"Training is needed in order to love properly..."---Thich Nhat Hanh

"There are different kinds of voices calling you...and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-interest."
---Frederick Buechner

"Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself- if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself- it is very difficult to take care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it's clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice. [Shambhala Sun March 2006 ]"
---Thich Nhat Hahn

"Our deepest calling is to grow into our authentic self-hood."
---Parker Palmer

"It is precisely because our present life is so inseparably linked with desire that we must make use of desire's tremendous energy if we wish to transform our life into something transcendental."
---Introduction to Tantra

"People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?"
---Thich Nhat Hanh

"Woman was taken out of man; not out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled underfoot; but out of his side to be equal to him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be loved."
---Unknown

"If you use love as an escape, the euphoria is unlikely to last long. However much we may try, we can never run away from ourselves. We will never find happiness if we don’t change ourselves from within."
---Unknown

"This is how we love, Buddha-style: impartial to all, free from excessive attachment or false hope and expectation; accepting, tolerant, and forgiving. Buddhist non-attachment doesn't imply complacence or indifference, or not having committed relationships or being passionately engaged with society, but rather has to do with our effort to defy change and resist the fact of impermanence and our mortality. By holding on to that which in any case is forever slipping through our fingers, we just get rope burn."
---Unknown

"Some people live closely guarded lives, fearful of encountering someone or something that might shatter their insecure spiritual foundation. This attitude, however, is not the fault of religion but of their own limited understanding. True Dharma leads in exactly the opposite direction. It enables one to integrate all the many diverse experiences of life into a meaningful and coherent whole, thereby banishing fear and insecurity completely."
---Lama Thubten Yeshe

"Hinayana teachings focus on personal conduct; getting your own life together. Mahayana teachings are about what naturally happens next: your heart opens to others. You can’t help it. So the Mahayana is about compassion and recognizing the profound interconnectedness of all phenomena.
The Vajrayana is about working with every circumstance as an opportunity for complete enlightenment. Here one finds teachings on ordinary magic, crazy wisdom, and auspicious coincidence—the ways the world conspires to introduce you to your true nature.
With these ridiculously superficial explanations, let’s look at the four noble truths and the three yanas in light of relationships."
http://www.susanpiver.com/wordpress/2008/03/05/buddhism-and-relationships-four-noble-truths-three-yanas/


"Four Noble Truths of Relationships

1. Relationships are deeply uncomfortable.Whether it’s your first date or tenth anniversary, there is simply an enormous amount of discomfort involved in relationships. We’re afraid of being hurt, disappointed, overtaxed, ignored. The interesting part is that all these things happen. This is just the way it is, even in happy relationships.
The thing no one tells you is that it’s impossible to stabilize a relationship. Yes, I really mean those italics. Impossible. The emotional exchange between two people shifts like grains of sand in the desert: some days you can see forever and some days you just have to take cover because something kicked up out of nowhere and now sh-t is flying all over the place. You can’t see two feet in front of you and it stings. On still other occasions, imperceptible winds cause little piles to slowly accumulate until, one day, a familiar path is altogether blocked. You just can’t tell what’s going to happen. And just like hiking in the desert, you have to be as absorbed in the present moment as you are attuned to atmospheric indicators. Woe to she whose attention to either lapses.
The bad news is you never get to where you thought you were going. You get somewhere else instead. The good news is that there’s basically no way to have a boring relationship.

2. Discomfort comes from trying to make the relationship comfortable. At the root of the discomfort is the wish that it wouldn’t be uncomfortable, that we could eventually find the “right” person and relax. But the truth is that when you do find the (or a) right person, it’s anything but relaxing: your neuroses, their neuroses, and all the hopes and fears you’ve ever had about love flood your situation. Whether you bargained for it or not, you get introduced to your deepest self while someone else is trying to introduce you to their deepest self. It can get very confusing. But instead of wasting time trying to make it not confusing, better to dive right in and be really nice to each other as you consider the root of your own and his/her confusion. (Acting nice to each other in the midst of confusion is love. Shhh.) (PS Acting nice doesn’t always mean being all sweet and demure. But I digress.)

3. It’s the inability to create safety that plots the path to love.True love seems to exist on some mysterious edge of its own. It can’t be controlled and when you try, it calcifies. To keep it alive, at some point you just have to let go and see what happens.
When you work with all this nuttiness, love becomes more than mere romance. It turns into something way better: intimacy. Romance has got to end, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. But intimacy? It has no end. You can’t be, “oh, intimacy, we’ve done that. What comes next?” Nothing comes next. That’s it. Discuss.

4. It is possible to work with the uncertainty skillfully.Instead of flinging yourself kamikaze-like into the flame of love, you can train in working with the heat. As with anything you consider important (or life-threatening, for that matter), you don’t want to just show up and hope for the best. You want to play the odds.

Applying the view of the three yanas could help.
Three Yanas

1. Hinayana


As mentioned, Hinayana teachings are about personal conduct: right speech, right action, and so on. You get your own life in order through discipline, honor, and effort. You know how to make your bed, pick up your clothes, and make it to work on time. Basic stuff, but without which everything simply falls apart. Very important.
When applied to relationships, Hinayana view could mean things like calling someone when you say you will. Being on time. Having good manners. Listening when they talk and other such radical propositions.


2. Mahayana


When you are a stand-up human being, you can extend yourself to another in a more profound way. In fact, you want to. It just happens. You could find love and actually enjoy it.
Once you get into a relationship however, you find out something pretty disturbing: you have to love them back.
For whatever reason, all the relationship books and TV shows in the world seem to be about how to get love, not how to give it–which is quite a complicated proposition. Here’s the problem: most of us aren’t looking for someone to love. We’re looking for someone to cast in the role of boyfriend or girlfriend. Central casting, send me someone who has a job, a car, and speaks English! (My stringent requirements for potential boyfriends, back in the day.) You can get as specific as you want when you send in your requisition (I need someone with brown hair who likes dogs but not cats, enjoys rowing, and has never eaten at Hooters), but eventually that person is going to break character. Then what? Alarmingly, you have to dispense with all your requirements and have a look at the actual person in front of you. You see that this person is as important as yourself. This is the very teeny-tiny beginning of compassion: when you agree not to be the most important person on earth. But that’s okay. Now you can start to figure out what it really means to love.

3. Vajrayana

If the Vajrayana teachings are about meeting the circumstances of everyday life as a potential moment of transformation, then applied to relationships it could mean something like this: Every single thing that happens between you and your beloved is an opportunity to love more. Everything. Even crappy stuff.
Just as no one can tell you how to make giving birth or spilling your coffee into an opportunity to attain enlightenment, no one can tell you how to do so when your beloved leaves you for someone else or fails to empty the dishwasher. (Although he promised he would.) Big or small, heart crushing or annoying, delightful or irritating, no matter what happens, in the Vajrayana view it is fodder for wakefulness, for love. And just as with Vajrayana meditation practices, you can read books about how to do them and even have a great person teach them to you, but at some point you’re on your own. You have to figure it out for yourself.
The willingness to try is love itself. Isn’t it?http://www.susanpiver.com/wordpress/2008/03/05/buddhism-and-relationships-four-noble-truths-three-yanas/

"When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable."
---Thich Nhat Hanh


"Training is needed in order to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice DEEP LOOKING directed toward the other person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly. Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love. That is the message of the Buddha. [True Love. A Practice for Awakening the Heart.]"
---Thich Nhat Hanh

"Rahula, practice loving kindness to overcome anger. Loving kindness has the capacity to bring happiness to others without demanding anything in return. Practice compassion to overcome cruelty. Compassion has the capacity to remove the suffering of others without expecting anything in return. Practice sympathetic joy to overcome hatred. Sympathetic joy arises when one rejoices over the happiness of others and wishes others well-being and success. Practice non-attachment to overcome prejudice. Non-attachment is the way of looking at all things openly and equally. This is because that is. Myself and others are not separate. Do not reject one thing only to chase after another. I call these the four immeasurables. Practice them and you will become a refreshing source of vitality and happiness for others."
---Buddha

"Grasping at things can only yield one of two results: Either the thing you are grasping at disappears, or you yourself disappear. It is only a matter of which occurs first."
---Goenka

"We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love."
---Thich Nhat Hanh

Compassion: The definition is: wanting others to be free from suffering. This compassion happens when one feels sorry with someone, and one feels an urge to help. The near enemy is pity, which keeps other at a distance, and does not urge one to help. The opposite is wanting others to suffer, or cruelty. A result which one needs to avoid is sentimentality. Compassion thus refers to an unselfish, de-tached emotion which gives one a sense of urgency in wanting to help others. From a Buddhist perspective, helping others to reduce their physical or mental suffering is very good, but the ultimate goal is to extinguish all suffering by stopping the process of rebirth and the suffering that automatically comes with living (enlightenment).


"The point of Buddhist meditation is not to stop thinking, for cultivation of insight clearly requires intelligent use of thought and discrimination. What needs to be stopped is conceptualisation that is compulsive, mechanical and unintelligent, that is, activity that is always fatiguing, usually pointless, and at times seriously harmful."
---Allan Wallace

"The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves 'inside the skin' of the other. We 'go inside' their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the subject of our observation. When we are in contact with another's suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, 'to suffer with.'"
---Thich Nhat Hahn

"To open ourselves to the truth and to bring ourselves face to face with our personal and collective reality is not an option that can be accepted or rejected. It is an undeniable requirement of all people and all societies that seek to humanize themselves and to be free."
---Bishop Juan Gerardi

"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
---Matthew 6:21

Since love resides in us and around us, since love resides everywhere, you would think that it would make sense that love would be our very essence. Well, it IS; we are just fairly unfamiliar with our deepest and highest Self. We typically exist in a sort of "rational" cocoon which separates us mentally from all that we ultimately ARE. Some call this cocoon Maya. But this rational plane called Maya, also, gives us a unique identity within the cosmosphere.

As mankind, we inherently know that we are experiencing something extraordinary as we learn all about living. Some of us respond favorably to this extraordinary aspect of life which calls us forward, makes us want to go on, and gives us drive. Some of us respond with shock, fear, anger, or some other type of negative energy. The perception there is that the "something" is too powerful next to our darkened and heavy, mass-like beings.

In the beginning, our spirits were unavoidably in the dark about what that extraordinary "something" IS. Every human spirit is first birthed on planet earth. From that starting point, the spirits then must grow and develop. They must learn how to open themselves to the Light---Be the Light. This takes time. It is a process. And as the spiritual process procedes, the purity of the "something" that each of us is immersed in, causes our individual and collective body-soul-spirit-mind to question and to wonder. To live.


We find that we are eternal creatures. We are, in fact, Divine orchestrations. And that "something" we are immersed in is Love Divine. No matter what, that Divine Love is all-encompassing. It is a permanent state of being for all of us. [There are many stories to the contrary, but consult your heart for the Truth. Love IS.]


Life is not closed in a box of sheltered desires, rules, regulations and/or ideas. Life beckons us forth...over and over again. It explodes and collapses. It gives and gives. It knows us long before we know it; and yet, does it? For it IS everywhere. It WAS and it WILL BE. It is to be gotten. It is to be given. It is to be breathed. It is just to be.


Our soul which is dowsed in eternal bliss is the vehicle that comes and goes throughout our incarnational growths and developments. The soul unfolds just as it is supposed to. Its awakenings are timely. Our soul does not move prematurely. It does not move late. It is sovereignly motivated. And there is no such thing as a soul that fails to know the Great I AM. THE GREAT I AM IS.

Life doesn't reign over God. God reigns over life. God is life. God IS/WAS/WILL BE.


Reviewing Christian Scripture, there is an indication that there are souls that have come and gone and there are souls that are in current existence. The reason for all this is relationship with Love [God]: Through it [Him], with it [Him], in it [Him], for it [Him], etc.
"We did not invent our mission, and our mission is not a new one, rather we received it just like those who have gone before us. We have been moved by God and motivated by his Spirit as we learn from the life stories of those who have taken the journey already. Some of the stories that have shaped our mission are the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Joshua, Deborah and Gideon, Samuel and David, Isaiah and Esther, Peter and James, Priscilla and Aquilla, Paul and John, as well as those who have been shaped by their stories - Ignatius, Augustine, Aquinas, St. Francis, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Corrie Ten Boom, Mother Theresa and those who aren't well known, but are living faithful lives devoted to God.

Jesus of course is the climax of the story and the head of our mission today. Both the scriptures and the Church to which Jesus gave the keys of the kingdom, help us to keep faithful to the mission.

The Renaissance movement birthed a whole new era of thinking, knowing and perceiving, and in many ways a fresh wave of creativity and invention was birthed. In the same way we have entered a new era in which our understanding is expanding in how we gain knowledge and see reality. We are called to understand our times and engage with the world in which we find ourselves in with great wisdom.

Jesus once said that you cannot pour new wine into old wineskins, because the new wine would not be able to be contained in the old wineskins. New times require new approaches. The good news is that the message of God is such that it can never be contained to a particular people or a specific time, but it is cosmic in nature, meant for all people in all times. We are to learn from the past, engage in the present, and prepare for the future. Our context, the scripture, the spirit and the community of God help us to determine the best way in which we live out the story of God faithfully and effectively.

Shalom is the way in which the prophets talked about a day when all things would be put right again. Those things that have become corrupt and polluted would be re-made in such a way that it would take our breath away. Through imagery and story, their words painted a picture of how things are supposed to be. People would no longer be looked at as tools and property in the hands of the powerful, but as people made in the very image of God. People would not try to build their own kingdoms in which they rule in their own way, but would gladly be a part of the kingdom of God, letting God be God, so that peace would prevail in the world. They pictured a world in which the environment that was originally created good would become freed of the curse. They spoke of a place in which people would genuinely love each other.

Then Jesus came along and said something that is utterly amazing. When his followers asked him how to pray, one of the profound statements he made was that we should actually pray that these things would come about. He said to pray, "May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." He was telling his followers to pray for the coming shalom, pray that the world would be made right again. That peace and beauty would prevail over violence and corruption. In the same way, Jesus invites us all to become active participants in bringing the hope of the prophets to reality. And though we won't see the fullness of that reality immediately, we can live with great hope that Jesus will finish what he started. Until then, we are to pray and work so that what is true in heaven would be true on earth."
http://kairos.la/beliefs/

God is Love and Love is God. This IS a constant. But we, also, ARE always love, too. Our bodies were designed perfectly for each of our incarnations. Our souls were made to be molded and shaped through the changes of our being. Each life we have an opportunity to live is an experience we have to bring us closer to the I AM of us and the I AM of God which ultimately are One in the same.


To discern the illusion of the Maya that seemingly separates all that is, we need only begin to drop the pretenses of what we think we should be: Our mental armor of knowledge that was assigned at birth and padded frequently throughout our years of existence.

To get to the quick of that which we already ARE, we need only begin to trust our heart (our real and inextinguishable Love, our internal residence of Divinity, our God Spot) which houses the Power of the Universe---the Source of All that IS/WAS and WILL BE.

Mankind by necessity has to learn its way through the cocoon-like rational exterior in which it temporarily abides. [This is often referred to as Enlightenment.] From my perspective, today's necessity---the cocoon---was actually a choice mankind made way back when. Therefore, breaking through that mental barrier of Maya is a primary destination for humanity. It provides us with our individuality. It enables us to choose for ourselves. It prepares us to love with maturity and grace. It calls us by name. It is the Way---our Way.


I come from a Protestant Christian foundation, so that Scripture is what I am most familiar with. [There are other belief systems that render a congruent story of the Beginning. Please seek them out. There is such beauty in diversity!] And in Protestant Christianity the Beginning of time included the first man called Adam, and the first woman called Eve.


I have been enamored with the tale for years, but I will condense Adam and Eve's story as I know it today. First, Adam failed to live according to God's will.

[Is this possible since God is sovereign??? Christian theologist, Dr. R.C. Sproul, states his point on sovereignty as, "The answer to that question will not determine whether you are a Christian or a Muslim, a Calvinist or an Armenian, but it will determine whether you are a theist or an atheist." Sometimes the students can't see the connection. And I say to them, "Don't you realize that if there is one molecule in this universe running around loose outside the scope or the sphere of God's Divine control and authority and power, then that single maverick molecule may be the grain of sand that changes the entire course of human history, that blocks God from keeping the promises He has made to His people?" It may be that one maverick molecule that will prevent Christ from the consummation of His kingdom. For if there is one maverick molecule, it would mean that God is not sovereign. If God is not sovereign, then God is not God. If there is any element of the universe that is outside of His authority, then He no longer is God over all. In other words, sovereignty belongs to deity. Sovereignty is a natural attribute of the Creator. God owns what He makes, and He rules what He owns. Reprinted by permission of Ligonier Ministries from "Now That's A Good Question" http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/9170/SPROUL10.HTM ]



Adam willingly subjected himself to his manly desire for Eve and the mysteries of Life. He ate of the forbidden fruit in the center of the Garden of Eden that Eve spoke of so passionately. [She had been bitten by the "fangs" of subtle deceit. Satan, in the form of a serpent, tempted her with lofty ideations and sweetened versions of his truth.]

Suddenly, beyond reproach, Adam knew the tree of knowledge, and in doing so he lost his and his descendants' free access to the Tree of Life (He made his first independent choice while being ill-advised of the various repercussions).

Furthermore, the main effect of that choice was that Adam naively and jointly selected the path of death for all men and women. He and all his descendants would eventually return to the dust from which they were originally molded and made. All people would know the intricacies of genetics.

[Uh, haven't many of us been cursing their ability to makes decisions?!? Especially those of us who have aspired to be "goody two shoes" most of our lives!]


I believe it is this first attempt at the decision-making process that created mankind's embryonic Way. Life eternal was at once hidden in the cloak of "knowledge-oriented" mystery (the biggest encryption case ever). I am sure the Heavenly Father in all His mercy conceived that to live forever without knowing love as a personal choice would have been a fate far worse than bodily death.

From my perspective, God knew all that would Be (He is omniscient); and like a parent who teaches and teaches and teaches His child, God played a loving game of "hide and seek" with his mortal delights.

God had already touched his belligerent and brightest angel, the highly creative Lucifer, with a "wand of disgrace." Lucifer, by obstinate choice, was thrown from the heavens and became sainted as the lowest, most despicable character sent to rule the earth for a bit. Satan for a time [a mere moment in the field of infinity] was crowned a master illusionist of Maya. As a result, he was initally forced to crawl upon his belly in a continual reminder state of humility; and it was that twisted, pride-ridden position that he willingly locked himself into being. There was no written release for the king of hell.

Mankind from that point on would need special guidance; and for some human lives, absolute deliverance would be imperative.

Mankind's heart would often feel faint, unsure, and without direction. Man and woman would find struggle with that which they did not already know. Mankind would need education. Mankind would be suspect of ignorance and influence. Mankind would cry for redemption. Mankind would know the power of the One outside of its most rational experience. Mankind would feel unable to face its inner being just yet. And as a result, Mankind would forever seek the healing salve that only Love could provide. Man and woman would live for total reconciliation with the parts of themselves that were harbored in the safe-keeping of the Great IAM.

But Mankind too, would know the lover of its soul. For Love was everywhere as God intended from the very start. Man would steadily grow to know the empowerment of the love inside himself. Man would steadily begin to know Oneness with all that IS. Man and woman would forever find eternity in the heart of God.

I haven't found this embryonic process exciting until lately. It took me learning many lessons about love and healing before I could be happy about all my life's experiences. I held so much disdain in my mind and heart because my soul had chosen a path that got serious during my childhood.

As a young being, my shoulders [my spirit] felt too slim to carry the burdens of the people around me. And yet I would try and try and try. My body-mind "picked up" [absorbed] the love and the unlove of others when I was very small---perhaps at the age of two. I am not sure really when it occurred; but, it did occur. I was an empath. I felt the power of the world around me as well as the world inside me. It was very unnerving!

I spent countless number of years sculpting my life into a masterpiece of depth and hunger. Was it any wonder that I gleaned so much pain from the surface of my being? I thought everything had to be studied and measured. I felt that everything must have profoundness and/or meaning. I could laugh. I could cry. I could do whatever as long as the depth of my emotions were meaningful and potent.

I learned the story and experience of Agape around the same time frame; but my many educations (spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, societal, etc.) quickly divised "a route" to sever my being's "umbilical cord" from its root.

Day after day I would learn the Way of Unlovingness. I would learn from my family, from my church, from my school, from my peers, classmates and friends, from country, and from the world around me. And, eventually, I would forget the tremendous pleasure and empowerment the Loving Way had to offer. Worst of all, in a reversed state of understanding---a darkened state of living that I gleaned from the Unlovingness my very self manufactured---I experienced perpetual lessons of doubt, shame, indifference, and unlovingness which cultivated a dark spirit to balance the inpenetrable highlights that clung to the love I still knew and fought for .

I was initiated in the path of Lilith. I began to perceive life through a ball of pain and suffering. Folk tradition: The Alphabet of Ben Sira is considered to be the oldest form of the story of Lilith as Adam's first wife. Whether this certain tradition is older is not known. Scholars tend to date Ben Sira between the 8th and 10th centuries. Its real author is anonymous, but it is falsely attributed to the sage Ben Sira. The amulets used against Lilith that were thought to derive from this tradition are in fact, dated as being much older.[38] The concept of Eve having a predecessor is not exclusive to Ben Sira, and is not a new concept, as it can be found in Genesis Rabbah.

However, the idea that Lilith was the predecessor is exclusive to Sira. According to Gershom Scholem, the author of the Zohar, R. Moses de Leon, was aware of the folk tradition of Lilith. He was also aware of another story, possibly older, that may be conflicting.[39]

The idea that Adam had a wife prior to Eve may have developed from an interpretation of the Book of Genesis and its dual creation accounts; while Genesis 2:22 describes God's creation of Eve from Adam's rib, an earlier passage, 1:27, already indicates that a woman had been made: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." The text places Lilith's creation after God's words in Genesis 2:18 that "it is not good for man to be alone". He forms Lilith out of the clay from which he made Adam, but the two bicker. Lilith claims that since she and Adam were created in the same way, they were equal, and she refuses to submit to him:

After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone.' He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.Adam stood in prayer before his Creator: 'Sovereign of the universe!' he said, 'the woman you gave me has run away.' At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent these three angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, to bring her back.Said the Holy One to Adam, 'If she agrees to come back, what is made is good. If not, she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day.' The angels left God and pursued Lilith, whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God's word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, 'We shall drown you in the sea.’'Leave me!' she said. 'I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days.’When the angels heard Lilith's words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: 'Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant.' She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day.

Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels' names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers.
The background and purpose of The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is unclear. It is a collection of stories about heroes of the Bible and Talmud, it may have been a collection of folk-tales, a refutation of Christian, Karaite, or other separatist movements; its content seems so offensive to contemporary Jews that it was even suggested that it could be an anti-Jewish satire,[40] although, in any case, the text was accepted by the Jewish mystics of medieval Germany.

The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is the earliest surviving source of the story, and the conception that Lilith was Adam's first wife became only widely known with the 17th century ‘‘Lexicon Talmudicum of Johannes Buxtorf.
An Armenian writer Avetik Isahakyan describes Lilit as Adam's first wife. However, here God created Lilit from fire and Adam from soil. Lilit did not like how Adam smelled like soil. In the end, she escaped with Satan in the shape of a snake. Only after that did God create Eve from Adam's bone, so that she would always be with him. "But though Adam's lips said Eve, his soul always echoed Lilith."[41]

In the folk tradition that arose in the early Middle Ages Lilith, a dominant female demon, became identified with Asmodeus, King of Demons, as his queen.[42] Asmodeus was already well known by this time because of the legends about him in the Talmud. Thus, the merging of Lilith and Asmodeus was inevitable.[43] The fecund myth of Lilith grew to include legends about another world and by some accounts this other world existed side by side with this one, Yenne Velt is Yiddish for this described "Other World". In this case Asmodeus and Lilith were believed to procreate demonic offspring endlessly and spread chaos at every turn.[44] Many disasters were blamed on both of them, causing wine to turn into vinegar, men to be impotent, women unable to give birth, and it was Lilith who was blamed for the loss of infant life. The presence of Lilith and her cohorts were considered very real at this time.

Two primary characteristics are seen in these legends about Lilith: Lilith as the incarnation of lust, causing men to be led astray, and Lilith as a child-killing witch, who strangles helpless neonates. Although these two aspects of the Lilith legend seemed to have evolved separately, there is hardly a tale where she encompasses both roles.[45] But the aspect of the witchlike role that Lilith plays broadens her archetype of the destructive side of witchcraft. Such stories are commonly found among Jewish folklore.[46]

One story tells of how a daughter of Lilith dwelling in a mirror came to possess a narcissistic young girl. A wife had bought a mirror and hung it in a room of her daughter. The mirror had been hung in a den of demons and a daughter of Lilith resided in it. Whenever the mirror was moved from the haunted house, the demoness within went with it. The girl spent a lot of time gazing at herself in the mirror, each time drawing closer and closer into Lilith's web. The daughter of Lilith watched the young girl's every movement. Biding her time, one day Lilith's daughter slipped out and possessed the girl through the eyes. Seizing control of the girl, Lilith's daughter dominated the girl's every move. Driven by the evil wishes and desires of Lilith's daughter, the girl became promiscuous and ran around with many men.[47]

It is said that every mirror is a passage into the Otherworld and leads to the cave that Lilith went to after she had abandoned Adam and Eden for all time. In this cave, Lilith takes up demon lovers, who father upon her multitudes of demons who flock from the cave and infest the world. When these demons want to return they simply enter the nearest mirror.[48]

"Many generations later, Lilith and Naamah came to Solomon's judgement seat, disguised as harlots of Jerusalem." [49]

Kabbalah: The major characteristics of Lilith were well developed by the end of the Talmudic period. Kabbalistic mysticism, therefore, established a relationship between her and deity. Six centuries elapsed between the Aramaic incantation texts that mention Lilith and the early Spanish Kabbalistic writings. In the 13 centuries, she reappears and her life history becomes known in greater mythological detail. [50]

Her creation is described in many alternative versions. One mentions her creation as being before Adam's, on the fifth day. Because the "living creature" with whose swarms God filled the waters was none other than Lilith. A similar version, related to the earlier Talmudic passages, recounts how Lilith was fashioned with the same substance as Adam, shortly before. A third alternative version states that God originally created Adam and Lilith in a manner that the female creature was contained in the male. Lilith's soul was lodged in the depths of the Great Abyss. When God called her, she joined Adam. After Adam's body was created a thousand souls from the Left (evil) side attempted to attach themselves to him. However, God drove them off. Adam was left lying as a body without a soul. Then a cloud descended and God commanded the earth to produce a living soul. This God breathed into Adam, who began to spring to life and his female was attached to his side. God separated the female from Adam's side. The female side was Lilith, whereupon she flew to the Cities of the Sea and attacks humankind. Yet another version claims that Lilith was not created by God, but emerged as a divine entity that was born spontaneously, either out of the Great Supernal Abyss or out of the power of an aspect of God (the Gevurah of Din). This aspect of God, one of his ten attributes (Sefirot), at its lowest manifestation has an affinity with the realm of evil and it is out of this that Lilith merged with Samael.[51]

An alternative story links Lilith with the creation of luminaries. The "first light", which is the light of Mercy (one of the Sefirot), appeared on the first day of creation when God said "Let there be light" This light became hidden and the Holiness became surrounded by a husk of evil.” A husk (q'lippa) was created around the brain" and this husk spread and brought out another husk, which was Lilith.[52]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith

Inner devastation would cause me to long burn with inequity. I learned how to feel unaccepted, unloved, angry, hurt, and venegeful very well.

But I knew this state as sin. And for many years I would believe that my very soul deserved its sense of condemnation because my forefather and my foremother, Adam and Eve, created eternal darkness outside the loving arms of the Holy Father begotten as the Son called Christ Jesus.

Ritually, I would devote myself to "mental and emotional flagellation" so that I would remember the "One True Reality of Life" as seen by the Christian Church. In other words, I would say, "I have sinned..." [Not once, not twice, but every service I attended. It was the deepest Mantra of my being. I would even use it at home in prayer and Bible study.]

And then, I would, further ritually, immerse myself in the absolution of Christ. And I would BE clean in every sense of the word.

I followed this Way of Sin and Cleanse until approximately 5-6 years ago.

My heart nearly died from the pain. I didn't get how freely love was available. I thought the Scripture that God had a plan for me included the ritual of owning my sin, wearing it on my sleeve and absolving the sin through the power of Christ Jesus. Every aspect of my life was "written" out in some bizarre pre-script. I had to be this. I had to be that. I accepted the shoulds and the woulds. I cried out at my creative urges. I shuttered at my natural ways and desires. I longed to understand God's mysteries. I thought way too much. I felt overwhelmingly burdened. Grace could not solve my mind's conundrums regarding Doctrine and Life. And I failed to receive the blessings I was given before birth.

I was angry. I was depressed. I nearly lost my will to BE. [Over and over!] I begged for mercy. I asked for help. I prayed in faith that was so large before me.

And then I breathed in some cool, crisp air. I was released into the land of knowing. Love was all around me. Love filled me to overflowing. I just needed to believe it into my being one breath at a time. And when I could not believe, I practiced something entirely new, compassion for myself. And love would finally penetrate my heart again and again and again.

Life is a process. Life is relationship. Life is God inspired and God begotten. My thoughts must always ease inside my inner world and then must be transformed into daily miracles. All I needed those many years was to trust my heart and then understand that learning how to love is a practice and a Way.

Each moment we experience life, we have an opportunity to co-create our being and our world into lovliness. But to do this effectively, we must accept the greater sense regarding love. We must accept its infinite wisdom. We must accept its course for our lives. We are creatures transformed at first from dirt. According to Protestant Scripture, we had life breathed into us and through us. We are special. Each of us has a Divine destiny, and our "lives" will continue to evolve until that destiny is reached.

This is paced just right. Every aspect of our being is perfect and in harmony with all that IS. We are wholeness. We are love itself.

As we begin to release all that we know so that we can be all that we already ARE, we will start to glow with our inherent power. Our protected snip-its of love will succumb to THE LOVE. We will exist together as One. But this is a path first and a right second. This comes in flows and ebbs. This comes one inspiration at a time.

I believe that we chose to learn our Ways through life.

Our genetic lines are rich with education. Sometimes we know successes just the way we expect to know them. Sometimes we fall down and have to get up again and then success is earned. Sometimes the successes we know are surprising. Sometimes there are no successes at all. But love remains nevertheless. Love is the Great I AM. Love needs nothing to make it absolutely perfect. It just IS.

And it IS EVERYWHERE ALWAYS.

Words are extremely important because they form thoughts. Thoughts create all that we see and do. If we remind ourselves over and over that we are sin first [that we are unworthy of being], we reap what we sow. We harvest pain and destruction followed by absolution if we are lucky enough to understand what absolution even means.

However, if we choose to believe we ARE LOVE first, last and always, we, again, will reap what we sow...a fruitful, ever-abundunt harvest!!!

I know Christ and I feel very rich for knowing Him as the man-God that walked the earth, was unjustly crucified, was buried, separated from God the Father in bodily and spiritual death, and rose from the dead so that He could share His "perfect" incarnation with His disciples before ascending to Heaven and leaving His Holy Spirit for every being in the world.

But I feel compelled to share my story of previous horror and dismay coupled with my story and current experience of Love and compassion.

Christ fills me with power. He fills me with Love because He IS LOVE. And I have, finally, remembered who I was in the beginning of time, and the beginning of my life as Joan: LOVE!!!

And so I now practice the art of Loving, the Way of Love and Compassion. I no longer am sin. I never was. Only in the illusion of Maya are we as men and women anything but LOVE. Believe it and receive it. Live your legacy, live awakened in the heart of God. Assume your rightful place in eternity!

Growing brave by reflection...

"It is easier to build strong children, than to repair broken men."
---Frederick Douglass

"We are born male. We must learn to be men. Remember, strength is a force. It is an attribute of the heart. Its opposite is not weakness and fear, but confusion, lack of clarity, and lack of sound intention. If you are able to discern the path with heart and follow it even when at the moment it seems wrong, then and only then are you strong. Remember the words of Tao te ching. 'The only true strength is a strength that people do not fear.' Strength based in force is a strength people fear. Strength based in love is a strength people crave."
---Kent Nerburn

"It is time to get back to basics, time to go back to nature and ourselves."
---Darina Stoyanova

"I love men who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection."
---Thomas Paine

"We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true."
---Woodrow Wilson


I suppose I have been studying men since I was a young child. I started with my father. Then I moved to study my growing brothers. And, eventually, I began to notice those I was not related to. My family was very strong as I grew. The boys and my father were all forces to be reckoned with. I had to buck up or suck up a lot.

However, I am not sure when I started noticing the frailties of men and boys. I am not sure when I started catering to the difficulties they lived with. My mom certainly groomed me to care for others, and since I came from a house full of boys, it was only natural that I cater to the male "species."

I enjoyed baking for my brothers. I enjoyed playing nurse-maid. I definitely liked playing mother hen. But, those joys quickly became problems for me when I began to date. Initially, I was attracted to boys just like my family members. I competed with each male I dated. If I was in debate class, I competed in the realm of debate. If I was being overlooked for some aspect of myself I liked, I competed to be seen and heard. Generally, this competition brought my life a lot of sorrow and frustration. But chemistry-wise, it manifested in the relationships as power and magnetic attraction.

The chemistry part kept me on board a relationship well beyond any point of healthiness. Early on, I couldn't figure out how to connect with "nice" boys and stay interested.

I am now 37, and I have experienced a lot of ups and downs in life. Especially in terms of relationships. My last long-term connection was fraught with chemistry, love, and a myriad of difficult times. We had everything against us from the beginning, but we determined to stick it out and try to make it work. It, of course, did not.

I have found that many men are so segmented that the idea of wholeness and healthiness is often some sort of far-fetched dream in the minds of our United States' community. One friend of mine, for example, was psychologically split into two major components: work and sex. He usually objectified women because he "was just" a package of parts and he assumed women should be viewed and treated just the same--- as breasts, legs, whatever. He would drive himself constantly, and by all intensive purposes, he matched what American society would call highly successful. But, I saw a man who was so far from healthy. I often worried about his happiness and his direction.

The unhealthiness doesn't seem to be religion-based or even sex-based. It seems to be conceptionally-based.

I was thinking about the subject this morning, and I stumbled upon some interesting information. We are said to be co-creators in life. I believe this premise. I, also, currently believe we attract what we think about and what we send vibrations out to the universe for. Sometimes we purposely direct our thoughts toward someone or something. One word for this is prayer. There are other words depending on your system of philosophy.

The world consists of pockets of energy ("thought forms" are a major type of such energy). The history of people has been saturated with pockets of energy and their movement throughout the world. The United States was created because of Manifest Destiny. Nazi Germany was created from a group think harnessed by Adolf Hitler. These are just two examples of how history was shaped from "thought forms."

So, now, consider this: If women and men are pitted against one another via a cultural clash that has been unfolding since the dawn of time, then how do you presume the energy of that action plays itself out? Right! Negatively. Manifestation of positive relationships is hindered by the constant insurge of negative belief systems regarding men and women.

So, we must stop and rethink. We must redirect our belief systems. We must shift the dynamics between men and women from a point of contention to a point of understanding. If we hear ourselves making flippant commentaries about the opposite sex, we must stop and reverse the thought. We must see the positive in every circumstance. If we cannot, we must seek help. If a friend seeks help from us, we must assist as we are able.

The other night, a friend of mine helped me reverse a possible negative moment. The moment wasn't about men and women. The moment was how I was going to handle my tomorrow. He simply said, "Repeat after me. Tomorrow will go smoothly." Those words were powerful!!! I was very grateful for his thoughtfulness in helping me think positively. In the past I have had great difficulty looking toward the silver lining. The silver lining used to feel like a horrible fairy tale that mocked me because of how I grew up.

Positive thoughts are energy that create change. Actually, thoughts are creations. So direct them positively rather than negatively.

Returning to my original thought, men and women were designed to be an interlocking force of greatness and beauty. We must think this point of origin into "re-being." When we get frustrated, we must stop and breathe. And as we exhale a time or two, we must think positive thoughts for men and women. Each negativity creates a wall we must learn to overcome somehow---some way. Breathe in the utmost positive thought for your opposite sex. Now, breathe it out.

Big changes can take time and work. But, if you believe in antagonistic viewpoints regarding your opposite sex, you shall surely reap what you sow and that---most likely---is tremendous pain and suffering.

Each day, make a positive affirmation about your relationship with the other sex. And then expect greatness to come from that affirmation. Trust in love to bloom and grow. It is possible. Believe it! Visualize yourself planting a seed each time you choose to turn a negative thought into a positive one.

Between men and women...women and men, consciousness will always remain

"As human beings we all want to be happy and free from misery… we have learned that the key to happiness is inner peace. The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions such as anger, attachment, fear and suspicion, while love and compassion and a sense of universal responsibility are the sources of peace and happiness.”

---Dalai Lama



"Let go of your attachment to being right, and suddenly your mind is more open. You're able to benefit from the unique viewpoints of others, without being crippled by your own judgment.”

---Ralph Marston



“Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being "drawn toward." Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one's friends and enemies. Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth. To make love is to make justice. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggle, resistance, risk. People working today on behalf of women, blacks, lesbians and gay men, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not warm...”

---Carter Heyward



“Consciousness will always be present, though a particular consciousness may cease. For example, the particular tactile consciousness that is present within this human body will cease when the body comes to an end. Likewise, consciousnesses that are influenced by ignorance, by anger or by attachment, these too will cease. But the basic, ultimate, innermost subtle consciousness will always remain. It has no beginning, and it will have not end.”

---Dalai Lama



"But letting go is hard to do because our human mind persistently wants to hold on; it has an enormous and ancient habit of holding on. In fact, holding on is all we know; holding on is literally us, and we do not want to give ourself up. Letting go feels like death and we are frightened of death because it means the end of us. And actually letting go is a kind of death- it may be literally sometimes death: we have to let go of our life sometime. But actually whether it is what we call death or just everyday letting go it really is death anyway. Every moment we have to die - every moment anyway we do die to this moment of our lives. It is gone and it will never return. If it is a wonderful moment it will go away and if it is a terrible moment it will go away in exactly the same way. Every moment dies to itself and this is how every moment of our lives takes care of itself completely; every moment contains within itself its own perfect resolution. To practice letting go is to participate with this actual moment by moment dying which is life: to let go is to join our life.


This sounds drastic in a way and I know a lot of people don’t like to hear about this kind of thing. Letting go really is dying but dying isn’t just dying: dying is freedom, release, peacefulness.



Dying means laying down the burden of our life and going off into the mountains for a big hike, just wandering around, like a cloud. Dying means that we don’t hold onto anything of the six senses- whatever we see hear smell taste touch or think we just appreciate it for what it actually is - we don’t “me” it and try to hold it fixed- we just let it come and go- we allow it to be born and die as it really is being born and dying moment by moment. This is really the kindest way to live and it is the only way to love: to let each thing really be what it is and then to let it go- to let it be free. To try to hold ourselves or our world or another person in place is impossible. Nothing can be held in place.



Life is very pressured, very stressful, very burdensome- and this is why- because we are trying mightily to hold in place what cannot be held in place, we are trying to preserve the unpreservable and fix the unfixable. Actually everything has integrity as it is; everything is surrounded by immense space: each of our thoughts, even our miseries, certainly trees and grasses, the sun and moon and clouds, our human body- everything passes and reappears as it is, all of it operating together in a marvelous harmony of freely passing by, if we will only let it, if we will only let go and allow it to be that way in the course of our living.


The life of letting go is the life of freedom, the life of nonattachment.



Nonattachment doesn’t mean we are distant from things or have no warmth or no care for things; the word nonattachment is good because it suggests some distance and in love there always has to be some distance- some spaciousness or openness. In ordinary everyday human life there is always some desire- if there weren't any desire there couldn't be any life. But if desire is held onto too strongly it becomes very confining. If there’s too much strongly held desire in our loving then our loving becomes confining too and soon it is no longer love, it turns into dependency, or even antipathy; real love has to have some distance in it, some nonattachment.



With the eye of nonattachment we can see that the object of our love can never be possessed, can never be held onto. When I say this maybe it seems tragic to you. In a way it is tragic, tragic if you don’t like it and you don’t want to accept it. But if you accept it you see that it is a good thing that we cannot possess or hold onto the object of our love: because if we could it would not really be a living being; it would only be our invention, and inventions are not lovable. Any living being needs its own integrity and its own freedom and spaciousness- so there has to be always some distance and nonattachment in loving. And desire, if you study it carefully and very closely, has this aspect to it: desire has spaciousness around it if you will allow it, if you don’t insist on crowding your desire too much.

We do crowd our desire as a rule, and then it becomes usually painful because it can never be fulfilled. This is what hungry ghosts are- beings who crowd their desires into a very tight corners and so experience the tremendous suffering of endless unsatisfiable desiring. All addictions are like this- this is the mind of addiction, the hungry ghost crowded desire mind. But if we practice letting go and open up space for our desire and for the object of our desire- allow our desire to be itself and then to go away and allow the object of our desire to be itself and then to go away then we really don't have to suffer and we can enjoy our desire and its object whether we satisfy our desire or not. Actually everything is already letting go- you and I are already let go. So there is no need to satisfy our desire. Sometimes when it is right for us to do so we do- but even then we don’t possess anything. We just enjoy something for a moment and then let it go. So desire can come up and it need not be a big problem."

http://www.everydayzen.org/teachings/talk_nonattachment.asp





There is a new world before me and in me each day. That is a simple yet profound reality. I can choose to clutch my yesterdays---my memories---my foundational principles; but, that "holding on" can often carry a tremendous burden of suffering with it. In such a context, everything I experience is reviewed in the light of what was, but what was is just a mere ghost. The act of "holding on" lies to you body and mind because it is not in the now. It has no real-time voice in the today.

It is strange to come into this awareness. It is a powerful reckoning that resembles the Transfiguration. All at once you know who you were, who you are, and who you will become in any course of action.

I think Western society has been blessed with tremendous material gain. Material gain is not alive, though. It is tangible and exchangable, and somewhat "giving," but it is also non-living. I wonder if it is not our fascination with this non-living entity that keeps us attached to absolutely every aspect of the universe and disallows much growth and development---growth and development that could bring Love and compassion into our individual and global spheres. [Growth and development that may not have reached its time! But, then who knows that much about time?]

As I study Eastern philosophy and/or religions, I am compelled to express how similar these idealogies are to my own "home grown" philosophy stemming from Christianity. I have these resounding lessons penetrating the rafters of my mind which originally said emphatically, "As a Christian I must die to my self. And as a Christian, I must recognize that my treasures are stored in heaven, not here on earth where the moths can eat them."



How is this not like letting go? How is this not nonattachment?



I am thirty seven. I have lived through and in many relationships. I have had 3-4 best friends. I have had many varied personalities I have attracted into my world...and just as many that I have repelled. I have had three major loves, and one minor love. Each person I have known---no matter how significant a part they played in my hours, days, nights, months or years, has brought me a myriad of gifts. I have learned from them. I have taught them. I have become myself through their mirroring and their shadows. My relationships are all that I AM.

Today,I am at a very new place. I mean, really, I am creating a whole new exciting pattern to engage and be in. It is an amazing place!

I have a friend that has been in my life for close to a year now. He makes me think a lot, and I feel that he "was sent" to me [and I was "sent to" him] {{And I use those terms SO very loosely.}} so that I can know and experience life very differently than I have known and experienced it before now. To date, I have been a pretty big attachment freak. I am not sure I understand why that is.



Is it because I came into being in a big family of attachers? Is it because I experienced dysfunctionality at a high level during my most formulative years? Is it because I was divinely placed so that attachment would be a growing point in this lifetime? I just don't know.



Nevertheless, it is interesting. This particular guy friend is consciousness that my consciousness has "known" before. [[For lack of better terminology!!!]] From the beginning of this time's intersection, I felt him deep inside me and it has been very alluring. I have not recognized this "consciousness" aspect in previous friendships; though in hindsight I can see, 20-20, several life connections that were in such a light. My Chris was one such life connection. Chris and I's souls felt inseparable. [They still do.]



My new friend guides me "subconsciously" through the corridors of light and living. He acts, speaks, does and doesn't do... and I follow him through the spaces just below the threshold of my being. [Occasionally I will go 180 degrees from him, but often, I just go his Way because somehow it feels like my Way as well.] Maybe it is just the Way. I don't know.

The two of us partake in an odd dance of connecting and letting go.



I think in the past, I would have dissolved any kind of friendship that caused me to work at this level of mental intensity---or, at the very least, I would have become ill. But, today, I am feeling up for such a challenge. Perhaps now I am living through everything that is not mind and so I am not so exhausted and overtaken. I am definitely not overwhelmed by the lack of attachment. I am, instead, curious. And I like to be curious. It is fun. [Yes, there are days of frustration as well. I haven't had enough experience with the art of letting go!]



I am reminded that I share the spaces of the world with all others. And I have learned through yoga and meditative exercises that breath is the most important function of the body because breath is life. [Though that is much easier to acknowledge than to live] My new relationship fosters my breath---my breathing---and additional space. I can feel myself attaching to that which I like and feel connected to, and then I breath and I am able to release and let go. It is quite exquisite. It is quite dynamic. [The catch is that by letting go, you actually release yourself into the Great I AM. You trust your eternal being.]



And as the breaths become more and more, and I become stronger and stronger, I am enlightened about a bigger view that I suddenly see. I am growing into all that IS. Nothing is mine. Yet, I AM all that IS. And I feel special and good and beautiful and full of Love. But, more importantly, I recognize the point of consciousness. Oneness.

My friend is just a nice man. [Well, he is not JUST anything!!!] He is unusual, yes...at least within my circles of recognition. And I enjoy that for sure! But, I do know that his collective consciousness remains from some distant world we once shared---or perhaps we will share---maybe both.

Consciousness always remains, and he and I live within the remainders. And the force that lies between us reminds me of that.

It is interesting to expand into that which is LIFE. I enjoy the knowing of living----the living of living. It is temporal and permanent all at once. Dismissing the mind---the manager of our experiences---brings us closer to the ethereal connections which are not in part at all. It is merely what we choose to see [even if our upbringing did the choosing for us]: PARTS. Love is not a culimation for it is not in part. It is the greatest state of being. It IS who we all are.

There is no need for attachment if we can widen our vision far enough to experience Forever. Forever brings our knowing into totality. Forever is the blink of an eye. [How is that for a profound paradox???]

I cannot know past this moment; and yet, I can know everything all at once.

So, here I am looking for nonattachment. Life is bringing me its fruits, its toils, and its barrenness one breath at a time. Everything is a blessing if you recognize Forever. And consciousness is just that! Resting in the knowledge that we are always all that we can be, enables us---no, empowers us---to paint a picture with our existence. Everything around us and in us gives us color, texture, rhythm, you name it! We just need to see life for what it IS.

I am thankful for the role that my guy friend is playing in my world. Without him, how long would I have had to wait to learn the treasures of nonattachment? I believe every person is uniquely and wonderfully made, so I must think that his presence in my here and now was perfectly planned, perfectly orchestrated. The very thought of that makes my eyes light up with joy and gratitude.

The Art of Balance

"What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter. "


---Henri Matisse


"If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world."


---Joseph Addison


"Feelings are everywhere -- be gentle."


---J. Masai





This weekend I partook in a late night conversation that delved into the "delights" of men and women. [My poor brother was standing against three women...or so it seemed.] Curt and Brooke threw a party for a friend and when the party tapered off a neighbor woman stayed behind to talk and mingle some more. Many topics were discussed, but eventually the dialogue rounded over into the concept of men and women.


Lynn, the neighbor, began discussing her husband's lack of desire and motivation to manicure their lawn. She questioned Curt up and down about men's desires and motivations. It was a very long discussion. It ended at 1AM. I won't go into the details.


But, I am always caught these days in a point of frustration where men and women are concerned.


I am sure a lot of my dilemma lies in the fact that I no longer view men and women in such a black and white, traditional context. I believe in some sort of anima and animus which is alive in all people. And I believe everyone is conditioned to believe and react in some largely generalized manner. People are creatures of teaching, habit and influence.



I, for example, grew up in a household with a lot of male constructs. I had three older brothers, a frequently absent father, and a mother who didn't really know how to raise a daughter. I felt like a wild Indian when I was a child---before I was conditioned to think the Baxter Way. I ran around chasing my brothers and their friends to and fro. And yet, on the flip side of the coin, my mom did believe in an icon of femininity that she constantly called me out to be. I was her "Ruffles and lace." [I don't know that I was ever that!!!] She very much wanted me to be some ideal version of a girl. And I worked hard to become just that.


As I grew, I shifted from just chasing my brothers' friends to having mad crushes on them. And when I got to college, I chose young men to date based on their intelligence and their prowess. I selected young men from the database of my first mental model which was primarily designed from my original home life.


It is no wonder that as I became a young adult I floundered finding men that worked for me.

Once I "claimed" men for my very own, as many peoples do with lovers, I worked to convert them into obedient dilettantes of my liking. I did this for years! And when I got involved in the Christian Church after years of rebellion, I took things a step further. I determined to hitch myself to a spiritual leader---someone I could "willingly follow" as a husband.

It was all so disastrous!!!

I didn't realize that I was on a continuum. I listened to other people when I really needed to listen to my own heart. I had no idea how to listen to my heart. I just got pulled into the undercurrents of life until I just couldn't take anymore.


As I got older and older that original database became corroded and outdated. I was no longer a part of my primary family. The further out in age I got, the more I wanted different things from men.


And finally, I met my ex named Chris. He shattered that original database, altogether! He was so different from me. His mind went everywhere mine did not, and I liked that most of the time! It was exhilarating. Until, of course, it got to be overwhelming.

Listening to Lynn the other night made me reminisce about my discovery of personal expectations that we all initially "come to the table with." I heard her anxiety over her husband and his choices, and I couldn't help but think of what I was like at her age. I was three years into my relationship with Chris. Things were frequently painful. He saw things one way. I saw things another way. But, more than that, I didn't know much about my authentic self and its needs and wants.


I knew a lot about my myth of self.


I had no idea how to connect to my core. Page by page, Chris and I relationship came apart. But I grew into me, myself and I as a result. It was a tough trade-off. I lost Chris that year, but I found Joan. Yes, I miss him. A lot sometimes. Even today. However, I feel good about what I now have.


Chris taught me that men and women are not in compartments. Each person is an individual and with that individuality comes a plethora of possibilities. Men have the ability to cultivate femininity within their heart and souls. Women have the ability to cultivate masculinity within their mental, emotional and physical worlds. There is no end to the capacities of what men and women can become. There is no steadfast rule to either sex. There are too many variables.

There are distinct differences between the sexes because we are all separately made and groomed; but, there is so much common ground between the sexes, too.


It is the common ground I wish to concentrate on. It is the reality that men and women aren't as far apart as we think they are. Whenever I start to raise a question about men, I start by raising that same question about myself. In regard to Lynn's inquiries from the other night, I wanted to relate that the points of "weakness" she was pursuing in her line of questioning, were actually weaknesses in her own self. I don't mean that as abruptly as it might sound. I simply mean that the things and situations she was finding fault with could probably easily be found within her own psyche under different headings.

("In Jungian psychology, the shadow or 'shadow aspect' is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. 'Everyone carries a shadow,' Jung wrote, 'and the less it is embodied in the individuals conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. As a consequence, the shadow is prone to project: turning a personal inferiority into a perceived moral deficiency in someone else. Jung writes that if these projections are unrecognized 'The projection-making factor (the Shadow archetype) then has a free hand and can realize its object---if it has one---or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power.' The projections insulate and cripple individuals by forming an even thicker fog of illusion between the ego and the real world. Jung also believed that 'inspite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness---or perhaps because of this---the shadow is the seat of creativity." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)])


I am not addressing the "what" of the conversation (i.e., manicuring the lawn). I am addressing the "how" of the conversation. The "what" could have been seen as a variable "x". Anything could have been substituted. The baseline of the complaint, however, was how selfish she perceived her husband to be---and, also, how slothful. She was tired of giving him perks (i.e., saying thank you for a job well done) when she felt like she never received perks.


We all have these traits in one context or another. Yes, the traits might show more strongly in certain contexts (yard care, car repair, etc.) if men are involved as opposed to women. But, we all have global weaknesses. It was the global weaknesses that I wanted to bring to light. Lynn's energy was filled with nervous and domineering anxiety. If I had to guess, I would say the root of the anxiety was that she needed assistance and she didn't feel like she was getting any from her husband. She selected an unmanicured lawn to be frustrated over.

We all get frustrated. We all need help. We all want a pat on the back every now and then. Lynn projected her most sensitive issues in the form of an argument about the lackadaisical attitudes of men. She was unable to see the same faults in herself.

I am not sure how to convey to each of us in the world that if we start by assessing ourselves when we get ready to jump down someone's throat---or even when we just start to fume internally about someone's disgressions, then we can slow ourselves down just enough for us to to possibly see a more compassionate, creative solution to the issue.

It begins with communication, I know. But, before we communicate to others, we need to communicate to ourselves. We need to get to the bottom of the situation. What are we feeling inside that is being neglected or hurt? Truthfully, if we look first to ourselves, we will be able to reach our hand out to the other person and figure out the bridge that resides between us.

Relationships don't normally come with written signs that tell us this or that. Relationships are an open venue with lots of guideposts along the the way. Soreness can be a reflection of some sort of early abandonment that got covered over. Again, the possibilities are endless! There is no straightforward key to the map. We must keep our eyes/feelings peeled for the guideposts. We must ask questions of ourselves and of others. Depending on the amount of dysfunctionality, we may need some outside intervention (e.g., a good and objective friend, a counselor, a stranger).

If we realize that the relationships we choose are mirroring devices, we can become adept at navigating through all our personal thickets. If we choose to concentrate on our differences, the road may be substantially less travelled and often quite difficult. Sometimes our soul desires that difficulty for its growth and development. Whatever the case, I hope we all can grow in love and compassion. I hope we can steer ourselves toward one another rather than away from one another. We are one. We always have been!