That Abrupt Waking ~ Love’s Fierce Initiation

Offer the most love to whatever most disturbs you, in your parents, yourself, or others.
~David Deida

Now that I am an elder, I realize for how many years I’ve been watching people fall down and flounder around in the ocean of intimate relationships. This includes myself, my friends, my family, my teachers, my clients; no-one is immune. I have seen many brave and intelligent people come to a place of deep and profound disappointment, of heartbreak, of shame, of hopelessness, in this arena of human life.

What a place to meet yourself! On the meditation cushion, at the podium, having dinner with my friends, at the yoga studio, working hard at my job, I can still look somewhat sane and accountable. But with my intimate partner? Not a chance. Everything I am trying to avoid in myself is what I am confronted with here. The relationship I always wanted is not happening-sometimes I find myself in bed beside the one I never wanted to be with.

It’s no secret these days that our intimate relationships are breaking down. The signs are everywhere. What we have to learn here is something so basic, so elementary, that we can’t learn it until we are really ready. Until we are desperate. Until all of our strategies and techniques have failed. Love cannot be embodied through techniques. I used to teach my couples techniques and strategies, many years ago. I noticed that this seemed like a great idea at the time, but in the heat of the moment, such things are forgotten, instantly.

Part of us really does want to learn how to really show up, just as we are, in this moment. It longs to be naked, open, without excuses, without strategies, without agendas. To become fully conscious of what is going on, in the middle of all this suffering. To get strong enough, curious enough, fed up enough, to do the work of deep transformation and healing. And there are other parts of us: young, frightened, deeply hurt or enraged, who are often hidden deep inside. These dimensions of who we are do not want anything to do with this alchemical process of becoming adult and awake.

Learning to embody love is quite a practice-it’s like walking through fire. As David Deida says, “The under-appreciation that you felt as a child may continually show up in adulthood. You may face your parents’ worst qualities in your own character, as they have been passed to you through your ancestral lineage of sexual couplings.” Can we turn and face the truth of this? What we have to take responsibility for is nothing we have been prepared for. Nobody taught me anything in school or university about this. The people in my family never spoke of it. Who knew that my parents’ struggles would live on in me-in my bones, in my breath, in the way that I look at you?

I have been experiencing my ancestral heritage with great intensity lately, realizing that I have to gather all the strength, all the willingness, all the sweetness that lives in me, and keep on walking through this fire. Learning to love is ultimately a kind of warrior training, a fierce initiation into becoming a warrior of the heart. Someone who knows that when the dust clears, when everything falls apart, love is what matters. Not my career, not my knowledge and expertise, not my house, not my dream vacations, but the depth of love I am able to give and receive.

When people are dying, this becomes very clear to them. Let’s not wait until then. Let’s help each other, in the terrible messiness of what we are facing, to awaken the intelligence of the heart right now. Let’s strip ourselves down and find out how to move through all this baggage we are still carrying, from generations of our ancestors who did not know how to love either.

The heart has to grow very soft and very strong at the same time, in this process. As we turn towards real help and support, as we slowly learn how to practice in the middle of this fire, we develop new capacities for being with what we are experiencing. These capacities grow slowly, tenderly, with great fragility. Again and again the ancient patterns arise, again and again we move away from ourselves, away from the depth of our pain, our need, our vulnerability. Until we are strong enough and soft enough to feel the pain we have been running from. In the middle of this agony, we realize that we really don’t have to walk around bearing the weight of this accumulation, these slivers of sorrow and rage that get lodged deep in the heart.

When I can really begin to offer the deepest love to what disturbs me the most, I am walking in a new country, an unknown landscape, that was quietly waiting for me to enter it, all this time. It really doesn’t matter as much as we think, whether we stay together or not. I can stay with you and keep certain chambers of my heart shut tight. And I can walk away with a heart overflowing with love.

And how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly,
so Biblically,
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love

-David Whyte

 

with love,
Shayla

photo credit–Joseph Pearson on unsplash