“The only obsession everyone wants: ‘LOVE.’
People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls?
I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you.
You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open. ”
It’s How the Light Gets In…
~Philip Roth
How do you define yourself? An inspiring lecture from the late Alan Watts
By Lisa Citore
“When a fairly spiritual male friend of mine who had finally found and was deepening into committed relationship with his soul mate confided in me he was thinking of being single again, and in the next breath expressed his latest idea for raising consciousness worldwide, I wrote this poem.
” If you want to change the world… love a woman.
Really love her.
Find the one who calls to your soul, who doesn’t make sense.
Throw away your check list and put your ear to her heart and listen.
Hear the names, the prayers, the songs of every living thing- every winged one, every furry and scaled one, every underground and underwater one, every green and flowering one, every not yet born and dying one…
Hear their melancholy praises back to the One who gave them life.
If you haven’t heard your own name yet, you haven’t listened long enough.
If your eyes aren’t filled with tears, if you aren’t bowing at her feet, you haven’t ever grieved having almost lost her.
If you want to change the world… love a woman-one woman beyond yourself, beyond desire and reason, beyond your male preferences for youth, beauty and variety and all your superficial concepts of freedom.
We have given ourselves so many choices we have forgotten that true liberation comes from standing in the middle of the soul’s fire and burning through our resistance to Love.
There is only one Goddess.
Look into Her eyes and see-really see if she is the one to bring the axe to your head. If not, walk away. Right now. Don’t waste time “trying.”
Know that your decision has nothing to do with her because ultimately it’s not with who, but When we choose to surrender.
If you want to change the world… love a woman. Love her for life-beyond your fear of death, beyond your fear of being manipulated by the Mother inside your head.
Don’t tell her you’re willing to die for her. Say you’re willing to LIVE with her, plant trees with her and watch them grow.
Be her hero by telling her how beautiful she is in her vulnerable majesty, by helping her to remember every day that she IS Goddess through your adoration and devotion.
If you want to change the world… love a woman in all her faces, through all her seasons and she will heal you of your schizophrenia- your double-mindedness and half-heartedness which keeps your Spirit and body separate- which keeps you alone and always looking outside your Self for something to make your life worth living.
There will always be another woman. Soon the new shiny one will become the old dull one and you’ll grow restless again, trading in women like cars, trading in the Goddess for the latest object of your desire.
Man doesn’t need any more choices. What man needs is Woman, the Way of the Feminine, of Patience and Compassion, non-seeking, non-doing, of breathing in one place and sinking deep intertwining roots strong enough to hold the Earth together while she shakes off the cement and steel from her skin. If you want to change the world… love a woman, just one woman .
Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel. Love her through her fear of abandonment Which she has been holding for all of humanity.
No, the wound is not hers to heal alone. No, she is not weak in her co-dependence.
If you want to change the world… love a woman all the way through until she believes you, until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion, her wildness have returned to her until she is a force of love more powerful than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.
If you want to change the world, lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs. Lay down your inner war, your righteous anger and love a woman… beyond all of your striving for greatness, beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.
The holy grail stands before you if you would only take her in your arms and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy.
What if peace is a dream, which can only be remembered through the heart of Woman?
What if a man’s love for Woman, the Way of the Feminine is the key to opening Her heart?
If you want to change the world…love a woman to the depths of your shadow, to the highest reaches of your Being, back to the Garden where you first met her, to the gateway of the rainbow realm where you walk through together as Light as One, to the point of no return, to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth.”
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.
It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.
By Oriah
from the book The Invitation
