and ask them to strive for. I have been so afraid that I started worrying the crazies might be coming back -- or never really went away. I have been afraid that I will do the unforgivable, and living so deep in that fear that I created exactly what I was afraid of. I did something that may be forgivable, but has lost me one of the most precious gifts the Universe has given me. How can I not feel like a failure? I don't think I have failed so big. While I can usually find the opportunity, and even the beauty, in every failure or disappointment in my life, I can't imagine how that is possible with this. I have lost the love of my life, someone with whom I feel more potential for a love-filled life than I have ever felt before. How do I find the grace to forgive myself and believe that I am deserving and capable of a healthy, loving relationship?

Instead of writing a love story, which is what I believed myself to be doing, I was writing a fear story and brought my fear to life. I don't know that I have ever understood my own creative power so well. It's time to put that power to better uses.

One of the questions I am living is how can I trust the Universe if I cannot trust myself? How can I trust someone elses love for me if I cannot trust my own love? I am more violent with myself than I am with anyone else. I have voices inside, voices that I spend much too much time listening to, that tell me I am a failure, that I have no right attempting to make change in the world when I have so much change to make in myself, and that I should hide away with my fucked-up-ness. My saboteur runs rampant in me and keeps me from doing all that I am inspired to do. I am terribly unkind to myself. I neglect my body to the point that I am living with near daily discomfort or pain. I strive to take good care of the people I love -- my children, my tribe and the greater community I serve -- but I don't take care of myself. I try to meet everyone else's expectations -- sometimes to my own detriment -- and yet I don't feel deserving to ask for what I need or desire from others.

I desire to be living a love story, not a fear story. And not just with Knight, but with myself. Oh wow, I just realized a whole new layer to what is unfolding. I have been unable to forgive my mother for choosing a fear story over her love for me. I have also struggled to forgive my ex-husband for choosing a fear story over his love for me and my children. I have judged them, blamed them and struggled to forgive them because they are a mirror for my own fear choices. I have been doing the same damn thing, choosing to give attention to my fear more than my love.

When my mother died, a friend told me it was an opportunity to be free. I have convinced myself that the path to freedom is digging into my wounds. I have given tremendous power to my wounds, allowing them to disrupt the flow of love in my life. Every difficult moment I had with the Knight (and in all of my other relationships) was based in a fear story that reinforced my wounding. Once I was emotionally triggered by a situation, I couldn't break free of the wounded story. Instead I fed it and reinforced it by setting limitations for myself and our relationship.

I haven't broken free of my mother's hold on my life, I have become her.

"The whole world is waiting for someone to open their heart first." Byron Katie

This is my wake up call. I have always had a passion for self development because even though I was born into such a deep fear story, I was also born with a deep intuitive knowing of what living a Love Story can be. I have never been able to explain it properly to people, but I can feel the potential of living a Love filled life. I can feel it within myself, within others, and in relationship between myself and others. I work so hard on myself and on my relationships because I am striving to create that Love experience. I work to bring information and experiences to others that will encourage the Love because I am striving to create what I feel is possible. I believe in Love fiercely and I will do whatever it takes to open myself to it to my fullest capacity and encourage others to do the same. Right now that means ending the fear story I've been living and intentfully writing my Love Story.

Thank you for being a part of it.

"You suppose you are the trouble, but you are the cure. You suppose you are the lock on the door, but you are the key that opens it. It is too bad that you want to be someone else. You don't see your own face, your own beauty, yet no face is more beautiful than yours." ~ Rumi