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January 1, 2013August 2, 2013

Which is the Relationship of Your Dreams?

Are you willing to do what it takes to have the relationship of your dreams?

There are essentially 3 kinds of relationships: Traditional, Conscious, and Transcendent. Each serves it’s own purpose. Take a look at the descriptions below and ask yourself what kind of relationship you’re in and what kind of relationship you would like to be in. Remember, some people can’t or don’t want to do the necessary work too get to the next level. Are you willing to do what it takes to have the relationship of your dreams?
LEVEL 1: TRADITIONAL RELATIONSHIP
This is the most familiar dynamic found in traditional marriages and relationships. The focus is on shared interests and values rather than personal growth. In Traditional Relationships neither person has done the necessary psychological or spiritual work to bond either with themselves or another. This means that the couple connects at the personality rather than the emotional and spiritual levels. When two people relate from the personality or “I” level, the individual’s focus remains on him or herself rather than on the other. Each person is primarily focused on getting his or her own needs met which prevents the “we” of the relationship from forming. As a result these relationships often become stagnant and power struggles occur frequently. To remain together, partners in Traditional Relationships avoid looking at key issues, pretending they don’t exist. Many couples feel safe and secure in a Traditional Relationship. It is all they ever want or need and they can remain at this level forever. These couples will not naturally progress to the next two levels of relationship. Traditional Relationships end when one partner embarks on his or her psychospiritual journey and it becomes impossible to continue growing while remaining in the relationship.

LEVEL 2: CONSCIOUS RELATIONSHIP
When soul mates come together they join in Conscious Relationship. Soul mates are those who relate from the soul level. Though many seek a soul mate, the requirement for this kind of relationship is that both people must have done some psychological and spiritual work prior to meeting in order to relate soul to soul. In Conscious Relationships the focus is on emotional and spiritual growth both as individuals and as a couple. Those in Conscious Relationships are engaged in learning lessons. Their goal is to transcend the physical and emotional levels to the spiritual plane. As they actively work through issues together, Conscious Couples are increasingly able to lean in and trust one another to create the “we” of the relationship. One of the great challenges of Conscious Relationships is that they are transitioning from an I-based to a we-based relationship as they learn not only to work on their own individual issues but also as they learn to apply what they learn to the relationship as a whole. As this happens, power struggles occur. Though profound, Conscious Relationships but do not necessarily last forever. They might end when both partners are no longer able to grow together or when one person does not meet the other person’s Essential Needs. Just because people are Conscious Partners does not mean that they can automatically fulfill the other person’s requirements. Reaching the level of Conscious Partnership is a significant accomplishment and can lead to nourishing and lasting relationship.
LEVEL 3: TRANSCENDENT RELATIONSHIP
Not everyone wants to do the work to reach this third. Transcendent Partners love one another unconditionally. They are “guardians of each others souls.” Because Transcendent Partners have mastered the art of taking personal responsibility, they generate their identity, happiness and emotional stability from within and there is no fear of losing themselves in the relationship. With such a strong sense of their individual selves, Transcendent Partners can fully surrender to the “we” of the relationship, forming a union where the individual is not lost and the whole is profoundly greater than the sum of its parts. Skilled in unconditional acceptance, power struggles rarely occur. Transcendent Partners fully support each other in going for their dreams. They live in truth and can share anything without fear of shame or blame. Transcendent Partners relate at the spiritual level and have evolved beyond the need to work at the relationship. Both partners are guided not by outer but by inner forces and by each other. Knowing that what they have together is enough, Transcendent Partners are content and can commit to one another for life. Transcendent Partnership is focused in gratitude and on giving back to society. There are few models in our society for this type of partnership. Conscious Partners can and do evolve into Transcendent Partnership when both people do their individual work. You have not failed if you achieve a Traditional or Conscious Relationship. Transcendent Partnership is not and should not be for everyone.

Original Article Posting

November 12, 2012January 24, 2019

Pleasure Psychotherapy

I met a pleasure based psychotherapist recently. When Janov’s Primal Therapy came along I seem to recall that he said that a therapist was a dealer in pain. So is therapy about pleasure or pain and trauma?

Nobody would go to a therapist to talk about how happy they were or what a great childhood they had; but it is one of the more interesting questions in therapy the extent to which we have to go in to past pain and trauma to clear it out. In our culture we have the “no pain, no gain” school of development. A deeply Puritan culture like the British is very suspicious of happiness. I can lead straight in to the arms of The Devil. In most therapies, both humanistic and analytic happiness could well be covering something up; even a manic defence against deep sadness. Of course this can be true but it is also true that many defences, particularly somatic ones, tend to block access to all deep emotions; pain as well as joy. This is simply because all strong emotions and body sensations are close together in their emotional anatomy and neurology. On a fairground roller-coaster the riders play with the edge between fear and excitement; screaming with fear as the car descends and then cuing up for another go! A father playing with a young child may throw them up in the air and catch them giving squeals of joy, excitement, fear overcome by return to safety. Deep sobbing and deep belly laughter are quite similar to observe from the outside. In the intense autonomic activation of orgasm, pleasure and crying can come together. Those in to BDSM are experts on the edge between pleasure and pain and how both can lead to altered states of consciousness.

Many therapies are very interested in trauma; particularly if that term is extended from single incident events such as an accident, or act of abuse or death of someone to include developmental trauma such as having a depressed mother when there would be many occasions when the required empathic attunement and care-giving weren’t there. In the past going into the pain was seen as the only way. Now with modern energy psychology methods such as AIT(www.aitherapy.org) that I practice this is known not to be necessary. Just naming the trauma and finding the location in the body is often enough to clear it.

So as we block pleasure and pain, when a client comes in for a session reporting that they feel good. Unless I am very suspicious of this, I will only want to move feeling good to feeling fantastic. There has been more attention recently to positive psychology and to the concept of Flow, (from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi); a state of being where we are not divided and distracted but fully engaged in life at that moment.

So while I will try as a therapist to stay fairly divided in my attention between pain and pleasure. I have a growing sense that working with pleasure and how to expand it and deepen it within our bodies and our neurology is a powerful way forward. This forms a large part of my book Tantric Psychotherapy that I am working on at the moment (see www.tantricpsychotherapy.com )

Martin is London based psychotherapist

Freedom is the release of control…(Response to Serenade of the Boogie Monster)

Freedom is the release of control…

I thought this was a beautiful add on to my tale Serenade of the Boogie Monster. This allows all to see both sides of the story as well as the transformational aspects that occurred and are still in process. As with everything in life the path to enlightenment and expansion is never ending. Each step we reveal new aspects of our self and we see those in our lives through our new eyes. Our lessons are put before us so that we may expand personally but also so that we may openly share and have empathy for our brothers and sisters. It has always been through story that we learn.

“You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

I as the husband in this story would like to share my side and also take the opportunity to explain what I have learned. Perhaps in doing so some of the regret I have will wash away. I am still doing the work of discovering my particular issues referred to in Kabbalah as Tekkun. I have had a sense of not being good enough, not worthy, a very common human trait. Kendal had a very special spiritual/sexual love connection with her first lover. They where to run away together and he disappeared and left her devastated. She quickly turned to me wounded. For me it was as if God had handed me an Angel. The life partner I had been dreaming about. I could not believe she had chosen to love me and I felt like I could rope the moon. Neither of us understood at the time how much of a needs based relationship it was. The problem is anytime we are getting our needs met by someone else, if they stop filling them there is a feeling of loss. We humans when we feel loss strive to get it back, to get that need filled. This is where control comes in, what once was free we need to take. We take through manipulation, guilt, fear and sometimes physical abuse. Looking back this happened very early on in our 18 marriage and it is still happening today as my desire to be close to her causes her to feel controlled. Back to the story. My needs and insecurities increased by the fact that I compared myself to her first lover. He was taller, had a bigger penis, a better connection energetically then we ever had. I tried to make up for it through performance, to fix it. I would get her to love me more by making more money, taking romantic trips, fucking her harder and deeper and lasting longer. None of this worked of course. I would fantasize about our friend having sex with her, the two of us having sex with her. His penis was bigger so maybe he could please her and I wanted her to be pleased yet this surfaced all my insecurities. I could see and feel the energy she had with him. I needed to be the one to please her. My need would not be met, or would it? She was not open enough to talk about it and it would have brought my negative ego control issues to the surface like an atomic bomb, so she lied. I knew she was lying.

“Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.”
―Terence Mckenna

An absolute energetic relationship death. We continued on in this dead end disaster for 13 more years before her soul had had enough and she did what she had to do to heal herself and turned to Tantra, Kabbalah, her soul guide, and other men in a desperate attempt for freedom. I am sharing this in hopes that someone reading might be helped and get understanding. I want everyone to know how proud I am of her and how thankful I am that she had/has the courage to strive for soul integrity. She is and always will be my spiritual teacher. We can’t go back in time yet as I work on my healing I reflect on how different it could have been had I the courage 13 years ago to do the work on myself. To open up to Tantra as a spiritual path and also to polyamory. Looking back the only thing wrong with my fantasies is that I wasn’t emotionally or spiritually strong enough to handle it. It’s a matter of consciousness. I look around at relationships and can see and feel the pain these control issues are causing. I am looking forward to having many lovers as I continue to heal and grow my consciousness. I hope one day to be lovers with Kendal again knowing all the negativity that would have to be released because I would not want her to live out of soul integrity to fill my needs. I can desire her love open and free but I can not need it. Currently I still feel loss, needs unmet. There is much work to be done so here is my shout out to the world, stop the insanity. Do the hard work. It’s going to be really fucking hard and your demons will surface, but the world needs you to do it. Dive in the water is cold but you get used to it and it is why we are here. To heal, love openly, grow, expand love, expand ourselves.

Namaste’

July 12, 2012January 24, 2019

Love & Marriage: It’s an institute you can’t disparage… or can you? by Scott Beauregard

Having been married in my past and when that marriage ended, as all too many in current society do, in divorce I was lost for a period of time. I struggled with the concepts of what society says is the path to happiness. I started to look deeper into my own thoughts and beliefs about marriage. While It may seem in this piece that I’m condemning marriage that is not truly the case. I’m not condemning marriage, but more condemning the reasons we enter into a marriage contract.

In doing research based on this subject it quickly became apparent that there is not reliable historical information regarding marriage and rarely is the word “love” mentioned in all of the definitions and histories of marriage. Let’s look at the current state of marriage and its role in keeping us disconnected from our true selves. Although attitudes are starting to change slowly when it comes to the definition of marriage, this is not going to turn into a political debate. It has been commonly held that marriage is the union of one man and one woman for quite sometime. Look at that last statement again, specifically, “union of”. What does that bring into your mind? A partnership, a combining of equal parts? If it is so that this union of, and we can even expand it out to two people, is an equal partnership then why are people so lost and looking, searching for that one connection that will “save” them. The divorce rate is through the roof. Domestic abuse and violence is at an all time high. We don’t seem to be learning anything and making the same mistakes over and over.

People both men and women, straight, gay, bi, have relationships with 6-10 different people in their lifetime. All under the guise of finding “the one”. The one that will allow me to be happy. As those numbers point out there’s not “the one”, although in rare instances it does happen or at least appear on the surface. That older couple that has been together for 50, 60, 70 years, we’ve all heard those stories about a love that endures. It is obvious that these rare occurrences that the couple understands something about unconditional love or they hide the true nature of the relationship from even themselves.

Marriage is a contract not of equals, but of property. That’s right property. It is nothing more than a contract where the man agrees to provide security and physical property and woman agrees to become property of the husband for the security and physical property that is or will be owned and for the purposes of procreation so the physical property is in the hands of known relations. Men have through fear convinced women to give up their true feminine nature for stuff basically. Women have accepted the mantle of chattel on the antiquated notion that they will be provided for. If this is not true in this day and age why is it that more and more women have given up their feminine energetic natures and taken on more masculine natures in their lives.

So many people today still think that their happiness can come from another person. This is a crazy notion. One of the questions asked often in my counseling/coaching sessions is “Who can make you happy”, over 90% of the time the answer is “I can”. Next question is can anyone else? answer no. This is followed up with a question creates a lot of confusion. “Who can hurt you?” almost every person says “anybody”. When that is questioned with “If you are the only one that can make you happy, how is it that “anybody” can hurt you?”

If a good number of people can realize at this time that they are responsible for their own happiness why is it so difficult to accept that one is just as responsible for the hurts that come into one’s life. They bring this perception into the marriage contract and that is a pretty good indicator of why the divorce rate is so high. That and the fact that it is INSANE that women in this day and age would agree willingly to trade themselves for physical property and the illusion of security.

It’s not all their fault. The male has done a superb job of selling a bill of goods for hundreds or thousands of years that this is the only way it will work. The old patriarchal paradigm of conquest, control, and ownership is still in full effect today. Things are starting to change slowly. People in general are starting to take off the blinders. People are getting married for the first time later in life or choosing not to get married at all. Society is growing up and women are starting to wake up to the fact that the male will not give up what they have gained easily and the woman will have to take responsibility for becoming whole again. The male also bears responsibility in becoming whole but too many males still have that macho I need to conquer my world mentality. Using tantra and coaching it is possible to heal individual males and females, and couples as well.

When two people centered in the divine self, the unconditional love, the pure awareness, is it possible to create a union of equals. This is not to be seen though as an answer to fix the marriage contract though. It is only the understanding of what a relationship is supposed to be, for a reason, a season or on the rare occasions a lifetime. This can be applied to any relationship, friends, lovers, parents, children, etc. When we are centered in awareness and connected to that unconditional source, it becomes easier to love without attachment to thoughts of would, should, could. Which puts expectations of action or inaction, on the other person which will just lead down a path of hurting the self or other person with those expectations.

While there will always be those that prefer the marriage contract to the alternative, if we can get to the point of being centered within ourselves we can more easily handle the points in time when the current relationship we are in no longer serve the highest and greatest good of either party while maintaining the unconditional love and respect of the other party.

May 18, 2012January 24, 2019

Patriot of the Soul: Looking at life through heaven’s eyes.

“When you are moving toward an objective, it is very important to pay attention to the road. It is the road that teaches us the best way to get there, and the road enriches us as we walk its length. You can compare it to a sexual relationship: the caresses of foreplay determine the intensity of the orgasm. Everyone knows that… And it is the same thing when you have an objective in your life. It will turn out to be better or worse depending on the route you choose to reach it and the way you negotiate the route.” – Petrus, The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho

When my children were very young I spent many a late morning or early afternoon, cuddled up with them watching a Disney or Dream-Works movie. Each movie, even in its grand Hollywood masking carried with it a tale of a soul who was looking for their path. At some point in the movie the main character would have to step off the safe and stable route that their families and friends had encouraged them to stay on and they had to venture out into the great unknown called: Life.

My top favorite movie to watch with my children was: Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

The tale of a young stallion who through great pain, suffering, loss of family and true love discovers an unbreakable friendship, an elevation in love and the true courage of being a heroic Patriot of the Soul. For anyone who has watched this family movie from start to finish and allowed the soundtrack to dance its way through your heart, you know what I am referring to here. The beautiful thing about this movie and many others that captivate us is that only through struggle, tribulations, tears and pain; only through risking everything can we ever fully have everything that we want and more.

Joseph Campbell says it best, “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

Not so long ago I found myself lying in the arms of a man I love. Every moment spent with him has been full of peace, unconditional love, acceptance and even in the times that I find myself breathing as to not allow my ego to jump hastily into our differences I still feel great intimacy and depth. This particular afternoon however I was being torn up internally with fear. It had been weeks building, I had been taking notice of the smallest events, words shared, jokes, and above all else this pit in my stomach. I had made up my mind that for the greatest good of all parties (him and I) that we must part ways. I was fully prepared to tear my heart from my chest, to remove myself from the equation so that he could carry on and advance on his path. The fear of letting go of this bird so it could fly free though was horrifying!

We both found ourselves trapped in what seemed like a spot where God had abandoned us. The “higher powers that be” were laughing at our love, at our hearts that were breaking. Both fully aware that things were what they were but could soon very well change. The twists of the path we were walking on could cause a fork in the road. One that would force us to step down two separate trails. Being a man, as anyone who has read Grey’s book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus will understand, he was now acting in the role of Mr. Fix It. I was laying there taking in his scent, how his large hands felt as they cradled me, touched my cheek and how distant his heart beat felt in this position. I wanted to just blurt out everything that had been lying on my heart for the last month, but was scared that in revealing my true pain and not staying in this aloof state that was calm and collected would only cause him more suffering. And god how I did not want to be any more vulnerable then I was already feeling.

Sniffles cleared the silence of the moment, he was weeping. He was living the loss of us in this very moment. Tears came to my eyes, grabbing hold of his arm and his hands as I encouraged him to hold me tighter. I could feel that another Circumcising of the Heart was taking place for both of us.

“Often the love that means the most and is the truest will cause the most pain as well,” kept going through my head. It reminded me that we were each on the brink of great transformational awakening. It was a birthing process. Much like Pocahontas we were being gifted in this moment with the choice to choose our route. What’s around the river bend? Key words to remember for any Pathfinder. Anyway we looked at it there was going to be pain, there was going to be something that we would have to risk. The choice though was ours as to what we valued the most and what we could breathe through. In times when we are faced with hard choices and risk we are also faced with truly living life!

We can be like a turtle and cave up within ourselves, we can harden our hearts or we can be like a snake and shed our old skins, our old beliefs, patterns and transform into something more. A new version of ourselves. Often once we have revealed this new higher vibrational self to the world, to those we love and to ourselves we discover that what we were once afraid of is actually only our own TRUTH. From being willing to make what seemed like a sacrifice we open the doorway to our true path.

The path of the patriot of the soul is like all paths, but it is unique because of the being that has chosen to walk it. This person is a crusader. This person wants to live life to fullest. Does not want to settle for a life of illusion, doldrums, control and average ordinary experiences.

The patriot of the soul thrives on discovering their own bliss and promises to themselves and to those that hold their hand on the path to “always dance in loves moments; even the painful ones. To love unconditionally and religiously the divinity in each other.”

True love of another can sometimes make us feel as though we have found ourselves fenced outside of what our desires and hopes once were. True love in its highest form reveals the courage to share of ourselves even when it may appear not in our best interest. “Love is wanting the most for someone, the most experience, the most adventure, the most exploration, the most feeling, the most growth… For them to be all they can, fly as high as they can, go as deep as they can. And to support them as much as you can. This may be the hardest way to love; it is though the truest way to love… (Jonti Searll)”

To truly open ourselves to another soul and to our destiny, our purpose, our life path, we must be willing to travel across the bridges of emotion. We must be willing to STOP and meditate on our hearts and to listen to the omens. The Patriot of the Soul

knows three things:

I AM LOVE
I AM GOD
I AM ETERNAL

With these three things a Soul Patriot takes in the words of Buddha, “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” The Patriot of the Soul goes deeper then the material world of love and happiness. Advances farther than any societal career could ever take them. They open themselves to “seeing life through heavens eyes. (The Prince of Egypt)” In doing this the Patriot discovers true unity of self, there is no more dividing and conquering. They discover that the peace and harmony that everyone searches for is right here: It is within. Anything else is attempting to cause a wave of distortion in the peaceful waters of your soul.

A true Patriot of the Soul takes risks! And knows that in all honesty there is NO path.

If you believe you must go somewhere, do something, learn something, create something to obtain pure awareness, pure love, and peace then you have already lost all that you desire as well as your way home.

“You create your own universe as you go along” Winston Churchill

What does your reality look like?