I want to know what love is.
The song rings through my mind regularly. I have looked hard both inside and out of
myself and voila! From the view of my spiritual journey I have lived quite a
relationship ladder. Maybe I had too
many starts and no real marriage, or no permanent bonding of love. It’s all about me. The only common factor! In retrospect I see that I have stepped rung
by rung up a kind of spiraling ladder to the incredible expansiveness of
love. “I want to know what love
is.” So crooneth the song. “And I want you to show me.” But it doesn’t work that way does it? I wanted so much to feel love and be wanted
and persued. But I learned that I had to
give the love steadily and graciously. And
I was. But that isn’t enough is it?
I was pretty enough but different, always juggling a deep
inner angst about who I was. Unable to
love myself I couldn’t accept people in
ways that would honour their broad variations on the planet and see through
their defenses and quirks. Or lay loving foundations.
My hormonal yearning for love pulled in my first boyfriend when I was 15. We were in 11th grade. His pomped James Dean hair do boosted his height
to 6’1”. He shone in the glittery vest fashion
of 1958. His Brillcream, later called “greasy
kids stuff” kept his wave high, while
sideburns fuzzed up his cheekbones. My horrified
parents stood at the window as he revved his engine and we rolled out of the
driveway. Of course I fell in love with my free
floating hero. In his arms I dreamed
wildly – hormones sending out waves of ecstacy and a wildly soothing illusion
of completion! Later my illusion was smashed
into tiny sharp pieces by his betrayal. “Happily
ever after” had to morph into something bigger. But I had opened to the bottom rung of love.
Serendipitous events around a miscarriage, a betrayal, and
love tilted on its axis of commitment. I
reeled but only for a moment as my foot tenuously stepped on the next rung of
my ladder. A brilliant physicist,
driving an ice cream truck for the summer, reached for my hand and pulled my
love up to the tune of his wanderlust.
With our back packs filled to the brim with everything we needed or could
trade for a good year of travel, we hitchhiked through Europe and Africa, while
reality chipped away at our bravado. Together we became humbler and more awake
to the moment. A new kind of love
bloomed as we shared our resources, and trusted one another to create solutions
to our needs mile after mile. The owl
and the pussycat in the pea green boat.
We were confident in our love when we returned home to marry.
Like a mandolin, our love was tuned and returned. He followed his dreams to change the world. I, unclear of my own purpose, in the shadow of
his charisma, often retracted my love in
self doubt. Unconditional love is the
real meditation. The love I felt was an
infusion, like having a cork popped inside of myself. But I couldn’t keep it in its effervescent
state. The lists of my self doubts grew like weeds among my homemaking duties
and resentfully I questioned again, what is love?
He mused that he would die young. And indeed he did. I became untethered, found myself scrambling
for pieces of myself under our fractured foundations. My love, I recognized was often attached to
the dream that would design who I was and that I was now safe. The scaffolds we had dreamed up, were sitting
on deep hurt that needed to be excavated.
After his passing I took a 6 year turnabout which was often grueling. I had to figure out who I was and how I
work. My earliest memories as a small
person rose. I had known where I had
been before this life. In those memories I felt a strong, bathing, flow. I looked for it. I searched.
Who is in there, who is love? Is
it a who? Is it a Who? Horton hears a who. Where is Horton now that we need him? I didn’t meet a floppy eared pink elephant but I did enjoy some of me – my perspicacity,
curiosity, quick humour, and deepening compassion for people and how
intricately we all work.
That rich descent into who I am, took me on a wild tour
through which foods suit me, past life regressions, energy work of all kinds,
massage. For a few years I was obsessed, who am I?
who am I? It was an expedition that
often propelled me out of a harmonious friendship or two, as our shared dreams
no longer fit. Always there were a few
friends who stood by me, fascinated, but wary.
Slowly I began to understand the love I have for me and how my own defenses, shame and fears had
sheltered it from me. In time self-love peeked through the curtains
of my identities. The next rung was a
huge step up!
I drew up a list - one of my most famous lists - to follow to improve
myself, that I could be more loving in relationships. A wise friend of mine was
merciless. “You and your list” He
guffawed. “Just get into a relationship.
That’s where you’ll know yourself.”
Zing! His words vibrated through
me! And I drafted up a series of
affirmations calling forth a new partner and a few other things in my
life. 23 affirmations in fact on tape
which I ran behind everything I did. Within 2 days I found myself talking to several
different men. I chose one I thought was most enticing. Soon, smitten, I was off and running for the
travelling romance of Israel. My love was even more humbled and yet courageous
now. I made that huge step to the next rung. Definitely I loved him quickly but there were
more questions. What is love? He
and I helped each other out of our rickety boats of defenses as first. We were so loving as we shared our learning
and served each other. I was in fear of being at home. My love
of self, already scanty but emerging, chilled in an aura of his own limitations
on love. Interesting huh? I was learning that unless I could radiate
love to him unconditionally, we couldn’t share it. I kept finding limitations. Some feelings of 'no, it shouldn’t be like
this'. Yet it was. What should I do? Wrangling with his negativity and depressions
I decided I had to move on.
But then – surprise surprise - Big surprise – I was pregnant. I had been affirming “a child if it is
appropriate”. Here she was, this baby, a true test of love. I couldn’t bear to be without her. This new love was a pull, a warm glue of
sorts, whose essence lifted my being to believing in much greater than the
physical dimensions. I could love this
child unequivocally and without boundaries…as long as I could do my daily
chaotic dance meditation, that got me in the rhythms of my far too active
brain, and kept me aware of loving. It
was a new rung.
I had to leave her dad.
My empathy sucked in his depression so while I wanted to evolve and set
myself free from my childhood traumas, I was numbed, stuck in an etheric sand. I had to leave. His personal pain and resistance to change
were like a weight in me. I had to pull
myself away and begin a process of unraveling the reactive fabric I had become
or absorbed. It is so hard to know
whether it is the chicken or the egg. I
packed up my four year old and off we went to a small town where I could start
again and raise this love away from the madding crowds. We were in Sequim.
There I was set up quickly for another rung at love. This
time I became involved with a highly unusual mate for me, a top realtor. I seemed hippyish for him. To me I was proud to be an activist - not a
hippie! But he was so commercial for
me. What we did share was a deep commitment to our spiritual
growth. More than that we simply
couldn’t stay away from one another. I
can still feel our magnetic love. Yet I
was told by my Guides over and over “Do not marry this man.” And I “knew” it would be wrong though he
loved my daughter and me.
So here is the unbelievable strong message that insured that
we wouldn’t stay together! Right from
the first days of the five years of our relationship…visions of another man…a
“see through” blonde man, creative, metaphysical, working his way through
another relationship, was in our lives.
He sat with us in the car, in the kitchen in the living room…fortunately
not in the bedroom. But it was
unnerving. I thought he was a herald (Oh
hark! is that you Herald?) that meant we were to be together and that is why I
shouldn’t marry my realtor lover.
We talked about it honestly.
We saw a counselor about it. We planned the end of our relationship to be
a conscious parting. We met and
meditated daily for a month at 7 AM. In
our meditations his head kept turning into the head of a demon, horns and
all. I thought it meant I was being
negative or needed to poop. That often
darkens one’s visions. He was a good
guy. We were going to be friends
forever. I just “knew” it. My “knowing”
was totally wrong.
Then the invisible prince charming arrived by phone, the
love was palpable. Too early to know you
might say, but I had felt involved with him for five years so that seemed
alright. I loved him already. Three months later by his physical
presence. The realtor and I worked hard
on being friends but in frustration we turned to past life information. It turns out that the three of us had had
past lives in which we had taken turns betraying one another. So
they hated each other and the rage that both of them felt at me, was palpable
and never ending. All our spiritual work
seemed to yank on our invisible
chains.
For me, when the realtor stormed away never to speak to me
again…until he passed that is and our visits across the veil resolved the unspoken…..and when I sent away the etheric
suitor in his flurries of rage and strange misunderstandings, I was reeling at my illusions, deeply lost
and hurt. What is love? My beautiful daughter was heartbroken
longing for home and family and a steady supportive love. Inside I knew a gap between the love I
thought I felt and the attachments that seemed to vitalize it or their
distortions. Remember chutes and
ladders? I had slid down the 99th
chute, stumbling round the bottom of the game board.
I wanted to know what love is.
The tiny town with so many reminders and people who knew us
and made decisions about us and the external realities of my relationship break
ups prickled in their karmic nest. My
search for love had deceived me, the intuitive.
I needed to grow or clear out my old programs unhook attachments and
yearnings for a real love…self and others.
Like a Geiger counter I drove til
I found an electrical frequency in the land that would boost the
transformations of old reactions in my vibrational body.
It was Tucson, AZ where we re established ourselves. I capped my search for love “out there” stung
deeply by my own illusions and the trickery of seeing visions through the lense
of desire. It can often skew our
readings.
Tucson was a learning curve. No lovers.
No men. Lots of new friends and
fellow healers but no romance. I
couldn’t trust my own love to be clear headed.
Nor could I trust that I wouldn’t hurt my daughter further. I was learning the dance between attachment
and desire. A lot of us in the healing
fields have to wander through the weeds of our soul’s history, choosing and
releasing choosing and releasing from the magnetic attraction for
intimacy.
My daughter became as a teenager, enraged at me, at our life
together, and I had to send her to her dad.
I couldn’t bear it, but I couldn’t bear to lose her entirely to
drugs. I love her so much but didn’t
like her during that time and my emerging love capacity was daunted.
I did know by then that I loved a lot and deeply, but it just didn’t
seem to work for me. Back to the drawing
board. I moved myself to the Bay Area to
be near my step daughter.
At a workshop for sacred geometrics, I met a wizard. Sacred Geometrics and Metaphysics we had a
soul and spirit in common. My Guides said
we were soul allies. Not soul
mates. We were meant to push each other
out of our personality forming subconscious programs. To help one another
develop more wholeness. Our relationship
unfolded and together we pulled apart limitations on our selves, drank fresh
veggie juices, explored universes with my Guides and his long term studies with
Lazarus and the levels of blocks on our love whether from past lives or this
life. I worked hard to be home and
family with him, and to evolve my own service into the world. Our love grew through our sharing, step by
step support of one another as gingerly we pointed proverbial toes where he
could finish creating original sound replications, and me, my business of
readings, and radio. The Guides implied
that this was all temporary, which we didn’t quite believe. It just seemed such a deep and safe knowing.
Then devastating
financial circumstances melted down our home, and we were tipped into the
basement to unhook our lifestyle and rebalance our lives. The love that I always feel in my work and
meditations grew. The love he and I shared pulled itself into safety, wrapped
in a kind of tourniquet. I couldn’t hold our lives together. I had to do my dharma, my work in the
world. Chilled to the bone in fear and
loss, I had to work hard to focus on my own work and radiate at a higher
level. I headed out from the damp gentle
northwest to the rich bubbling droughted LA to be near my step daughter and
start again, all over again, at 71. She
and I have often shared a rung of love as we go through changes.
I chuckle. I often
say “I am always at the beginning.” It
keeps my ego at bay while truly opening me to listening to wisdom from people
and guidance. And the love I seek still
grows. My wizard and I have accepted our
physical distances along with our huge losses in a shared stream of love that always
expands. The attachment part of our
love has moved on. Now it is a flowing glue
of support, we have each other’s’ back, that each of us uses separately and as soul
allies, together.
Love is growing in me, at times staggering under the
revelations of deception in which we live politically and economically, but
finding a deepening connection with all that is, the gifts of the many illusions
that guide me and others into our soul’s
work.
Now I pray for another mating opportunity to activate new
levels of true love. I surrender as I
feel the updrafts of the etheric ladder to LOVE.