Today I want to share one of my playful visioning tools of inquiry into my being’s current vision of an aligned beloved and partner:

Give yourself enough undisturbed time for this explorative journey. Make yourself comfortable and drop into your heart, ask her to show you the relationship that makes your heart and soul sing with bliss, utilizing all of your senses make the journey come alive in full sensory high-definition.

When you have connected you can ask the first question below to get more detailed visions, answers, sensations, and knowing. Listen deeply. Let your heart guide you. Write the answers down when you feel your heart’s revelations are complete. Then pose the next question, listen and repeat until all questions have been answered. 

This is not something that is necessary revealed to you in one go. Contemplate your heart’s answers, feel into them, get to know your most tender, sensual, playful, pragmatic, spiritual needs in intimate relating. Keep revisiting this journey as you feel intuitively guided, become as deeply intimate with the felt and sensed frequency of your beloved as you can. Add whatever questions your heart deems important.

Most of all keep it light, playful, dream big, be outrageous in your wishes and dreams, and trust you deserve all that makes your heart come alive and overflow with love.

Acknowledge whatever limiting beliefs, fears or negative memories might come up and let them know you will give them their own time and space but this is not it. Make time to address them some other time with love and compassion. Heal what needs healing, release whatever needs releasing. 

I wish you clarity and a delicious harmonious resonance in communing with your heart, soul and beloved.

What kind of person are they?

Which core qualities do they embody?

How do they embody self love?

How do they live their life?

How do they show up in relationships?

How do they show up in relating to you?

How do they relate to others?

What makes them special to you?

How do you show up in the relationship with them? 

What do you feel like relating to them?

How do they enrich your life?

What makes them a great partner?

Photography by Unknown

The post Who Does my Heart Desire? appeared first on Venuskind.

This definition of what constitutes a dealbreaker, red, orange, or green flag is part of how I discern who cannot meet me as an equal and who can do so effortlessly. It serves as a touchstone I can come back to whenever relating gets messy and I need to analyze a relationship, its quality, and value.

This is a very personal list and can by no means be generalized to all because it arose from lessons learned through my karmic patterns, early woundings and other conditioning. Therefore it might contain things that are of no relevance to others or lack aspects that are key to their joy and fulfillment in relationships. Yet it may serve as an inspiration for contemplation and maybe even writing of your own list. 

Getting clear on our boundaries, needs, wants, desires and what we no longer are willing to tolerate before engaging with a potential partner, friend, family member, or colleague makes a huge difference in my experience. 

Regularly checking in with myself and updating my Relationship Q&A’s and this list is immensely insightful, as it tracks how my boundaries move and settle in new places. And it helps me know my current self and new experiences that are opening up in relating as old ones are released. Being clear and committing myself to being true to Self helps me make wiser choices in service of my wellbeing and that of others.

 I define the 4 categories below as follows:

Absolute Dealbreakers are (consistent) negative behaviors or traits which immediately and non-negotiably disqualify someone from any kind of relationship with me.  

Red Flags are troubling behaviors or traits that show up occasionally yet are alarming and unwelcome in my friendship circles and all the more so in close relationships or intimate partnerships. The more red flags I encounter the more I will be motivated to distance myself or disengage totally.

Orange Flags are behaviors and traits that point to underlying red flags or dealbreakers which need observation to discern if they are a sign of someone releasing negative traits or of their attempts at presenting themselves more favorably. 

Green Flags are welcome and desirable behaviors or traits which open doors to trust and closer relating.

Absolute Dealbreakers:

Lack of self love

Lack of integrity

Lack of intimacy

Lack of intelligence

Lack of communication skills

Lack of self work

Lack of accountability

Lack of self reflection

Lack of emotional availability

Imbalance of giving & receiving

I feel a lack of trust or respect for them

I feel a lack of alignment or meeting on the mental, emotional, physical, spiritual dimension

I feel unsafe, unseen, unheard, limited and unbalanced in their presence

Red Flags:

Lack of self love

Lack of sovereignty

Lack of full responsibility for self

Lack of self reflection

Lack of self work

Lack of shadow work

Lack of emotional intelligence

Lack of emotional availability

Lack of vulnerability

Lack of depth

Lack of kindness

Lack of compassion

Lack of consideration

Lack of curiosity

Lack of playfulness 

Lack of creativity

Lack of passion

Lack of hygiene

Lack of intrinsic motivation

Lack of awe for existence

Ego-centricity

Superficiality

Neediness 

Messiness

Stuck in analysis-paralysis

Stuck in self-sabotage or self-destruction

Stuck in outsourcing emotional labor

Stuck in low self-esteem/grandiosity

Lack of openness to change of behavior, thinking or patterns

Lack of capacity to create change

Lack of honor for other’s perspectives, needs and sovereignty

Inability to express love freely and with generosity

Inability to express their appreciation for me

Inability to see, hear and value me adequately

Inability to see and acknowledge their ego’s cruelties

Orange flags:

Evasiveness

Extreme need for privacy

Secrets

Selfishness

Stinginess

Wastefulness

Tone deafness

Phlegmatism

Lack of sensitivity

Lack of dignity (self respect)

Lack of boundaries

Lack of self care

Lack of openness about themselves

Lack of expressions of appreciation or gratitude

Lack of consideration for nature ( incl. others, animals, planet)

Green flags:

Depth

Presence

Mindful

Integrity

Intelligence

Accountability

Reliability and trustworthiness

Self work has become almost second nature

Knows own shadow and ego, has an effective shadow work practice

Ease and quality of self reflection proving a longstanding practice

Taking responsibility for his life, experience, actions, words and energy

Good self care (mental, emotional, spiritual & physical)

Good balance in giving and receiving

Good communication skills

Good emotional literacy, availability and intelligence

Good levels of self love apparent in choices, actions & thinking

Beautiful inside and out

Caring and compassionate

Cherishes and prioritizes relationships

Respectful of boundaries and need for consent

Quick to repair damage or misunderstandings

I feel an effortless and easeful connection with them on all dimensions

I feel a deeper sense of respect and admiration for them

I feel appreciated, cherished, respected and valued by them

I feel open, safe, seen, heard, free, playful and balanced in their presence

Photography: ‘The Golden Imprint I’ by Viet Ha Tran

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They often took me by surprise, arising mostly in chance encounters that sparkled with a special kind of glitter. But none of these have been as potent and devastatingly glorious as the one I experienced in an old connection teetering between death and rebirth. 

Energy so strong it shook my being to the core, undoing any armoring, blockages and blinders to flood me with all that I had been keeping hidden from my mind. Confronting me with seemingly novel aspects of self, their desires, dreams and passions. Oh their vast passions and depth of strength that arises from them.

Exploding and rippling through me like bolts of lightning, my mind forced into a helpless and confused surrender as the deluge of insights, emotions, sensations and energetic flow, unlocked by this catalytic moment, kept swelling and speaking new truths that held me in numinosity. Not in a religious definition of the term but in the unique quality of feeling that interweaves awe for the beauty of an experience with a hint of trepidation. 

Never did I realize in the headiness of the experience that it was only to be a beginning to a long and confounding process of falling apart in a kaleidoscope of fragments and reuniting into a new wholeness.

Grounding myself and allowing the experience to reveal its medicine, meaning and potentiality took a lot of energy and time as it was but the circumstances and interactions with the catalyst were also meant to trigger old abandonment, betrayal and neglect wounds with a surprising ferocity. And again I surprised parts of me with how well I could multi-task on growing different dimensions of being, perceiving and engaging while ‘carrying water and chopping wood’ as well as most days.

This has to be the most profound catalytic soul connection and activation moment I have experienced in this life. Maybe it has come now as I have developed enough perceptive acuity to know it for what it is, to understand the workings of higher selves and souls enough to recognize their handwriting on this and surrender to the process. A prearranged energetic healing sequence to rip the veils, release emotional hangups, balance karma and free me to walk my path unhindered by limitations and blockages that have fulfilled their teaching capacity. 

The experience has tested my ability to hold space for myself while doing so for another, expanded my capacity of disconnecting old energies and emotions from the reactivity they habitually trigger, and given me an opportunity to practice loving discernment in balancing the needs of another with my own. Making me experience and know the vastness of space within being and the immensity of strength, resilience and equanimity that spring from 

I have visceral knowing of where to draw the boundary when another’s feelings and actions impact my wellbeing negatively without allowing the past to make me feel unloving, shame or wrong in doing so. I know to discern the difference between impulsive self-protection from wounding and boundaries asserted by self love and self care. It has taught me many lessons on the subtle difference between fragility of ego/wounding and tenderness of heart and fed my preference and courage to remain in the latter.

I understand what it takes for me to sustainably hold space for another without causing harm to myself in that process, deepening my commitment to honoring other’s free will and sovereignty with compassion and love and giving me clarity on where the honoring has to be interwoven with justice and standing by higher truths. 

I intuit that this  was also unique in that the effect was not one-sided as previous catalytic experiences had been but a two-way energetic activation. Which makes it even more magical and precious to me. I cannot be sure how my latest catalyst perceived this or if they even have the tools to make sense of it or integrate the effects of the activation as they retreated into silence and disconnection. 

As beloved as they are to my soul and heart their choice to act in ways unworthy of them and myself preclude any contact or connection between us in the human dimension until justice has rebalanced the scales of our relationship. 

Making the decision to uphold the standards of relating in my life towards them was so hard it sent my inner tribe of selves into weeks of inner dissent until the voices of self love managed to unite them eventually in a new peaceful union. Still, walking away was not easy nor something I wanted, in fact it was the opposite of my desire for a deeper more intimate union and bond with them. Yet I know this boundary is part of what I have to embody fully to walk through the portal of ascendence opening through this energetic shift and rebirth. 

“If the full moon loves you, why worry about the stars?” ~ Tunisian Proverb

The Beloved has painstakingly made it visible and visceral to me in the past decade that toxicity often wears the face of family, friends or a beloved and that loving them does not equal sacrificing my heart, needs and wishes to accommodate their presence in my life. He has taught me to prioritize my soul path, wellbeing and visions for life encoded in my being over and over again. It doesn’t get easier to choose me over them as the Beloved ups the ante with every experience. And how else could he make me feel my strength and capacity to be without those who will not stop abusing, betraying, manipulating and disrespecting me?

It hurts me more than I wish to verbalize to have to walk away from those I hold dear, it takes more energy for self-care and healing to get back to balance than I would ever want to expend. But what else is there to do but accept reality as it is and work with it?

There is a deep knowing in my being that this death and rebirth cycle is a quantum leap towards the manifestation of everything my heart desires and I have been working towards for a long, long time. And it is manifesting – with them in the picture or without.

Another precious reminder of this catalytic soul activations is to hold the visions of love, connection and unions with clarity and consistency and to release any attachments to the presence of specific people in it. 

These moments where the Beloved flows through the form of another human to meet me in the physical are some of my most priced jewels of experience, even though they often come with pain and at the price of parts of self and beliefs that I am called to shed and leave behind. 

They are unique and profound moments of enlightenment, treasured gifts of initiation by the Beloved. 

Initiation into deeper union with Self and the Beloved, within as without. 

Therefore I shall keep saying, even when I am down on my knees and feeling the unbearability of death and rebirth, over and over again: 

Unbreak and let me Blossom in Wholeness and Union Beloved

So we may create a higher multidimensional dance of love 

Spiraling and leaping from the heart of consciousness and creation magic

For this is my Soul’s sacred dream and joyful path of the phoenix.

Art: ‘In bloom, not broken’ by Justin Ifill-Forbes, ⁠model: Windela

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The moment I KNEW that I am ready and fully capable of loving another in their light AND darkness, EVEN if my darkness is raging in the loudest language of trauma.

This is a self mastery I wouldn’t have believed I was capable of just a few years back and yet I choose to work towards it nonetheless. Choosing to keep getting up from my knees, look back, forgive, learn and do or fail better. Again, and again. 

And here I AM.

Reposing in this knowing, celebrating another milestone, thanking the Beloved for all the lessons that led me here and the grace that empowered me to transcend more of the past. 

Grateful to my closest friends of the past decade who had a big part in helping me grow towards this NOW by co-creating relationship with me where I could safely practice showing up as a more whole version of me and allow more of my soul to embody. Without our beautiful connections, your role modeling and love this would have been a more arduous and maybe even impossible journey. 

Thank you for the gift of your being, your medicine and unique soul expression which keeps enriching life and making this world a brighter place!

I also thank those who made it unsafe to show up as myself, those that triggered my core woundings and gave me opportunities to feel and release the raw pain that was still stored in my body. They might no longer be part of my life but I do not want to forget their part in awakening me to the need for growth, for confronting me with my complicity in my suffering and for teaching me discernment in recognzing and choosing my people.

Now I am raising my gaze towards new horizons expanding before my newfound eyes and envisioning how this new skill can be utilized to live more dangerously, grow in novel magical ways, serve others in their journey of healing and growth and serve the ALL as a ‘more hollow’ bamboo.

Will you journey further with me into the mysteries of love?

The post Milestone appeared first on Venuskind.

My heart whispered:

“If someone, whom your conditioning, culture, religion or society has labeled as “less than,” enters your experience pause and expand into full presence. Know viscerally that the differences your mind seems to perceive are mere illusions in the greater context of existence, know the lies and hidden self-aggrandizements embedded in the labels you learned, know the violence of denigration in the labels and narratives handed down to you, perceive and know the being-ness of the other and you shall know awe. 

Observe thoughts or narratives of charity or pity, see their dark and disempowering nature, release them from your mental body and replace them with knowing of sovereignty, compassion and service from the oneness of Self and Source. 

Can you see their presence opening countless doorways of wisdom to hearts and minds willing to be receptive to the wisdom on offer?

Can you see the magnificence of the soul that chose to explore an incarnation that was sure to be met with many obstacles, exclusion, resistance and pain? 

Can you see them being another you?

Can you be at the zero point, anchored in wholeness and oneness, being alert, open, receptive, giving and ready to co-create?

Now that you dropped the baggage of the old paradigm, you are ready for them to teach you a whole lot of new dance moves, you have never known to exist nor been capable of executing in your former mind state.”

Every time I look at this picture I feel a humbling gratitude for the intricate magnificence of life and the consciousness and love embedded in all our experiences. Both patiently waiting for our senses and awareness to awaken to them and delight in their abundant gifts and revel in joy. 

What could be more delightful and majestic than the play of rays of consciousness in innumerable forms, states and embodiments? 

Photography by Unknown

The post Heart message appeared first on Venuskind.

There is something deeply enlivening, healing and joyful in observing your being meet a beloved’s being, needs, wants, dreams and wishes with yes and yes and yes again. The magic of effortless, authentic and whole-hearted welcoming of the multi-dimensional wholeness of him is sublime and intoxicating in the best of ways.

Where do I find the words to describe the sensations and delights of feeling, sensing, seeing and hearing his YES to my being? The flutter and waves of energy, feelings and emotions flooding my body due to being wanted in playful delight, ever the blissful recipient of his enchanting presence and giving nature.

Thank you, Love.

Photography by Vadim Stein

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The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.
~ bell hooks, Outlaw Culture

My journey of self-integration and healing can be narrated as a journey of commitment to love for my inner tribe of selves.

I have come through many stages of committing to loving aspects of myself, building habits and practices of self love and care, and slowly and gently acknowledging, facing and loving shadow aspects back into a more whole and hale self. This is an ongoing journey, as it is all too easy to fall into unloving thinking, feeling and acting towards myself when I am low in resources and energy.

And yet I have come a long way on this challenging road to freedom.

Of course that was only half of the commitment to love journey I have consciously committed to. The other half is equally important and challenging in its own ways. To learn to love another in all their aspects, light and shadow, to extend compassion, kindness and generosity even when they prick and pain me, to protect them from unconscious hurtful expressions and actions from me and to do all this from sovereignty feels quite daunting at times.

To balance self love and love for another, to let it flow in a circular system of reciprocal nourishment, inspiration, joy and compassion is the holy grail for a fractured and traumatized self. A goal that can only be achieved by the alignment of self, higher Self and consciousness for more and more extended periods of time until it becomes our default setting. At least in my perception and experience.

This year I am called to teach my wounded and shadow aspects, which were created as per our soul contract with my mother, to CHOOSE to be loving, act with kindness and compassion even in moments of triggered CPTSD while being true to my own needs and boundaries. I am not saying this is what everyone has to do, nor that you are not entitled to your emotions of anger, resentment, hate and whatever else might arise for you in your primary wounding relationships. This is what I have been called to do after years of expressing openly my anger, sadness, grief and hate, a new stage, a new way of relating opening up for me now that foundations for self nurture and self love are firmly set.

Embracing on a mental level the commitment to love and choosing to be loving to others as an expression of my core being and not because their behavior deserved it was easy. For it is comparatively easy to disentangle from the concept of giving people what they deserve and drop the distorted concept of deserving/undeserving on the mental plane. Doing this on an emotional and physical plane is a decidedly different dimension of challenge to my self leadership.

Higher Self and consciousness lead the way to more equanimity in the mental/emotional which allows me to gently magnetize the emotional/physical into a state of homeostasis or balance. It is an excruciatingly slow progress for the mind, as the wounded parts and shadow feel like running towards old soothing strategies and reactivities at the slightest discomforting trigger and I observe the old scripts play out with all their negative ramifications for my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing. It takes many repetitions and regressions as well as the unswerving love and support of all other aspects of self and higher Self before the wounded and shadow parts can acknowledge the futility of their go-to-solutions and concede to trying something else. And much cheerleading, loving reminders and celebration of small wins is necessary in order for them to stay on course. Especially when their first attempts and steps are not reciprocated in kind.
Another layer of learning lay here for me: We (inner tribe of selves) are not loving to others in a game of barter or in expectations of getting our needs met by them. We are loving because this is our true nature to which we choose to return. Being loving is all the reward it needs.

It will still take a while and many repetitions of consciously choosing to be love and act as love in a variety of relationships until I can even remotely say that I have laid a foundation similar to the one I have built for self love. And yet I am already reaping the rewards of this work by virtue of the feeling of alignment within, the joy of oneness within and embodying integrity and love in relating whenever I wholly choose to act from love. It feels good to extend myself in love to others knowing that I can and will do my best to show up, be accountable and responsible, caring and mindful in my relationships. No longer having to fear being helplessly highjacked by my shadow aspects into painful catastrophizing abysses or loops of hurtful behavioral patterns towards others. Knowing that I have what I need to see and stop these patterns, and if they manage to bypass my awareness, knowing I have the tools, knowledge and commitment of my inner tribe to repair and make amends best we can in cooperation with another.

This is what empowerment through love feels like to me.

Grateful for the selves, people, lessons and experiences which help me anchor more deeply into my nature and lighten the heaviness of trapped distortions in my field.

May we all be free from suffering,
may we all be love.

Photography by Brenda Del Rao

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“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Photography by Unknown

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I stopped congratulating people on their birthdays

This is a rather funny thing to me as I wasn’t allowed to celebrate birthdays into my early 20’s due to being in a christian fundamentalist cult that strictly forbade it. Then upon leaving the cult, as part of my deprogramming, I started celebrating birthdays. And now here I am stepping back from it, for at least a year, to challenge myself to find more authentic, spontaneous and inspired ways of expressing my appreciation for another’s being and my gratitude for our connection.

Beyond that lie a few more mystical or spiritual reasons of no longer wanting to consent to time divisions, manipulation of our natural cyclical nature by virtue of clocks and unaligned calendars and the trance of aging. But those are of a more ethereal, subtle and non-verbal nature to me and hard for me to put in accessible writing just yet. I have the feeling I will come back to this later this year.

It is fascinating to observe how strong the pull to comply with our social codes feels (peer pressure, conditioning), especially when social media platforms like Facebook enforce them without the choice of opting out of birthday reminders. It has become a daily practice of internal dialogues to detach myself from the emotional responses to not congratulating a loved one. 

Often asking myself why is it so hard to not be a part of choir of celebration? 

Don’t I trust my friends to know, sense and feel how much I love them without this formulaic ritual?

Who taught me that it was unloving or uncaring if I expressed my appreciation on any other given day but not this one? And what is that based on?

I started writing intentional and authentic messages of appreciation & expressing feelings of appreciation and gratitude whenever I feel them

I have held myself to a code of integrity and honesty for most of my life. Therefore I do not make a compliment that is not truthful and if I have nothing kind and appreciative to say I remain quiet. That took some practice and unlocked a deeper dimension of meaning and value to the words of affirmation, validation, appreciation and praise I speak – as they are heartfelt, honest and not serving an egoic manipulative agenda. At least not to my conscious knowing.

In reflecting on my expressions of appreciation I realized a while back that though I have achieved integrity and honesty in these I still allowed societal or cultural programmings to hold me back from expressing them as often as I felt and thought them. Thereby denying the other whose existence, deeds or expressions allowed me to tap into beautiful frequencies of gratitude, awe, adoration, admiration and appreciation to partake of it and become aware of who they truly are. This felt unbalanced and quite lacking to me. So I intended to express these feelings and thoughts as often as they occurred or I could make space to express them, to make it my intent and conscious practice of giving and mirroring back to those who enrich and illuminate my life. And so I brave the dangers of being misunderstood, judged or made fun of while trusting that what I say reaches the heart of another even if their ego might be incapable of receiving it.

In a world filled with endless messaging and cultural conditioning telling us about our many inadequacies it is a radical act of rebellion to be part of the growing choir of voices that truthfully speak to our gifts, beauty and power.

To me all of these messages are small modern day love notes. Reminiscent of love letters, the forgotten art of speaking to and engaging the ineffable as well as the luminosity of our being. Love notes to God/ the Beloved/ the Divine/ Universe/ Source through their manifestation as this individual consciousness. Expressions of gratitude, delight, pleasure and the enrichment I feel through and with them. 

This choice and practice bring a new dimension of inner alignment, a feeling of rightness and flow of love to my experience I no longer want to be without. And what is more, it has taken even distant acquaintances into a more heartful and nourishing realm of relating. Something our world definitely needs more of…

I would of course never tell you to stop celebrating or congratulating people on their birthdays. It is a rather touchy subject to many for reasons of insecurity and lack of self love or lack of understanding the other’s motives. Yet I would like to inspire you to reflect upon your expressions of appreciation and gratitude towards people in your life.

Do you feel happy with how and how often you express your appreciation? 

Do you feel you could learn or do something to make your words reach their hearts? 

Are you giving yourself enough appreciation and gratitude for all the ways you show up for yourself and others?

Can you come up with fun, playful and inspiring ways of seeding, cultivating and nurturing a culture of authentic, heartful and uplifting appreciation with others around you?

Photography: Balinese girl praying by Gede Lila

The post Appreciation appeared first on Venuskind.

“in the in-between spaces of being, in the multitude of questions with no answers yet, in the disconcerting not-knowing i will meet your rawness in its multi-facetted beauty with tenderness. in the training grounds of compassion and love i will meet your growing trust and brightening light with delight. in the eye of the storm of your fears i will meet your excitement and dance with your spirit… in your vulnerability and openness i surrender to you in love’s embrace. beloved, will you meet me there?”

~ 05.02.2013

Photography: Dennis Carney and Essex Hemphill by Rotimi Fani Kayode, London 1988

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“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.” 

~ C. JoyBell C.

Photography by Unknown

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I hope you rise in love with someone who knows how to love,
with someone who grows you,
someone who listens to you,
someone who supports your dreams,
someone who love themselves fiercely,
someone strong enough to be vulnerable,
someone who remains present when triggered,
someone who makes you a priority,
someone who makes you laugh,
someone who broadens your perspectives,
someone who derails victim/perpetrator/savior dynamics,
someone whose actions align with their words,
someone who treats you like the divinity you are,
someone who drives you crazy and walks you back to sanity,
someone who inspires you to be a better you,
someone who shares all of themselves with you,
someone whose loyalty is unwavering,
someone who loves all of you – light and shadow alike,
someone who has a proven practice of self work,
someone who makes you feel safe,
someone who chooses to forgive and learn,
someone who incites your admiration and adoration,
grow in love with someone who is good for and to you.

~ 10.01.2017

Photography by Maud Chalard

The post In Love appeared first on Venuskind.

Will you hold another who has been touched by the darkness within? Will you love them enough to allow them to fall apart in your arms? To unravel, to become unglued, and to feel unbearably lost as the wisdom of their process unfolds? Will you be the space in which they can finally meet the feelings and emotions that have been kept at bay for a lifetime?

To love another in this way you must touch everything that is unresolved within you – all of your own unmet sadness, abandoned shame, discarded grief, and deserted aloneness. You are willing to no longer stay safe on the sidelines. You are willing to get messy. Even gooey and drippy.

 
Will you set aside your need for the other to change, to be different, to be “cured,” to be transformed, and to be healed? Will you resist the temptation to talk them out of their embodied experience, to tell them everything will be okay, and to dishonor the creativity hidden inside the unwanted? Will you allow your heart to break with them, and endure the urge inside you to put it all back together again? Will you fall into the unknown with them, holding them close, and provide a home for their brokenness?

To care about others, yourself, and the world in this way you must stay radically embodied. You are no longer interested in transcending suffering, confusion, and neurosis, for you see these as thundering expressions of the path itself. Please don’t turn away. As your attention moves out into the conceptual world, return to the wild intelligence of your body, for it is there that love is working behind the scenes, giving birth to its sweet activity in this dimension.

It is in this factory of love, which is operating as the temple of your own body, where the sacred world is revealing its essential secrets of healing: there is no “other,” there has never been an “other,” and there could never be an “other.” There is only the reflection of your own being.

Love is taking the pieces of your heart and is using them to re-assemble the world in front of you, each as an invitation sent to reveal to you the preciousness of what is really happening here.

~ Matt Licata

Photography by Unknown

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I have a soul deep yearning for the light in his eyes, the brilliant vivaciousness of his voice and the warmth with which his heart held all of me.

Today I am being pulled to you with a gentle ferocity, your heart calling me back to you, to emotional fulfillment and visions of a higher form of relationship only the two of us could co-create.

And so I sit here and hold space as waves of feelings, images and thoughts come and fill the house of my soul with heart wrenching beauty.

I tell myself I will not resist nor will I grasp at any of this to give it a label or make sense of it in words or concepts, I remind myself to open myself wholly to these feelings, to let every cell embody them and vibrate with the miracle tones of our connection.

My mind is lost for words as none of this makes any sense. 

How do such feelings arise with such unfathomable intensity and trueness without the slightest indication of their existence for years? Where did they lay in slumber? Were they biding their time till I was ready for them? Are these feelings mine alone or are you feeling this too? 

I dare not allow my mind to wonder about these things too much as I would not want the magic of this mysterious experience to be lessened by its clumsy attempts at making sense of it.

I have no idea if this is just mama Venus sprinkling her magic of healing on the past to close it out on a sweet note or if this is a rebirth and rekindling. 

I just know that my heart longs to be united with yours in more than the spiritual dimension and that I will leave it up to you and Source to decide.

And so I surrender to this longing and welcome whatever it means or does not mean.

Photography: Unknown

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here in this beautiful now i am standing alone at the precipice of a new life. a life you might become a part of or a life in which you might turn into a transient memory slowly fading away as the years roll by. only time can tell what it will be and so i widen my heart to love you more fully because now is all we have for sure and because you are the one i hope life chose to be mine…


yet every time my love for you deepens i have to make myself let go more – let go of my attachment to wanting to be with you, let go of my imagining a common future and let go of my minds obsession with thoughts of you. 

never have i felt the impermanence of life and my vulnerability more than in my love for you. there are uncried tears in my eyes when i smile at you, a melancholy coloring my joy and laughter as the writings on the wall tell me to open my hands and let you go… then my hands slowly let go as i do not want to lose you!

“To hold, you must first open your hand. Let go.“ 
~ Lao Tzu

I wrote these words 4 years ago. Reminding me of relationship and love  transformational and elegant in its uniqueness. A man I still adore and love deeply even if our paths parted and we are no longer connected on a human level.

I had the honor of learning to open my heart in the face of fears, uncertainty, to allow for my vulnerability and let it all in, surrendering fully to the impermanence of our human experiences while embracing the eternity of love with an exceptional being.

I had let you go as you did me and yet I love and hold you more deeply today than I was capable of then my beloved K..

With gratitude, love and blessings for all you have been, are and will be!

Photography: Unknown

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