a meditation

Imagine what his skin feels like. Imagine what he smells like. Imagine what his eyes on me feel like. Imagine what his hands on me feel like. Imagine what his embraces feel like.

Unzip my heart. Open it. Imagine his energy coming at me, coming into me, infusing me, permeating me. Let him in.

Even if I can't fully relax, it's okay. Feel him come to me, and let him in. Even if my heart wants to close, unzip it. Open it.

Lean back. Feel him. Feel his warmth. Let it all come into my heart and being. Let him touch my heart. Allow him to hold it in his hands. Allow his love and warmth to radiate.

random thoughts

I don't understand why I continue to feel like this. Why do I keep conjuring these images? Why do I keep making up these scenarios of him lusting, masturbating? Why can I not stop myself from thinking that he wouldn't look if he felt whole in this relationship? Why do I still feel as if betrayed?

I realize that he didn't understand the power it had to hurt, but now he does, so why then does he still do it? Stubborness? Anger? Exertion of freedom and independence? Habit? He tells me that it has no more significance than playing his video game. He tells me that it's not a reflection on me whatsoever.

I don't understand. I'm so confused. I feel like I'm going to break into a million pieces. I feel like I'm going to explode. I feel so scared. I feel like I want to disappear, yet I feel so present. I feel so much ache and pain. I feel a band around my heart, yet when I can get it to release it feels so good, tenuous, a little daunting, a little frightening, yet it's nice. Is this the source of my uneasiness? To allow an opening and release is huge and wonderful, but it also leaves me feeling enormously vulnerable.

I'm so tired of writing about this. I'm so tired of these thoughts that plague me constantly. It keeps me from going more deeply into myself, more deeply with him. It protects me from harm, but it disallows the love I seek within and without.

I have a deep, disturbing relationship with porn. I don't really know why it triggers me so. It's never come up before. Am I so weird, naive? I feel like I'm part of a harem, yet I know this is ridiculous.

Is he normal? Am I? I have used many techniques to attack my obsession, meditations, deep body work, coaching, tantric sexual healing, acupuncture, so many tools I've learned.

I can choose to let it all go by sinking into the awful feelings when they come up, walking myself through them and back out into light. It's so hard. I must stop myself whenever I find myself trying to figure out where he is with it. I can choose each and every moment. I am the creator of my thoughts. I need to sink into my anxiety and release him from my mind.

I acknowledge my obsession, and I must take the gremlin out, the one that whispers into my ear, telling me awful lies. The gremlin is mean, ugly, seductive, yet I must put him in a corner along with the tape that loops inside my head. I must drop down as deeply as possible. I must feel my pain, feel the feelings, and then drop my energy down. Gently pull back the icky thoughts.

Every time the obsession takes hold, feel K giving me his love. He's told you you are important to him. He doesn't want to hurt you. It's all okay. It's all wonderful, beautiful. Receive all the time. Waves of love and devotion come from him all the time, flooding my being and my heart. He's cherishing me all he time. All the time!!! He's smiling at me, touching me, loving me all the time. All the time!!!

openness

September 15, 2006

D,

The goal of everything, all this work, is of course ultimately about you. About opening up to life, opening your heart and body. This is separate from K. You're not doing it for him; you're doing it for you. However the most important thing right now in your personal growth is the relationship. And specifically being open in the relationship - not just through your body but through your words. To get to the point in the relationship where you can communicate about anything you choose to share. And what you choose to share determines the depth of the relationship.

If you choose to share your deepest fantasies, then you will allow him to share his deepest fantasies. Not wanting to hear them, you'll not speak about yours. Keeping secrets is very tricky business. I do not share much about my inside life with my husband (I don't think he's ever expressed interest in or read a word of my books or anything I write.) but he's free to. I'm very aware what I don't want him to read or know about me is my choice to keep the relationship superficial. It's about the level of trust I have.

For you getting closure in the leering, salacious side of K that you are fixating on may be about going into that milieu and seeing and experiencing it for yourself. And yet it's not a book you read or a picture you saw or a fantasy you had - but an actual nighttime visit to a real place. If I stop into a porno shop or lingerie shop to buy myself a sex toy, I don't feel the need to tell my husband about it - we've done it together. But if I was concerned, and it bothered me to think of him going into such a place or renting a porn video or catching some girls gone wild on TV, then my visit would eat at me. It would fester and bother me. It would be a secret because we'd never had the discussions and the ease to talk about this part of our lives.

Essentially you are working on your internal reactions to something that is commonplace and acceptable to most people - looking at pictures of naked girls every once in awhile. This has to do with you and control and curiosity and all kinds of feelings you really want to get to and get familiar with and release their hold on you.

I just want you to look at things from his point of view. And to look at everything as an opportunity to deepen the relationship by talking rather than tip-toeing around things. I don't know how to tell you to do this, just to please be aware of your stress level, where the guilt comes in, how open you feel around K, how he's being, how you're talking with each other about stuff, whether or not he feels free to unburden himself to you, and how if you were him with the same sensitivities you have, he'd like you to be with him. I vote for communication as the most important thing on the plate here. This may take some thought, some writing, some really looking at him and the relationship, and how this all fits together.

You are brilliant and on the edge of something really incredible. What is keeping you from marriage is not your feelings of inadequacy, we all have those, but your fear of the depths of intimacy you could go without some of the secrets you still hold. I'm going to have to up the level of my life just to keep ahead of you. It's easy for me to talk - I'm inspired to take some more giant leaps so I can keep walking my talk.

Love, R

another breakthrough

July,27 2006

D,

Wow, is all I can say. This is like - amazing. Your letter is amazing - I will treasure it. Yes I believe him totally. Yes - believe him about everything. What happened in terms of your openness was not just about you - you're so sensitive to everything - you really were so much closer after that exchange - this is exactly what you want - you are beginning to be yourselves with each other and trust each other that who you are is who the other person loves.

And it's true - you do love who the other person really truly is, both of you. He truly, truly is into you in every way. This masturbation thing and the openness about it and the way this exchange went - you're fine with whatever he does as long as he takes care of you! - that's the crux of the whole relationship, right?!! - that is a good thing. Now he can share stuff about himself and not worry what you'll do.

He feels safe!!! This is so great. Please believe me - what you get when a man feels safe is soooooo much better than the control over his behavior you have to give up to get that feeling of safety. You'll begin to feel it too - and you guys are off to the races!

About the ickyness - just leftover stuff, just habit. Do what you've been doing, keep allowing, being, trusting, saying your feelings; let things roll and unfold. Just don't give energy to the icky stuff. Go in for a moment; feel it in your body, and then let it go through the beautiful garden of light and the love you really have between you.

The Gremlin will never, never go away forever. Just don't give energy to the Gremlin; keep expanding; keep being the sky and K and everything, and the Gremlin will get smaller and smaller in response, and you'll by annoyed by it less and less and live your life from a place of love and trust and better things to do with your thoughts than hand them over to the nasty Voice of the Gremlin!

Love, R

my ongoing path

July 19, 2006

You brought him in as a way to challenge deeper issues - issues which your ex-husband had no ability to help you connect with - and as you are connecting with them, the need for the trigger is disappearing.

In co-dependency both people are so afraid to bring up their "stuff" and their feelings and their fear, they are hugely invested in the status quo. Any change of any kind is feared - by the mind! However - you've been going around the mind. By going into the body and your heart, you're making changes on an elemental level that are, because you two actually DO have a strong bond that is NOT co-dependent, of course prompting all kinds of adjustments in and for K - but they are pleasant! They feel good to him.

You're not going around demanding stuff and laying out boundarries with a heavy trowel - you're sinking in. So he's adjusting. He's dealing with his adjustments and his feelings and his fear - but what his mind and his fears were telling him is not what he's experiencing! He's experiencing (and so are you) that closeness that feels good! So the co-dependency is just sort of falling away.

letter to myself

June 28, 2006
I cannot really know or understand how men are, how they work inside. I can accept and embrace them and their differences. They have an ability to disconnect, compartmentalize that most women do not, that most women would find incomprehensible. We connect emotionally to everything, especially women like me who are so sensitive, so sensory, so self-aware physically and emotionally and spiritually.

Recently I have become even more aware and able to touch surrounding energies, others and their feelings. I can feel a person even through a photograph. I can connect with a person's spirit instantly, and my instincts in this regard are quite accurate. This ability is mostly inconceivable to men. Their emotional connection lies with us. We facilitate this in them if we allow it within ourselves. This is their path to peace, love, and freedom, through our hearts.

I am K's vehicle on his journey to love and in love which defines itself as peace and freedom and contentment in his mind and heart. The journey within my own heart and more deeply my soul is crucial to his. As we walk our respective paths, they will merge the more, the more I allow myself access to my depths, my deepest, darkest secret places, my well of brimming love where my angel goddess resides. The farther I venture forth, the deeper and closer we will grow together, dance together in a love for each other so profound. It really is up to me.

This is the love dreams are made of, poets wax rhapsodic about, a few special beings have the honor and the wonderful, blissful, immeasurable delight in experiencing.

This is my dream. This will be. This is.

and so it goes

June 26, 2006

There are many areas in which the communication between you and K does not flow completely, as easily and effortlessly as - believe me it can (and will). Having come so far and feeling things so much easier than they were - imagine how it would feel if you were to double that gain - wouldn't that be a nice place?

It's very reachable - there are still many secrets that your solar plexus tension is holding onto. I know you want it gone, and yet in a very real way you don't. In a very real way, whatever you solar plexus is holding onto, you may not be, no matter how much you want to be, completely ready to be a person who is without that secret.

Who would you be without the thought, "I'm not good enough"? There is a part of you being held together by this last bit of tension that doesn't want to let go of being the person who hears that as truth. The part of you that does not want to live with the reality of this uncertainty of knowing where K is at on this issue, who needs to understand rather than accept, who would feel rudderless without that anchoring thought of, "I'm not good enough, and K's behavior is proof of that."

Instead of analyzing this, what would it be like to be a person who could simply accept all this and move on? Who would you be? How would it feel to let go of this core issue, this old belief, this past life? Imagine how your solar plexus is grabbing onto that thought. Imagine slowly tearing its fingers away from it; imagine letting that thought go. It means cutting the cord to what you have always believed about yourself and moving into an unknown in which nothing makes sense. In which you have to proceed into uncharted territory with a newly minted and unfamiliar ship called D.

Men want what you want: to feel connected; to feel admired, loved, appreciated; to feel there is someone beside them, mentally, psychologically, emotionally; to feel free to be who they are and accepted and loved even with their faults; to be known; to be loved even when they are known; to be responsible and respected but not beholding; to be allowed to give and have what they give be received but not to be owing or demanded or pressured.

They have exactly the same needs. They're just wired a little differently in their brains and body, and they process information differently. They have a need to go outward and make their mark and give and leave an impression.

We mostly need to connect. We are about relationship; they are more about how things work. These qualities are supposed to dovetail so that the team has all of these qualities, together. Otherwise we're both at one end of the dinghy and end up taking on water. Without some sense of mystery - as how women work or how men work, we're cutting off some of the joy of the whole thing. Otherwise we should marry women!

My wish is for you to abandon these notions that you can understand anything and simply make a choice to take him as he is however that is and to heal your own self by staying with your deepest feelings and sharing them as much as you can, reveling in your own body and how good it feels when it mixes with his, and let the past and the rest go.

Believe in yourself and your relationship even when you are tense. Believe that you have cleared a piece of the past that had a hold on you. Let it go. Take another step forward on the game board, if not by actually feeling better yet, by believing that you will tomorrow, and that it's just a matter of sinking into yourself, letting go of what doesn't work or feel good, and stepping forward at the same time.

The catching, the blocking, the tension is very real, caused by traumas, physical and emotional all locked into my muscle memory, but it's also a habitual response, and it creates separation as my protection when things feel too good, as if I need to suffer for my rewards, or when I'm afraid. I have already suffered greatly.

Suffering is earthbound and no longer necessary, all the sinking feelings, the not good enough stuff, the pain, the obsessive thoughts. In an odd way, the pain makes me feel more whole, and that's okay. Embrace it. Love it, for it has kept me from sinking under. I must change my beliefs. I must walk the road to my goddess self bathed in bright light full of love and in all my glory.

DOUBT-GRATITUDE-COMPASSION-RELEASE- LOVE-PEACE