Beautiful Birthday- love with no opposite-? - Linda

[Guest guest]

>

> I have a question, because what you are saying is my biggest struggle ever and

forever. How to become love without an opposite?...

 

Dear Linda,

 

Thank you for the birthday wishes, that's very nice of you. By the way, when is

your birthday? Post a `its my birthday' note and I can send you blessings

& #61514; this may be a long mail so get your coffee..lol

 

Several things you say resonate. These are some thoughts on your mail, and if

they don't ring true or if they appear like I know what's going on for you, then

I hope you can be ok with that; they are simply from my experience. First,

thanks for sticking your neck out and writing this. Your voice is valuable and I

hope you can begin to, at least mentally for now, accept that. I went through a

process of getting the courage to post, to being okay with the responses, and

now to being able to increasingly share what is going on with me.

 

For a long time, I also felt alienated, not worthy, feeling like I didn't fit

in, and so on. I came from a disempowered family where love was not freely

expressed, I never saw my parents affectionate, my older sisters rejected me

and I was taught `Children should be seen and not heard' and `be grateful for

what you've got'. I can guess that if your Dad oppressed you for so long that

the feeling of not being worthy must be deep in your system and its going to

take some rooting out. ( I will get to the `love without an opposite' in a

moment as there have been several angles to this in my experience). I have had

to go on a healing journey of learning to express my voice, to know that what I

have to say has value, and to know that I am worthy of love. I understand the

struggle, and it's frustrating when someone like me says `I am having such a

wonderful day' when your reality is not one of love, and no matter how much you

want it to be or what you believe, it's just not real for you.

 

So, how do you do this? How do you experience this and make love real? How do

you `be it first so the world can follow? ` First, the safeties are very useful,

so try and live them. Second, there is a powerful meditation practice called

Tonglen, or Compassionate Exchange ( I will attach a summary at the end of the

email) and there is also a guided meditation on the ILP kit from www.myilp.com

which I use a lot. In the practice, you practice embodying the non-dual heart

and strengthening that connection. The kit is worth its weight in gold, so

strongly suggested. In my experience, it is complimentary with K.

 

Then, there is the day to day living, of being aware of the results that you

want in life and how you co-create your current reality. Let me give an example

from my recent experience. I became aware recently that in many of my

relationships, I give more than I get, I accommodate and accept more, and I seem

to be faced with a world where I care and the world doesn't. I became aware that

I was angry about this, I was angry because I wasn't being cared for back. As I

reflected further, I noticed that I felt a had to be something, that giving was

better than receiving, and that I had to earn love, and that I had never felt

deeply worthy, no matter how much positive thinking I tried.. haha. Even though

I have been through an amazing and ongoing healing process, human love was

something that was eluding me. I regularly have powerful experiences of bliss

and feel at peace, yet somehow my human world was still a little barren. I

noticed a slight tension in the presence of people I desired love and acceptance

from, and noticed that I have always given more than I receive. I would go out

my way to meet friends, I always liked to pay, and did this especially for

beautiful women. lol... As I explored this furthur, I noticed that I was more

habitually a disempowered lonely child seeking love and attention from the

world, and then angry when I wasn't getting love back. This dynamic has been so

much a part of me for so long that I didn't notice it, and would play itself out

in subtle ways, and so only when I became very present to what I was doing in

the moment, did I see it.

I desire a relationship where inflow and outflow are equal and simultaneous and

where I feel worthy. So, I began to ask myself how to do this, and why it (love)

didn't seem to be coming into me. Could it be that I was the one that didn't

care? As I continued to explore, I noticed that my desire to `earn love and be

accepted' meant I was always moving out of the present, which contains all the

potential within in for love and bliss and happiness. So (and this is key) this

meant that I was blocking love from coming in as I thought I needed to earn it

first and find it elsewhere, instead of right here, right now. What if I could

just open myself without doing anything?

From that insight, I set the intention, to `open and be worthy'. I started to

stay present in my interactions with people, and stayed present to the slight

inner tension which was there and noticed how it made me want to play out, and I

didn't act from it. What emerged next was the realization that if I believed I

was worthy of love, then I would not accept sh#t. I would act is though I was

worthy and if I didn't get good enough behavior, then I would do something about

it, or leave. If I don't act, or if I complain and do nothing, then I stay

disempowered. Change needs action! At some point you may need to become

fiercely rebellious as you no longer choose to accept the status quo, and choose

instead to act from your higher self (ask for guidance when doing this & #61514;

)

SO, over a few weeks, if friends or colleagues let me down or took advantage,

(and the same thing had happened a few times with the same person) I let them

know that I was not happy with how I was being treated, and I kept it about my

reaction, not their behavior. I decided to start acting as if I was in

relationships where my voice was valued, heard and respected. No more would I

try and change myself to fit into others worlds. Some friends have stayed, and

some I have not heard from. If there is not an equal flow, characterized by

respect, mutual value and a real desire for mutual understanding, then it's not

a relationship I want to be in. At first I was scared doing this as it meant

disturbing the peace, yet tests and challenges as we grow are often actions for

bringing forth a higher good in the face of fear. This may mean some family

dynamics change, and that will be tough. The more confidence you can develop in

your being, in your Spiritual Self, the less you will feel the need to be

something for others. So, just notice whenever you feel the tension be something

else, and don't push it away or get overwhelmed by it, but stay present to it

and get very curious about it and notice how it plays out. That part of you

which is aware of the tension (your presence that has you) is free of it.

 

So, implied in this is the willingness to recognize your value, and act from the

value. There may be some tests as you change how things have always been, and

that will depend on your strength, and your willingness to stay present without

doing anything, knowing God is with you. And so, I just keep opening. I stay

present., and from a place of being present, I practice appreciation, which

opens me furthur. I notice how I want things to be different and I stay present

to that tension until it self-liberates. This is tough work, yet I believe that

the only real change occurs in the moment-by-moment awareness of how results are

being created, and that starts from being present, noticing the pattern

starting, and choosing a different course of action.

 

Along the way, taking the perspective of others and feeling that within yourself

and seeing/feeling the world through their shoes is very powerful, as this will

help the shift from reaction to creation. And then, you can begin to create new

results.

 

What I found is that being a kundalite doesnt necessarily mean I am good in

relationships. I like the model that we have lines of development, and may be

very well developed in some lines (for example our spiritual awareness or in

maths, but not other lines of devlopment, like relationships). This kind of

describes the 'enlightened asshole' phenomenon. I have found that K. has

increased my ability to be present, and then whatever I focus my presence on

(for example how I relate to others) then I start to learn from that experience

and I notice distinctions, and thats where wisdom in that arena of life is

grown...shakti tends to guide the process, and if I just pay attention to what

is happening, then thats the area I learn in..

 

It was an interesting experiment for me to tell everyone about my birthday on

the site, as in the past, I wouldn't have drawn attention to myself, as I had a

history of wanting love yet it being frustrated, and so the wanting became

associated with pain and I eventually stopped bothering. Yet, I wondered what it

would be like to share good news (my birthday and the appreciation) with the K.

family and see if it would come back in. By sharing it I created more

appreciation and more good wishes. Just a point here; when I wrote the birthday

post, I was feeling radiant and open, and really not sharing to `get love', but

sharing as I wanted to share from fullness, and fullness came back.

 

Another useful trick is to learn to change your state into fullness, into

releasing energy. The 5 tibetans do that for me, and so does Compassionate

Exchange – it shifts my state and my energy flow from being deficient to full.

 

Good luck with the journey.

 

Hope that helps

Love and blessings

Bruce

 

1. Compassionate exchange.

 

• Used for: Accepting and working with the present moment.

 

• Our instinctive response is to move away from pain and toward pleasure,

protecting ourselves from discomfort and suffering. If we want to transform

ourselves, we need to be able to stay present to the energy of difficult

experiences and feelings, both within us and outside of us. Compassionate

exchange is a way to stay present to difficult feelings and experiences, and

then to practice releasing them and transforming them. Being able to work with

difficult experiences, instead of running away from them, is empowering. By

working with them, we can learn to hold these difficult experiences within us,

and we can open to the world around us. It is a much easier to stay with

difficult states with your full awareness when you have a practice of

transformation to use. Facing difficult states, and working with them turns you

from a victim into someone who has the power to take action in their life. The

first step in any real transformation is an acceptance of the reality of what

is, and a willingness to begin to work with the reality of the situation.

Compassionate exchange practices bringing loving acceptance to whatever is

arising, and begins to work with the transformation of the difficult energy.

 

Compassionate Exchange.

 

1. Bring your attention to your heart, and breath into and out from the heart.

Remember a time when you felt love or compassion, and this could be done by

recalling any memory of love or compassion Breathe into and out from your heart

a few times to establish the connection to the heart center.

2. Then, allow yourself to feel the suffering that you are resisting, or which

is troubling you, or which somebody else is experiencing. If you are feeling

sadness, or depression, or anxiety, for example, then you simply allow yourself

to feel this fully, wherever it is in your body. If you are doing it for someone

else, then you simply imagine that persons suffering traveling out of their body

and into your heart.

3. You breathe in the difficult feeling to your heart center, and then on the

out breath, you simply breathe out the essence of care, compassion or release

from suffering (from the heart center), and let that feeling of care and release

radiate back out from your heart through your body and out into the world, or

towards the person whose suffering you are attempting to transform.

4. Don't worry if nothing seems to be happening. Just keep on doing the

practice, for a few breaths, or as long as you want, for any length of time.

Sometimes it can be done for 20 minutes or an hour. If you have a persistent

emotion or feeling, then do it periodically throughout the day, or as long as

the discomfort lasts.

5. Then, you imagine all the people in the world who may be experiencing that

same difficult feeling, and you breathe in their pain. Envision yourself among

them as you do the practice. This connects you to a much wider context than just

your own limited self.

6. Notice that your vision of people suffering, yourself and your other

experiences all arise within your awareness, and from your awareness.

7. Done over time, this practice opens you up to more and more of the world, and

you will find yourself increasingly in states of openness and acceptance. When

you feel open and accepting, it is much easier to take actions towards your

goals.