Dear Lover (6 page)

12

If your heart’s hurt causes you to close or protect yourself, then you are no longer able to receive your man’s presence—or the divine presence for which he provides the wedge. Unentered and unclaimed, you feel empty and frustrated inside. You try to fill the hole of your yearning. You eat, work, shop, chat, and try to satisfy your craving with superficial sex or sweets. The power of your heart’s yearning becomes blocked behind shells of fear, so you settle for less than your heart’s deepest desire to give and receive love.

Your yearning is either genuinely deep or you are settling for something that can’t truly fulfill you. As long as you are willing to settle—for a good but
not a great man, for a career and nice vacations, for new furniture and fancy restaurants—you will never be willing to suffer the vulnerable depth that is required for your heart to reach open to be taken by love’s divine presence.

What you settle for is determined by your fear.

You may be afraid to be without a man’s support, so you settle for the man who has loved you the deepest so far. His love may not be unwavering. His integrity may be slipshod. His commitment may be ambiguous. But he says he loves you, you love him, and you do share some moments of great beauty.

So, you settle for a mediocre relationship because you are
afraid to be alone.
You fill your heart’s yearning with an adequate, but not absolutely trustable, man.

As you grow beyond being dependent on a man, you may choose to settle for an independent life because you are
afraid to rely on a man’s support.

You may choose to live alone, or perhaps you live your independence in a so-called “self-responsible” relationship based on “equality” with a man who gives you the space to do what you want and take care of yourself.

Such a man is safe; you know he won’t physically hurt you and he shares his feelings with you in a sensitive way. But still, you wouldn’t trust him with your total heart-surrender. You can’t give yourself to him entirely, because he doesn’t have the depth to know you fully and open you to God. He is a good partner, perhaps, for raising children and creating a comfortable household, but he rarely shocks you open to God in love’s ravishment.

He is not dangerous enough to swoon you. He is not certain enough of his own purpose to take you open in utter confidence. He is a good man, but not a great man. You are afraid of losing the security and comfort you have acquired, and so you settle for the benefits of living with a man who respects you and cooperates with your plans. You know there is more to life, your heart yearns for deeper surrender, but you will hardly even admit to yourself how badly you want to be claimed by a force stronger than yourself, taken open in love beyond your own
resistance, ravished open in an ecstasy more heart-true than the comfort of your safe arrangements.

Finally, you grow beyond fearful independence. You are no longer afraid to confess that you want a man who you trust to open your heart more than yourself. Your heart yearns to be taken open by a man whose depth and integrity guide your heart open
better
than you can guide yourself. You realize that you are not weak; you can guide your life—financially, socially, artistically—just fine. But this kind of self-guidance at the surface of your life is not your deepest pleasure. Navigating your own heart’s openness doesn’t allow the ecstatic surrender for which your heart yearns.

As successful as you may be in your life, you long to merge with a man who can take you open beyond your shells by his deep and authentic claim, his gentle but persistent command—the dangerous demand of a man who will not settle for anything less than your total heart-giving.

He is willing to violate you open into God, to enter your resistance with a smile, to coax your heart from beyond crossed arms, to ravish you open—especially when your habits of fear and childish pout would keep you closed. He is not to be trusted to give you space, but you can trust that he will not be derailed by your resistance. His train is going straight open to where you want to go, and he embraces your refusal with the same humor and impeccable insistence with which he embraces all of life’s changes.

He takes you, relentlessly, humorously, unflinchingly, where your deep heart most yearns to open, and he does not take your resistance seriously. You want more space? You want to be left alone to sulk in moods of closure? You’ve got the wrong man. Your man can guide your heart open more surely than you can, and you know it. Your refusal is only a moment of drama; you know, sooner or later, your pleasure is to surrender to the surety of his loving command.

Eventually, you are only willing to settle for a man whose heart-opening guidance you trust
more than yours.
You are only willing to settle for a man
to whom you can surrender, knowing that through his sure claim, divine love guides you open more deeply and consistently than you have been able to open yourself. Your loving has grown large enough to encompass worship in the form of two bodies.

Your knowledge of love is larger than a self-guided woman’s fear. You know that nothing is lost—and divine fullness is gained—by offering your superior devotional love-light to a man who offers you his superior heart-ravishment, so together you both open more fully and consistently than either of you tend to open on your own. Openness is love. This same love yearns open at everyone’s heart. Your
commitment
to open to God through two-bodied form prepares you to open as this love alive at the heart of all bodies.

13

Your lover is with you for the sake of love; he wants you to receive his masculine love and he wants to receive your feminine love. He wants you to trust his gift of heart-direction more than your own and you want him to value your gift of heart-light more than his own—it would disturb you if he spent more hours looking in the mirror admiring his own body’s shine than yours.

You want him to notice—in fact, worship—your body’s radiant beauty and your heart’s light of divine love and he wants you to acknowledge and worship his heart’s capacity to spiritually and sexually ravish you open to God. This two-bodied devotion only works when two bodies are better than one; when you are opened more by his deep command and heart-guidance than by your own efforts, and he is opened more by being drawn into your heart of devotion more deeply than his self-enclosure would otherwise allow him.

If you don’t trust your man’s capacity to take you open where you want to go spiritually and sexually—
more than you trust your own
—then you won’t open fully with him, nor should you. If he is more committed to attending to his own radiance than yours, and you are more committed to surrendering to your own heart’s direction rather than his, you are both still too self-involved to offer your deepest gifts and open without bounds.

Your independence will evoke his independence: he will find ways to receive feminine radiance without you. He will spend time in nature’s radiance—surfing, hiking, skiing—or he’ll choose to relax with the energy of music or a soothing beer rather than with your untrusting heart.

Due to your shells of mistrust, you may have chosen a man who
can’t
guide your body and heart open to God better than you, directing your life so love’s fullness flows unimpeded. Maybe you
are
better at opening yourself than he is at opening you. If so, you are better off trusting your self-guidance than his.

But if you are with such a man, you have
chosen
him. You have probably come to mistrust external masculine guidance—perhaps you inherited such mistrust from your experience with your parents or past intimate betrayal—and so you have chosen a man who justifies your fearful need to direct your own life.

Your man will feel your lack of trust and you will feel the weakness of his loving command in your life. You can love each other as two independent and self-responsible people, but you will never surrender open in love’s most blissful dissolution and he will never commit himself completely in his claim of your heart. You would do better to stay in a safe relationship of two self-reliant and autonomous people than to fake devotion to a man’s direction that you do not trust more than yours.

But if you are ready to live a love larger than one body, if you are ready to trust a man’s deep presence to wedge you open so the flow of love can open your boundaries beyond self-centered moods of protection, then you are ready to practice the art of
fully
offering your feminine gifts, and thereby fully reciprocating your lover’s masculine gifts. Your heart-offered devotion inspires his deep consciousness to open through his fears more than he would open by himself.

You always attract your reciprocal. A woman who worships a man’s depth of masculine consciousness attracts and inspires a man who worships her
heart of devotional feminine radiance. The openness you induce in one another through your worship expands your capacity to love far beyond each of your bodies, beyond even your two-bodied ecstasy, unfolding your love outward to infinity, feeling every heart’s yearning, breathing open wider than the moon and sun and stars. Your sexual embrace can open you to God through the loving worship of masculine consciousness and feminine light.

14

If you don’t have a man in your life who claims your heart with his love and opens you to God, you are probably not fully offering your heart to be claimed while opening your body to flow with love’s bliss—right now. You always attract and inspire a man as deeply committed to opening in love as you are—right now—which means that a man will be as actively present with you as you are actively radiating your love and allowing your yearning to open in his company and when you are alone.

Right now, how fully is your heart yearning open? How deeply do you want your heart’s longing to be met? How actively are you allowing love’s yearning to open through your feet, your thighs, your neck? Are your heart and belly as open now as if you were making love with a trusted lover while breathing the hearts of all beings? Probably not. Most likely, your heart is less than devotionally surrendered and your body is less than overflowing with love’s yearning pleasure. Therefore, you will attract a man who is less present than your heart truly desires.

Deep in your heart, you probably want to be with a man who could be
totally
present with you when you are together, as if he were making love with you, even at the dinner table or while taking a walk. To attract such a man, to evoke his fullness, you must be offering yours. His presence and the offering of your heart’s yearning go together; he drifts when you close down, you close down when he drifts. He wants to claim you when you trust him with your worship of his consciousness. And you open, offering your yearning and surrender to him, when you feel his deep claim and worship of your heart.

If you are not currently in relationship with such a man, feel yourself: Right now, are you opening and breathing the love that flows at the heart
of all beings, feeling their suffering and their joy? Are you actively opening, breathing, and receiving this moment’s force of love into your body and heart—as if you were taking your lover deep inside, offering him your most vulnerable yearning of feminine devotion and the untamed gifts of your energy?

If you are offering your heart’s deepest yearning, then you will attract and inspire a man’s deepest presence, right now. If your heart’s surrender is cautious and your body’s flow of energy is minimal, then you will, in this moment, attract and inspire a man whose presence is easily distracted and whose heart is uncalled to feel you deeply.

How do you open now? Start by breathing deeply, filling your belly pregnant with breath-force while you inhale, then exhaling and releasing all hold of tension. Breathe deeply in and out through every part of your body. Breathe in and out of your feet so your toes wiggle and you continue breathing open every part of your body: your legs come alive, your vagina softens and moistens, your belly grows round and full with pleasure, your heart opens and feels, your arms and hands and fingers unfold as sprouts of your heart, your throat softens and your neck elongates, your face and lips and eyes and head all relax open. Breathe fully and relax your entire body open, from toe to head.

Then, as you breathe, feel outward from your heart. If you have a lover, then breathe him—his shape, his joy, his suffering—in and out of your heart. If you have children, then breathe them and all your friends in and out of your heart. Open your heart to feel your community and eventually the entire world, breathing all—people, animals, plants, ocean, forest, even the night’s darkness—in and out of your heart. Allow your heart to open and feel all, breathing all. Feel alive as all, breathing as the yearning that opens at all hearts.

Soften your body so your heart can actively breathe the openness of this moment. This moment
exists
as openness. Feel the actual
aliveness
of this
moment, living within you, living as you, and living all around you. This moment is alive as love, as openness.

As if you were soaking in an ocean of love, relax open your throat, heart, belly, and genitals to receive love’s saturation. Lovingly melt your heart and body open as the fullness of this moment.

With practice, you learn to breathe and feel the love alive as the universe and the yearning at the heart of all beings. You learn to melt open and receive every moment’s love-fullness into your whole body. In response, your natural gesture is to offer yourself open as love, as a lover gives herself to her beloved. It is as if God were making love with you and you were offering all of yourself open to God.

Right now, are you receiving this moment’s divine ravishment down to your love-splayed toes? Are you offering your body as a sacred gift, surrendering your deep heart fully to be claimed by love’s earthly embodiment?

To attract a man of heart-depth and inspire his fullness, you must be offering yours.