Sacred Love - Healing a Broken Heart; Part 3
By Chris Walker
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Knocking Down De Fence...
We withdraw from love because we expect something and don't get it. We take offense to something, so the ego is unwilling to let you play anymore. The solution is to change our expectation, to knock down DE fence, but instead the ego takes offense.
In the American football game there are the defensive and the offensive groups within each team. The offensive groups attack and try to score points. Now that is the game of football. But in relationships, there are different rules. For every point you gain, you lose another. Balance means neutral scores.
Taking offense means that someone has upset something in your ego and you are reacting to it. Now consider this; maybe they are right, but you just don't want to admit it.
If you are accused by your lover of some crime or ill doing, and can say, "Yes, I am capable of that and worthy of love for it," you will pass the whole journey of growth back to your lover.
Truth in Love
Honesty, they cry
Honesty they cry
But really they mean conformity
They ask for honesty
But condemn anything that doesn't fit their expectations.
Is that honest?
Our expectations?
Maybe the first honesty is admitting
That everything we know
Is a lie.
Nature's law pervades every walk of life, so it is not specifically what you think that matters; it is how you think that makes the difference. You must change how you think from one-sided learning (causes depression) to balanced thinking (causes love).
Most business power and success comes from lies, or at least the ability not to tell the truth. Secrets. Telling lies means withholding the truth and therefore holding great power. So, in your relationship, if you want great power, then its best to withhold the truth, not reveal your emotions, blame your partner, and tell lies. This is a very powerful way to approach relationship, and a perfect way to prevent vulnerability.
But if you want love. Well that's a different story. Love means naked, raw, honest, exposed, vulnerability. I hear people say, "I need to trust before I become vulnerable" and that is a horrible lie. The only person you need to trust in being vulnerable is you. Shame makes us worry about trust. Why would we be holding back anything if it weren't for shame. Shame means we are not worthy of love, therefore, we can't trust ourselves being open and natural and vulnerable. So we seek out people with the same ego issues and open up to them, only because they agree that we are victims.
Remember as a child you'd put your hands up to your face, and because you couldn't see people, you automatically thought they couldn't see you. My daughter did this all the time when she was being reprimanded for playing up. She'd just put her little open palms in front of her eyes and disappear, as far she was concerned, into nowhere. This made me realise how easy it is to shame someone in the process of helping them learn.
Power comes from lies. Love comes from truth. Power comes from not revealing who we are. Love comes from vulnerability. Most people don't know how to love. So they ask for ego backup instead. They go looking for ego support, "Oh, yes, you poor man, she was such a nasty thing, now lets process her, so you feel well". If you want to waste your entire life in therapy, and finding equally deluded friends who are emotionally inept, then holding back is perfect. However, it is not love, and certainly not the food for sacred relationship.
In my relationships, I am very honest. Right up front. If I am falling in love with someone else I speak out. If I am finished in the old relationship, I speak out. This is not enjoyable for either person, but it is love. Since my marriage more than 20 years ago, I have tried to be honest in my relationships. Sometimes people say I lie. I must. Sometimes I tell the truth, but the person just doesn't want to hear it. They say, "No, that's not how you feel" but it is. I believe that lovers come together with love, they process emotions as part of their growth in love, they stay together in a relationship because their dreams overlap, and they stay together in love whether they admit it or not.
Truth is a powerless, raw, vulnerable experience. Emotions reveal a lot of truth. Truth of emotions is not "the truth", it is "your truth". So, "your truth" can become food for growth for both you and your partner.
Some people tell the truth because they are guilty and want to get the guilt off their chest. That is not telling the truth, it is passing the buck. If you are carrying guilt you are far wiser to process that guilt until there is love. Then share. But passing your guilt to your partner turns to their pain and not your pain. This is really messed up.
In a relationship, things happen that you are not proud of. But everything is worthy of love. So you can come to love for yourself no matter what happened. You need to keep an open heart to your partner if they share truth. That means you may both have some work to do if there is news that comes out unexpectedly. But everything is worthy of love.
The Lies
My eyes can lie, any actor knows this.
My words are constructed, all children perfect it.
My heart is manipulative, loneliness guarantees the compromise.
My hopes are ever changing, because my world is too.
My past is irrelevant, although I may carry it as a burden.
My Love is my own, I cannot love you more than me.
My soul is intangible; any attempt to personalise it is the Ego trying to survive.
Who am I even when you know me?
Are you really ever able to know me other than to fit me into a box and say,
"Ah, he's one of them!"
Even if I do fit that box, have you really got to know me, or just a part?
If you really want to get to know me, your Ego needs to die.
Are you ready for that?
Are you ready to dissolve all your judgments
of who you should and shouldn't be, and all your anger and bitterness from your past?
I challenge you to try it.
I suspect that if you are looking for love,
but can't really open to it, then something from the past is hindering your truth
Lying is the exact same behavior. We think that if we shut up, keep a secret, or put up a story to cover something, we are behind a shield and can't get caught. It's like dressing a pig in an Armani suit and wondering why people are suspicious. Lies deceive the willing, but only on the surface. Deep down, people know. Consciously or unconsciously, they know. And they extract a huge retribution.
A person who is lying arouses suspicion. Now the accusations might be completely off target, but the suspicion is absolutely valid. For example, lets imagine that you take a phone call at the office from your ex and you enjoy a few moments reminiscing about the past, almost flirting, as you both fantasize about some amazingly romantic experience you had. Now, not everyone has a partner who is aware enough to understand that these things are normal. So you get home, and discretion being the better part of valor, you keep it under your chest.
Then your partner says, "What's wrong?" and you say, "Nothing's wrong, why does something always have to be wrong?" and they say, "You just don't seem yourself tonight" and then you say, "Would you get off my back, don't you trust me or something?" and then your partner says, "Yes, I mean no, yes, I trust you, but you seem strange". It starts to escalate and the result is they start to withdraw. So, you lied (or kept a secret) because you feared their reaction, and now they are in reaction, not because of what you did, but because you lied to hide what you did. Like a child you thought that by keeping a secret, putting your words up in front of your face, that people can't see you, but they can. And more importantly, so can you.
Nobody can lie to you more than you. If you don't want to know that someone is lying you'll deny your intuitions. On the other side, you'll need to know that the intuition is always right in energy, but rarely right in form. Now this can save you a lot of heartache. If you accuse your partner of having an affair, you are expressing your greatest fear, and by the laws of nature you'll cause it.
The spirit of the inner child
One of the most impactful healing experiences in my entire life was in counseling after my marriage break up where I learned about my inner child, or in another language, my spirit. After 12 months getting to trust the process of counseling, my counselor helped me find something quite amazing. There, underneath my manhood, was a rejected child.
The only way to describe this child is to tell you the story. We all have a psychological child within us. This child is innocent, vulnerable and wantless. This child has no age or form, yet it has all the beautiful qualities of a newborn babe. This "child like innocence" never changes. Over time, we get an impression of the world in which we live, and if things go wrong, or are not safe, we blame this child for being so vulnerable, and try to cover it or in the least, change it.
Like everyone else, there were things about my innocent child I always wanted to change. I resented that he was so soft. I was annoyed that he was clumsy and vulnerable. I was so embarrassed that he was so accident prone; I blamed him for everything that went wrong, including humiliating me. It is a part of us all we want to keep secret and it's different for everyone. Ironically, I was later to find out when I was doing advanced Zen, or sitting in a sweat lodge in Canada, that this "secret" part of me was my greatest strength.
The process of finding him was so easy, but what to do with him? I was in a huge divorce, I wanted my ex-wife back. I was having more ups and downs than a yoyo because I didn't know how to look after him. That child inside, I had given to my wife and said, metaphorically, "Look after this part of me please, because it gets in the way of my career, my business, my life."
In my counseling sessions it became obvious that I was still trying to give my child to my ex-wife. My counselor said, "Now we have met your child, maybe we can find somewhere safer for him until you are ready to look after him yourself". She offered to be the caretaker, but this didn't feel right for some reason. Instead I got a flash of where he wanted to be, so I took him to a park, a tree that I loved, and climbed that tree and sat with him. I placed my spirit high in the branches of a tree. To be safe, nurtured and cared for.
It was the beginning of my spiritual path. I suddenly knew the difference between being in the world but not of it. There was something precious, my essence, I couldn't change, fix, modify, use, sell, entertain. I found my spirit, my inner child. The next few years were spent getting to know him, learning to love him. Suddenly there was a quietness to life. Suddenly, there was a beautiful awareness, that if my child was safe, I could go anywhere I chose, I was free to be content in the world without a lover to make me so.
This spirit sits inside every human, an inner child. To connect with this spirit, go and pick up a child in your arms under the age of three. Let them fall asleep in your arms. And in those moments when they are just closing their eyes, feel that beautiful energy that comes from them. Just when their little ego stops struggling to have more ice cream, or more milk, or more toys, or more something, just when they really stop wanting, there is the spirit of the child. This is the child within. The spirit.
A sacred relationship is one in which this child is shared with someone. It must be welcomed. It must be safe in your arms and then safe in your lover's arms. This child is not a playful, fun, creative child. It is a sleeping beauty that gets awakened with a kiss. It is a simple stillness that feels tender and gentle, wants for nothing, feels content in your arms and feels safe with your lover.
The ego is built to cover that child (spirit), the ego is built to change it, eradicate the vulnerability of it. The ego is built to be in the world without that child. We learn tricks like giving that vulnerability away by handing your inner child to someone, "Look after this for me while I go off to work." This is the conventional way to have a relationship, but it makes relationships sick. And hiding that child, to make it safe from your lover, is even sicker. It is really just judging your own worthiness for love. Your spirit, your inner child, is what makes you complete. It doesn't need anything except for you to love it, to want it, and it doesn't deserve to be handed over. There is nothing your spirit has done or not done that isn't worthy of love.
When I do a consultation with a person, I always meet them first for an interview. If I cannot hear their child's voice within, I cannot give guidance. It doesn't matter if that person cannot hear what is going on within them, but if I can't feel that child, that spirit within, then I cannot hear the truth that is being blocked.
After some more months in counseling, I went back to that park, I climbed up into that tree (I was 34), and placed that little spirit, deep into my heart. As I did he woke, he smiled, and from that day to now, he has guided my life, every step. I won't type a keynote without his presence inside me (I never put him on display), I share his happiness with everyone I meet. I keep him space from those who would not understand his beauty and I never, never, give him away. Never again.
When I travel to Nepal I sit on the top of dream mountain. A place where I believe any dream that begins from and includes the inner child, comes true. I take my child everywhere I go, and here on this mountain, he sings. He sings to the angels from whom he came, he sings of love and sunshine. He is my angel, he is my love, never lonely while I am with him.
I take clients to this home in the clouds, and by the time they reach this place they are ready. Their child speaks, their heart opens, and their dreams are known. This vision quest isn't a formal thing. The spirit sings from here, on the highest mountains, and all the world hears the echo. On this mountain in Nepal, dream mountain, our spirit surfaces and the ego steps aside.
Think of what you dislike or hate most about yourself. Now think about your childhood, and if this part of you always caused you to suffer. You will begin to know your inner child. It is the most precious pearl. Nature wrapped this special secret inside a package for safe keeping, wrapped it so well to protect it, to soften its hardships, nature wrapped it in your ego. Are you ready to open the gift?
A Precious Pearl
Treat this wonderful spirit within you, this child, as the precious pearl. Value it, more than your life, more than anything. Feel the beauty of it, know that it is not frail, just recognise how precious it is. Grown from the belly of a shell, deep in the ocean, from a single grain of sand. Your spirit. It wants nothing, needs nothing, and therefore has everything.
Now, unwrap it from that silk cloth you call protection. Remove the coverings, and another, and another. Get past the idea that someone wants to steal it, unwrap another layer again. Learn to care for it, find a safe place to keep it. Find a place to keep this spirit within you and make a promise that where you go, she or he comes with you, and if it is not there, you are not there. It's not a burden carrying it around, so don't hand it to someone.
The ego, the guardian of your inner self does a beautiful job. It makes you safe, wraps you in protection. It guards against everything. It learns to expect the best and worst, it begins to preempt what will happen, it expects and projects itself into the future. It is the master of prediction.
Your inner spirit does not fear, you do. Your inner child is not wrong or stupid, you are. There is nothing that can damage it, nothing you can change. Nothing can hurt your inner self; nothing can hurt your love. Only your ego can be damaged. There is nothing that can hurt your inner spirit. Only the wrapping can be hurt.
And isn't that what you want? To undo the wrapping and fall in love again. Can you see there is nothing to fear but fear itself. There is nothing to protect, it was a learning, and now there can be an unlearning.
That is always the great discovery of self-help. In the end, there is no self to help. There is only love.
To Bring "Light" Back Into The Heart
Contemplating the meanings of the revealed books
of the sacred traditions, and the words of the saints,
since these perform an action upon the heart,
removing its illusions, healing its ills, restoring its strength.
The same function can be served by inspired
art, literature, and music, which also perform an action upon us.
Another cure for the heart is keeping one's stomach empty.
Any excess of food hardens the heart.
Fasting is the opposite of the subtle and not so subtle addictions
with which we numb ourselves to the experience of heart.
When through fasting we expose the heart's pain to ourselves,
we become more emotionally vulnerable and honest.
And then, can the heart be healed.
Prayer before sunrise is a powerful inspiration.
In these early morning hours the activity of the world has been reduced to its minimum, the psychic atmosphere has become still, and we are more able to reach the depths of concentration upon our own conscious.
Finally, keeping company with "heart" people can restore faith and health to the heart.
It is only a matter of degree to move from the ailing heart
to the purified heart.
Centre yourself and all your attention in the reality of divine love which has the power to unify our fragmented being and reconnect us with unity at all levels of existence.
Minimising your psychological distortions by love becoming the slavery of your attractions, and seeing beyond the veil of selfishness -
Then, in that state, we may discover a deep receptivity a spiritual presence within.
When we can centre ourselves and our attention on the presence of divine reality,
we not only become unified within ourselves, we recognise our unity with all of life.
This is the unifying function of the heart. Knowing Love.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
More Articles by Chris Walker
Keeping Love Sacred
Peace of Mind is not Peace
Sacred Love - Healing a Broken Heart
Sacred Love - Never Go Back
Letting Go of Relationship
Sacred Love - Quality Control in Relationships
Love is the Deepest Of Human Awakenings
The Path - Leadership Inspired
BIO - Chris Walker - Australia's Spiritual Realist Christopher Walker is a global expert in the application of Nature to human development. He's known as the Anti Guru Guru, The Spiritual Pit bull and the Heart and Soul Guy. Mr Innerwealth. www.ChrisWalker.com.au Chris lifts people's spirits and opens their heart. He is the author of many best selling books including the The Laws of Nature for a Better Relationship
and The Laws of Nature for a Better Business . Chris is an international change agent and keynote speaker on self leadership and personal change. He runs treks to the Nepal Himalayas each year leading groups and entrepreneurs on self-discovery journeys to the two highest trekking peaks in the world. Chris lives in Sydney Australia where you'll find him practising natural meditation techniques in Sydney Harbour on his racing ski or sea kayak. Chris Walker has also worked with the Indigenous communities in Canada.
 
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