Easy to start. Difficult to end. And impossible to forget.

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New Musings on Love

When it comes, I feel completely distracted.  Getting me to focus on the things that matter is like pulling skin off my bones.  Funny how unpredictably these moments are, when the muse, my passions, utterly consume me.  What is that?  Why?  It comes upon me like an obsession, like a brain drug I have quietly become addicted to. Love. The feeling spawned by desire of your heart racing and your tummy flittering that literally takes your breath away. THAT feeling that gives you butterflies, and takes over your thoughts to the point of physical and mental anguish.  Only you are aware of the terror that comes along with it – you cry tears just to release the feelings, daydream instead of sleeping just so you can create a world to play in, you feel more stress and pressure in your heart than if you were getting ready for a major performance.  Anticipating the next move, you fantasize about the next meeting, or how you will EVER meet… again.  You reel from one extreme to the other – full of the most magical energy and then you wane, curling up like a baby – secure only in the touch of your own raw skin.  It’s that thing that happens EVERY TIME – at first – then quickly dashes away into a game of hide and seek.  So weird.
That intense passion is my muse. It is what fuels the artistic side of me and inspires the words I write. It is sometimes all consuming. It is sometimes totally absent. It makes me think hard, and occasionally (yes), realistically, about the psychological state I am in. And interestingly, when I am in the right place, my muse can fuel me to move forward aggressively in my creative tasks with confidence, joy and excitement.
The muse comes ofttimes to torment me of the love that I desire and think will complete me, and that I fear will never come.  (I define that love, you define that love, from our own hearts, needs, and our past experiences.) Although my intelligence knows this kind of love does not really define me, my emotions believe they do and will intently move toward it like a starved lion to its prey. Love will violently rip through and take over my thoughts – cutting straight through the bullshit of logic, expectations, and the images in my mind that I have succumbed to (and perhaps for what I have habitually believed was the truth) and challenge them – and for that I am most grateful.
My best friend and poet soulmate said it to me this way:

“I think the most fragile relationship we have is with our muse, even though it is strong and always there, we let ourselves get in the way of it. Knowing my  muse is there often sustains me when nothing else does, because it is the keeper of the keys to all that is spiritual and alive. The muse is what gives us art and art is the only way to capture the muse in a weird symbiotic twist.  Love springs from the muse as well, I don’t know exactly what the muse is but I think it is that third eye to other dimensions and because we are victims of gravity and reality, it is sometimes difficult to hear it as well.”

People can “fall in love” with a new job, a fresh little baby, big house, beautiful man, a gorgeous woman, or an adorable pet.  We may love and live with many people during our lives.  Some will live contently with the love of their life – and it can all be good – it can be magical.  They will have fun, navigate long and successful relationships, overcome painful obstacles, grow and be happy.  But for so many, relationships fail in providing what is needed and can leave you in total emptiness and un-fulfillment. Enter the muse.  Out of the blue and unexpectedly you are filled with an insatiable desire that seems can only be filled by someone or something that cannot be possessed. “It” speaks to your passion, awakes the emotions, and seems to alone understand your heart.  You simply have to say something.  You must take action! You will wait on a dangerous ledge 100 feet in the air for the next move, anticipating with displaced joy what will happen next. You will long with every fiber of your being to feel that rush of feeling one more time that validates your desires, and fills that longing.  What magic!  A love that will feed your passions and satiate your desires – this is the love and companionship we all dream about.
Sometimes the muse comes and delivers within us a powerful embodiment of love. I don’t understand it, but I have experienced it.  I have learned and accepted that I am a being filled with joy and light and an abundance of passions, overflowing with desires for love and life. Sometimes I am so filled up with joie de vivre that it wells up onto my nerves and skin so that I can physically feel it. It is too powerful to keep to myself and painful if I must.  I am compelled to spill it out and enter into a love-dialog – relinquish it, if you will – to that special person who has enveloped me with their understanding, someone who I have truly connected to. We long for someone who can flow with us along this journey of living, who is compatible with our nature, so much so that when we are satiated, that abundance naturally flows from us into that ONE and then eventually returns back to us – gift to gift.   I think we MUST have that receptacle – a two way connection – any other way returns us to loneliness.  Maybe this is how some people sustain a life-long love partnership – they have learned to provide a natural outlet for the springs of their partner’s passions and affections to flow into, and out of.  They have accepted the mystery of love and the struggle of unhappiness life brings and have agreed to navigate it together.
In the world of loving and pursuing love, when we allow ourselves to act out on or honestly acknowledge our passions, I wonder if sometimes it can blur the lines between what we NEED and what we WANT, what we DESIRE and what we KNOW could lead to our destruction – or our joy. Acting on our desire is powerful.  POWERFUL. You can’t always call it love though. Many times it is merely lust and a need for our own personal validation or instant gratification, often times it is selfish, but sometimes it is the tender fulfillment of exactly what we have longed for.  It is good.  It is beautiful and fulfilling.  I believe that being aware, understanding our true feelings, and living in the moment is how we divide the truth correctly in our hearts and minds to know what is right for us. I believe that you can have a meeting of the hearts in this way – I know you can. But it doesn’t always mean it will stay.  And it doesn’t mean that it won’t break your heart.

“You love who you love.  You can’t make yourself stop dreaming who you’re dreaming of.”

~ John Meyer

The muse can teach us.  The muse will give each of us a good case for acting compulsively (not so safely) when you feel that connection and that nervous feeling  for someone.  It can humiliate you, embarrass you, bring shame or pride, it can bring you unfathomable pain or indescribable joy.
It is an understatement to say how important it is to understand what I need in a relationship, not just what I can give, but what I truly need to complete who I am.   Ahhh Love, it comes in many forms, and in many ways.  It is a miracle. I only hope I can be aware enough to recognize it when it arrives. We meet hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people in our lifetime, yet we truly connect with only a few – maybe we are lucky enough to honestly connect to that ONE.  So when you feel it, act on it, tell them – see where it goes, or don’t – but see to it quickly because the muse won’t stay long.
Love and peace…

Captured

There is a wholeness that sometimes I don’t understand

A feeling in my heart of being 10 again

The joy of being with and looking at this man

…You have captured my heart

 
 
 
© Sandy Hibbard

“… I choose the extraordinary sprinkled with madness.”

Love and peace
Sandy

“Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.”
~ Toni Morrison

“Falling in love” and “I love you”—the two most overused phrases when describing relationships.

I don’t want to fall in love. I don’t want to fall into anything. Because to me, falling is a black hole of co-dependency, of relying on terms and phrases to describe relationships to make us feel secure in them.

Think about those friends who have seemed to drop off the face of the planet once they are in a relationship. Sure, many of us have been there, that infatuation-filled, realistically-not-sustainable phase where you might as well be riding a unicorn through sunflower fields with an ice cream cone in your hand listening to Ray Lamontagne’s “You are the Best Thing.”

Why is our society so big on saying “I love you?”  We say this at the end of phone calls, good-byes and as constant reaffirmations throughout the day. And what does your “I love you” mean?

What if we dropped the labels and focused on feeling? My deepest and most heartfelt moments never included or depended on these words. In fact, it was the silence and present moment connection that said so much more than a few words could ever say.

Let’s redefine “falling in love.”

In the future, I want to rise in love for you. Take my time with you and fully get to know your lightness and darkness which equally fascinates me. I will feel your love as you watch me cook and dance around the kitchen to Indian music. We will feel love as we look into one another’s eyes, experiencing beautiful moments, both of us thinking: “Is this real?”

As I look down, slightly tilting my head to the side, reaching my arms out for you, you’ll know that means: “I know I’m being difficult and I’m sorry.” Words will be unnecessary.

Words will be unnecessary because I would rather fill myself with self-love than superficial countless connections that suck energy away from what I truly desire.

I challenge each of us to clean house, to purge, to get honest with ourselves and identify the relationships that no longer serve us. If we can’t dissolve them on our own, we can ask for guidance from the universe, from our inner guide, whatever we want to call it. The truth is, until we kill these draining connections, the magical ones will not have a chance to bloom.

Here’s a mantra to help:

Please dissolve any current relationships that are not benefiting me and are not aligned with my path. I now let go of the need to control and manipulate and trust in my abilities to attract those who will enrich my life as long as my intentions are clear.

If it doesn’t come to me, I will not force it, because I trust the universe and its love for me, knowing that as long as I am clear about what I want and make space for it in my life, it will come to me. I don’t need you. I want you. I don’t have anything to fill. I don’t need my other half. I am whole.

Need is replaced by a preference for sharing. There is no faster way of evolving spiritually than a deep romantic relationship. Save the ordinary for those who don’t want to be challenged. If I want ordinary, I can have it now, at this second, but I choose the extraordinary sprinkled with madness.

A painful lesson I learned recently was that I will never call it love, unless it sets me free. Unless I feel that I can be my authentic self, imperfectly perfect, raw, beautiful, curious about the world, sometimes impatient, hyper, stubborn, but always willing to grow. My willingness to learn from you will dissolve my dark side that you will reflect back to me, because I will recognize it as an opportunity to shed my ego and break through patterns of the past.

And you will do the same. I will be patient and caring. You will see parts of yourself that are ugly and dark and that you may not have seen in a long time or even knew about.

I will watch your layers evaporating and will rise in love for you as I witness you fully becoming yourself. You’ll watch me fall apart and come together again and again.

In the love I feel, there is no timeline for tying knots, babies to be made, crimes to be partnered in. There are no expectations, no roles to fill and no rescuing to be done.

We will be an ego-kicking, layer-shedding, mirror-reflecting machine, and our connection will be magical. Our love will be infused with awakening and the ability to leave the “person” behind. It will be light, playful and innocent. We will walk beside each other through highs and lows and our connection will be so real that it will surpass all doubt. I’m tired of building imaginary walls. Only love is real.

We will laugh hysterically and cry uncontrollably and the bridge that we build between ourselves will be home, a space of soft emptiness full of possibilities devoid of need and selfishness.

A world created from passion

…Your lips suffocate me
the sweetness of your mouth on mine
…your breath mingles with my breath
enchanting
breathing in your honey
living in your passion
one moment of your drinking
one moment of your touch
one mingling
two moments later…
our world is created.
The beautiful art in this post is by artist Albena Vatcheva.