To love truly is to have faith in the entity of love. Love is the miracle that removes fear. We trust our breath and our act of breathing because in some way we are being forced to be in love with life. When we are in the midst of intense doubt or hate, we are in the depths of the fear zone. And fear is the opposite of love. Love is an open door to a possibility of a joyful dance, getting your needs met and fulfilling someone else’s needs, trusting you will be safe.
Every relationship you enter into is a form of a love relationship. It is a sharing of energy, time and space. It is a partnership. It is unity in it highest form. We become intimate by the contract of the joining itself. The birthing between a child and a mother is the most beautiful act of trust, as important as the implanting of the seed. All are acts of trust. We believe in the best of our highest dreams. We lose faith when that story takes a turn not to our liking, or becomes a threat to our personal and emotional security. But just as in a birthing, we believe in the process. We trust all will be done to deliver the child and mother in perfect health. We trust.
When I walked into the room and spoke to my fellow artist,I thought we had a trusted relationship. I was surprised when I spoke to him and his response was one of explosion and anger. I asked why we were standing in disagreement, refusal to communicate and I received statements reinforcing the wall that had risen in the room. My faith in the validity of the relationship was fading. I had believed we had nurtured honesty and truth in our communications and interactions. I felt a sense of failure because I thought we had built our relationship with spiritual tools and trust. He was refusing to speak to me in dialogue. “I can’t talk to you right now…” was his only response.
I had had a history of not trusting men in my life, starting with my father. I had been trusting my relationship with my friend, The Artist, because we had found our relationship within the boundaries of spiritual growth and the act of loving honestly. For many hours we spoke of the different ways we were formulating our male relationships in this portion of our lives. We were doing things differently. We were inserting love and understanding into our male relationships and trying to practice listening and being present for our male counterparts and not be competitive and warlike. We vowed there would be ”no pissing match” in the school yard. We would express our feelings in truth and love. We were now living in a state of declared silence. My father could not express his emotions without exploding and I felt it was happening again with my friend, The Artist.
I keep asking what had I done. I felt the way I did when I was speaking to the dead corpse of my father in his casket. There was no conversation. I felt guilty without a trial. At this point of my life and journey, I would not accept a lack of communication, and I was willing to do whatever what was necessary to get clarity and have that important conversation.
It took two days of emails and talking ourselves down from heightened wall of fear. Without realizing it, I had hit a sore spot in his armor. His history with his dad. His dad had been controlling and emotionally abusive. Without me realizing, I had been so bent on having a clear and loving conversation with him, I had been controlling in my use of our conversations to solidify a new perfect, modern man conversation. I did not allow him to express his views without correcting him and guiding him to my sense of solution. I had forgotten it was our conversation and not just my monologue of being peaceful, modern men. Even with good intentions, I had overstepped my boundaries trying to have peace. My fear of failure caused me to fail at my task. I had forgotten to trust.
I had to trust the process and the power of love to work its magic.
As men, we have a history creating a semblance of control by shows of power, drawing lines in the sand or seeing who could piss the longer line in the school yard. It ceases to be a conversation of solution by becoming a conversation of winning. I wanted a different kind of winning. I wanted clarity and solution and I was willing to do whatever was necessary to bring about that sense of truth. In my emails I told him if I was wrong in any way, I was willing to make it right. I told him the most important reality was the maintenance of our friendship and not breaking the bond of trust. He heard me through his veil of fear. Both of us were wounded human animals looking for love. We sat in solution and found the love once again. We came back to trusting.
I will remember one statement he said in our conversations. It was, “Give me time to think and I will get back to you.” I had to trust the process and the power of love to work its magic. I have found we have to allow life and situations to breathe within their own time of being. I had to stop trying to control the outcome. It is like putting the ingredients of a gumbo together and asking the shrimp to be a vegetable and wondering why you have a different taste than you anticipated. I wanted an apple to be an orange because it made me feel safe.
When he got back to me, he was willing to have an open conversation of solution, and I was willing to listen and trust his decision to process his feelings. I had also had time to think and release. I had a chance to not revert to old tapes of failure and stay in the moment of now. This was not a conversation between me and my father or my younger, hot-headed brother. This was a conversation of today and now. I was able to change my reference of time.
Days passed before we saw each other in person. At our first meeting you could feel the fear welling up in both of us. We did not react in our old habits and reached out and embraced each other. The hugs and the laughter drowned out the old fears. We chatted about our mistakes and what we would not do again. We made a commitment to always begin again when we hit the wall of lack, or when we end up in confusion and disagreement. We started a new conversation between the two of us. We could laugh about conquering our childhood fears, the old echoes of failure and we could learn to trust, again.
Photo credit: iStock
This is my favorite article so far, Terrell. Great job!