ATTRACTION & THE PRINCIPLE OF INCLUSION
I’m receiving a message on Facebook from a man who voices very sweetly, reflected and openly that he feels attraction to me. My fingers hover over the reply field while I’m feeling into what my answer to that could be. Something inside of me wants to engage and flirt away and at the same time I know deeply: this is not what’s going to make me grow. A week ago Simon shared with me that he is feeling attraction to one of the 3 women that we are living with in our castle of love. In our weekly family sharing she shared reciprocating feelings.
All of that took me by surprise and hit me harder than I expected. It’s obviously not the first time that attraction to others has happened in our long term freedom relationship, so much the more I am taken by surprise as to how much fear is running the show in my body now. We always look at the gifts that every attraction holds for ALL people involved rather than just acting on impulse. With radical transparency and inclusion we have time and time again discovered a grand well of healing and discovery that opens the potential for more love inside of us. Attraction is really a call from our childhood conditioning (which is the reason for our protective or enmeshment mechanisms in later life) wanting to be heard. The question for all of us is then, if we can hear that voice and decipher it’s individual messages?
FROM “ALONE” TO “ALL ONE”
A lot has been moving for me since the sharing, struggling to come back to my strength and power, feeling lost in the maze of my mind as to what this attraction means, where it wants to go and how I can deal with it in our home environment. Meanwhile nothing has actually happened between them or me, but the trigger is strong and I’m observing what this attraction has to teach me about ME. At the same time I notice my mind wander to other men in my circumference and the story starts playing: Maybe I can feel attracted to this one, or that one? The wobbly feeling in my solar plexus is looking for a “someone” to soothe the discomfort. Escaping my tension and stress by finding the flirtatious energy with others. And I know, this is not going to make me grow or help me feel what I need to heal.
The most courageous and scary thing to do is to just be with it, allow Simon and my friend to explore wherever it may take them and stay utterly alone. This may sound brutal to some (it certainly does to my ego!) but I know for a fact that if I can face this fire of separation, exclusion and nasty ownership and scream out the pain of my little child inside that wants nothing more than to be loved and seen. Cry the tears of my sulking victim that wants to just be held. Then in the darkest moment, on the bottom of my heart “Alone” will turn into “ALL ONE”. I’ve encountered this feeling many times, the softness of the mature feminine that wants nothing more than to share love abundantly. For whatever reason I can not find that woman inside of me. I dance with her for a moment, free myself of the grip of my crazy mind, just to see her slip out through my fingers and disappear into the dark. I’m tapping blindly, panting in fear and shaking in anticipation of the next dreaded hiobs message.
Then I look outside the window and I catch mother earth looking at me, in the structures of a beautiful hill right outside my window I see a giant eye. Peacefully watching me. I can hear a voice inside my head: “I see you. You are love.” My heart is pounding, tears fill my eyes. “Thank you” I whisper and then: “I am here”.
RADICAL INTIMACY – THE ART OF SHOWING UP
Is it radical to tell you exactly what’s going on for me? Can I dare to break my own beautifully constructed image and show up in the puddle of my tears – exposed, wounded and vulnerable? And can you bear to see me that way? Broken, incapable and lost? Without trying to fix me so that your discomfort can go away?
Radical Intimacy is the fine art (and sometimes the messy dance) of showing up. In a world of lies and deceit it takes courage to bare the depth of one’s own being. It takes knowing ourselves, which is a lifelong journey.
Intimacy hides in the letters the code of it’s deeper meaning: INTO ME I SEE. What we cannot see in ourselves, we can not move beyond. The deeper we look the more we can reveal. The more we can reveal, the bigger the space inside gets – making room for a kind of love that is way beyond the good old “happily ever after fairy tale” or our modern day “fast food relationships” (you can eat a lot of burgers but they never really satisfy for long)
That space inside is filled with a love that is our birthright, our very essence. To be more precise, that space isn’t even filled. It actually just reveals the essence and the truth of who we were in the first place.
Relating starts and ends with self. Everything in between is just a magnified, sometimes distorted, sometimes very clear reflection of that which is hidden under our conscious sight. All of our relationships will mirror in some way or another the parental imprints we got as little children of how we perceived love to be given and received. All relating therefore is an enormously effective and powerful tool to bring greater awareness to our conditioned self and move beyond.
BECOMING COMFORTABLE WITH OUR UNCOMFORTABLE FEARS
When we are dead our life line is flat. When we are alive the ECG shows a constant wave of ups and downs. In a way that is symbolical for our lives. When we are fully alive and in this experience, in this body, in this moment, life is a series of ups and downs. Even though we crave the comfort of a flat line – the times where everything is just perfect – in reality that makes us only stagnant, depressed and metaphorically dead. The art of Radical Intimacy then is to get comfortable with our most uncomfortable fears – to stand in that fire of that pain and breathe. The more we become comfortable with our most uncomfortable fears, the more they lose their power over us and the more the mind loses its ability to manipulate our environment and the people in it in order to avoid feeling the pain and discomfort.
We don’t disconnect from people because of what they do, we disconnect because of what we don’t want to feel and therefore avoid inside of ourselves. We disconnect from ourselves.
To be radically intimate means to stay open when everything inside of us screams to shut the door. It means to parent ourselves when we are feeling these uncomfortable feelings like we would nurture a little child that is utterly afraid or hurt. It means to accept the challenge that every relationship is a mirror for everything inside of ourselves that is not loving, everything that is still wounded and that needs to come to the surface so we can heal it and love it.
Radical Intimacy is stopping to be selfish and learning to be self-first. Radical Intimacy is changing the conditioned reaction to our deepest F.E.A.R. which is “Fuck Everything And Run” to a new paradigm of: “Feel Everything And Rise”.
Taking care of our own energy, our own moods and emotions is the greatest gift to ourselves and anyone in our surrounding. Then relating just happens naturally, as a byproduct of our profound ability to really be with it all.
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A version of this post was previously published on DaraAndSimon and is republished here with a Creative Commons License.
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Talk to you soon.
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Photo credit: Dara and Simon