I think the authenticity of being in expressions of love with others involves presence with the individuals you are engaging with in terms of how attentive you are to one another in conversations and nonverbal interactions. It seems to me other trappings of spirituality are not interesting to most people in love relationships. At least, in my experience, adding ritual acts such as gift giving, meal sharing and romantic forms of intercourse are mundane and left to the media's stereotypical views on what should not be regarded as sacred. To me, these affirm more than just tokenistic attempts at finding and drawing out someone's usefulness, and belong more on the spectrum of mutually heartfelt and uplifting boundary pushing. It increases the yield of love by connecting through actions in the world that represent the symbolic nature of what is shared therein. Do I personally include these elements? Yes. Do they mean to me as other folks? Often not. As far as I can perceive, the ways in which people relate to each other with toxic love almost generally can be viewed as an abuse of power and privilege, related to what the love relationship guarantees them in return for generating the love emotions and somatic responses. It is a psychological game to a lot of folks, being something that can control and exert undue influence on each other for reasons that they actually believe to be innocent, like protection, distraction, security of the basic needs, fringe benefits, entertainment, and other ways of committing disrespect and harm to what otherwise would be a divine union. Souls can't heal from these things easily, and that creates a void of desperation in a lot of people when they go single or lose a partner or contact who they had invested in, on either side of the equation. So what I do to find spiritually fulfilling in a relationship is likely all about me, and fitting my needs in the same way, into the relationship that exists without it being mutual. It's a cycle that can be broken. It has to be a cultivated spirituality between people involved, and not just thrown in to the mix for some kind of taking of what isn't given freely. I don't limit myself to presents, foods, and physical connecting like hugging or gentle prods in jest. Other forms of creating the sacred involve deep listening, validation of what is heard with more questioning and calculated responses, as well as uplifting potential. What I see in others I attempt to help flourish in them. It is a different kind of pressing up against their boundaries, because what I have a long vision for often is abrasive in the first few moments of a lifelong journey or a seasonal acquaintanceship. Folks build strengths through spiritual commitments to each other, one perhaps takes a lead or speaks a different love language, however, the other(s) in their way, also learn how to grow and extend that blessing upon those whose lives they touch.
Do you mark the bindings and partings of love?
I often have, at the prompting of others external to the embrace of the love relations at hand. Sometimes I have handfasted, or taken on a title of endearment. Other times it is just a brief conversation and a kiss goodbye, forever. Once in a while it is a settling in of comforting sensations or emotions, rather than a settling for someone or something they represent, or even settling into a space. I frequently find myself excited for new opportunities to get to know people intimately, on a breath-to-breath level of speaking closely, on a level of sharing a sip of a drink or using fingers to pick at the same dish of food; it can be cultural, these beginnings. There really are no bindings in love that I wish to participate in. Therefore, it often is the case that parting ways is a ghosting. I have had it worse than that, as well. The turmoil that comes from disruptive abandonments has left me sour, broken into pieces spiritually, and miserable on multiple levels of my wellness wheel and psyche, many times over. I have come to understand that the withdrawal from relationship is itself a healing process that begins with a wound. I don't enjoy the idea of wedding and divorce, which always go hand in hand, the former lending itself to the latter. I would officiate certain ceremonies of connection, but it would be very different in my stream than those of a classic marriage or handfasting, being ritualized permanence of something unpredictable and yet hopeful. To me, the partings of love and the commitments we make in love are solely and completely based in the ecstatic moments that, whether they are crushing drops or sharp peaks of experience, or somewhere enjoyable in between, it's those moments that throw a relationship forward into it's next moment, it's next phase, it's next... whatever it brings. So each moment is one, either for a connection to unfold, or for the petals to fall and something else to happen to the flower of it. I try, for that reason, to have a healthy relationship to myself. I grieve every time I have a fresh wound. I feel unlikely to connect to others when I am wounded. I feel loss and I feel blank, flat, and without a sense of compassion for myself or the world in those moments. I try to love myself better, and honour myself in some small way each time I have a need to connect back to myself. It looks selfish in some regards to gift myself a rewarding something when I am not doing the same for the seven hundred people and their families that I know. I am one person, and I have to think to my own wellbeing in order to push myself into a state of grateful charity for others. It seems as though self-love is something marketed as an oversexualized statement on anatomy and pleasure, these days. In fact, the commitments and re-commitments to self-healing I make and then part from due to the circumstances of my life, are indeed crests and waves that catapult me back into the regressions of self-loathing and low self-esteem that brought me to love too openly, too widely, and too bodily, before this time that I am in now. These days I have to mourn myself more often than not. I am having a year of empathy, which is an intention to relate to others more than myself, and in the midst of a commitment to the powers of the sphinx, knowing myself is partly a challenge and partly a flow state, an arc of not really knowing at all who I am. These are commitments to self, they are beginnings with me, and they are binding agreements I have to and with and for myself, to be better to myself along this journey.
What commitments and revoked commitments do you have, in these terms with others and yourself? Many are unstated.
Do you celebrate ecstatic communion?
It feels like I don't. When I dance, surrounded by people full of alcohol, substances, spiritual fire, or whatever gets them moving, I feel alone in those times of celebration more often than not. However, it feels also as though I am pulled to connect, during a few of those rituals. I have been approached, sometimes in a friendly way, other times in a lewd, crass, grasping. I don't know how to make sense of the disconnect I have always felt at a time when I am least restrained, least closed-off, and most vulnerable. Ecstatic, yes... but not often connected in the communal dance. When I've made love, it is mainly one-sided, and more often than not, it's been a chance for others to abuse the privilege in so many ways, not honouring the exchange of physicality that is embodied in those moments together, and only together, so it is difficult to see past the wounds and into the communion aspects of being one, as one, in the embrace of another person. But then there is the how, and how do I attempt it when my attempts are frequently thwarted? How do I move into a spaciousness where it is not only allowed to be as sacred as the heiros gamos, but also limitless in the depth of where that leads to, in moments of brilliant egoic loss? I find that for me, instead of divine partnerships in bed, I get the most out of exchanges of wordplay and the innocence of the beginner's mind learning intelligent things, exchanging emotional and spiritually valuable poetry and dialogue, and basically finding rapture in the ever-present blossoming of nature experiences all around me. The rain kissing my skin, the snow biting my fingertips, the way a word I've had to look up burns at my psyche, and the way a shared human condition caresses the wounds I hold closest... these are the ecstatic rituals of expressing that actually help me heal and release into a place of vision and timelessness.
When you think about it, are the ecstatic moments of communion in your life about reaching climax or laughing so hard you hurt, or are there other ones that linger and carve deeper pathways?
Do you honour your conflict?
I am not sure how to answer this because I avoid conflict. I suppose the answer must be that no, I don't honour it at all. Conflicts for me generally mean an end to interactions. I can conceive of ways in which conflict could be honoured; breaking to take space and then reconvening to discuss the ways in which things could have gone differently, recapitulating past successes when things have gone awry in a connection or at least, getting angry to someone at their level in a way they understand and then feeling out that anger with stomping, smashing, spitting, whatever that would look like to a person embodying primal expressions. I don't know how I would do it, personally, from a place of love, other than just cutting ties and moving on so that the person could find their needs met elsewhere.
What about in single life, how do you make it sacred?
I've expressed a bit above with regard to this, and I would add to that a little. Holding space for myself to do self-discovery work often in past years has involved artistic means of writing out my internal dialogues, so that I can look back at them later instead of carrying them forward. Painting pictures that show my visions in order to see them as portals to places I have been in my conscious awareness, too has been a bit rewarding. When I create costume for myself to beautify my life, and become more appealing to my own sense of what is attractive has also brought me some respite in a world where most are trying to fit in and not stand too far out of line in order to be accepted. I don't feel accepted most of the time. I do stand out. I don't care. To me, this sacred self-love comes from a place of finding comfort in the dwelling with self that happens when a person ceases to connect with new people. Even when new people arise in my life, I now take steps back to decide, is this going to help us both flourish, or is this going to be some kind of competition for who gets something out of it and who gets the short end of the stick? I have seen it too many times, and without the collaboration of mutuality, I am just not interested in the dramas and games that fuel everyone else. That boundary is sacred as well.
Tell me about how you love.
♥ Jacki