Have you stood on a lookout point somewhere in the world and been simply stunned by the view. You can't touch it, change it, fix it, even taking a photo feels like it can't capture the essence of it? You see that view, but what you feel is something completely different. Some people say, "I've been here before," even though, in this lifetime they have not. There's a memory - the memory is not always of the view, it's a memory of the feeling, a familiarity.
This is Soul Love. A memory and when we feel it, we say, "yes, I have felt this before," and we have.
There are moments that entrepreneurs don't often speak about because they sound intangible and too personal to put words to, but every entrepreneur, in fact, every human being, has them. They are moments of arrival.
Moments such as those are like the alignment of the stars, but really, they are even more profound than that. They are the alignment of body, mind and spirit. A moment of deep personal recognition, a memory of something so deep and yet so intangible, we struggle to put a name to it. Inspired is close, Soul Love is closer, divine is yet again, a reach toward it. But it remains nameless. Maybe, just maybe, it is simply, truth.
Soul Love has no attachment, however, we want as much of it as we can get. People have done the most extraordinary things to get it, to keep hold of it and to celebrate it. We often marry the person we feel this feeling toward, but this is like buying the view, eventually the connection becomes evasive.
There are techniques to guarantee Soul Love connection does not fade like the view. For example, a period away from that view will potentially bring you back to it like a novice, once again stunned at the beauty, connected to the moment, mesmerised once more.
Meditation, done correctly can wipe the fog from our heart and allow this moment of connection to shine again.
Sexuality (Refer: The Currency of Sexual Energy - Yasin Sheryl de Jong. ISBN 9781921578663 www.bookpal.com.au)
Healing, the Eastern healer enters this zone of Soul Love inspiration in order to delve beneath the crust of the human condition.
Prayer, a deep gratitude can bring this connection back to the surface of life.
Poetry and music has been used for centuries to bypass the ego mind and tap the deeper recesses of the human Soul Love connections.
Guru's and the touch of a divinely connected hand can bring this state of consciousness to an individual.
Travel into nature rekindles the inner child, the innocence of being new and awakens so many memories deep historic Soul Love memories.
Falling in Love cuts straight past the surface direct to the memory of Soul Love.
Dance can allow the mind to wander far enough off track for the worries and cares of life to be swept aside and for a deep body memory of Soul Love to emerge. Ecstasy.
The Quest
The quest for these Soul Love connections is the real motive of human existence. We forget this, and buy a car, hoping this will give us this moment, and sometimes it does, for a few seconds. We climb mountains hoping that, by the top, we reconnect to this precious memory. We build companies in order to free us to experience more Soul Love moments, but we forget, and the company becomes the mission.
Soul Love is the human mission. We want moments of it.
In a relationship we feel it, at least at first meeting, but it is hard to sustain. And then we walk down the street to get the milk and in the corner store we collide with another Soul Love moment.
That person and our person collide and now we are confused.
Should we be guilty? Should we do something, say something? In these moments of connection we feel our current relationship diminish, this moment is what we married for. We crave it in our deepest being and yet, we work, make families, build houses and farms and have lots of other things. We crave this Soul Love and when we are touched by it, we remember why we started something.
We started a business to feel that moment of divine inspiration that comes when a great idea manifests. We married because in those first moments of meeting our partner the Soul Love memory woke up. We remember and we so easily forget. We so easily lose contact with "why" we chose a certain path, and begin to focus on what to do to survive without Soul Love connections.
Lets ask ourselves this question. "What happens when we get into a relationship triggered by that Soul Love connection, but then lose contact with it? What do we do when we are at the checkout and find Soul Love connection with another person? Start a collection?
Forgetfulness
Soul love is perfect, we can feel it at a party, at the office or wherever, but it is not a motive. Soul-love is no reason to do anything. In fact, if you have to split up with a partner, all you do is return to Soul love for them, and there's no attachment at all. This is both a state of healing and one of connection.
Wanting something motivates us. Losing something hurts us. But Soul-love is a vacuum in which there is no motive. We don't want anything, need anything, desire anything. So, the motive to marry someone is not because we have a Soul Love connection to them, because we can have a thousand, million, billion people we have Soul Love connection to.
We marry people because we have Soul Love connection to them AND because we have trust, admiration, appreciation and vision for the future with them.
In marriage we can often lose one or all of those important relationship ingredients, but we can never lose Soul Love for a person. And this is a really important awareness in relationship. Once you feel the connection, it lasts forever.
Sure, Soul Love can become fogged with stress, anger, and busy-ness, and sure, Soul Love is no penultimate reason to stay in a relationship where the other four ingredients are missing, but, if you are going to place one thing, between you are your partner as absolute and sacred, place Soul Love way above the rest.
To feel Soul Love for a person, male or female is a great connection and it has nothing to do with causing or killing romance.
Soul Love is by far the most important level of communion between two individuals. Without it, relationships are complex and emotionally unstable.
It is even more important to acknowledge this Soul Love connection when one or both people in a relationship are struggling with commitment. The ability to let a person spin and search their heart for appreciation, trust, admiration and hope for the future, that ability to stand in stillness without reaction can be found in the capacity to acknowledge a Soul Love connection to a partner that can never fade.
Sometimes we get scared. Sometimes we get jealous. Sometimes we even get resentful of our partner. These are not because of Soul Love connection but because of emotional attachments. They are a part of the struggle to be human in relationship, but they are not a reflection of the depth of your Soul Love.
Many people tell me that the more they love their partner the more jealous they become. This is inaccurate. The more we feel Soul Love for our partner, the more we can relax. They can come or go, leave or stay, it will not matter if your connection with them is based in Soul Love.
The Real Essence
Some people think that Soul Love is exclusive. That we have this experience with one person, and exclude all others. Others stay single just so they can have as many of these connections as life permits.
It is safe to say that we need and want Soul Love connections and irrespective of our moral or social judgements about it, we do have them with multiple people. So, there are only two important questions. How do we have as many of these moments with our partner instead of becoming "familiar with the view?" And the second question is, "What do we do when, while in a relationship, we have these connections with others?"
The first question is the most difficult. How do we sustain moments of Soul Love connection with someone we become familiar with on an everyday basis?
Conventional attempts to sustain these Soul Love moments with a partner include: gifts, holidays, babies, sex, romance, new homes, picnics, pornography, self help courses, tantra and theatre.
But even these, over an extended period can become like the view we own.
To understand how to have more Soul Love connection moments with a partner, it may be important to understand the mechanics of Soul Love experiences.
You are sitting at your desk, the Sun is shining in the sky, but you don't look up and think, wow, there's the Sun. You just enjoy the daylight and night light (moonlight is Sunlight). Sometimes you see the Sunrise or Sunset and you marvel at the Sun. So, Soul Love is Sunlight. It's there 24/7 never missing. Without it we'd shrivel and become dust. However, we don't always think about it.
Sometimes a person triggers our memory that Soul Love is really there, and like a Sunset or Sunrise, we feel great at that incredible recollection.
The key to enjoying the Sunrise and the Sunset, remembering the great beauty of the Sun, is that it makes us take notice. In that warm early morning or late evening glow, we just put down tools for a few seconds and turn up right in the moment.
Driving a car, it's hard to admire the Sunrise or Sunset. We've got our mind on the job of keeping safe, so, we might go wow for a nano second and then get back to driving.
Soul Love moments can happen fifty times a day, but if we're "driving the car" - too busy to notice, we'll slide right past in a blink. Gone.
In relationship, we're driving a car. We're romancing, dancing, prancing, freelancing. We're eating, showering, talking, thinking, emoting, wishing, wanting, not wanting, hoping, caring, not caring, worrying, giving, taking, sexing, pleasing and more... So, that takes a lot of head-space.
So, the Sun is there, Soul Love is there, but we've got so much going on in our tiny head that we just blink and keep focussed on "bringing up the kids" or "paying the bills." We blink, and the Sun is out of mind.
We recognise the loss. Something seems wrong. We're in a relationship, doing relationship, being invested in good relationship, trying to please, making the effort, but we know something isn't right. And what is not right is that in amongst all the pleasure seeking, love making, family caring, life creating, home building, and health preserving activities, we lost contact.
Imagine a space shuttle losing contact with earth. Imagine a kite without a string. Imagine a ship without a compass. Imagine a story without an ending. Imagine anything without an intent. It's impossible to imagine that such things would be good. And it's impossible to imagine a relationship without Soul Love at its core.
But that's what happens. That's one reason why couples have affairs, why lovers exist, why people become disenchanted with life and most often throw themselves into their work, trying to avoid the tedium of a relationship without the Sun.
I have lived that life. I have experienced that life just like millions of other people throughout the world. I caused it, I suffered in it, I searched for options and tried all sorts of bandages to repair it. But none work.
If the connection is blocked, the contact with mother earth is lost and with that, everything becomes mundane. I tried all the substitutes: Food, alcohol, substances, greed, sex, spirituality - none work. None replace the incredible life giving, health creating, heart opening experience of Soul Love connection.
In that time I was limited by two vital things. The first was that the only experience I could have of Soul Love connection was with a woman. I couldn't find it, or more likely, didn't recognise it, anywhere else. That was a real dependency on my relationship and when it faded, a real vulnerability with other women.
The second limitation I had was that, I confused wanting that Soul Love connection with my partner with romance, intimacy, relationship and responsibility. Everything else in my entrepreneurial life was achieved by wanting it bad enough. I wanted success, I just really motivated myself. I wanted family and wealth I just motivated myself. Life, in my model, was up for grabs. So, when it came to Soul Love, I just applied the same head-space. Foolish thinking...
Soul-utions
The Sun doesn't reach out and say, "hey, please take my rays" just like Soul Love doesn't reach out and grab someone by the throat and say, "Love me." If we're in a messed up space, filled up with worries, wants, desires, needs, fears, ambitions, expectations, drama, emotion, stress, anxiety, motivation, and loneliness, we block the Sun. Soul love doesn't come to us, it comes from us.
We get into relationship feeling that Soul Love connection and the first thing most of us do is stuff it up by letting all our "relationship baggage" come it and plug the pipe, block the Sun, close the portal.
Then we start to fuss and talk and complain and worry. "Oh, hell, here I am again. In another loveless relationship. More hassles, less joy."
The single greatest discovery you can have for relationship, and one that will really transform your dynamic with your partner is the realisation that the feeling of love you are wanting to get from your partner is actually coming from you, not to you.
If I take you into nature, Up into the Himalayas for example, you'll love everyone and feel like everyone loves you. Suddenly you feel loved and loving. Weird? No, because out in nature, when your expectations drop away and all the "relationship baggage" falls off, you suddenly feel it. You feel Soul Love connection going on, without anyone to connect it to.
Suddenly you discover that it's not your partner that is the cause of Soul Love connection, it's you. You also discover that you can't give people Soul Love connection, you can only share it.
My partner says, "let me in" and I say, "Piss off. Nobody comes in here."
I used to let people come into my being just as if I'd created a beautiful garden and anybody could trample around, borrow the flowers, pick the fruit and stomp the grass. That was how needy and out of balance I was. Now, it's different. I preserve this Soul Love experience inside myself and I know, what's meant to be shared comes out.
I look at it like this. Fill a cup half full and then share it. As you do, you get less, someone gets more. You give some and lose some. So, that to me is like focussing on getting Soul Love connection. Instead of that head-space, I now fill the cup to the top and let it overflow, what comes over the top is absolutely unconditional. It's my job to go inside and keep that connection, not someone else's.
That's a big shift. It means instead of having one Soul Love connection in my life I have thousands. Instead of it being limited to women, it's available with all humanity. Instead of it being a freak accident, I can choose it anytime.
If you want your relationship to stay anchored in Soul Love you need to make sure your cup is full - and more. The way to do this is to stay focussed on the four virtues of high emotions: kindness, generosity, compassion and appreciation. That keeps your energy circulating, then, last but not least, learn how to really turn up.
How quickly that Soul Love connection disappears from view has a lot to do with how much stress I am having in my life. The more stressed I am, the faster the connection becomes vague.
We have to learn how to stop the rush and deal with the "relationship baggage" in order to stay connected.
Learn to sit in silence, turn the TV off, turn the silence on, and fall back into Soul-Love. Remind yourself everyday that Soul-love never dies, it just gets covered by stuff, old stuff, new stuff and ambitious stuff.
"All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room. And, all men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone". - Blaise Pascal
The idea of stopping, breathing, smelling, tasting love had never occurred to me. I'd measured my love in pleasure's and shouts and ecstasy, this was all new.
Exercises in Soul-Love Connection
Step 1.
Take a rose and sit it in front of you. Try to relax your posture and keep your spine quite straight. Look at the rose. Observe it. Observe it with your eyes. Now observe it with your ears. Listen. Now observe it with your nose, smell. Now touch it with your fingers or draw it up next to your skin.
Here, there is still a rose, and there is still a you. The rose is there, you are there.
This is normal life, everything is individualised. Separate. Hold the rose in front of you, or place it on a table in front of you.
Continue the exercise.
Step 2.
With the rose in front of you extend the exercise to a mastery level by losing the separation between yourself and this rose. This is the culmination of years in Zen practice but you are a modern person with an incredibly developed and evolved mind, so it will not take you much time at all if you can follow these instructions.
Each individual aspect of that rose has to become absorbed into you. First the visual interpretation has to vanish. We do this by simply identifying all the aspects of the rose within ourselves. Say, for example: where are you delicate? Where are you perfectly shaped? This is a Zen practice of elimination of separation, detachment. So, then proceed to all the other aspects of the rose until you find that what the rose is, you are. As you progress without interruption the separation between you and the rose will, I assure you, vanish.
Then you will not see, hear, taste, touch, smell the rose. It will not exist in a form separate from you.
If this does not work for you after five attempts on five different days with a fresh flower on each day, change the rose to something else that is impeccably beautiful to you. Even a vista can be caused to become merged with the self.
Step 3.
Sit with your partner in front of you. Look for their real essence and beauty. Look with your heart, ears, nose, mouth and hands. Don't be afraid to touch and feel the beauty. Breathe the beauty in with each breath and let it move you. To really fall into Soul-love you will need to practice this exercise until you merge with your partner. Merge until there is no separation. You will eventually bridge the gap between what you see and who you are, and in other words, dismantle your ego.
At first it takes time. Just look, feel and become in rhythm with your partner's breathing. Make sure you've cleaned your teeth and freshened your breath before this exercise. I tried it once with a person with bad breath and it's very distracting.
Eventually you will do this is seconds instead of hours. It's natural. As long as your mind doesn't intervene and say, "Hey, this is a person over there, is the technique working."
The most important thing to remember is that this person is just like the rose. You were not seducing the rose, trying to make the rose smile at you. You were no staring into the rose trying to look into it's eyes and make it feel horny. You were becoming the rose. Remember this at all times.
Soul-Love happens when we forget the separation between ourselves and what we experience outside ourselves. So, the great memory that is triggered in a Soul-Love experience is the memory of our connection to life, the universe and all that goes with it.
This is Soul Love and it is not the reason for relationship but it is the cause of the grounding that makes relationship possible and desirable.
If you have struggled to remain committed to a relationship, or you've had a great relationship that finished and can't seem to reconnect with that essence, then look carefully at your practices surrounding Soul-Love.
Soul-Love does not come to you, it comes from you. If your "relationship baggage" seems to quickly flood the potential of a good connection with someone, then it's a high likely hood that you've got some unfinished business with the past or present that's blocking your connections.
Everybody connects, the only question is whether the noise in their life is making it harder to feel.
If you are in a relationship and have lost this connection don't blame your partner, it has nothing to do with them. It is because you have blocked the Sun through distraction or diligence to your professional life.
Remembering that Soul Love is the essence of relationship but not the motivation for it, the whole key to authenticity and comfort in a relationship, and the real choice to work through the challenges that come will be built around this core of Soul-Love. It can't be emphasised enough how much this connection can transform even a damaged relationship let alone, inspire a healthy one.
| Chris Walker - http://www.chriswalker.com.au - will open your heart and lift your spirits. He's the guy you turn to before discomfort turns to disaster. The Walker way is nature's way. Natural, sustainable and inspirational. Chris Walker inspires change, he is a catalyst for growth where there's an urgent need for it. Walker runs leadership programs in the Nepal Himalayas and throughout the world in nature. He combines an MBA and studies in Zen, Yoga and self Mastery. Walker inspires people and organisations to change when times are tough. and download your free ebook here - subscribe to the direct feed from that address. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chris_J_Walker |  |
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