Читать книгу A Lifetime of Love - Daphne Rose Kingma - Страница 8

Creating Depth

APPRECIATE THE MOMENT

T his moment, this day, this relationship, and this life are all exquisite, unique, and unrepeatable. There will be no moment exactly like this one (the yellow light spilling in through the thin white louvers on the window, the sound of the men at work in the street and, in the living room, of the pages of the newspaper turning). There will be no day that repeats precisely the sweet events of this day (the waking and sleeping, the beautiful dreams before waking, the precious and, even, the ordinary conversations, the clothes you have chosen to wear, and the way that today you are wearing them, the way the wind is today, clattering the shutters, scattering the leaves, the thoughts—all sixty thousand of them—that have passed like bright kites through your mind).

There will be no love, no dearly beloved, exactly like this one (the man who pronounces your name in just such a way, with his beautiful voice, the man who brings flowers, whose words move your heart so tremblingly softly, whose arms hold you this way and that way, embracing, consoling, protecting; the woman whose fragrance enchants you, whose head on your chest when you sleep is the sweet weight of bliss, whose kisses are blessings, whose laughter is sunlight, whose smile is pure grace).

There will be no lifetime exactly like this one, no other, not ever again, not this birth, not this particular story, this mother and father, these houses and walls, these strangers and friends—and how we moved through it all, with such beauty, touching each other, dancingly stepping, curtsying, bowing across all the stages, filling the rooms of our lives with this joy, this sweet love.…

There will be no other way to live this life, only the way you have chosen to live it, only the way that, moment by moment, you fill up its houses and cradles and baskets, its cupboards and drawers—with which beautiful things, what small scraps and treasures—and only the way that you fill up your heart—with what feelings, which lovely emotions—and the memory of her standing there, in the light, by the window, her blonde hair in sunlight…and the image of him standing there and saying, “always, forever, till death do us part”—and your mind—with what words, which endlessly coddled concerns, what difficult puzzles and brilliant solutions, what emptiness…waiting for God.

This moment, this day, this relationship, this life are all unique, exquisite, unrepeatable. Live every moment as if you, indelibly, knew this.

ASPIRE TO A SPIRITUAL RELATIONSHIP

To have a spiritual relationship is to consciously acknowledge that above all we are spiritual beings and that the process of our spiritual refinement is our true undertaking in this life. When you have a spiritual relationship, you choose to embody this truth in love. You shift context and focus. Whereas an emotional relationship has as its focus the contents of the relationship itself, a spiritual relationship sees the spirit's well-being and the soul's journey as its overriding undertaking. Whereas the romantic relationship operates in time, the spiritual union has timeless infinity as its context. Rather than framing itself in life on earth, it knows that we are all far more than we appear to be, and it joy-fully claims as its territory a cosmos that radiates and scintillates, that includes an infinity of angels, and all the stunning coincidental events that are the mysterious instruments of God.

When you love one another in spirit, along with loving, desiring, cherishing, adoring, and protecting your beloved, you will also be the champion of your beloved's spiritual well-being, ensuring that she will make the choices that will allow for her soul's evolution. This may mean creating a quiet environment in which your spirits can flourish, or doing those things—meditating, praying, throwing away the television set—that will encourage a reunion of your souls.

To have an intimate relationship that is also spiritual defies our Western ordinary thinking, for, in a spiritual relationship, we are not seeking the satisfactions of the ego in a conventional way. Instead, we are aware that we are spirits and that we are on the spirit's journey.

The spiritual relationship is gracious, easy, considerate, and kind. Because it has stepped off the merry-go-round of ego concerns, it can be generous and patient, can behold the beloved not just as a person doing this or that, but as a soul on a journey. For, to the spiritually beloved, there is always a sense of this greater focus. Because of it, each action and experience takes on a different coloration. The disappointments of the moment and even the tragedies of a lifetime are seen not as happenings which are absolutes in themselves but finite, irritating specks on the larger screen of vision.

A great spiritual love does not exclude the psychological and physical—in any spiritual relationship the partners will always support each other in these realms with healing and attention—but when you love one another in the spirit, your love will also be a reminder of the infinite context, the true destination. Remembering this will give your love an exalted, crystalline, and truly luminous quality. For if your emotional relationship is a jewel, your spiritual relationship is the light that shines through it.

REJOICE TOGETHER

When we think of being with one another emotionally, we ordinarily think of empathizing with one another in times of pain or misery. While it's certainly true that in our sufferings we have a great need for empathy, we also need positive empathy—rejoicing—a delighted feeling with and for all our joys.

Rejoicing is feeling joy, allowing the feelings of exhilaration and delight to enter your being and fill you with a fine, ecstatic sense of celebration. We all need to rejoice, to slather ourselves with exultation, because life is hard; and at times our paths are very difficult. We need to rejoice because joy is our true state of being; and when we rejoice, we return to joy for a moment. We need to rejoice because there isn't enough rejoicing in the world. And we need to rejoice together because, in this world of self-involvement and nonstop competition, it's often hard to find a kindred soul with whom to rejoice.

Rejoicing is empathy at the encouraging end of the spectrum; and, although you may think it's easier to rejoice than to commiserate with someone, rejoicing, too, can be difficult. As a matter of fact, a lot of people feel so defeated in their own lives that instead of being able to celebrate with anyone else, they feel jealousy or self-pity. Indeed, unless you've really been able to feel your own joy, you may have a difficult time rejoicing, even with your beloved.

So in order to rejoice together—to double your joy, to share your beloved's pleasures, and to truly celebrate them—allow yourself to rejoice first of all in your own life, about all the things that delight you, that brighten your day, that make your heart glad. Celebrate your victories, exult in your own achievements. Then you'll be well prepared to really rejoice with your sweetheart.

Rejoicing together is breathing in joy, being together at the moment of beauty (of soul-washing tears, of life-changing praise), in the hour of unbridled happiness, of sweet—or stunning—success. It is to be the loving witness at the epiphany of a talent (his book, her photography exhibit, his all-star game, her tennis match), to celebrate special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, life achievement awards. It is also to rejoice in all the cycles of your love—times and years you have shared, crises you have lived through, reunions that rekindled your love, and even all the good fights and their healing resolutions.

We must rejoice together because joy begets itself. It brings us more joy, more hilarity, a greater sense that life is radiance, splendor, pleasure, and fun. So one by one and, above all, together, rejoice!

OPEN TO THE ECSTATIC ENERGY

Life is breath, movement. So long as you are capable of movement, you inhabit life and the energy of life inhabits you. In this state, every step you take, every word you utter, every thought that passes through the magic electronic circuitry of your brain, every single gesture you enact is an expression of your vivid aliveness, a sign that you are a mortal, alive human being.

In relationships, we join these energies with one another through passion and affection. Sexuality and sensuality are the media of our passionate connection, the arena where flesh and spirit meet; and affection is the medium through which we express our fond, caring love.

Sometimes in our overemphasis on verbal communication, we forget that we are also bodies and that as physical beings, too, we have a unique and powerful language. In our bodies, we “feel” and know things often before we can even begin to articulate them. Through our bodies, we share our love in an immediate, instinctual way that conveys a depth of feeling beyond words.

The language of the body is this energy, the invisible, ecstatic, pulse which is the essence of life itself. We often think of our aliveness only as form—the bodies we inhabit—and not as the force of life, or energy, that flows through them. In so doing, we miss the opportunity to feel our own aliveness, and, in relationships, to be nourished by that mysterious spiritual commodity that is another person's “energy.” Yet it is precisely the “energy”—of a city, a person, a particular piece of music or an emotional exchange—that actually moves us at the deepest level. Nothing reveals this more clearly than a body which, through illness, is being drained of its energetic essence; and no one demonstrates the existence of this energy more beautifully than children.

In our intimate relationships, when we shift our attention from the material form—what we look like, what we're wearing, how in or out of shape we are—and move it into the energetic realm, we enter the grand, new, mystical arena in which we experience love itself as an expression of this energy. Instead of feeling it only as an emotion, we also sense it as a mystic invisible pulse, the heart-filling throb, the luminous shivers that tell our bodies we have truly “felt” our love.

To move your consciousness from the awareness of substance to energy, and to seek the persons whose energy, for you, is ecstatic, is to immediately expand your repertoire of love. When you do, you will not only be able to talk about the love you feel, you will actually be able to “feel” it as the tingling, brilliant, ecstatic, life essence in your body. So open your heart—and every cell of your being—to the luminous life-changing wisdom that is your soul's ecstatic energy.

STOP TRYING SO HARD

Most of us conduct our lives primarily through a combination of effort, exertion, and ambition: If I work hard, then…If it's very difficult, then…If I keep at it, then…If I do it better, longer, or stronger than anyone else, then…surely, I'll be successful, achieve my ambitions.

This inclination toward the difficult, demanding, and competitive is so much the hallmark of our culture that it has become a knee-jerk reaction in our personal lives as well. It is an occupation of the mind and a preoccupation of the personality; it is the antithesis of grace, of ease.

Unfortunately, the same sad predilection toward effort that we apply to work we also apply to love. We use the ghastly expression that we are “working on” our relationships, as if they were cars that needed repairs or gold mines from which with endless effort we might dredge up the sacred paydirt of a wonderful relationship.

When we look at love in this way, we degrade it. Love becomes a project instead of a miracle, and we miss the fruits of its marvelous quirkiness. We can become so involved with “working on” it, “sharing” our feelings, “trying” to communicate better, or “learning” how to negotiate, that love, the mysterious power that brought us together in the first place, is all but stifled in the process.

This isn't to say that a good relationship doesn't prosper from the appropriate forms of focused attention, but rather that if you become fixated on it in this way, you'll squeeze out all the juice and be left with nothing but an empty rind.

The truth is that most of the things we try for in life are just that—trials and trying. But when we slip, by accident, into the effortless space, we stand face-to-face with the miracle—and the lesson—that the things that move us most deeply are almost always a gift.

Love, real love, is a grace, unattainable through effort. It is a gift of the spirit, not a consequence of endeavor. It is not an outcome to be worked toward, but a treasure to be received. So when love magically, spontaneously appears, don't try; just let it in. And when your relationship whimsically, unexpectedly, grandly, offers you beautiful moments, don't try to analyze or repeat them, just open your heart and allow them to burst into bloom.

CAST OFF YOUR PRIDE

Pride is a spurious, dangerous emotion that can stand in the way of deep love. It's what you feel when your truer feelings are too hard to feel—that you have been (or may be) abandoned, that you're not enough, that your looks, achievements, wealth, social status, clothes, children, houses, jobs, professions, won't in some way (or in some important context that you're measuring by) measure up.

Pride is what we have, do, feel, preserve, instead of all of the above. It gets us through the rough times, allows us, in difficult circumstances, in spite of our feared inadequacies, to carry on. But pride, embedded, taken on as a personality trait, is a dangerous attribute. It stands between you and what is or might be: love, a new friend, the healing of an old wound, a better job, a kiss, a miracle.

When you get too involved with your pride—the way you think you ought to be treated, how important you are, how insulted you feel because “they” overlooked you—you miss what's right in front of your eyes—this beautiful, unrepeatable moment, to say nothing of the chance to step forward exactly as yourself.

Pride in relationships creates distance. If you want to be treated like a proud, kingly, lion, you can be; but you'll be all alone in the jungle. Instead of coming to your beloved in vulnerability, revealing yourself, asking for what you need and allowing her beautiful love to flow in, you'll stand like the Wizard of Oz in her presence, all puffed up with your pride, insisting she be your accomplice in shoring up your illusions.

We often use the phrase “pride and joy” to speak of who or what makes us proud, gives us joy. In that sense, pride is a heart-swelling joy. But pride as a private emotional stance is the antithesis of joy. Far from bringing you joy, it will stand in joy's way. Joy thrives on freedom; joy flows. If the place in your heart that is longing for joy is already jammed full of pride, joy, the unwelcome guest, may just slip away.

So give up your pride. It may preserve your dignity, protect you from all the judgments you fear, but, in the end, all it will do for you, really, is leave you alone…with your pride.

DISCOVER SEX AS SACRED REUNION

Our sexuality is one of the loveliest, most complex, and satisfying aspects of our intimate relationships. It is where we gather in the flesh to be joined, connected, and bonded. It can bring us joy or disappointment. It can be the source of our most painful betrayals, or of the highest moments of our ecstatic love.

Just as bringing our bodies together in the sexual encounter reminds us that we are bodies, essentially physical beings, so orgasm, the moment of blossoming ecstasy, connects us to the spiritual essence within us. Taken in total, making love is the movement of the mystic, electric current that bears eloquent witness to the fact that we are not just physical beings but temples where the spirit resides.

To apprehend your lovemaking in this way is to move toward the sacred in your sexual relationship. It is to ask more of it, give more to it, and receive more, far more, from it than you can ever expect from the how-to-improve-your-sex-life articles in popular magazines. Although handy-dandy advice columns and erotic manuals may indeed solve some of your sexual machinery problems, they will drop you off at the doorway of sex as a gymnasium, romance novel, or power trip, leaving you with only a sensate thrill. Thus you are denied the magnificent opportunity of experiencing your sexual encounters as a spiritual reunion of the highest order.

In making love, it is not only our bodies that are happily and deliciously engaged; but, because of the irresistible magnetism that sexual attraction is, we are also invited to contemplate in the mind and actually experience in the body the spirit which lives and moves within us.

Through sex we enter the timeless, boundary-less moment. We partake of the one experience above all others in life which allows us the bliss of true union. Here ego and all its concerns are erased, and the self is dissolved in utter surrender. To know, feel, and discover this in the presence of another human being, as we are invited to do in making love, is to be brought face-to-face with one of the greatest mysteries of human existence—that we are spirit, embodied; and that, as human beings, we are partaking in this miracle.

To experience your sexual relationship in this way is to elevate it to the sacred encounter it is. In so doing, you will experience your body as a vessel of the divine, your orgasm as a gift of the spirit, and your beloved as he or she with whom you are gifted to share a taste of eternal bliss.

BE EXTRAVAGANT WITH YOUR PRAISE

Everybody has hundreds of attributes to be praised—even a total stranger. If you stopped for a moment and looked at the person beside you on the bus, ahead of you at the check-out stand, pumping gas at the service station, you could see, sense, hear, feel something so fine, or beautiful, or true about that human being that you would realize how worthy it is of being remarked upon. And if you uttered that praise, that mini-celebration of this person's specialness, you just might see a stranger suddenly burst into bloom.

How much more, then, does your beloved, the one special being you've chosen to honor, cherish, enjoy, and merit the celebrating words of praise, admiration, and acknowledgment that will make his or her heart sing? All too often, proximity breeds, if not contempt, then blindness and amnesia. We forget to acknowledge those sterling attributes, whimsical quirks, and singular passions that caused us to fall in love in the first place. Once we've “captured” a mate (precisely because of all the attributes we so cherish and admire—her beautiful eyes, his wonderful wit, the amazing softness of her skin, his big bear rug of a chest), we often get lazy, stingy even, with the warm bath of praise that could wash away hurts and deepen our bonds of connection.

It's as if we use praise as a lure, to snag somebody to love, but then seem to forget that praise—the out-loud, out-spoken, uproarious celebration of all the things that are good, great, special, and rare about that one very fine person—is really the life's breath of love.

Praise opens the heart and refreshes the soul of the one who is praised. It sculpts and enhances the very behaviors it honors, encourages them to multiply. Praise creates change. It refashions the soul. By quietly showing forth the magnificence already there, it inspires the ongoing creation of an ever finer human being.

So if you want joy in your relationship, an enduring sense of its specialness, the feeling that you are loved by (and are loving) a most extraordinary human being, be accurate, consistent, generous, and extravagant with your praise.

ACCEPT THE GLORIOUS COMPROMISES OF LOVE

There is a component of sacrifice to every intimate relationship, no matter how blissful or harmonious it may be. When you choose to love one person in a special, committed way, you are unchoosing—or giving up—your option to choose all others, for a time at least, in that same particular way.

Love—the feeling—and “being in love”—the ravishing experience—make us willing, even daredevilishly eager, to make these sacrifices. It's a joy to choose one above all others, a delight to feel graced and blessed by your beloved's uniquely delicious and heartwarming presence.

But this choosing, grand as it is and willing as we are to make it, is also symbolic of the many choices, little renunciations and revisions of priority that, for love, we shall come to make as we walk the path of relationships. There's a great deal we do (or discontinue doing) precisely and only because we love. Jane postponed graduate school to care for Paul's two children, whose mother had died of cancer. Mark moved out of the house he'd built for himself to live in the town where René, his new love, was a tenured professor.

Such revisions are only the tip of the iceberg. Each day, in love, you will be faced with decisions and choices, invited to make compromises which represent a willingness to meet your beloved halfway on the playing field of love. Thus, you may find yourself adapting to uncomfortable schedules or meticulous (or sloppy) housekeeping habits (the proverbial toothpaste folded up wrong—or far too perfectly), taking vacations you never imagined (but ended up loving anyway), preparing foods you never even liked, or entering into financial arrangements that stretch your equanimity to the limit.

A compromise—what you do for love—needs to be just that: a conscious revision of your own preferences. As such, it becomes a creative, imaginative act, an opportunity to expand, to experience life in a new and surprisingly beautiful frame. But above all, it shows you the depth of your love. For when we smooth off the corners of our own dogmatic priorities, we reach toward one another. In so doing we see that love, the deep recognition of the soul of our beloved—and not all the endless particulars of life—is truly the most important thing there is.

ATTEND TO THE UNFOLDING

Your relationship is constantly in a state of evolution. Like the river, ever moving, you can never step into the same current twice. When you “fall in love,” there are certain things that draw you to a person, hook you in, connect you, and then, as time goes on, things change. You change. He or she changes. The way you were together is changed—through aging and illness, by external events (earthquakes, drops and gains in the stock market), and internal revisions (emotional and spiritual awakenings), or by the direction that, because of personal or economic necessity, you find your mutual life taking. (He had asthma; we moved to New Mexico. She lost her job; we joined the Peace Corps.)

You may have had an idea of what you wanted your relationship to look like, the direction you hoped it would take; but life and its surprising little tricks will probably tease you off your intended path. As it does, the actual events and external circumstances you face will also become a map of what's happening to you and your beloved inside your relationship.

Paying attention to what's happening, therefore, and communicating about it, is of the utmost importance. It will keep you real. It will also keep you in conscious contact with each other—and with all the changes your partner may be going through as his or her individual life (and your mutual one) unfolds. Keeping in touch (and being aware of each other's feelings) is the stuff that intimacy is made of. If you stop paying attention (or communicating), you may lose the feeling of deep connection that lies at the heart of love.

But paying attention also has a larger purpose. Life is shaping us all the time, and we are being constantly invited to move toward the deeper layers of ourselves—and of life itself—through all the experiences that life doles out to us. In a similar way, as your relationship unfolds, it is asking you to expand. For example, you may be being asked to express yourself more—to cry, to get angry, to say the things you were afraid of saying—or to find a way to go deeper together—to join a discussion group, to meditate, to pray.

But whatever you do, life and your relationship are constantly inviting you to change. If you're not paying attention, you may miss brilliant opportunities—to make more money, to embark on a new career, to open your heart, to create a deeper sexual relationship, to expand the reach of your love.

So always notice what's happening—to yourself, to your heart, to your mutual life, and, above all, to your beloved—so you won't miss a single chance to spice up, shore up, deepen, enhance, or renew your marvelous relationship.

LIE IN THE ROSE PETALS

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could just say, “Come lie with me in the rose petals,”—if you had the rose petals to lie in, if you had enough time to lie down, sweetly, deliciously, in them, if you had the beautiful imagination to whisper such words in the first place.