Let me be straight with you.
This is urgently, importantly, especially for women.
Although every woman I work with is gorgeously unique, each woman that walks through my door and sits down for her session says her version of:
"I'm so bone-tired of dating the same type of guy, over and over. I know I have patterns where I self-sabotage, but how can I evolve out of them? How can I get out of this painful "Groundhog-Day" of relationships? How can I step out of these
relationship ruts?"
We proceed; and I show her exactly how.
If you feel like you have to choose between YOU and a relationship, you need to be on my FREE tele-class, "Sexy, Radiant & Confident: The Three Simple Secrets" on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 5:30pm Pacific time; 8:30pm Eastern time.
If you are like the women I work with, I'll bet you've been working your tail off to feel comfortable in your own skin - but you're still working at it.
I'll bet you long for a way out of the "Groundhog-Day Dating" syndrome of dating the same type of person over and over ... and over again.
I'll bet you feel like your "glow", your luminous, delicious self is just around the corner - or the next, or the next.
That's why I've compiled all you need to know in one place, in this one jam-packed tele-class!
So I can show you exactly how my clients move from depressed and desperate to radiant and glowing. So I can show you exactly how they move from relationship ruts to passionate partnerships.
These Three Simple Secrets are the same ones I used to build a thriving business, a rich, adventurous life and an extraordinary,satisfying relationship - both with an amazing man and with ME!
I'm dying to hand you these Three Simple Secrets.
The world needs you. I need you. Your partners need you. Your sisters need you.
But not as a dusty facsimile of yourself; as your fully expressed, glorious self.
It's time to get serious - about stepping in to your birthright: Sexy, Radiant & Confident!
"I feel I was given one of the secrets of life!"
- Heather C.
"I'm so glad I got clear on this before embarking
on another relationship that could have been doomed
before it even began."
- Megan F.
"People keep stopping me and asking me why I'm so
smiley and shiny."
- Laura V.
Isn't it time you joined your sisters?
Sexy, Radiant & Confident: The Three Simple Secrets
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
5:30 - 6:45pm Pacific time
8:30 - 9:45pm Eastern time
To reserve your spot, use this link:
http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com/teleseminar.html
On this ground-breaking tele-class, you'll learn:
1) The #1 source of your powerful radiance (Most women don't know this!)
2) A simple 3-Step Process for calming your self-defeating patterns and your debilitating self-talk. (Psst -- It's what I (and my clients) use to get through the rocky patches with grace and ease!)
3) How to have ridiculous amounts of passion & satisfaction, in your day-to-day and your sensual life.
4) Exactly how to uncork and harness your Feminine Power. (Hint: It's different than what you're already using in your daily life.)
5) The most critical mindset shift you need to make before you can step into your sensuous, lit-up self. (Don't even bother with all I'm about to teach you if you're not willing to do this!)
6) The most powerful tool for more ease, joy and delight with men - that you can use instantly! (Without this, you are likely pushing away men, without even knowing you're
doing it!)
6) And I will show you on the class how to get a full (fr*ee!) 1-on-1 coaching session with me ($295 value).
Here's that link again to reserve your spot in this complimentary tele-class.
http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com/teleseminar.html
Additionally you will:
* Be able to ask your questions live on the tele-class
* Leave the call with simple at-home practices to integrate it all into your life - as soon as tonight!
Yes, we delve into the hard, stuck stuff, too. But by including these above gems, unheard of shifts happen daily for the women I work with.
"I wanted to get past what was blocking me from meeting
"Mr. Right" vs. "Mr. Right now". Since working with LiYana,
and for the past two years, I have been in a happy
relationship with Mr. Right!"
- Shireen D
"Thank you for helping me manifest this incredible,
1-in-a-million man. I know it's only because of our
work together..."
- Catalina S.
"LiYana lives what she teaches."
- Rosalinda P.
If you've been living in a sea of self-doubt and negative self-talk, if you've been wondering what those women who GLOW have that you don't, if your sensuality is more like a desert than a lush garden, and if you've been wondering how to attract your soul-mate-hot-lover, all-in-one ... it's time.
Sexy, Radiant & Confident: The Three Simple Secrets
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
5:30 - 6:45pm Pacific time
8:30 - 9:45pm Eastern time
To reserve your spot, use this link:
http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com/teleseminar.html
To YOUR Sexiness, Radiance and Confidence,
LiYana
---
PS: As you probably know (and have experienced yourself first-hand), being the brilliant, sassilicious woman you are meant to be is easier said than done. Let me walk you through the Three Simple Secrets!
PPS: Feel free to forward this to other women in your life who would love to be more Sexy, Radiant and Confident, but please remember to reserve your spot HERE first!
http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com/teleseminar.html
PPPS: To find out what time the tele-class will happen in YOUR time zone, use this link:
http://www.timeticker.com
* * *
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The Newest Love of My Life
No. Nothing's changed with Nathan! He's still the true love of my life.
But we did just get a little bundle of love - and fur and claws, and named him Mishka, which we just found out after the fact means "gift of love" in Hindu and "white bear" in Russian.
He's the first breed cat I've ever owned (an Egyptian Mau), and he is not only soft as a mink, but clever, sweet, friendly, affectionate, playful and can jump and flip in the air and run up to 30 miles an hour. Although he hasn't gotten up to those speeds in our little seaside flat.
I am totally in love. It's not that easy to get any work done at all! But somehow love of this sweet-hearted fuzzy one makes it all worth it.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
One Thing To Do With Grief
Two questions came from readers lately, that turn my face toward the face of grief and loss:
"After one has been in deeply in a love relationship, how do you let go in order to move on. I tend to linger and wallow in the pain of letting go..."
"How can couples create/maintain connection and sexual polarity during difficult times -- for example: illness, trauma, grief, loss of loved one, loss of home/financial stability, or other radical changes in circumstances, etc.? Is there anything that extinguishes feminine radiance more quickly than grief?"
Grief and loss are deep, thick waters that are a personal affair to plumb. How to embrace their weighty, heavy arms? How long to hold the embrace so the grief and loss have run their course through our veins? How do we know when we've traversed into "wallowing" territory and it's time to throw off the tight bands of grieving?
I wish I had the answer for every form grief and loss takes; I wish I had a caress for every sister's cheek grief and loss leave their sad kiss upon. I don't have every answer, but I do have the beautiful story of the Japanese goddesses, Ameratsu and Ame-no-Uzume, which points a finger toward the door we must all walk through with our unique shuffling, sashaying, sauntering step.
----
Amaterasu is the sun goddess, associated with royal power, and returning life and joy after dark times, as the sun becomes stronger and warmer after winter. Ame-no-Uzume is the voluptuous goddess of merriment and celebration.
Amaterasu and Ame-no-Uzume
http://www.thaliatook.com/AMGG/amaterasu.html
Amaterasu is the sun goddess, the goddess from which all light emanates and is often referred to as the sun goddess because of her warmth and compassion for the people who worship her.
"I am the author of order, the sun in her clockwork path. To this beloved world I have given many gifts — the plow-furrowed fields, the strands of the seasons, the celebrations joining families and neighbors — these I carefully weave, weft across warp, binding communities and ordering Time. So it goes, as I knot together the substance of civilization. However ..."
Most of her myths revolve around an incident where the goddess traps herself in a cave because of her brother's actions. One day, in a drunken rampage, he trampled Amaterasu's rice fields, filled all of her irrigation ditches and threw excrement into her palace and her shrines. The people asked her brother to stop but he ignored them and even went so far as to throw the corpse of a skinned horse at her hand-maidens who were weaving at the time. The women were killed by the splintered wood from the looms piercing their wombs.
"Every older sister knows a younger sibling, troublesome and maddening; my brother, I utterly can not tolerate. Where I am quiet, he is loud; where I am calm, he is violent; where I am steady, his tempers wax and wane. My planted fields he floods, my handmaidens he frightens; my weaving he cuts in pieces. But he passed all endurance one morning when he burst through the roof of my hall like a thunderclap out of the blue sky, and into the tumult he then cast, of all things, the flayed and bloodied hide of a horse — I'm sure he found it quite witty — and bright Wakahirume, most dear to me, was killed. A little of his chaos must then have entered even into my own heart, for I put down my shuttle and turned from my loom, took myself to a quiet cave, and shut the entrance after me with a great stone."
Amaterasu was greatly angered and in protest she shut herself in the Heavenly Cave and sealed it shut with a giant rock.
"In that cool place of silence and still water, I finally had peace. I lay down in the quietude, and soon wandered into deep dreamings."
As a result, the world was consumed with darkness. Without her, everything began to wither and die. Countless people gathered in front of her cave and devised a way to lure her out. They all sat around the cave and set up a mirror across from the entrance. Ame-no-Uzume, the voluptuous goddess of merriment turned over a wash-tub and began a sensual dance, tapping the beat on the tub. She exposed her breasts and lifted her skirts as she danced a divine striptease. All of the gods made a great noise of yelling and cheering and laughing.
"But it was not to last. In time I was awakened by a din and disturbance outside the rock-cave entrance. It was quite an uproar: I made out rowdy shouts and screams, and for a moment I thought my brother had come to disturb me even here. But, no, it was not his usual crashing jumble of noise — it was, no — was it? How could it be? By the door-stone the sound was much clearer — unmistakable now, the sounds of joyous celebration: music, cheers, and merry laughter. How can this be? Without my workings, the dark chaos of winter must descend. Are all my gifts given so cheaply held? The lore and learning, the wisdom of seed and soil, are these so swiftly forgotten?"
"I am so angry that at last I shift the stone slightly, to peer out at this madness. And within the dark winter, there is a small shining. I catch a gleam of the golden light of heaven, brilliant and beautiful. Its radiance and glory thrill me; such loveliness I have never seen. Forgetting my anger, I roll the stone aside and step towards the light."
Amaterasu peeked out to see what the noise was about. She asked the nearest god what was going on and he replied that there was a new goddess. When Amaterasu asked where she was, he pointed to the mirror.
"Tied to a tree is a small mirror, and the splendor shining back at me is mine. I have never truly seen my own beauty, caught as I was in my weaving; with my relentless work and busy mind I have somehow left out my own self."
Amaterasu had never seen herself before and when she caught her reflection, she stared at the radiance of her own form. She was so surprised and fascinated by her own nearly forgotten beauty.
When she was out of the way, the people shut the rock behind her. Having lured her out of the cave, the gods convinced her to go back into the Celestial Plain and all life began to grow again and become strong in her light. Once back in the Celestial Plain, she made sure that she was ready for her brother's harsh actions again by having a bow and quiver at her side.
"All around me are the welcoming smiles of my friends and neighbors, my own woven community come together to coax me from my darkness. I must never forget that I too am one of the strands."
---
What do the goddesses remind us to do? Never, never forget our exquisite beauty? Be coaxed out of our cave by the merry-making, music, laughter, sensual celebration (and exposed breasts! ;-P) of others less bound by grief and loss than us? Remember our place in the warp and weft of things? Step into the plains of our life after an appropriate time of weeping, with the knowledge we are stronger now to bear the joys and pains of this crazy life?
---
http://www.thaliatook.com/AMGG/amaterasu.html
"After one has been in deeply in a love relationship, how do you let go in order to move on. I tend to linger and wallow in the pain of letting go..."
"How can couples create/maintain connection and sexual polarity during difficult times -- for example: illness, trauma, grief, loss of loved one, loss of home/financial stability, or other radical changes in circumstances, etc.? Is there anything that extinguishes feminine radiance more quickly than grief?"
Grief and loss are deep, thick waters that are a personal affair to plumb. How to embrace their weighty, heavy arms? How long to hold the embrace so the grief and loss have run their course through our veins? How do we know when we've traversed into "wallowing" territory and it's time to throw off the tight bands of grieving?
I wish I had the answer for every form grief and loss takes; I wish I had a caress for every sister's cheek grief and loss leave their sad kiss upon. I don't have every answer, but I do have the beautiful story of the Japanese goddesses, Ameratsu and Ame-no-Uzume, which points a finger toward the door we must all walk through with our unique shuffling, sashaying, sauntering step.
----
Amaterasu is the sun goddess, associated with royal power, and returning life and joy after dark times, as the sun becomes stronger and warmer after winter. Ame-no-Uzume is the voluptuous goddess of merriment and celebration.
Amaterasu and Ame-no-Uzume
http://www.thaliatook.com/AMGG/amaterasu.html
Amaterasu is the sun goddess, the goddess from which all light emanates and is often referred to as the sun goddess because of her warmth and compassion for the people who worship her.
"I am the author of order, the sun in her clockwork path. To this beloved world I have given many gifts — the plow-furrowed fields, the strands of the seasons, the celebrations joining families and neighbors — these I carefully weave, weft across warp, binding communities and ordering Time. So it goes, as I knot together the substance of civilization. However ..."
Most of her myths revolve around an incident where the goddess traps herself in a cave because of her brother's actions. One day, in a drunken rampage, he trampled Amaterasu's rice fields, filled all of her irrigation ditches and threw excrement into her palace and her shrines. The people asked her brother to stop but he ignored them and even went so far as to throw the corpse of a skinned horse at her hand-maidens who were weaving at the time. The women were killed by the splintered wood from the looms piercing their wombs.
"Every older sister knows a younger sibling, troublesome and maddening; my brother, I utterly can not tolerate. Where I am quiet, he is loud; where I am calm, he is violent; where I am steady, his tempers wax and wane. My planted fields he floods, my handmaidens he frightens; my weaving he cuts in pieces. But he passed all endurance one morning when he burst through the roof of my hall like a thunderclap out of the blue sky, and into the tumult he then cast, of all things, the flayed and bloodied hide of a horse — I'm sure he found it quite witty — and bright Wakahirume, most dear to me, was killed. A little of his chaos must then have entered even into my own heart, for I put down my shuttle and turned from my loom, took myself to a quiet cave, and shut the entrance after me with a great stone."
Amaterasu was greatly angered and in protest she shut herself in the Heavenly Cave and sealed it shut with a giant rock.
"In that cool place of silence and still water, I finally had peace. I lay down in the quietude, and soon wandered into deep dreamings."
As a result, the world was consumed with darkness. Without her, everything began to wither and die. Countless people gathered in front of her cave and devised a way to lure her out. They all sat around the cave and set up a mirror across from the entrance. Ame-no-Uzume, the voluptuous goddess of merriment turned over a wash-tub and began a sensual dance, tapping the beat on the tub. She exposed her breasts and lifted her skirts as she danced a divine striptease. All of the gods made a great noise of yelling and cheering and laughing.
"But it was not to last. In time I was awakened by a din and disturbance outside the rock-cave entrance. It was quite an uproar: I made out rowdy shouts and screams, and for a moment I thought my brother had come to disturb me even here. But, no, it was not his usual crashing jumble of noise — it was, no — was it? How could it be? By the door-stone the sound was much clearer — unmistakable now, the sounds of joyous celebration: music, cheers, and merry laughter. How can this be? Without my workings, the dark chaos of winter must descend. Are all my gifts given so cheaply held? The lore and learning, the wisdom of seed and soil, are these so swiftly forgotten?"
"I am so angry that at last I shift the stone slightly, to peer out at this madness. And within the dark winter, there is a small shining. I catch a gleam of the golden light of heaven, brilliant and beautiful. Its radiance and glory thrill me; such loveliness I have never seen. Forgetting my anger, I roll the stone aside and step towards the light."
Amaterasu peeked out to see what the noise was about. She asked the nearest god what was going on and he replied that there was a new goddess. When Amaterasu asked where she was, he pointed to the mirror.
"Tied to a tree is a small mirror, and the splendor shining back at me is mine. I have never truly seen my own beauty, caught as I was in my weaving; with my relentless work and busy mind I have somehow left out my own self."
Amaterasu had never seen herself before and when she caught her reflection, she stared at the radiance of her own form. She was so surprised and fascinated by her own nearly forgotten beauty.
When she was out of the way, the people shut the rock behind her. Having lured her out of the cave, the gods convinced her to go back into the Celestial Plain and all life began to grow again and become strong in her light. Once back in the Celestial Plain, she made sure that she was ready for her brother's harsh actions again by having a bow and quiver at her side.
"All around me are the welcoming smiles of my friends and neighbors, my own woven community come together to coax me from my darkness. I must never forget that I too am one of the strands."
---
What do the goddesses remind us to do? Never, never forget our exquisite beauty? Be coaxed out of our cave by the merry-making, music, laughter, sensual celebration (and exposed breasts! ;-P) of others less bound by grief and loss than us? Remember our place in the warp and weft of things? Step into the plains of our life after an appropriate time of weeping, with the knowledge we are stronger now to bear the joys and pains of this crazy life?
---
http://www.thaliatook.com/AMGG/amaterasu.html
Friday, June 12, 2009
Sex, God, Rock & Roll
A while back I was interviewed by the "Punk Monk" Stuart Davis on Sex, God, Rock & Roll on "Relationship as Spiritual Path". Check out a clip of it here:
Stuart is funny. An amazing musician. The king of off-off-off humour. Sacred. A loving father. A stellar husband. Rocks the camera.
Close your eyes and open your legs, it's time for the full episodes of Sex, God, Rock & Roll! I'm on episode 4, and will be in the DVD box set that's coming out soon. Membership is $5 a month or something silly.
http://www.sexgodrocknroll.com/episodes/
And here's the article I wrote, after having so much fun with Stuart:
Sex and Relationship as Spiritual Path: can a relationship actually do what an ashram does?
by LiYana Silver, Relationship Specialist, November 2008
I am sitting in a filming studio in Boulder, Colorado, getting ready to be interviewed on the Stuart Davis Show, "Sex, God, Rock n' Roll." I'll be talking about Relationship and Sex as Spiritual Path; can a relationship actually do what an ashram does? It's going to be a good one.
In a pre-interview email, Stuart emailed me the following questions: Relationship as Spiritual Path: Can a relationship actually do what an ashram does; can a relationship actually do what a teacher-student relationship does? In what ways can relationship do what lineage, community, etc, does? In what ways do we use spiritual communities or teachers to "avoid" deeper engagement and relationship with our partners?
There's no One Right Way. This is a unique concept in a world that functions as though there is very much One Right Way. Our world loves the "either/or," "black/white," "good/bad" paradigm; our cultures raise arms around who are the chosen people, who's getting into God's kingdom, which diet is the right diet, is a homosexual marriage still a marriage?
Relationship can absolutely do what the ashram does. It just tends to do it in a sort of technicolor thriller, comedie noire, 3-D dramatique way.
The ashram asks of those who enter to supplicate, to prostrate yourself physically, emotionally and mentally at the feet of a master. It asks of you to give over of yourself in order to gain insight and maturity, to strip away illusion and delusion, to awaken. If you have a partner who has a basic grasp of the foundational elements of powerful relating (self awareness, communication, honesty, vulnerability and integrity), and you have a partner you can trust, your partner (or partners) becomes teacher, sensei and master - as well as and student.
The ashram offers you practice and challenges to rise to. Getting up to meditate at 4:00am in a cold zendo with aching knees and back, whether or not you feel like it, is a lot like getting up to breast-feed an infant or tend to your lover's food poisoning, whether or not you feel like it. Cleaning the meditation halls is a lot like cleaning the bedroom, sweeping away the dust and clutter to allow seekers to again tomorrow, free of too much distraction, lay themselves at the feet of intimacy and union.
The ashram offers you a physical and spiritual container, within which to examine who you are: Who are you in the glorious, open times as well as during the tough times? Come rain or shine, the ashram demands of you to do your practices. It's one thing to be a good communicator and a loving open being when the sun is shining in our relationship, but can we keep our hearts open and vulnerable in the midst of a painful, confronting storm when the shit hits the fan and it gets tough and scary? The cultivation of discipline, whether done in the ashram or in the relationship, is useful because of what it trains us for.
My rather irreverent assertion that relationship can be a vessel for growth, discovery and communion with the Divine, as the ashram can also be, comes from my experience with Vedic Tantra. Vedic Tantrism offers that there is nothing to transcend; the Divine is not out there or over there, separate from you; you are the Divine. The Divine is having a human experience through you. There is no where you could go, nothing you could do to escape the Divine. Being human is not a fallen condition. There's not a place of perfection we fell from and can claw, pray or self-flagellate our way back to. Vedic Tantra is inclusive, offering a way to see our shadows not as deviance from the Divine, but for further means of integration and experience of the full spectrum of the Divine. There is no experience that doesn't offer you, bundled inside of it, the chance to open to God. Relationship, when done with the intention and heart of a spiritual seeker, is an honorable spiritual path.
Lineages, like pilgrimages to ashrams, offer the beautiful structure of well-trodden spiritual paths, but don't necessarily have built in to them the elasticity to account for human and cultural development. Often in trying to transcend our humanity - our visceral, earth-bound bodies with their plethora of racing thoughts, storms of emotions and abounding sexual energies - is an excuse to push away life like a mirage, and can drive us even further from a union with the Divine. We have been taught, whether through Eastern, Judeo-Christain or through Puritanical traditions, to deny the body, kill the ego, cut out parts of ourselves and ascend above our messy humanity in order to commune with the Divine. But those same sought-after spiritual experiences are equally as accessible through the body, thoughts, emotions and ego; through an integration and understanding of our humanity. Rather than pretending our shadows aren't there or can be exorcised, we can embrace, include and integrate them.
When you choose life (and relationship) as spiritual path and choose to know and engage (rather than deny) every part of your being, the conversation with the Divine then happens right here, right now, not limited to churches, synagogues and ashrams. There is no spot where God is not, no place that is not holy; every moment becomes one where union is available. If you choose relationships, you choose to engage. Relationship is the highest-stakes, highest-reward spiritual game I know.
LiYana Silver is a Relationship Specialist, teacher, writer and counselor.
Visit her website at ww.RedefiningMonogamy.com.
---
Stuart is funny. An amazing musician. The king of off-off-off humour. Sacred. A loving father. A stellar husband. Rocks the camera.
Close your eyes and open your legs, it's time for the full episodes of Sex, God, Rock & Roll! I'm on episode 4, and will be in the DVD box set that's coming out soon. Membership is $5 a month or something silly.
http://www.sexgodrocknroll.com/episodes/
And here's the article I wrote, after having so much fun with Stuart:
Sex and Relationship as Spiritual Path: can a relationship actually do what an ashram does?
by LiYana Silver, Relationship Specialist, November 2008
I am sitting in a filming studio in Boulder, Colorado, getting ready to be interviewed on the Stuart Davis Show, "Sex, God, Rock n' Roll." I'll be talking about Relationship and Sex as Spiritual Path; can a relationship actually do what an ashram does? It's going to be a good one.
In a pre-interview email, Stuart emailed me the following questions: Relationship as Spiritual Path: Can a relationship actually do what an ashram does; can a relationship actually do what a teacher-student relationship does? In what ways can relationship do what lineage, community, etc, does? In what ways do we use spiritual communities or teachers to "avoid" deeper engagement and relationship with our partners?
There's no One Right Way. This is a unique concept in a world that functions as though there is very much One Right Way. Our world loves the "either/or," "black/white," "good/bad" paradigm; our cultures raise arms around who are the chosen people, who's getting into God's kingdom, which diet is the right diet, is a homosexual marriage still a marriage?
Relationship can absolutely do what the ashram does. It just tends to do it in a sort of technicolor thriller, comedie noire, 3-D dramatique way.
The ashram asks of those who enter to supplicate, to prostrate yourself physically, emotionally and mentally at the feet of a master. It asks of you to give over of yourself in order to gain insight and maturity, to strip away illusion and delusion, to awaken. If you have a partner who has a basic grasp of the foundational elements of powerful relating (self awareness, communication, honesty, vulnerability and integrity), and you have a partner you can trust, your partner (or partners) becomes teacher, sensei and master - as well as and student.
The ashram offers you practice and challenges to rise to. Getting up to meditate at 4:00am in a cold zendo with aching knees and back, whether or not you feel like it, is a lot like getting up to breast-feed an infant or tend to your lover's food poisoning, whether or not you feel like it. Cleaning the meditation halls is a lot like cleaning the bedroom, sweeping away the dust and clutter to allow seekers to again tomorrow, free of too much distraction, lay themselves at the feet of intimacy and union.
The ashram offers you a physical and spiritual container, within which to examine who you are: Who are you in the glorious, open times as well as during the tough times? Come rain or shine, the ashram demands of you to do your practices. It's one thing to be a good communicator and a loving open being when the sun is shining in our relationship, but can we keep our hearts open and vulnerable in the midst of a painful, confronting storm when the shit hits the fan and it gets tough and scary? The cultivation of discipline, whether done in the ashram or in the relationship, is useful because of what it trains us for.
My rather irreverent assertion that relationship can be a vessel for growth, discovery and communion with the Divine, as the ashram can also be, comes from my experience with Vedic Tantra. Vedic Tantrism offers that there is nothing to transcend; the Divine is not out there or over there, separate from you; you are the Divine. The Divine is having a human experience through you. There is no where you could go, nothing you could do to escape the Divine. Being human is not a fallen condition. There's not a place of perfection we fell from and can claw, pray or self-flagellate our way back to. Vedic Tantra is inclusive, offering a way to see our shadows not as deviance from the Divine, but for further means of integration and experience of the full spectrum of the Divine. There is no experience that doesn't offer you, bundled inside of it, the chance to open to God. Relationship, when done with the intention and heart of a spiritual seeker, is an honorable spiritual path.
Lineages, like pilgrimages to ashrams, offer the beautiful structure of well-trodden spiritual paths, but don't necessarily have built in to them the elasticity to account for human and cultural development. Often in trying to transcend our humanity - our visceral, earth-bound bodies with their plethora of racing thoughts, storms of emotions and abounding sexual energies - is an excuse to push away life like a mirage, and can drive us even further from a union with the Divine. We have been taught, whether through Eastern, Judeo-Christain or through Puritanical traditions, to deny the body, kill the ego, cut out parts of ourselves and ascend above our messy humanity in order to commune with the Divine. But those same sought-after spiritual experiences are equally as accessible through the body, thoughts, emotions and ego; through an integration and understanding of our humanity. Rather than pretending our shadows aren't there or can be exorcised, we can embrace, include and integrate them.
When you choose life (and relationship) as spiritual path and choose to know and engage (rather than deny) every part of your being, the conversation with the Divine then happens right here, right now, not limited to churches, synagogues and ashrams. There is no spot where God is not, no place that is not holy; every moment becomes one where union is available. If you choose relationships, you choose to engage. Relationship is the highest-stakes, highest-reward spiritual game I know.
LiYana Silver is a Relationship Specialist, teacher, writer and counselor.
Visit her website at ww.RedefiningMonogamy.com.
---
Monday, June 1, 2009
Red-Hot Body, Red-Hot Relationships
I met my friend and colleague, Jena LaFlamme, over 8 years ago, while we were both studying holistic wellness and counseling. We were both struggling with eating disorders, weight issues
and relationship woes. From macrobiotic cooking classes, conferences at Kripalu, contact improvisation dancing and zen meditation in India, I've experienced it all - and then some - with Jena.
Today, we are both successful business owners with booming private practices; we live, breathe and teach the secrets to vibrant wellness, healthy and balanced (red-hot) bodies and extraordinary and vibrant (red-hot) relationships.
We'd like to invite you to a free 2-part webinar series, where we'll share with you, each in turn, what we've mastered over the years.
Red-Hot Body, Red-Hot Relationships: Let two women who KNOW show you how!
To register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/129027795
Part 1: Red-Hot Relationships
The Nine Essential Ingredients for Passionate Partnerships for the 21st Century
with Relationship Expert, LiYana Silver
Tuesday, June 9, 2009; 5:30-6:30pm PST; 8:30-9:30pm EST
- Confounded, confused and can't communicate with the opposite sex?
- Discouraged when your relationship gets more loving & intimate, the sexual spark fizzles?
- Want to stop unhealthy relationship patterns, but you're not sure if it's them, or if it's you?
- Want to be yourself, but always feel like you have to choose between you or the relationship?
- Daunted when it starts out so loving and sizzling, but turns into a fight-fest, over and over again?
Join Relationship Expert and Coach, LiYana Silver and get the revolutionary recipe guide for creating the intimate love relationships you hunger for.
If the Iron Chef got Naked, slipped into a sassy, classy lady suit and divulged her feisty, fresh formulas for creating tasty relationships, sex and intimacy - and passed out yummy samples at the end - that would be this webinar.
You will:
- Learn the nine essential ingredients that make any relationship sizzle - and lasting!
- Uncover the number one skill, without which your relationship is doomed
- Decipher your relationship blueprint - the first step in turning conflict into harmony (and so that you will never get into a lame relationship again!)
- Learn simple communication tools that will get your needs met without nagging, diffuse reactivity and bring you more satisfaction in the bedroom
- Find out why men and women appear to be different species - and how to activate your translator for symbiotic, respectful relating
- Learn why in most long-term relationships the sex dies - and what you can do about it
Complete with vital information, lively Q&A and simple how-to's and tools you can apply to your life (tonight!), this hour-long, chock-full webinar will forever change what you know to be possible in relationships.
** You'll also get a special offer to be a part of a 11-week beta relationship coaching program with LiYana Silver!
To register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/129027795
To learn more about LiYana Silver, Relationship Expert & Founder of Re-Defining Monogamy :
http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com
Part 2: Red-Hot Body
The Seven Succulent Ingredients for a Body that Sizzles
with Weight-Loss Expert, Jena LaFlamme
Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 5:30 - 6:30pm PST, 8:30 - 9:30pm EST
- How would you like to look in the mirror only to find a satisfying smile ripple across your face?
- How would you like access to your metabolic hot buttons so that weight loss becomes a natural letting go of that which is no longer needed, as opposed to a forced and painful restriction exercise?
If your relationship with food and your body feels more like a nightmare than a dream, like a fight than a friendship, do not resign yourself to a life of inner conflict, there is a way out.
I spent a decade vacillating between overeating and cruel food restriction, and in my search for the body of my dreams I tried everything under the sun. And nothing worked....until I came across these teachings. These teachings worked for me to lose 20 pounds and you can too.
In the end, the answers were simpler than I ever could have imagined. My discovery? That the blue-print to easy, sustainable weight loss has been with you all along, in the very instincts of you own body, or as I call it, your "animal."
In this 60-minute free webinar you will:
- Discover why "self-control" doesn't melt off the pounds and what really does.
- Dissolve your despair with your stubborn body and replace it with hope and inspiration that you too can have the body of your dreams
- Learn the key, delicious foods that will satisfy you and put an end to your cravings
- The exercise secret that keeps weight on even if you are pounding the treadmill and has allowed me to maintain a slender figure without even stepping in the gym
- Recognize where you may be inadvertently sabotaging your weight loss efforts and how you can get more satisfaction from food and make weight loss effortless
With these strategies, I have not only lost weight myself and kept it off for years without yo-yoing, but have helped hundreds of clients get the same results. You can too!
There's only room for a limited amount of you on the bridge line so if this interest you sign up immediately while there is still space.
To register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/129027795
To learn more about Jena LaFlamme, Weight Loss Expert & Founder and Director of the Jena Wellness Center :
http://www.jenawellness.com
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I look forward to having you on the red-hot pair of webinars!
Enjoy, LiYana
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Saturday, May 30, 2009
Cru d'etat
I'm a student of sensuality, and am familiar how "taking away" one sense can have the wonderful effect of enhancing the others in our fine five: taste, touch, sight, smell and sound.
So I was interested a week ago, to be invited by two close friends to dine in the dark at a local San Francisco restaurant, Opaque. We would be served in complete darkness, by legally blind servers - and fine fare would complete this strange and fascinating experience.
We were led down twisting, velvet-lined corridors to our table, and managed to find our places without either upsetting the table nor knocking even a plate or piece of silverware off. When food began to arrive, we coordinated between our server and us four, to put it all within groping reach. Our first trick was to pry a piece of bread out of the napkined basket and dip it (rather than our fists) into the butter. So far so good. And plus, if you didn't put your bread on it's assigned bread plate, who could tell anyway?
After an "aumse bouche" - my favorite term in the world for an appetizer before an appetizer, literally meaning, to amuse or tease the mouth, but hey, I'm all for amusing a bush! - came a plate of cut up veggies with three sauces. Our server announced, here is your cru d'etat.
Speaking enough french to order in a restaurant and have a conversation about love while keeping myself out of jail, I know that what he meant was, crudite - meaning raw cut up vegetables.
Without knowing it or meaning it, I'm pretty sure, he put "crudite" and "coup d'etat" (meaning revolution or overturning the current regime) in a blender, pressed "whirl" and got "cru d'etat."
I have to say, his slip of the toungue was the best thing about the night. We all found our eyes strained for sight, giving us slight headaches, not at all enhancing the flavors of the food. Likewise, it hard to really feel and get into what each other were saying, without being able to see body language and facial cues.
Grateful for our sightedness, we all commented how the visuals of food - it's shapes, presentation and variety - all add to the experience of eating. At least during this night, taking sight away didn't add to the taste, texture, sound and smells of our meals. The food was fine, but not worth the whopping price tag, attached to the novelty of blind dining.
As we exited the restaurant, back into the twilight of the street, we realized Opaque had gotten away with quite a "coup" indeed. Somehow, we'd paid twice as much for mediocre food, and helped them save on their electric bill!
Cru - raw
d'etat - of the house
Opaque: Raw Deal in the House!
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Friday, May 22, 2009
Love versus Love
I couple weeks ago I went to see a new-to-me band, Loop!Station, a performance of their new album, Love versus Love.
An impassioned women singing, Robin Coomer, and an impassioned man playing cello, Sam Bass. All live, they loop their tracks, layering them, overlapping them, singing along with themselves, creating a gorgeous blast of intoxicating music.
When I walked in to the venue, they were already playing, and I was nearly knocked over by a gorgeous tsunami of sensuous, sonorous sound. I continued to weep for the rest of the hour's performance.
You have to check them out. If you don't know where to start, try "The Last Time" from their album, "Balance on What."
http://www.loopthis.com/
http://cdbaby.com/cd/loopstation1
And for their glorious, powerful, exalted new CD, "Love versus Love," you'll have to wait as patiently as me. Do get on their mailing list. Your ears and heart will never be loved so well.
"Love versus Love," Robin says. "Which will win?"
Loving, opening to love, devoting our lives and selves to love - is not always a dance with the daisies.
Love is the greatest game there is. 99.9% of humans make a conscious or unconscious choice that to love, fully and openly, is too painful, too vulnerable, too unpredictable.
It's true. It can be.
Lovers, the 1% of 1%, we are courageous, crazy, and somehow the most sane. It takes a great roar of YES to life. It's easier to hide, to numb out, to say NO to life.
The reward of loving - ourselves, another, this chaotic life - is often blown-open hearts, lives in cinders, work charred and scarred.
And the rewards are also heaven on earth: what comes from living with arms thrown wide, head tossed back, open, open, open, truly seeing and being truly seen. The wash of creative fire that comes only of the inclusive embrace our YES as opposed to the painful pushing away of our NO.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
C.S. Lewis
Love versus Love. Which will win?
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Birthing Pleasure
In a recent article (coming out in June) I explored the concepts of lasting sexual spark in long-term relationships, our erotic intelligence and shadow natures, and the link between pain and pleasure. And in the exploration I ran across something I'd heard about before, but never seen covered by mainstream news - orgasmic birth.
Talk about an area of our lives fraught with pain, shame, blame and shadow: childbirth
I believe it's Genesis 3:16 that says, "I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children."
Enjoy an excerpt from my article as well as the ABC news story and a link to an extraordinary site.
Why is it that so often where there is the intimacy, love and familiarity of long-term and life partnership, the sexual spark seems to dim, flicker and perhaps fade altogether? What gives?
Arousal is a complex paradoxical cocktail: it requires some amount of adrenaline, some degree of excitement and danger, while also requiring just enough safety to open to the risk of the unknown, the new and they mysterious.
Our conundrum: shadow aspects can be hot, exciting, intriguing. The taboo has simultaneous repulsion and appeal. Can our shadow – the very things we’ve decided have nothing to do with our best, most sacred selves have a place in our sacred sex and turned-on relationship lives?
When we can unlock formerly locked doors and embrace what was previously rejected, the result is often more wholeness and a divine homecoming. As Dossie Easton, marriage and family therapist and co-author of The Ethical Slut puts it, “… the shadow, our personal garbage pit, becomes the gateway through which we pass to travel in realms beyond ordinary consciousnesses.”
Dossie Easton explains when we dive into our past with consciousness, we get to rewrite the ending ourselves; we travel a familiar path, but come out as victors, rather than victims. And when it is injected with eros, with the very life force that sexual energy is, it is powerfully affirming – and we have created a new memory, now accessible in our consciousness. We turn our personal tragedies into triumphs.
She offers, “Lucifer actually means “light bearer”… the fallen angel who goes into unfathomable darkness with an unquenchable light inside him, and who carries the power of the villain and of the emancipator.”
But is going deeper into pain always necessary for its transformation? “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer,” says influential thinker and founder of Analytical psychology, Carl Jung. For some the healing process cannot bypass pain, and the “powers of enlightenment” have to bore directly through the dense center of suffering. Often, going through pain becomes the access to pleasure; it becomes a question of degree and the intention behind the exploration.
I admit to being rather skeptical, until I ran across an abcNews video story on orgasmic birth. Birth is considered to be one of the most painful experiences a body can endure, yet this showed many women having the same blissful, expansive sensations in birthing their babies as in sexual orgasm. One woman explained her process as re-interpreting the intense sensations of contractions and labor from painful to pleasureful. In fact, many of the same physiological actions occur in labor and birth as in sexual intercourse and orgasm.
We are all influenced, to one degree or another by spiritual lineages that have included shadow and pain in the quest for enlightened union: fasting, sleep deprivation, whirling dervishes, self-flagellation, walking uphill on the knees, etc. While many of these sought to punish and deny the body in order to get to spirit, others used pain as a transformative tool to lovingly unite the body with the divine.
Buddhist nun and author Pema Chodron reminds, “Staying with pain without loving-kindness is just warfare.”
----
News story:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=6120045&page=1
Amazing site:
http://www.orgasmicbirth.com/
----
Talk about an area of our lives fraught with pain, shame, blame and shadow: childbirth
I believe it's Genesis 3:16 that says, "I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children."
Enjoy an excerpt from my article as well as the ABC news story and a link to an extraordinary site.
Why is it that so often where there is the intimacy, love and familiarity of long-term and life partnership, the sexual spark seems to dim, flicker and perhaps fade altogether? What gives?
Arousal is a complex paradoxical cocktail: it requires some amount of adrenaline, some degree of excitement and danger, while also requiring just enough safety to open to the risk of the unknown, the new and they mysterious.
Our conundrum: shadow aspects can be hot, exciting, intriguing. The taboo has simultaneous repulsion and appeal. Can our shadow – the very things we’ve decided have nothing to do with our best, most sacred selves have a place in our sacred sex and turned-on relationship lives?
When we can unlock formerly locked doors and embrace what was previously rejected, the result is often more wholeness and a divine homecoming. As Dossie Easton, marriage and family therapist and co-author of The Ethical Slut puts it, “… the shadow, our personal garbage pit, becomes the gateway through which we pass to travel in realms beyond ordinary consciousnesses.”
Dossie Easton explains when we dive into our past with consciousness, we get to rewrite the ending ourselves; we travel a familiar path, but come out as victors, rather than victims. And when it is injected with eros, with the very life force that sexual energy is, it is powerfully affirming – and we have created a new memory, now accessible in our consciousness. We turn our personal tragedies into triumphs.
She offers, “Lucifer actually means “light bearer”… the fallen angel who goes into unfathomable darkness with an unquenchable light inside him, and who carries the power of the villain and of the emancipator.”
But is going deeper into pain always necessary for its transformation? “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer,” says influential thinker and founder of Analytical psychology, Carl Jung. For some the healing process cannot bypass pain, and the “powers of enlightenment” have to bore directly through the dense center of suffering. Often, going through pain becomes the access to pleasure; it becomes a question of degree and the intention behind the exploration.
I admit to being rather skeptical, until I ran across an abcNews video story on orgasmic birth. Birth is considered to be one of the most painful experiences a body can endure, yet this showed many women having the same blissful, expansive sensations in birthing their babies as in sexual orgasm. One woman explained her process as re-interpreting the intense sensations of contractions and labor from painful to pleasureful. In fact, many of the same physiological actions occur in labor and birth as in sexual intercourse and orgasm.
We are all influenced, to one degree or another by spiritual lineages that have included shadow and pain in the quest for enlightened union: fasting, sleep deprivation, whirling dervishes, self-flagellation, walking uphill on the knees, etc. While many of these sought to punish and deny the body in order to get to spirit, others used pain as a transformative tool to lovingly unite the body with the divine.
Buddhist nun and author Pema Chodron reminds, “Staying with pain without loving-kindness is just warfare.”
----
News story:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=6120045&page=1
Amazing site:
http://www.orgasmicbirth.com/
----
Friday, April 10, 2009
Dancing Down Demons
Years ago, I was a professional modern dancer. I did fairly well in a hard field, making my humble living (mostly) dancing in Europe, Israel and in New York City. Until one day I realized I spent 80% of each day hating myself.
When I did the math, that meant 80% of my life devoted to self-denigration, and that was too high a percentage (!) so I quit dancing as a profession.
I wasn't raised religiously, but I know being a dancer from a young age took the place of Catholic school or a rigorous, constrictive religious training. In terms of working harder for less for promise of reward later. In terms of denying the body for a higher cause. In terms of becoming a vessel for another's vision. In terms of striving for perfection as the basis for simply being alive. In terms of self-loathing and joy being mixed up in the same thing. And also in terms of feeling a light shine forth from me and feeling a visceral connection with the divine as I did this craft I loved very much.
Last year, about this time, I created a dance piece, not only so I could dance and enjoy myself, but so that I could work out any leftover demons of dance roaming around in my psyche. So I could be free to enjoy this most gorgeous of arts, one I am blessed to be very good at.
And come up the twice-warmed demons did! (You can read old posts from February - May of 2008 to see to track my dancing with demons...) I have never been more challenged, more stretched to the bone to focus, show up, problem solve on my feet. I have never felt more shame at not knowing what I should know, but could only come to know by the experience of going through it.
They say you only get the courage to do something after you've done it. I do believe I'm brave enough to truly dance now.
Here's the piece, for your viewing pleasure.
http://www.beforeplaydance.com/
on one side
are
our lives
discon nected
di/ssected & bi-sected
int er rupted by
(over-technologized)
misunderstanding @
our brutal
isolation
& on the other side
there lives
visceral connection:
beating heart (light!)
and red hot heat
she persists
regard
less
Thursday, April 9, 2009
David Deida - dive in or run the other way?
This is an article I wrote for New York Spirit Magazine, Spring 2009. Three couples take on a Deida week-long intensive. I'm one of the couples. Only two couples survive.
Read on here, or use this link:
http://www.nyspirit.com/issue154/Enlightened_Sex/
David Deida: Dive in or run the other way?
Enlightened Sex in the City takes a look at the work of a controversial spiritual master.
Best-selling author, powerfully insightful teacher, and provocative master of his craft, David Deida is arguably your man if you are looking to study sexuality as spirituality.
In addition to countless students, David’s work has inspired the likes of well-known achievement coach Tony Robbins, Ken Wilber of the Integral Institute and minister and spiritual spokeswoman, Marianne Williamson. For as many hearts he’s inspired to ecstasy and minds he’s blown wide open to divine love, there are just as many who’ve come away pissed off and disillusioned, hurt and burnt.
I first encountered David Deida’s work when my fiancée handed me the book, The Way of the Superior Man. Just the title set off alarm bells to my neo-feminist sensibilities, but I read it anyways and became hooked on Deida’s heartfelt prescription for erotically-charged harmony between the sexes. I’ve since read most of Deida’s books, heard him speak numerous times and have placed myself (and fiancée) in Deida’s masterful hands during a week-long intensive.
The heart of Deida’s work is about living your deepest truth and giving your greatest gifts, in the face of pain, broken hearts, confusing partners, and your own personality maze. He offers information, skills and energetic/body practices so as to be of service to the force of divine love in the universe, through your loving, love-making and relating.
In a moment, you’ll meet two other couples: Kendra and Decker and Bryan and KC, who have recently taken a week-long intensive with Deida. One couple finds their marriage deepening and opening; the other broke up as a result of the workshop. What is it about Deida’s sexual and spiritual truths that have the power to send two hearts more deeply aflame in connection, and for two others, sears their relationship to cinders?
Deida offers potent definitions of the essence of – and the interplay between – the divine masculine and feminine.
He describes the masculine as depth of presence; archetypically and energetically it is piercing presence, stillness, purpose and will, a penetrating force by which and through which the world and all experience is felt and known. The feminine is all possibility, all movement and dynamic creative energies; fire and fury, sweetness and comfort changing on a dime, the fierce beauty of life and experience itself. The feminine is attracted to depth of presence and the masculine is attracted to that which is flush with energy.
Deida positions the romantic relationship as a means to understand and be in service of the divine feminine and masculine within your self and within your partner; it is a way of continually opening to more love and appreciation, and for sexuality to be divine prayer. Many people can misunderstand Deida’s work and assume simply that women should be more feminine and men more masculine. As Deida says in an interview with Bodhi Tree Bookstore, “We're multidimensional and fluid beings. There's nothing wrong with any of us identifying with more masculine or more feminine, more consciousness or more light at any particular moment except when it creates closure or problems because we're not using it wisely.”
Another important principle in Deida’s work is that of polarity. As with magnets, there is the most irresistible pull between distinctly different charges – negative on one side, positive on the other. Deida adds, “Any time one person is in their masculine and one person is in their feminine, it's like a magnet or electricity happens between them, and it doesn't matter if they're committed in a relationship or total strangers.” Much of Deida’s work is about cultivating polarity – with masculine on one end of the spectrum and feminine on the other, to maintain and deepen sexual attraction.
Another important aspect of Deida’s work revolves around his three stages of development: “Any time you're doing something for yourself, for me, me, me, it's the first stage. Any time you're doing something on the sense of equality and sharing making sure you’re both safe and okay, it's the second stage. And any time you're doing something for the sake of all beings, it's the third stage. You may die in the process. Martin Luther King, Jesus Christ, and Mother Teresa are third stage people, but we could all have those moments every day. All you have to do is be in a disposition of serving, regardless of the outcome to yourself, and that's the third stage.”
It was for this and more that we all came. Kendra and Decker, recently married, were well aware of the potential to get bored and take each other for granted over the span of their marriage and they decided to fix it before it was broken in 5, 15 or 50 years. The wanted to be able to continue to appreciate and truly know each other as well as deepen their sexual connection; they wanted to be able to have moments of tantric merging at will, rather than at random. The urging of their good friend and business partner, Bryan, was the deciding factor to dive in. Bryan is a coach and leads seminars for men – the Authentic Man Program – along with Decker and Kendra, and KC is a meditation teacher and sensuality coach. KC and Bryan decided similarly to do the workshop for similar reasons: a more solid relationship and deeper sexual practices. A long time student of Deida, Bryan wanted to receive the direct benefits and transmission possible through being with him personally.
The week-long intensive I attended with my partner was called the Yoga of Sex and Relationship. Obviously confused at the outset, we thought we were going to do a little yoga and learn some sensual and sexual practices that would amplify our connection. When we got there, we were all told there was to be no touching, kissing or exchanging bodily fluids for the whole week, not even with our partner. The next morning we found out that yoga in Deida-land doesn’t mean familiar stretchy, sweaty, feel-good asanas.
Deida draws a distinction between therapy, yoga and spirituality: therapy is past and healing-based; the whys and hows. To use a metaphor of a hole in a panel of stained glass, therapy is fixing the hole. Yoga – disciplined practice, a means and a way – is the polishing of the colored glass, regardless of the hole, making beauty out of the hole. It is the ability to take whatever you’ve got, whether or not it’s what you like or prefer, no matter how ugly, and transform it into art, surrendering to the divine, regardless. Spirituality? Well, everything’s perfect, as it is; there never was any hole in the stained glass. Deida defines his work as yoga with the goal of making art out of sexing and loving. Although it can be useful to at times go back and do some therapy on stuff, and his work does rub up against spirituality, Deida is about yoga. Attending his yogic workshops for most is like an interactive, intense, challenging co-creation of art – and a certain level of comfort can’t be your priority. At then end of each break throughout the day, I had to gird my loins to go back in and continue to do yoga and make art.
Relationship is as good a spiritual vehicle as any to experience divinity – but possibly the most challenging. For those of us who haven’t committed to being celibate monks and who choose relationship as spiritual path, Deida offers a map. In addition to a greater appreciation for herself, Kendra’s greatest take-away was to see how the masculine and feminine naturally clash and to not take it so seriously when it comes up in life. The problem isn’t over there with the opposite sex; your partner will continue to baffle, annoy, anger and disappoint you; it all comes with the territory. The feminine can often appear as volatile and unstable and the masculine can often appear as dense and inconsiderate. In a moment of humor, Deida says, “Ask yourself, is this the crazy bitch I want to be with?” or “is this the stupid asshole I want to be with?” Rather than bemoaning it, or assuming the next one will be less wacky or less of a jerk, the key is to learn how to dance with the essence of feminine and masculine, as an expression of your greatest truth in each moment.
All of us who took the workshop are facilitators and coaches and represent a younger generation of teachers working with men and women who want deeper relating, the ability to truly connect with others, and greater authenticity. One of the things taught in the Authentic Man Program is how to cultivate connection, to really “get” where another is at, often called resonance. Decker walked away from the week with Deida with the profound distinction of polarity versus resonance. The choice of when to go for resonance and connect with another, and when to choose polarity in order to retain powerful presence and purposeful separateness, has changed his life, relationship, organization and marriage – forever. Rather than always defaulting to being intimate and close, he is grateful for the choice of being able to bring his best, no matter what ride his partner is on.
With tears in her eyes, KC attempts to convey the depth of gratitude for what she got from the challenging workshop and the fallout – her breakup: a space of profoundly valuing herself, the gift of opening heart and body to another, and an understanding of her “blueprint” for attraction. When we take things we think are ugly, dark and wrong and shine light and love through them, they have this miraculous effect of being able to open the heart and body. Deida’s work can be remarkably transformational because he isn’t afraid to go to the dark epicenter and make art by finding beauty everywhere, in every moment. And then we become no longer afraid of ourselves, nor of living fully.
Bryan left with a deep sense of what he is and what he is not; getting himself as perfect, yet wanting more for himself. The workshop compounded issues between him and KC and broke them apart. Although the type of solid masculine man of deep character espoused by Deida is something that Bryan aspires to, he realized it just isn’t him. It’s like going against his natural strengths of fluidity and movement. One of the unfortunate pitfalls of Deida’s work is that many try to become “Deida-bots,” adapting postures or behaviors, developing an exoskeleton (of the kind Deida is actually trying to dissolve), and never make it back to themselves. Although not totally Bryan’s experience, he still says, “For the month after the workshop, I was raking myself over the coals, trying to become someone I am not. I am still sorting through what is true for me,” After periods of mourning and grieving the year of being together with KC, he is still left feeling infinitely deepened. As he says, “Can you stay open in the face of some of the most painful emotional experiences you’ve ever had? The cup of your joy is carved by your sorrow.”
Although Deida’s workshops are not inherently unsafe or dangerous, it is up to each participant to honor themselves. It can be important to separate teacher from teachings, since some masters or enlightened beings still have a shadow side and could do with a little therapy themselves. Deida is the first to acknowledge he’s far from perfect. Deida has profound mastery of his topics, lives much like a social recluse and shirks any markings of being a guru. Whether or not participants make him into a guru is another matter. His workshops are designed as a microcosm of real life and relationship; they are designed to push edges, because this is really how it’s going to feel and be with your partner. If you are not strong and supple, upset in the relationship will just be another excuse not to love.
Looking back at the experience, we all agree: being in the room with Deida for a long week is inherently beneficial for anyone hungry, aware or developed enough to receive it. He’s the real deal. With a bent more toward rigor than compassion, Deida’s work is still that of a living master. It’s not for everyone. Most wouldn’t trade it, but there aren’t many who are clear they’d do it again. As KC puts it, “You have to be kind of crazy to do something like this, but crazy in a really gorgeous way, so hungry for the most beautiful, raw living – and that isn’t always what you think it is.”
Deida offers us an avenue to meet the dark stuff – that we all share, teachers and students alike – with love. It is about cultivating discipline and ferocious intensity, but for the ultimate goal of living in beauty and union, of striving toward the divine through sex and love.
Deida offers a way to open your heart, give your greatest gifts and love as fully as you can this lifetime. Yes, he’ll urge you to push your edges in yoga and in practices, when you have a week, weekend or hour set aside for it. But the rest of the time, he reminds us to make our lives as kind as we possibly can for this gentle soul we find ourselves in relationship with.
David Deida offers a demanding path to become strong – so that we can be sweet.
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LiYana Silver, Relationship Specialist and regular contributor to New York Spirit, is a teacher, counselor and writer – with a reverently irreverent outlook and a true love of true partnership. She works primarily with women and couples in intensives, retreats and in individualized sessions. For upcoming events and more information, please visit her website: http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com.
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To learn more about David Deida’s teachings, books and workshops, visit: http://www.deida.info.
To learn more about the Authentic Man Program, visit: http://www.authenticmanprogram.com.
To learn more about KC Baker’s work: http://www.kcbaker.com.
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Love, Love, Love
You know those people at the gym that jam out on the elliptical machine like they are in a nightclub, lip-syncing along with their ear phoned-in music, arms flailing and hair tossing, occasionally emitting some high-pitched screechy sounds that resemble singing?
I am one of those people.
I jam at the gym. I admit it. (That'd me, above, if I were ipod-ized)
Last week, I was listening to a new Lenny Kravitz song, "Love, Love, Love" (go download it from iTunes or whathaveyou) and got to thinking about Love, God and What Really Matters.
The Cliff Notes version of Lenny's song is that he don't need nothin - like money, fame, jewelry, drugs or someone to get him laid - he's got LOVE. It's a great song, and very conducive to gym-jamming. And, really, what does Matter?
The economy is deeply messed up and we all feel it. So many have been hard-core affected, and those who've only felt it peripherally, it's on our minds. As much as I bow my head to the realities of many people's lives, scorched and splintered by our nose-diving economy, I also still see that this country is still the richest in the world, still happily consuming away. For most (not all) of us, it means we now can't buy a new car, we have to make due with our three-year old one. Or we can't buy the blu-ray player, we have to make due with our DVD player. American consuming and rich livin' marches on for most. Yet still, there's nothing like the threat of recession and depression to get us frightened about all that can be taken away.
But what doesn't get taken away? What feeds Mother Theresa? What sustained Nelson Mandela in prison for all those years? What made Gandhi get up, morning after morning, sore from another beating? What fuels a single mother of three toddlers in the inner city?
I call it Love.
What is it that you Love?
What thunders through you, demanding to be felt? What moves you, taps at your heart and buckles you at your knees? What doesn't go away when your things do? What doesn't go away when your lover or your mother does? What feeds you, but not through your plate? What courses through your veins and comes out as a palpable blast of creativity? What quietly keeps you company when your heart is breaking? What compels you to sing in the shower - or at the gym?
What is it that you Love?
Bow to That. Cultivate That. Honor That. Feed That. Flirt with That.
We could all do with a direct upline to Love, Love, Love.
And while you are madly flirting with the unique expression of Love and experience of Love in your life, watch this clip of Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of "Eat, Pray, Love") speaking on Creativity, Genius, God and Love on Ted TV:
http://www.ted.org/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
It was my eye-watering, heart-melting, exultant dose of Love today.
Go Love, Love, Love.
LiYana
Thursday, January 29, 2009
At Home with the Erotic
Soon, I'll get married. And have a baby.
All of which I'm grandly looking forward to.
(Soon being relative, mind you)
I've always done everything in my life back-ass-wards, in my own time, against the current and by my own rules - and the marriage thing and the baby thing will be no different. Personalized vows, a pre-nuptual arrangement (so we both know what institution we are signing up for!), a highly unusual ceremony, living "off the grid," and the child born into the village it takes to raise it: these are all par for the course for me.
Although I do everything unconventionally and it doesn't look like it's about to change any time soon, I wonder about the conventional phenomenon of the decline of sexual desire within long-term relationship. The sizzle subsides. The heat peters out. The comfort of home and hearth replace the fire of the loins. Not for everyone, but for so, so many.
Should we not get into long-term partnership if we want to keep our erotic embers alive? Is it inevitable or can we practice, will, hope, create, connive and reason our way out of the inevitability? And why does it prove to be so ubiquitously inevitable?
Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with giving sex a break. After that many years together, some folks might be happy to get a rest, to have time to devote to intimacy, conversation, travel, children, learning, cuddling, what have you. A hot sex life is only a priority if it's a priority.
But what if it is a priority - and it's going down the tubes? I've just been reading and heartily enjoying "Mating in Captivity" by Esther Perel, NYC based sex/couples therapist.
http://www.estherperel.com/
She posits that one cause for the decline is that the safety, intimacy and comfort that are the hard-won results of long-term partnership are often at odds with the unknown, taboo and forbidden that fuel our sexual and erotic connections.
Another is the identity clash some of us feel in our new roles as wife, husband or family maker. A dutiful wife should be self-sacrificing and not tend to her pleasure, right? A caring husband wouldn't have THOSE kinds of thoughts about the mother of his children, would he?
But who says what we want in one area of our life carries over part and parcel to another? Aren't we flexible beings, capable of wearing many hats? Can we be a vixen in bed and a entrepreneur in life? Can't we be a fantastic parent and into whatever kink we are into? Isn't it a paradox in the first place to be human, to be in a relationship, even?
Perhaps including all our oxymoronic parts in one teeming relationship is what the whole thing is about.
Perhaps embracing the paradox and including what would ordinarily be excluded is the key to getting all we want WITHIN the relationship, rather than going OUTSIDE the relationship. The statistic is that somewhere between 50-80% of people cheat. Yowsa.
As Esther Perel writes:
"Family life flourishes in a an atmosphere of comfort and consistency. Yet eroticism resides in unpredictability, spontaneity, and risk. Eros is a force that doesn't like to be constrained. When it settles into repetition, habit, or rules, it touches its death. It is then transformed into boredom and sometimes, more powerfully into repulsion. Sex, a harbinger of loss of control, is fraught with uncertainty and vulnerability. But when kids come on the scene, our tolerance for these destabilizing emotions takes a dive. Perhaps this is why they are so often relegated to the fringes of family life. What eroticism thrives on, family life defends against."
"When we validate one another's freedom within the relationship, we're less inclined to search for it elsewhere. [Infidelity] is no longer a shadow but a presence, something to talk out openly, joke about, play with. When we can tell the truth safely, we are less inclines to keep secrets."
So, here's to telling the truth - all of it.
Here's to a hearth and home that embraces not only our excellent communication, our brilliant intimacy, our integrity and our loving kindness, but our seducer, our temptress, our shadow, our illicit, and our quickly-beating erotic hearts.
---
Monday, January 19, 2009
Reverse Spiritual Cowgirls in Red
Don't all magical things converge in threes?
One
I lit a red candle today, in honor of my dear father, who passed away on October 23, 2008. Red for Roland (my dad). I'm trying to sense into the ways his essence is still with me. He's not so much a guardian angel type, more like a trickster, a coyote or kokopeli. So as my best plans for efficiency and hard work unravel and snag, I wonder if it's my dear dad, reminding me to lift my head up, sip life, enjoy the art in the making around me, the ordinary made extraordinary by taking the time to see it. And leave time for some mischief, too.
To keep track of our toothbrushes, growing up, it ws Red for Roland, Blue for Beverly, my mom (who is a guardian angel) and Yellow for LiYana (ok, that's a stretch, but what color starts with L? I don't think lime-colored toothbrushes existed in the 1970s)
Two
As I was sitting at my red candle, I saw that the book of matches was stamped with "Camp Reverse Cowgirl" - and remembered getting it at Burning Man this last year. I sparkly woman in a cowgirl hat handed it to me as a reward for making it back alive after flying in an open-cockpit plane with a friend. For those of you that don't know, Burning Man is a 50,000 person summer camp for adults in the Black Rock desert of Nevada. Each year, folks come and set up extraordinary art installations, dance, and bring new meaning to extreme camping, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Many folks form themselves into theme camps, such as the Reverse Cowgirls.
In case you don't know, a Cowgirl is not only an intrepid lass exploring her way to her own personal frontiers, but is also an affectionate name for the sexual position when the woman is on top. Reverse Cowgirl, well, you can probably make the picture.
Maybe you recognize this chic?
And check out the picture, up and to your right, yo!
Three
And then there's one of my newest friends and colleagues, Sera Beak. I met her when we were both interviewed on the Stuart Davis Show, "Sex, God, Rock & Roll" a couple of months ago. I realized her book, "The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark" was hugely helpful to me, years and years ago, as I was redesigning my business and creating www.ReDefiningMonogamy.com.
The Red Book. It's all about "going Red," connecting to the real, alive, beating heart of spirituality, in that kind of raw, outlaw kind of way. The divine is nowhere that you are not; the divine is having a divine/human experience through you.
Sera's up to starting a Redvolution.
Here's Sera, in a phone booth, which I suspect is one of the art installations at Burning Man.
Welcome spiritual cowgirls and boys … This is Sera Beak, a Harvard-trained scholar of world religions and intrepid spiritual cowgirl who spent the last 12 years traveling the world exploring spirituality -- from whirling with Sufi dervishes to meeting the Dalai Lama on her 21st birthday; from taking the host from a Croatian Catholic mystic who had the stigmata (truly) to having life-altering visions with a shaman (and everything in between). She's synthesized her experience and research into a new book and have come to one conclusion:
(it’s not what you think)
The Golden Age of divine booty calls.
Is not in the ancient past.
It’s right now.
So then the question becomes:
How the hell do we wink back?
One answer: By turning red, of course.
Check it out:
http://www.serabeak.com/
"When life hands you lemons, ask for tequila and salt and call me over!"
- Anonymous
---
One
I lit a red candle today, in honor of my dear father, who passed away on October 23, 2008. Red for Roland (my dad). I'm trying to sense into the ways his essence is still with me. He's not so much a guardian angel type, more like a trickster, a coyote or kokopeli. So as my best plans for efficiency and hard work unravel and snag, I wonder if it's my dear dad, reminding me to lift my head up, sip life, enjoy the art in the making around me, the ordinary made extraordinary by taking the time to see it. And leave time for some mischief, too.
To keep track of our toothbrushes, growing up, it ws Red for Roland, Blue for Beverly, my mom (who is a guardian angel) and Yellow for LiYana (ok, that's a stretch, but what color starts with L? I don't think lime-colored toothbrushes existed in the 1970s)
Two
As I was sitting at my red candle, I saw that the book of matches was stamped with "Camp Reverse Cowgirl" - and remembered getting it at Burning Man this last year. I sparkly woman in a cowgirl hat handed it to me as a reward for making it back alive after flying in an open-cockpit plane with a friend. For those of you that don't know, Burning Man is a 50,000 person summer camp for adults in the Black Rock desert of Nevada. Each year, folks come and set up extraordinary art installations, dance, and bring new meaning to extreme camping, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Many folks form themselves into theme camps, such as the Reverse Cowgirls.
In case you don't know, a Cowgirl is not only an intrepid lass exploring her way to her own personal frontiers, but is also an affectionate name for the sexual position when the woman is on top. Reverse Cowgirl, well, you can probably make the picture.
Maybe you recognize this chic?
And check out the picture, up and to your right, yo!
Three
And then there's one of my newest friends and colleagues, Sera Beak. I met her when we were both interviewed on the Stuart Davis Show, "Sex, God, Rock & Roll" a couple of months ago. I realized her book, "The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark" was hugely helpful to me, years and years ago, as I was redesigning my business and creating www.ReDefiningMonogamy.com.
The Red Book. It's all about "going Red," connecting to the real, alive, beating heart of spirituality, in that kind of raw, outlaw kind of way. The divine is nowhere that you are not; the divine is having a divine/human experience through you.
Sera's up to starting a Redvolution.
Here's Sera, in a phone booth, which I suspect is one of the art installations at Burning Man.
Welcome spiritual cowgirls and boys … This is Sera Beak, a Harvard-trained scholar of world religions and intrepid spiritual cowgirl who spent the last 12 years traveling the world exploring spirituality -- from whirling with Sufi dervishes to meeting the Dalai Lama on her 21st birthday; from taking the host from a Croatian Catholic mystic who had the stigmata (truly) to having life-altering visions with a shaman (and everything in between). She's synthesized her experience and research into a new book and have come to one conclusion:
(it’s not what you think)
The Golden Age of divine booty calls.
Is not in the ancient past.
It’s right now.
So then the question becomes:
How the hell do we wink back?
One answer: By turning red, of course.
Check it out:
http://www.serabeak.com/
"When life hands you lemons, ask for tequila and salt and call me over!"
- Anonymous
---
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Pablo Neruda and Skype
The truth is, these last few weeks have felt like hell. Negotiations with my partner on leaving San Francisco, how to combine keeping my business flourishing and me writing my book while we take off on a sailboat for a year, or two. We are good negotiators, but sometimes our skill level is surpassed by the complexity of the situation. This has been one of those times.
It's gotten heavy, snarled, emotional, chargey and even ugly. I've been scared. I don't think the straightest when I'm terrified.
Today, the last person I expected to be my angel, was.
Nathan, my partner in crime, in life and in love.
Nathan, on a boat, our home to be, in the Caribbean:
The Pablo Neruda part comes after the Skype part.
Our Skype chat from today:
LiYana
1:21 PM
how are you feeling about me?
Nathan
1:22 PM
i'm feeling good about you
i like you
i like us
i like our time together
i don't have all the answers
but i feel like things will work out
with creativity and intelligence and sensitivity
we made it through crazier things and have been the better for it
we'll do the same in leaving san fran / sailing / leaving sailing
come out better for it, is my thought on it.
what do you think?
LiYana
1:24 PM
generally, i like that, it makes sense
i'm having a very difficult time right now
i guess nothing to do about it
Nathan
1:25 PM
anything i can do to help with your difficult time?
LiYana Silver
1:27 PM
i'm shy to express things like that
since it's gotten us intro trouble lately
mostly, it's not your deal, so i try to work it out on my own, but then i isolate and it's hard for me to connect or be vulnerable
if i share, or ask for support, eventually it becomes something that you don't like doing, and it causes problems, and i feel like a jerk for asking, for needing, for relying on you
these last few days i feel lost, like leaving SF now, things seems pointless while we are apart
Nathan
1:30 PM
hmmm
it is hard to have decided to leave, with a transition time
i can feel that
of course, you're welcome to come to the boat and do nothing but work for the first 2 months
though i think some things are better in san fran
i've been thinking about coming back earlier in feb
so as to have less time apart
as another way to do it
LiYana
1:34 PM
that's sweet. i'm surprised and delighted to hear it
i wouldn't want you to miss out on being there, if it's important
i don't have good thinking on it
Nathan
1:35 PM
no worries ... i'm thinking on it ...
i figure it will all make sense as we go along
mostly
i just come back to
i love you
i feel better with you
life always works out better than i expect
even when it doesn't feel like that will be the case
so not to worry too much, but be healthy, eat well, love a lot, and stay Awake
and make the best decisions with the most information we have
LiYana
1:36 PM
i'm just so scared
terrified, actually
Nathan
1:36 PM
what is your worst fear?
LiYana
1:37 PM
two i think
that i'll give up on myself, what's important to me
that i'll be that woman who follows you and eventually, you'll hate that woman, who has no center
Nathan
1:40 PM
i hear you love
on the first one, i feel like you're doing good at holding out and discussing what's really important to you
and i feel like i've moved a lot around supporting your business, and will only get better around whatever i understand is really important to you
on the second one ... i don't think its a real fear ...
i think its dangerous to think that way
because it puts you between two losing options
one to not follow me, to be independent, and to lose me
or to follow me, to lose yourself, and to lose me
i don't think either is accurate
LiYana
1:42 PM
that's kind of what it feels like
Nathan
1:42 PM
yes. i think that second one is a construct where its reasonable to be terrified
its an unwinnable construct
not sure how to assure you the 2nd is not true. likely there is nothing i can say around it. but i'd say that's the place to focus your thoughts / talking to others / talking to me
LiYana
1:43 PM
if it's not true, what is?
i get that it's not winable, just not sure what IS winable?
Nathan
1:44 PM
that you are a woman i repeatedly and consistently show affection, love and loyalty too.
and that you being you will cause that to continue
the you that is strong and flexible, and follower and a leader
who negotiations nicely but firmly
who stands for what she wants and needs, but who considers me and my needs as well
the lionness
and the seductress
the woman by my side
and the woman out ahead
i think you are a unique and amazing woman, who has the skills and ability to be with me, and be better as a result
and i don't know any other that will be
LiYana
1:46 PM
those are nice things
thank you
Nathan
1:46 PM
not nice. true.
LiYana
1:48 PM
i don't what to say, sorry, i am crying
Nathan
1:48 PM
its ok. i love you liyana. i think you should keep doing what you are doing. feeling in the dark, doing your best. negotiationg, leading, following, petitioning, giving in, what feels right.
trusting your instincts for when to
go along, when to dig in your heels
i'd look at the current situation
from a place of what do your instincts say would be the best to do, the best to say
if you trust that will be the best thing, and it will all work out in your favor if you follow it
and do that, be true to that, come what will
LiYana
1:50 PM
that is very good guidance
do you always trust your instincts?
or listen to them?
Nathan
1:52 PM
i listen to them
then do everything not to listen to them
and then come back to listening to them, and generally doing what they say
even when it makes little sense
they are my navigation in complex waters
and when i look back on my life, they've always been right
none made sense at the time. all took courage. all were the right thing to do in retrospect
you have developed instincts. listen to them. see what you come up with. trust them. trust yourself. you know!
this is one thing i know to be true about you
no bullshit
we share this trait/skill
LiYana
1:54 PM
thanks for saying all these things about me. it's helpful. i'm not feelng very good about myself. it's good to get a little outside perspective.
Nathan
1:55 PM
you're being great, you know?
liyana, i love and adore you
i'm sorry this is a rough time
i have empathy.. and i feel rsponsible. and i know i'm doing the best i can
you'll get through it
listen to your soul, listen to your pussy
and tell me what they say later on, sometime soon
LiYana
1:55 PM
ok, i will, my love
Nathan
1:55 PM
i love you
LiYana
1:55 PM
i appreciate your seeing and level-headedness and compassion right now
i need it
i wasn't expecting it, and i couldn't ask for it
i love you, too, nathan, this i know
Nathan
1:57 PM
i love you liyana
i always ask myself, do i love liyana, am i better person as a result of being with her
and i consistently come back with
absolutely
LiYana
1:59 PM
this is what i wanted to ask for before, when you asked how you can help me: your compassion, love, tenderness, support
thank you
more than you can imagine
thank you
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly,
without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way.”
- Pablo Neruda
-----
It's gotten heavy, snarled, emotional, chargey and even ugly. I've been scared. I don't think the straightest when I'm terrified.
Today, the last person I expected to be my angel, was.
Nathan, my partner in crime, in life and in love.
Nathan, on a boat, our home to be, in the Caribbean:
The Pablo Neruda part comes after the Skype part.
Our Skype chat from today:
LiYana
1:21 PM
how are you feeling about me?
Nathan
1:22 PM
i'm feeling good about you
i like you
i like us
i like our time together
i don't have all the answers
but i feel like things will work out
with creativity and intelligence and sensitivity
we made it through crazier things and have been the better for it
we'll do the same in leaving san fran / sailing / leaving sailing
come out better for it, is my thought on it.
what do you think?
LiYana
1:24 PM
generally, i like that, it makes sense
i'm having a very difficult time right now
i guess nothing to do about it
Nathan
1:25 PM
anything i can do to help with your difficult time?
LiYana Silver
1:27 PM
i'm shy to express things like that
since it's gotten us intro trouble lately
mostly, it's not your deal, so i try to work it out on my own, but then i isolate and it's hard for me to connect or be vulnerable
if i share, or ask for support, eventually it becomes something that you don't like doing, and it causes problems, and i feel like a jerk for asking, for needing, for relying on you
these last few days i feel lost, like leaving SF now, things seems pointless while we are apart
Nathan
1:30 PM
hmmm
it is hard to have decided to leave, with a transition time
i can feel that
of course, you're welcome to come to the boat and do nothing but work for the first 2 months
though i think some things are better in san fran
i've been thinking about coming back earlier in feb
so as to have less time apart
as another way to do it
LiYana
1:34 PM
that's sweet. i'm surprised and delighted to hear it
i wouldn't want you to miss out on being there, if it's important
i don't have good thinking on it
Nathan
1:35 PM
no worries ... i'm thinking on it ...
i figure it will all make sense as we go along
mostly
i just come back to
i love you
i feel better with you
life always works out better than i expect
even when it doesn't feel like that will be the case
so not to worry too much, but be healthy, eat well, love a lot, and stay Awake
and make the best decisions with the most information we have
LiYana
1:36 PM
i'm just so scared
terrified, actually
Nathan
1:36 PM
what is your worst fear?
LiYana
1:37 PM
two i think
that i'll give up on myself, what's important to me
that i'll be that woman who follows you and eventually, you'll hate that woman, who has no center
Nathan
1:40 PM
i hear you love
on the first one, i feel like you're doing good at holding out and discussing what's really important to you
and i feel like i've moved a lot around supporting your business, and will only get better around whatever i understand is really important to you
on the second one ... i don't think its a real fear ...
i think its dangerous to think that way
because it puts you between two losing options
one to not follow me, to be independent, and to lose me
or to follow me, to lose yourself, and to lose me
i don't think either is accurate
LiYana
1:42 PM
that's kind of what it feels like
Nathan
1:42 PM
yes. i think that second one is a construct where its reasonable to be terrified
its an unwinnable construct
not sure how to assure you the 2nd is not true. likely there is nothing i can say around it. but i'd say that's the place to focus your thoughts / talking to others / talking to me
LiYana
1:43 PM
if it's not true, what is?
i get that it's not winable, just not sure what IS winable?
Nathan
1:44 PM
that you are a woman i repeatedly and consistently show affection, love and loyalty too.
and that you being you will cause that to continue
the you that is strong and flexible, and follower and a leader
who negotiations nicely but firmly
who stands for what she wants and needs, but who considers me and my needs as well
the lionness
and the seductress
the woman by my side
and the woman out ahead
i think you are a unique and amazing woman, who has the skills and ability to be with me, and be better as a result
and i don't know any other that will be
LiYana
1:46 PM
those are nice things
thank you
Nathan
1:46 PM
not nice. true.
LiYana
1:48 PM
i don't what to say, sorry, i am crying
Nathan
1:48 PM
its ok. i love you liyana. i think you should keep doing what you are doing. feeling in the dark, doing your best. negotiationg, leading, following, petitioning, giving in, what feels right.
trusting your instincts for when to
go along, when to dig in your heels
i'd look at the current situation
from a place of what do your instincts say would be the best to do, the best to say
if you trust that will be the best thing, and it will all work out in your favor if you follow it
and do that, be true to that, come what will
LiYana
1:50 PM
that is very good guidance
do you always trust your instincts?
or listen to them?
Nathan
1:52 PM
i listen to them
then do everything not to listen to them
and then come back to listening to them, and generally doing what they say
even when it makes little sense
they are my navigation in complex waters
and when i look back on my life, they've always been right
none made sense at the time. all took courage. all were the right thing to do in retrospect
you have developed instincts. listen to them. see what you come up with. trust them. trust yourself. you know!
this is one thing i know to be true about you
no bullshit
we share this trait/skill
LiYana
1:54 PM
thanks for saying all these things about me. it's helpful. i'm not feelng very good about myself. it's good to get a little outside perspective.
Nathan
1:55 PM
you're being great, you know?
liyana, i love and adore you
i'm sorry this is a rough time
i have empathy.. and i feel rsponsible. and i know i'm doing the best i can
you'll get through it
listen to your soul, listen to your pussy
and tell me what they say later on, sometime soon
LiYana
1:55 PM
ok, i will, my love
Nathan
1:55 PM
i love you
LiYana
1:55 PM
i appreciate your seeing and level-headedness and compassion right now
i need it
i wasn't expecting it, and i couldn't ask for it
i love you, too, nathan, this i know
Nathan
1:57 PM
i love you liyana
i always ask myself, do i love liyana, am i better person as a result of being with her
and i consistently come back with
absolutely
LiYana
1:59 PM
this is what i wanted to ask for before, when you asked how you can help me: your compassion, love, tenderness, support
thank you
more than you can imagine
thank you
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly,
without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way.”
- Pablo Neruda
-----
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Rock it
I was at a friend's for dinner a couple of nights ago and got to spend time with a new friend, Annie Lalla, who said the most astounding thing I have to pass along to you now.
We were talking of the ups and downs of life, of what to "do" with an emotion that surges up, less-than-comfortable. She said, "I always think of rocking my emotions to sleep like a baby."
Imagine. Holding each emotion close to your heart, gently, and rocking, letting it spin out its howling, its tantrum, its longing, its misery. Until with enough time, warmth, love and compassion, it quiets and it comes home.
Incidentally, Annie has a fabulous last name, Lalla, also the name of a woman ecstatic Sufi poet. Here's one of Sufi Lalla's gems:
I was passionate,
filled with longing,
I searched
far and wide.
But the day
that the Truthful One
found me,
I was at home.
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