| Oct. 8th, 2009 @ 08:29 am Luv Circle: On Friendship |
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Current Mood:  contemplative
As part of my Work of Spirit Integration.. I am struck by the old phrase, "and love will bind them together' which is in reference ot the elements and actually a much older reference to Empedocles in which the elements mingled and separated under the dual forces of love and strife.
So under this idea.. i am exploring spirit as LOVE...the uniting force in the Universe. I tend to perceive spirit in various ways.. as love, as information/data, as pure undifferentiated energy, as pure consciousness/sentience/awareness.. as all of the above.. which different aspects moving more central in my awareness and experience at different times.
This week I started a six-week collaborative group (with six participants and one leader) exploring the nature of embodying love .. throughout the six weeks we will be exploring embodying love (as opposed to being loving) in various contexts: self, environment, food, friends, family, and work. I didn't choose the six contexts and would probably have chosen a different six..ha..but am glad for the ones that were chosen..as food and work wouldn't have made my list and I need to work on those like crazy!
During the week we are to focus on increasing awareness of the spectrum upon which walk in terms of embodying love and through that increasing awareness, choosing actions that are more aligned with love. I've already noticed a significant difference in how I am moving through the world.
This week the focus is on friends. I've long been frustrated by my sometimes lack of awareness of the different needs and desires of my friends. Sometimes it's hard for me to expand my perspective and take into account their unique preferences and ways of being when talking to them, planning things with them, or even just attempting to understand them. People are so weird and so very very different. In the rush of life, the 'no-brainer' convenient solution is to just assume people are like oneself.. it's quick then to make a plan or come up with a suitable response to a question in a conversation ..because we know ourselves best.. but in actuality .. this is not the case and I think we short change our relationships when we do not take the extra time to really be present with and engaged with our friends highly personal locations in the World. I am focusing this week, on being present in those diverse locations, in opening my eyes wide, and clearing my mind of biases and filters...so that I can perceive my friends in a new light and utilize that deeper understanding in the practice of relating.
Secondly - another area of personal frustrating I have is that I am a better talker than listener. I'm one of those sparkly performative types and my friends typically appreciate my story-telling conversation moving self... I think that other people have the space to jump in when they want..but that is due to error one above. People are different and some people need the perfect type of space created to step into and shine. Back to error one again, sometimes in listening people, I do not adequately get into another's person's perspective enough to be truly present in their personal narrative. I am experiencing it from my narrative and though to some degree we can not get truly outside our narratives, there is a lot of room for expanding one's perspective and I think that a much deeper intimacy can be gained from moving our narrative to the background, when we 'listen' to another... really shifting our focus to being fully present and engaged in witnessing the narrative of a loved one. That means taking in their background, what you know of their interests, family, political views, etc to understand what they are saying in the present, taking the time to really try to deeply understand who they have been , who they are, and who they are becoming.
Lastly - I'm also the busy girl.. the girl whose best friends don't often think of asking her to help them move because they think she is too busy.. There are countless easy and simple ways we can show our appreciation to our friends that we do not. Whether its bring them a gift of soymilk because you know they always run out. Taking the time to find a dinner place that serves their favorite type of food. Offering to help with something small or even something big.. in short..by being more present with them in their process and attuning oneself to their needs, helping as one can.
All of these things on my mind come down to increasing awareness and engagement with the others process. I think this week could go many different ways.. embodying love (I have a love smackdown conversation with a friend to have later this week!) is a complex and rich tapestry upon which to explore personal transformation... but I'm feeling called for this to be one of my primary foci this week. It's something I have been working on for years..but I've never spent a week in deep 24-7 practice with it. It will be interesting to see what other threads manifest over the remainder of the week.
So ..how how does attuning, listening, understanding, and anticipating the needs of friends contribute to embodying love? Well for this I think we need to unpack what Love is. No easy task for sure but I'll try to speak to it in the context of this writing. If Love is the force the binds the universe.. what is it binding and how? Glue? Duct Tape? Chewing Gum? :: wink :: I don't tend to think of it binding of disparate thing by smooshing them them together. In contemplating this concept, I thought of the way light penetrates the ocean. The impulse to Love for me is that fundamental urge for unity, connection, intimacy, and understanding in the dance between self and other. I think the more we come to know someone , the more we understand their essence, the deeper and more profound that love can be.
Now here is where i may lose some of you.. but I think to understand something truly, we must let ourselves be penetrated and transformed by it. I don't mean that we should take on our friends bad habits.. I'm not talking about that.. but by truly letting the light of our loved ones into our hearts and minds.. our minds and hearts are transformed and expanded. Greater awareness promotes greater understanding; greater understanding allows for clearer attuning of oneself to the light of one's friends; greater attunement allows one to harmonize and vibrate with the other (other-self spectrum depending) which promotes the force of Love in the Universe and binds together disparate things through a way that is indelible..because each person becomes infused with the part of their loved one. It's not like glue at all. It's like a complex chemical reaction where everyone gets transformed and becomes something else. This is LOVE to me. Embodying Love is trying to do that in a way that with ever increasing awareness and intention so that the results of those reactions in turn promote the desire for additional mixing. ; ) By doing this and interacting with people who in term pass techniques for good people mixing to others through touch, word, and sign... we touch with love friends of friends of friends.. until we are touching the world with a kiss from the heart.
In Nomine Agape;
Soror.Veleda.216 |
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