The more I retreat from socializing virtually
The more I am unavailable
The richer my remaining encounters and relationships are

A lovely paradox to live, navigate and experience.

That is one way of putting my latest experiment in relating in a nutshell, of course the experience itself is much more nuanced and the insights gained multidimensional and manyfold. Retreating from social media and its temptations in staying connected with those, who in times before internet would have been lost to my experience until our life paths crossed or aligned again, has been a source of deep contemplations, emotional and mental integration and a fundamental reset to my relational system.

There is beauty in the possibilities of virtuality, the multitude of information and knowledge available to us in our increasingly digital realities. And in the glaring light of infinite possibilities, distractions and temptations it is easy to remain blind to the costs of living our relational lives to a high degree within digital instead of analogue realities. Which points in part towards the loss of exchanges in form of tones of voices, micro-expressions, body language, chemistry and energy and goes much further than we are aware of until we make ourselves change our experience.

There is a massive loss our relational system encounters in engaging too much in the virtual and not enough in the real. A loss in nourishment, calibration, and co-regulation with others, which are essential to our wellbeing and health. Unfortunately the habituated behaviors and communication styles that arise from being too much in the digital have a way of bleeding over into the real and disconnecting us further when we remain unaware.

Have you noticed how little REAL encounters you have with others these days? 

In a real encounter all participants are present, open hearted, ready and capable to attune to each other, listen, share and express from their essential nature. There is a marked absence of the machinations of the ego, mind games, automatisms, and mindless chatter or replay of patterns. No matter if people are spiritual or not, the majority do not take the time to be fully present and attuned to an exchange as their being is way too exited, vigilant, minds racing, emotions chaotically overflowing or ebbing – which only allows for personalities and minds to meet but no deeper meeting of souls and beings to be possible. 

The engagement in the virtual has furthermore robbed many of several layers of trust, which once arose from feeling safe to express who they are in contexts of friendship or acquaintanceship. The experience of safe spaces where everyone gets to express freely and healthy discourses on the matters shared (not on the validity of another’s feelings, experience, or worse person) is possible, has become a luxury hidden behind paywalls of therapy, workshops and retreats. And even there the corrosiveness of current trends is undercutting a true and prevailing acceptance of ALL that is present by only allowing for what aligns with the given groupthink. If we do not consciously create such safe spaces for each other we are becoming part and enablers of this toxic patterning that cuts us off from each other and renders egos ever more fragile, violent and dangerous.

Real encounters are also more prevalent when people have enough time to themselves, to integrate experiences, to self care and nurture, to know themselves and their inner universe and have the spaciousness and willingness to open to the vastness of another in their unique complexities. They cannot be easily had by a relational system that is being drained and exhausted by non-stop information overload, emotionally manipulative content, and the rise and intensity of fanatical and manipulative language, and disappointing social encounters and experiences in the virtual sphere.

They can happen wherever one person is willing and ready to hold space for realness and invites the others into presence. It takes only one person to open the door, and equally only one to bar real encounters. I sense there is more here that wants to be explored and known by us…

The past 3 months have been incredibly nourishing and delightful to me as I had more real encounters in that time than I recall having in years. My awareness was focused on the quality of relating, energy exchange, reciprocity, and my body’s responses in order to learn anew what works for me and serves my wellbeing. It was surprising to realize how important fairly short exchanges with strangers or near-strangers can be whenever we are fully present to them and the others follow our invitation into it. Amazing how a short conversation, smiles, and meeting of beings can uplift and nurture the relational system for days to come – if experienced and reflected from a space of open hearted presence, playfulness and gratitude.

What a gift to reset to the real and get new insights into my relational system and its workings.

~ August 2022

Photography by Tatsuo Suzuki

The post Resetting to Real appeared first on Venuskind.

These are some of my reflections at the end of this adventure in humaning.

Men of my age and older

Having been surrounded for more than a decade by very aware, caring and spiritual people has upped all my baselines for communicating and relating. And engaging with mainstream ‘normal’ men gained a surreal retro feel thanks to the evolution and growth shared in various communities. I caught myself over and over in surprised and speechless moments of “People are still doing this and not aware enough to see it for what it is and change or grow?”

Habituated to fellow growth-minded people the slow pace of progression and learning in others, coupled with an unadulterated and unapologetic rigidity in holding on to dysfunction felt not only alien but put me off, even if the man had other good qualities.

A history of immersion in psychology, communication sciences and being part of the polyamory community has taught me early on about communication, consideration and respect for another’s needs and feelings. So much so that it has become second nature and my world is primarily populated with people who are eloquent practitioners of it. Therefore the disjointed communication styles, absence of consideration of my needs and feelings, unabashed egocentricity, unconscious mind games, ego tantrums and other manipulative attempts felt jarring and alienating. And I realized these block communicating and relating so much that even the most basic levels of these are repeatedly or permanently unavailable with these men. Though the reasons for said blockages are amalgamated by individual unaddressed patterning and wounding the general dynamic was quite repetitive.

Overall I observed the immensity of emotional and spiritual poverty rampant in men of my age, the ways they try to compensate or flee it (sex, status, money, etc.) and the suffering, fragility and loneliness underneath all their striving or posturing as they have achieved enough of their goals to be confronted with their fecklessness in the face of the hole within they tried to fill with them.
I am saddened by how few of them are courageous and willing enough to face their shadow and integrate it now. Too many messages and conversations had men acknowledge that they probably should address this or that and then giving me rationalizations and excuses why they won’t just now or ever. Of course change and healing is impossible, shouldn’t I know?

With men who are spiritual and have their own self work journey the fault lines lie along similar lines though in a more tempered and less obvious way. They also strive and posture by displaying their spiritual practices, jobs, achievements – the more integrated have a humorous awareness of it when pointed to it while others will react with the same fragility to be found in other men. I cannot help but see a lack of decisive actions and investment in things of value due to the ease of being distracted or too sluggish to leave the (spiritual) comfort zone. A lack of ability to slay the Buddha on the path and progress beyond on the one hand and the inability or unwillingness to marry spirituality with the mundane on the other.

Conditioning is truly strong and finds ways to operate in new ways along old lines, the spiritualized ego is just one of the more visible ways this shows itself. If we do not keep alert, sharpening our awareness and consciousness our human affinity for comfort and consistency will limit our progress and insert unhealthy stagnation and calcification. A valuable reminder to be honored.

Power differentials

The most fascinating experience I made for the first time in this intensity and across all encounters is a dynamic power differential which put me in the stronger position without any intent or effort on my side.
All the disappointments, heartbreaks, and subsequent ongoing self work that emotional unfulfilment has brought into my experience has blossomed and is bearing a magical fruit. Said fruit is twofold as it manifests as the ability to fill my own cup by having a variety of ways and flexibility to fulfill my needs independent of a singular other. Sitting alone and dropping inside already washes away all burdens, worries, and needs in the luminosity of presence and equanimity. Taking full responsibility for my experience has grown and transcended me beyond the strangling grip of trauma and conditioning into a state of compassionate self love that allows me to navigate life with awareness, trust, playfulness and inner strength.
The second manifestation is the curated life I have been slowly building from the inside out, rich in connections and relationships that can nurture me more than *enough* and which evolve and grow steadily and healthily. When filling my cup internally or from Spirit doesn’t quite hit the point there are cherished friends and acquaintances who will do it. And often it takes only a word or sentence here, a hug, moments of shared laughter or commiseration. Even little things are superfoods to my heart and Soul in this web of love that lights up around and in me.

Having worked on my childhood trauma and with my sexual desires and energy has shifted my relationship with sex in ways I haven’t had a chance of being so acutely aware of in the absence of viable sex partners. I realized that the past years had taught me to transform the dense, sharp, burning imminence of sexual desire into other forms of energy in service of my spiritual practice or into a gentle, encompassing, warm, expansive erotic energy that is more akin to a wide flowing river than the intensity of burning fiery sexual need. My urges no longer hijack or control my being, I can feel, sense and take pleasure in them without having to act on them right here and now, frustration, or loss of the energy. There is no enslavement nor opposition to sexual desires, just an allowing, awareness and loving intentional engagement. Which is very different to the way it dominated and drove the decisions and action of the men I encountered, even the spiritual with a few exceptions (true tantric practitioners). This dominating drive was often the reason why connection was impossible as their system had concept of relating and connecting outside of sex. Not only a mental poverty but also a terrible pattern of starving the emotional body.

I enter every encounter as a whole being open to new experiences, cognizant of the goodness and abundance of life, while these men act from mindsets built on scarcity, competition, domination and neediness. A power differential asserts itself as I am less driven than them, moving at the pace of my awareness and intuition, my desires for the encounter being for it to be respectful, kind, and interesting/expansive. While on the other side they are under pressure to fulfill their burning needs and desires for ‘the one,’ sex, admiration, alleviation of loneliness, filling the emptiness in their life, etc. The exception being that spiritual guys have less of a pressure and more of a desire and the best of them meeting me in a similar openness to mine.

This calls for extra mindfulness and compassion in my words and actions in order not to enter into the dysfunctional patterns this power difference might invite and to be kind and caring towards the tender aspects of the man. Gifts always come with new responsibilities to keep relating balanced and fair.

Take away for me

All the work to disempower and dismantle romantic conditioning and be more spacious about relating and loving has changed how I perceive relationships, my visions and needs in relating with an intimate partner or friend, and lastly me. I can smile at my inner romantic when she starts going off creating Hollywood movies in her future projections, and still stay anchored in awareness and act from my higher senses and mind.
No longer a slave to these narratives by blindly following them nor by rebelling against them, I have learned to allow life to write an authentic and healthier narrative into every encounter with potential while practicing detachment from outcomes and surrender to the way life unfolds.

And so here I am in a state of awe of the wholeness this path has gifted me. Grateful for the expansion of my awareness, the learning of skills that help me navigate challenging feelings and pains of the past with tender compassion and firmness in service of the wellbeing of all. Grateful for the lessoning of the selfishness and self absorption of the ego which used to blind me to the needs, wants, desires, and feelings of others in the pursuit of my emotional fulfillment. Thankful for leaning into interdependence, allowing vulnerability, honesty and tenderness to strip me to my essential nature and truths in the face of worthy beloveds, learning and practicing how to keep filling another’s cup while keeping mine full *enough*.

I bow in gratitude for my teachers in the past months for the insights and learning they co-created with me. Grateful for them helping me realize that companionship and friendship are fundamental to me and my vision of an evolutionary and fulfilling relationship and that many fail to meet the basic skills and awareness needed for that starting point, let alone the evolutionary trajectory I see as intrinsic to my life and loving. Grateful for making me realize how unique and special a man has to be to co-create a relationship and life with me that would be worthwhile to surrender my aloneness for. Laying the foundation for the proper appreciation and gratitude for the one that will take this role in times to come. Grateful for making me more committed to my path and consciousness work to avoid the pitfalls of conditioning, rigidity, and stagnation which render us lifeless.
Hoping from the bottom of my heart that our encounter was in some little way enriching and nourishing to them and that their Soul flourishes and delights along the path she choose.

Last but not least I bow in gratitude and awe to Life/Self/Source for the playfulness, love, creativity, care, and challenges they pepper my life experience with. And for the blessed and indomitable knowing that what is mine will never pass me by!

Photography Karen Williams by Paul Innis

The post Online Dating appeared first on Venuskind.

How do I explain that my mind is reeling while trying to differentiate and keep apart timelines, feelings and persons?

How do I own and express to him that I know it’s unfair that he is affected by my childhood trauma and that I choose to protect and love my inner child even if it means hurting his feelings in the process?

How do I hold space for his hurt without collapsing into abandoning myself  while gently advocating for my wounded child?

How do I express my gratitude for our meeting because it revealed an unconscious effect of my past and helped me avoid hurting myself and others in this way again now that I gained an understanding of this trigger?

~ June 2016

Art by Unknown

The post Questions from the Void of a Flashback appeared first on Venuskind.

The sly power of dysfunctional romantic conditioning and the repetitive nature of ego, shadow and subconsciousness is truly fascinating and at times daunting.

At least this time around it wasn’t spent in confusion, delusion or unconsciousness but under the guidance of my Self and in high awareness and observer mode. The idea being that if I do this with full awareness and and full allowing it would be a last experience to close out the pattern and cycle equally. I am so grateful for the humorous way my Self teaches me about the patterns of my small self and the enchanting way I am called home to be loved on and showered with gifts from Spirit once the lessons are learned. 

Every disappointing relationship, betrayal, manipulation, abuse, injustice, denigration or selfish behavioral pattern I have been confronted with has helped me to unlearn the “good girl” programming and to prioritize my relationships with Self and Source before ALL else. 

I am grateful to my teachers, catalysts and mirrors who have led me home to the place which fills my being with love, bliss, wellbeing and balances what needs balance. Please understand, though, if I choose to no longer engage with you or keep you in my experience when you cannot meet me on the levels of relating I prefer. I trust you will find countless others who will avail themselves for the continuation of the ego games we played or who will help you awaken and reach for more or better ways of relating.

I am grateful for the relationships and soul kin who relate with me on dimensions of reciprocity, compassion, generosity, integrity, creativity, ease, bliss, love and most of all on the dimension of Spirit. Without you I could have never survived and thrived through the karmic load of the old cycle. Thank you for being in my life and making me laugh! 

I am ready to leave these experiences, patterns, beliefs, karma, dynamics and people behind me and to welcome more of the balanced and holistically fulfilling relationships into my life which mirror my expanding relationship with Self. Thank you Source for always teaching and loving me through all my experiences.

May we collectively transcend the darkness of the old scripts and rise into the light of loving, equal, sovereign and generous relating!

Photography: Tony Thornburg by Unknown

The post Laughing and Reflecting appeared first on Venuskind.

My mind assumed it to be a call for assessment of how well I did in the past year or where I failed to show up in my core relationships, oh how stunned it was to realize it was wrong. 

At first the retreat was met with a silence of both, reminding me of the importance of patience, stillness and being. Once my being leaned into the silence and simplicity of being a sweetness and blissful flow of harmony arose in me. A sweetness that had lessened in the engagement with loved ones and catalysts in the past months. Yet its rising was not accusatory but a gentle reminder of what the baseline of my existence has become through the hard work of the past years and the grace bestowed by Spirit. 

Leading me to reflect on why I allowed my inner wellbeing to lessen, how I participated in or instigated the lowering of my vibration. Then my inner Guru pointed to the experiences of the past months that challenged me to meet unlove with love over and over again. Showing me the patterns and scripts I have been enacting while observing it with awareness and working on responding from love even if it felt nigh impossible. Proving once again that the mind and its beliefs on what I can or cannot do are stuck in the past and need to be left behind on a path of growth. Highlighting where I still hold attachments and blind spots in need of my loving illumination, integration and transmutation in order to follow the call that has been stirring within and becoming louder by the day.

A call I sensed and knew deep in my cells. 

A call into Divine Union and a new path announcing its opening.

This union is first and foremost internal, a higher state of union of inner feminine and inner masculine, of polarities and energies within. A union that enables and necessitates a higher kind of relating, relating based on the foundation of knowing and values I have embraced and learned to embodied throughout the past years. This inner union demands a higher level of integrity, clarity and alignment to be embodied and lived by me than I have ever done. No more letting things slide or allowing aspects of me to rationalize holding on to the dysfunctions and superfluousness of what is belongs to the past. Consciously offering it all on the altar of the eclipse season and letting it be transmuted by Spirit to be of service of the experiences to come.

This new path of being and creating life comes with its own soul family, tribe and fellow journeyers. Holding on to the status quo or trying to fit in what isn’t energetically aligned with it will create unnecessary suffering for all involved. 

Source is illuminating where I need to let go, where relationships have to be adjusted to a form and level of engagement that befits their energetic reality and where the interfering fantasies of the mind need to end now. 

I am being reminded how important it is to start a new part of your life with care, awareness and integrity. Any kind of laziness, be it emotional, spiritual, mental or physical, in preparation of my new beginning will have larger ramifications in the time to come. 

The quality of the seeds planted in this time is of utmost importance and that is why we are collectively called into reflection and meditative contemplations. We are calibrating and attuning our energy, by releasing whatever obstructs the flow of Source energy or distracts from our inner callings and evolution of consciousness and thus the seeds of the new realities we are building on various dimensions are purified and elevated.

May our inner divine union help us seed external divine unions, families and tribes of love and creativity which serve all of life in the highest and best way.

Art: “The Beginning” by Anna Ewa Miarczynska

The post Divine Union appeared first on Venuskind.