- Foreward
- Introduction
- My Journey
- Adversity
- Anger
- Body Wisdom
- Love Knocks
- Money Tree
- HealthLoveWealth
- Simplicity
- Generosity
- Shock! Treatment
- Responsibility
- Grateful
- Growth Notes
Risk vulnerability
Loving another person makes me vulnerable; I can be hurt easily. When loving ends in hurting, I become less willing to risk vulnerability again. Unless I take that risk, I have no chance of gaining the benefits of relationships. Today I make a new choice to be vulnerable, to risk loving another deeply.
Balance inter-
dependence
Sometimes I lose my identity when I become intimate with another. Or I remain fiercely independent, never yielding to deep sharing. To grow, I must balance between dependence and independence. Today I evaluate my own inclination toward dependence or independence then move toward balance.
Find Light in Dark Times
Chapter 5:
When Love Knocks
(sample excerpts)
Find Light in Dark Times gives you philosophical and spiritual tools to help you recover from
losses of all kinds, then emerge into the light. These are sample sections from Chapter 5.
If you have loved and not lost, you are a rare and fortunate soul. Most people, including the author, have suffered painful knocks in the land of love: divorces, breakups, arguments, custody battles. Casualties litter the field.
But despite the carnage, does love retreat? Does cynicism prevail? No. Love blooms again, as resilient as edelweiss flowers on cold, rocky ledges. The human heart has tremendous capacity to cast off negative experience and regain a positive outlook. Love holds enormous potential for spiritual deepening. Realizing this potential is tricky. For most folks love emerges again, but they don’t respond because they can’t stand the pain that frequently accompanies love.
Some losses in love cut so deeply that they injure your ability to risk new love. If you have been through protracted divorce or the death of a person you adored romantically, you understand this. You want to curl up in fetal position in a dark corner of the world and do little but quiver. Some despondent lovers—not just Romeo and Juliet—contemplate suicide in the bleakest moments. For some people, full retreat lasts for years, even decades. Part of the retreat may be to transform themselves physically from a sexually attractive person to one with diminished appeal. Even if they were never hotties, they had ways of luring a lover. Most folks, whether heterosexual or homosexual, find love or at least sexual fulfillment at some point in life. Nearly all the observations that follow apply equally to any form of love. When it comes to love, we all relate to the pain of loss and humiliation, as well as the giddiness and exhilaration of being in love again.
. . . (Hot love section)
Sometimes we hit gold in relationships, stumbling by chance into a partner with whom nearly every channel clicks. You talk for hours into the night about anything. Sex makes you swoon with pleasure and your body cannot get enough. You feel aroused in every cell. You dream together, hope together, move together, relax together. These are swirling romances that we all seek. This is the stuff that every romantic novel and movie wraps its story around: penetrating connection. We reach across the apparent chasm of our aloneness and touch another person. Love changes consciousness.
As a hot love settles in after a year or so, the novelty may fade but passion can deepen. Then arrives extraordinary spiritual opportunity in the closeness you are fortunate to have found. Can you strengthen your love without controlling? Can you risk giving all of yourself without fear reining you back? Can you pour energy into building a new life together? Can you avoid recirculating past failures and troubles, your breakups, divorces and fights?
Spiritual growth can leap forward in the lively warmth of a healthy relationship. Intimacy feeds growth as it eases fear. When you are fortunate to have found such a sparkling relationship, grow and grow! Reach enlightenment through passion. Let your heart silence your mind’s chatter. Allow sexual intensity to bring you to pure moments of connection with your lover. What passion can reach in minutes—rushing into present consciousness—meditation can take years to accomplish. Like a balm, love tends to dispel worry and bring you into the present moment, into the light.
