This time of the year has always mystified me. 'Tis the season of love, yet it seems to be mostly about giving and getting a bunch of stuff no one really wants or needs, and running ourselves ragged in the process. We mostly don't love what we give, what we get, nor how we give or get it.
"Christmas is the season when you buy this year's gifts with next year's money."
~Author Unknown
And if there were a ton o' love in the things being bought or got, that would be cool, but for the most part, there's not.
Before you accuse me of Scroogitis – yes, I was raised Jewish/New Age/Buddhist – around the holidays, suicide goes up, we over-eat, under-sleep, get stressed out, gain weight and burn the candle at both ends. Despite our country's economic recession, we remain the land of plenty. How much more of what we don't want in the first place do we really need? All I'm saying is maybe we could peek behind the
curtain of this culturally-sanctioned sadness and madness, masquerading as gladness, just a little bit.
Instead of RE-GIFTING all those gifts you'll be getting that you didn't want in the first place, consider DE-GIFTING.
Don't know what to get the person? Don't get them anything at all. Blame it on Rudolf.
Imagine: no gifts given or gotten, aside from the ones that mean something, are truly desired, or you are moved and inspired to give.
Seriously, consider one way you could DE-GIFT:
1. Don't buy any gifts unless they truly are DESIRED by the person you are buying them for.
2. Let your friends and family (and office peeps) know that you don't want any gifts unless they are truly INSPIRED give them to you.
3. In lieu of needless gifts given or gotten, consider a micro-finance loan instead:
Kiva (http://www.kiva.org) and World Vision Micro (http://www.worldvisionmicro.org) are two amazing organizations that take your small donation ($5, $25 or more), and put it in the hands of a person in a developing nation, in the form of a loan that must be repaid. Most recipients start a micro-business with your loan that gets them out of poverty, sends children or family members to school and totally changes the trajectory of their lives. You get to watch their progress, too.
All for the price of a Starbucks gift card!
"A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver."
~Thomas á Kempis
May your heart be full to bursting with love and gratitude this holiday season,
Enjoy the week,
LiYana
Day of the Undead: musings on Dia de los Muertos
October's shadowy holiday, Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), has recently come and gone. Recently visited by shades of all sizes, I'm left musing on what we have to learn from those who've gone to their graves before us, and those who are waiting for an invitation to rise.
All Soul's Eve and the Day of the Dead are the kissing cousins of the holiday known as Halloween. Dressing in costume and hoarding candy is a bit of a mutation from the original point of the holiday, which was to remember and honor the dead and our ancestors, without whom we wouldn't be here.
Along with solemnity and honoring, these traditional holidays always include color, music, food, humour and celebration. Death need not always be solely a sad thing, but can also be a reminder of life; death as a continuation of life.
Speaking (highly) of the dead, my father passed away a year ago, almost to the day. He's recently taken to visiting in my dreams, speaking (highly) as the dead, not uncommon I'm told.
The last dream of a few nights ago, he came smiling, telling me of all the perks of his new after-death faculty position. "It's great, he tell me. Each day in my in-box is a new goodie: an invitation to a special lunch, a request for me to teach a class, a thank you for all I've contributed, a gift certificate, a thoughtful gift."
I watch him, full of life and joy and am delighted as I listen, and then I feel sad. "I wish I had an in-box like that. I wish to be appreciated, recognized and supported in those ways."
He cocks his head and says, "Oh, you have a box, too. I saw it. It's quite full, actually, since you haven't looked at it in a while. You just have to go look."
In two courses I'm teaching, we're on to a section of material in the realm of the sensual and erotic, in which we must embrace head-on the paradoxical and oxymoronic. In unlocking our Erotic Blueprints, as I call our themes of erotic connection, we can't but look directly at our Shadow; Eros and Shadow usually have a lot to say to each other, when officially introduced.
Using the term Shadow in the Jungian sense, it refers to an area of our beings where we toss all of the parts of ourselves we deem unfit for public consumption. Our Shadow is the trash heap or communal grave of our psyche, where we've tossed those parts of ourselves we once learned that, if let roam free, might bring upon us shame, ridicule, embarrassment and pain.
Humans contain both light and shadow. The paradox is that the more we ignore our Shadow, the darker it becomes. And the further paradox is that when we open up the coffin grave we sealed so tightly with grim devotion, we find unexpected gifts from looking at the seemingly un-see-able. When we can go into wounded places and put light on them, when we stop spending energy on hiding, holding back and lying, when our undead, lost Shadow parts can be included in our life, so much creative, congruent vital energy becomes available to us.
Ancestors and lost parts of our selves: they literally gave and give us life, and their choices got us here today. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, so it can be a powerful thing, this once a year, to look down, and to look back at them in thanks. Our bones are made strong by their lives, and their blood runs into ours via the river of familial connection.
Although our parents, grandparents, Shadows and ancestors may have had some heavy, complicated stories, and what they handed down to us might not have been all easy and sweet, what remains true is the elemental Love and the Life that flows from them to us, in one direction, always.
To tap into that is an honoring. To open up to receive it is a nourishment and a blessing.
As the days get darker, may we unlock the boxes to our Shadowy selves, may we unveil the many shades of our past, and may we pay homage to the lost, the dead and the undead, since they in turn have so much illumination to lay at our feet.
(Photo "El Regalo" – The Gift – from http://diadelosmuertos.us/)
Weekly Mini Relationship Tip, Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Dear Goddess:
I got this ode, below, in my email inbox from a friend in a hard, dark time, who just found out her hard-won tenure-track at a well-known university will not be renewed.
I just sent it to another friend (with the same name as the first friend!), whose workshops at well-known centers have been canceled, whose health is stressed and whose second book proposal got its first rejection.
And then I sent it to another friend (yep, with the same name as the other two!), who just had a miscarriage.
Smart, talented, hard-working women. Who are in the dark, hard part of the cycle. Perhaps you know one; perhaps you are one.
So, this week:
1. Read the following simple "Dear Goddess" letter.
2. Send it to a woman who could use it right now (maybe it's you).
"Dear Goddess: The lady reading this is beautiful, classy, strong and I love her.
Help her live her life to the fullest.
Please promote her and cause her to excel above her expectations.
Help her shine in the darkest places where it seems impossible to love.
Protect her at all times, and lift her up when she needs you the most.
And let her know that she walks with you, and that she will always be safe and beloved."
Have a sweet, sweet week, LiYana
My boyfriend and I have been in a wonderful and rich conversation the last several months as we've been creating our engagement vows. Since engagement means you intend to marry, and we intend to marry consciously and create our own vows, we need those vows now, pre-marriage so we can be clear about what we are vowing to!
A friend just came back from a week at the hot springs. She took her computer, but vowed not to open it. Instead she renewed her marriage vows with herself.
Before we can love another, we must love our own self, truly, madly and deeply.
Love After Love, by Derek Walcott
"The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life."
So this week, celebrate Love Before Love – the love affair you must have with you, before you can have it with another:
1. Take a few moments to write out to what you are vowing (what you are committing to, what you are upholding, who you will be for you…), in your love affair with you.
2. Decide on a symbolic gesture (a ring out of a gum-ball machine, a pricey piece of bling, a bouquet of flowers, a calligraphed copy of your vows, framed…) and be trothed.
To your brilliant love affair,
Enjoy, LiYana
In the book, The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity, the first law is about “tithing” – giving 10% of what you’ve got, to where you received your “spiritual food.”
I’m taking a non-denominational, modern-day look at the concept of tithing – and spiritual food – and invite you to come along.
Scan your life for a moment. From where do you receive your spiritual food? Presence yourself to an element of your life you are so grateful for, it has you down on your knees, moved and inspired by its existence. What nourishes you, without which you wouldn’t be your greatest self?
It may be indeed a church or charity group, but spiritual food comes in a lot of unlikely forms: a group of girlfriends, a stranger on a park bench, your grandmother, a training you just took, your father, your yoga teacher, your lover, your business coach…
Traditionally, tithing was mostly in the form of money, but in the case of your spiritual food, it may not be money that makes the biggest difference. Take a second to think about – and feel into – this place/person/thing you get your spiritual food from; what type of contribution from you would make the biggest
difference?
As much as we are unique snowflakes, living our wondrous lives and contributing our greatest gifts, we didn’t get here on our own.
On whose shoulders are you standing now? And how can you in turn acknowledge, feed and nourish your relationship with that?
So, this week, I invite you:
1. Where do you get your “spiritual food?”
2. What’s your “10%” that you can give back – or give forward? Give that.
"I'm not trying to change the world. I'm just trying to bring something beautiful to my little corner of it."
- A relative of mine (father of two, husband, recently clean of a crack addiction)
—
xshke9y4ra
Your Hunger for Extraordinary Relationships
Your Hunger for Extraordinary Relationships:
The Red-Hot Recipe Guide for Re-Defining, Re-Designing and Re-Igniting Your Relationships for the 21st Century\
We
lcome to the 21st Century.
The conventional relationship models that were handed down to us don’t quite fit so well, don’t have a great reputation for working, nor do we seem to have the skills to make them great and sustainable. Relationships are one of the most important, vital things in our lives, but they are crashing and burning and are one of the places we suffer the most.
Our hunger for extraordinary relationships is a lot like ordering a meal at a restaurant: we look at the menu, salivate at the picture or description, and then start chewing away bitterly on the menu itself. We want the delicious, satisfying meal, but somehow settle for the cardboard facsimile.
But having the meal is absolutely possible. I know seems like it’s a chasm away, but it’s not; it’s only a paper ceiling.
Over the years of messing up grandly, suffering madly, but then getting diverse, top-level education and training, doing in-depth research, working with hundreds of clients, teaching scores of workshops and retreats and creating my own extraordinary relationship (for over 7 years now), I’ve found what it takes create – and sustain – extraordinary relationships.
It requires some Essential Ingredients – Nine, in fact. You decide on the proportions and presentation, but all Nine Essential Ingredients have to be in there.
There’s not one right way to create the ultimate relationship feast – but there is YOUR way.
I'm about to lay out the feast that enables YOUR way to extraordinary relationships, but before you read on, check out the Tele-Seminar Series I've crafted to deliver to you the Nine Essential Ingredients, without you having to leave your home or your PJs:
Living Radiance:
Ten Weeks to Sexy, Vibrant & Confident
The Nine Essential Ingredients for Taking Liberties with Your World
Tele-Seminar Series for Women with LiYana Silver, Relationship Expert
Wednesdays, September 16 – November 18, 2009
5:15-5:45 Pacific time; 8:15-9:45pm Eastern time
Are you ready to no longer choose between YOU and the relationship?
* Are you ready to get out of the “Groundhog-Day Dating” syndrome of dating the same type of person over and over …?
* Are you ready to feel lit-up and brilliant, in or out of relationship?
Just imagine: ten weeks to leading the way to an extraordinary relationship … with you first!
The 10-Week Program includes ten, jam-packed tele-class sessions with LiYana, individualized coaching, cutting-edge information, skills and tools, handouts, at-home practices, at online forum for your questions in between sessions.
Click here for more information and to apply!
***
Living Relationships:
Ten Weeks to Extraordinary Partnerships
The Red-Hot Recipe Guide for Re-designing, Re-igniting & Renovating your Relationships for the 21st Century
Tele-Seminar Series for Partners, with LiYana Silver, Relationship Expert
Mondays, September 14 – November 16, 2009
5:15-5:45 Pacific time; 8:15-9:45pm Eastern time
* Are you ready to avert your relationship from heading down the predictable path of becoming dull and boring?
* Are you ready to create a relationship that’s different than the ones you see crashing and burning around you?
* Are you ready to take your partnerships to the next level?
Just imagine: ten weeks to put the juice back in your love life, one ingredient at a time!
The 10-Week Program includes ten, jam-packed tele-class sessions with LiYana, individualized coaching, cutting-edge information, skills and tools, handouts, at-home practices, at online forum for your questions in between sessions.
Click here for more information and to apply!
OK, back to the Nine Essential Ingredients. Let me give you an example:
If I handed three different people three sets of the same ingredients, say eggs, butter, flour, sugar, salt and zucchini, person one might make quiche, person two might make zucchini bread and person three might make a sautéed zucchini fritters and toss the extra salt over her shoulder for luck!
There’s no one right way to do it, and your outcome will be as unique as it will be delicious, but all Nine Essential Ingredients have to be there:
Ingredient #1
Appreciation: the golden key
This is the foundation. It begins and ends with and always comes back to appreciation. I know you may be experiencing real conflict and suffering in your relationship world. Appreciation is not a palliative; you’re not to pretend everything is fine when it isn’t. Appreciation is the ground that connection, amiable communication, and open-heartedness can grow from. Appreciation is the thing that makes possible the working on the areas of conflict and suffering
Ingredient #2:
Decoding Men, Demystifying Women: ending the war of the sexes and starting a partnership party instead!
At the end of the day, it’s true: we are all human beings; we are not “just” men and women. However, the differences in how we relate, process, perceive, organize, decide, think, feel, reveal, communicate and experience life, based on our gender, are vast indeed. Consider this a UN translation skill; you learn the language of this often-seeming different species. So when you travel to the land of Woman, you can speak some WomanSpeak; and when you travel to the land of Man, you can speak some ManSpeak, for more ease, understanding and peace.
In my work with women and couples, I notice about 90% of all fights, communication struggles and conflicts are completely taken care of when they are able to Decode Men and Demystify Women. (We focus on this specifically in the Tele-Seminar Series, both for women, and for partners).
Ingredient #3:
Self-Awareness: you first, or how to stop stopping yourself!
We want to have a great relationship with another, but we have to have a great one with ourselves first. Know Thyself: know your hot buttons, your wiring and plumbing, so to speak, your triggers, what sets you off on your Downward Spirals. Know Thyself: what’s your Relationship Blueprint? This explains a lot about why you are attracted to the same type of person over and over again who’s often “bad” for you – and how you can turn that around and make it work for you.
Self-awareness is not so that you can engage in endless self-absorbed naval-gazing, but so that you can essentially have your own owner’s manual to YOU. It is the first step in shifting unhealthy, unwanted patterns and stepping out of your relationship ruts.
Ingredient #4:
Communication Made Easy … really!
Why is it that other person can get upset, defensive, distant, disengaged and cold when we try to communicate? There are so many ways for it to go wrong!
Communication isn’t usually thought of as easy. It usually seems like there is huge chasm separating us from the other person, impossible to bridge. But with a bit of information, understanding and practice, the chasm becomes a paper-ceiling. It can become truly easy to break through into black-belt level, simple – even fun –communication.
Ingredient #5:
Conflict Re-Solution: from rupture to repair
I know sometimes you experiencing real, painful conflict. You are miserable, fighting or nagging all the time. You experience intense jealousy you are not sure how to deal with. You run up against what seems like an impasse, around having children or not, the different ways you spend money, your different views on religion, different importance placed on sex, whether or not spending the holidays with family is important or not, etc. You wonder if you should end it, or if you should stick it out to learn the lesson now, rather than repeating it in a future relationship.
We make messes all the time. It’s a natural by-product of growing, trying new things, taking leaps and being human. But, it’s important to take the initiative and responsibility to clean up – and learn from – your messes as soon as you can.
Ingredient #6:
Truth-Telling: how trust and intimacy are born and grow
Intimacy, Trust, Honesty, Integrity, Congruity – all these elements don’t exist without Truth-Telling. If you are not telling the truth, you have a lie, not a relationship.
There is a simple reason why we so deeply desire Intimacy, but at the same time we run from it like our tails are on fire. Or why we intend to be honest and trustworthy, but our actions are very different. Truth-telling requires radical levels of honesty, personal responsibility and initiative. Not always easy, but I say necessary.
Telling the truth – about yourself, about what you want most – if not you, then who?
Ingredient #7:
A Divine Sex Life: a body of ecstatic sensuality and the red-hot erotic
The most important aspect to having A Divine Sex Life is choosing monogamy – or not. For most of us, it’s a default setting. It needs to be a choice. Monogamy is great, but only when it’s a choice. Likewise, non-monogamy is great, but only when it is a choice.
The statistics vary, but somewhere between 30-80% of people cheat. We say monogamy is the gold standard, but our actions do not at all align. To be blunt, many of us practice non-monogamy, but just lie about it, feel terrible about it and hide it.
What if it weren’t the actions themselves – of being sensual, sexual or flirting with others – that were the problem? What if it were the rules and default settings themselves? No one can decide if monogamy or some flavor of non-monogamy is right for you in your relationship, except you and your partner, or partners. It should – and has to be – your choice, your conscious, eye-open, brave and courageous choice.
Then you can move on to steering your sensual life into the stratosphere!
Ingredient #8:
Your Relationship Vessel: charting a course, course correcting and enjoying the waves.
The seas of relationships are sometimes sunny and calm, sometimes they just about kill you, but the important question is, what’s the condition of your boat? Where’s it going? What’s it’s name and mission?
What is your personal vision and goals for you individually? For the relationship? What are your partners?
Ingredient #9:
Community Creation: the company you keep and who keeps you
We rise and fall to the company we keep. Those around us influence us, whether we want them to or not! Those around us have particular “listening” for us. When they listen to us like we are messing up and can’t get it right, we mess up and can’t seem to get it right. When they listen to us like we are doing a great job, making great choices and asking important questions, we do all that and more.
Those around you witness you in your relationship, they hold you to what your goals and intentions are for the relationship. We are social beings. We need others. We can’t do it in a vacuum. But selecting those around you with care and attention is vital.
These are the Nine Essential Ingredients. They are the red-hot recipe guide to help you to step out of relationship ruts, to shift unhealthy emotional patterns and to create extraordinary partnerships for the 21st Century.
Retro-fit to you. Hand-crafted, rather than pre-fab from the factory.
Consider me your intrepid guide on your joyride to the relationship education you likely never got. I offer you insight into how you are wired and how to get out of your own way; fluency in the areas of radical personal responsibility, communication, conflict resolution, intimacy, honesty and commitment; tools to decipher your partner and create profound partnerships; skillful use of joy, pleasure and passion as your touchstones; and of course the courage to choose traditional monogamy – or to color outside the lines of monogamy.
How you mix, merge andintegrate the Nine Essential Ingredients, that’s your role. Serving them up to you, in clear, usable, appetizing morsels – that’s mine!
To taste the Nine Essential Ingredients for yourself and to apply the recipe guide to your own precious relationship life, join me for my upcoming 10-week tele-seminar series, beginning in September!
For partners: Living Relationships: 10 Weeks to Extraordinary Partnerships
Begins Monday, September 14, 2009
For women: Living Radiance: 10 Weeks to Sexy, Vibrant and Confident
Begins Wednesday, September 16, 2009
To learn more and apply, click here.
(Or use this link: http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com/10weekprogram)
It's time to get serious – about becoming sexy, radiant & confident!
Let me be straight with you.
This is urgently, importantly, especially for women.
Although every woman I work with is gorgeously unique, each woman that walks through my door and sits down for her session says her version of:
"I'm so bone-tired of dating the same type of guy, over and over. I know I have patterns where I self-sabotage, but how can I evolve out of them? How can I get out of this painful "Groundhog-Day" of relationships? How can I step out of these relationship ruts?"
We proceed; and I show her exactly how.
If you feel like you have to choose between YOU and a relationship, you need to be on my FREE tele-class, "Sexy, Radiant & Confident: The Three Simple Secrets" on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 5:30pm Pacific time; 8:30pm Eastern time.
If you are like the women I work with, I'll bet you've been working your tail off to feel comfortable in your own skin – but you're still working at it.
I'll bet you long for a way out of the "Groundhog-Day Dating" syndrome of dating the same type of person over and over … and over again.
I'll bet you feel like your "glow", your luminous, delicious self is just around the corner – or the next, or the next.
That's why I've compiled all you need to know in one place, in this one jam-packed tele-class!
So I can show you exactly how my clients move from depressed and desperate to radiant and glowing. So I can show you exactly how they move from relationship ruts to passionate partnerships.
These Three Simple Secrets are the same ones I used to build a thriving business, a rich, adventurous life and an extraordinary,satisfying relationship – both with an amazing man and with ME!
I'm dying to hand you these Three Simple Secrets.
The world needs you. I need you. Your partners need you. Your sisters need you.
But not as a dusty facsimile of yourself; as your fully expressed, glorious self.
It's time to get serious – about stepping in to your birthright: Sexy, Radiant & Confident!
"I feel I was given one of the secrets of life!"
- Heather C.
"I'm so glad I got clear on this before embarking
on another relationship that could have been doomed
before it even began."
- Megan F.
"People keep stopping me and asking me why I'm so
smiley and shiny."
- Laura V.
Isn't it time you joined your sisters?
Sexy, Radiant & Confident: The Three Simple Secrets
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
5:30 – 6:45pm Pacific time
8:30 – 9:45pm Eastern time
To reserve your spot, use this link:
http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com/relationship-courses/relationship-tele-class
On this ground-breaking tele-class, you'll learn:
1) The #1 source of your powerful radiance (Most women don't know this!)
2) A simple 3-Step Process for calming your self-defeating patterns and your debilitating self-talk. (Psst — It's what I (and my clients) use to get through the rocky patches with grace and ease!)
3) How to have ridiculous amounts of passion & satisfaction, in your day-to-day and your sensual life.
4) Exactly how to uncork and harness your Feminine Power. (Hint: It's different than what you're already using in your daily life.)
5) The most critical mindset shift you need to make before you can step into your sensuous, lit-up self. (Don't even bother with all I'm about to teach you if you're not willing to do this!)
6) The most powerful tool for more ease, joy and delight with men – that you can use instantly! (Without this, you are likely pushing away men, without even knowing you're
doing it!)
6) And I will show you on the class how to get a full (fr*ee!) 1-on-1 coaching session with me ($295 value).
Here's that link again to reserve your spot in this complimentary tele-class.
http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com/teleseminar.html
Additionally you will:
* Be able to ask your questions live on the tele-class
* Leave the call with simple at-home practices to integrate it all into your life – as soon as tonight!
Yes, we delve into the hard, stuck stuff, too. But by including these above gems, unheard of shifts happen daily for the women I work with.
"I wanted to get past what was blocking me from meeting
"Mr. Right" vs. "Mr. Right now". Since working with LiYana,
and for the past two years, I have been in a happy
relationship with Mr. Right!"
- Shireen D
"Thank you for helping me manifest this incredible,
1-in-a-million man. I know it's only because of our
work together…"
- Catalina S.
"LiYana lives what she teaches."
- Rosalinda P.
If you've been living in a sea of self-doubt and negative self-talk, if you've been wondering what those women who GLOW have that you don't, if your sensuality is more like a desert than a lush garden, and if you've been wondering how to attract your soul-mate-hot-lover, all-in-one … it's time.
Sexy, Radiant & Confident: The Three Simple Secrets
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
5:30 – 6:45pm Pacific time
8:30 – 9:45pm Eastern time
To reserve your spot, use this link:
http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com/relationship-courses/relationship-tele-class
To YOUR Sexiness, Radiance and Confidence,
LiYana
—
PS: As you probably know (and have experienced yourself first-hand), being the brilliant, sassilicious woman you are meant to be is easier said than done. Let me walk you through the Three Simple Secrets!
PPS: Feel free to forward this to other women in your life who would love to be more Sexy, Radiant and Confident, but please remember to reserve your spot HERE first!
http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com/relationship-courses/relationship-tele-class
PPPS: To find out what time the tele-class will happen in YOUR time zone, use this link:
http://www.timeticker.come
No, no. Nothing's changed with Nathan! He's still the true love of my life. But we've opened up our relationship to include another little bundle of love – and fur and claws – and named him Mishka, which we just found out after the fact means "gift of love" in Hindu and "white bear" in Russian.
He's the first breed cat I've ever owned (an Egyptian Mau), and he is not only soft as a mink, but clever, sweet, friendly, affectionate, playful and can jump and flip in the air and run up to 30 miles an hour. Although he hasn't gotten up to those speeds in our little seaside flat. But I think he's trying.
We are so happy he finally figured out the litter box concept. We are a proud mama and papa, if ever there were.
I am totally in love. It's not that easy to get any work done at all! But somehow love of this sweet-hearted fuzzy one makes it all worth it.
Two questions came from readers lately, that turn my face toward the face of grief and loss:
"After one has been in deeply in a love relationship, how do you let go in order to move on. I tend to linger and wallow in the pain of letting go…"
"How can couples create/maintain connection and sexual polarity during difficult times — for example: illness, trauma, grief, loss of loved one, loss of home/financial stability, or other radical changes in circumstances, etc.? Is there anything that extinguishes feminine radiance more quickly than grief?"
Grief and loss are deep, thick waters that are a personal affair to plumb. How to embrace their weighty, heavy arms? How long to hold the embrace so the grief and loss have run their course through our veins? How do we know when we've traversed into "wallowing" territory and it's time to throw off the tight bands of grieving?
I wish I had the answer for every form grief and loss takes; I wish I had a caress for every sister's cheek grief and loss leave their sad kiss upon. I don't have every answer, but I do have the beautiful story of the Japanese goddesses, Ameratsu and Ame-no-Uzume, which points a finger toward the door we must all walk through with our unique shuffling, sashaying, sauntering step.
—-
Amaterasu is the sun goddess, associated with royal power, and returning life and joy after dark times, as the sun becomes stronger and warmer after winter. Ame-no-Uzume is the voluptuous goddess of merriment and celebration.
Amaterasu and Ame-no-Uzume
http://www.thaliatook.com/AMGG/amaterasu.html
Amaterasu is the sun goddess, the goddess from which all light emanates and is often referred to as the sun goddess because of her warmth and compassion for the people who worship her.
"I am the author of order, the sun in her clockwork path. To this beloved world I have given many gifts — the plow-furrowed fields, the strands of the seasons, the celebrations joining families and neighbors — these I carefully weave, weft across warp, binding communities and ordering Time. So it goes, as I knot together the substance of civilization. However …"
Most of her myths revolve around an incident where the goddess traps herself in a cave because of her brother's actions. One day, in a drunken rampage, he trampled Amaterasu's rice fields, filled all of her irrigation ditches and threw excrement into her palace and her shrines. The people asked her brother to stop but he ignored them and even went so far as to throw the corpse of a skinned horse at her hand-maidens who were weaving at the time. The women were killed by the splintered wood from the looms piercing their wombs.
"Every older sister knows a younger sibling, troublesome and maddening; my brother, I utterly can not tolerate. Where I am quiet, he is loud; where I am calm, he is violent; where I am steady, his tempers wax and wane. My planted fields he floods, my handmaidens he frightens; my weaving he cuts in pieces. But he passed all endurance one morning when he burst through the roof of my hall like a thunderclap out of the blue sky, and into the tumult he then cast, of all things, the flayed and bloodied hide of a horse — I'm sure he found it quite witty — and bright Wakahirume, most dear to me, was killed. A little of his chaos must then have entered even into my own heart, for I put down my shuttle and turned from my loom, took myself to a quiet cave, and shut the entrance after me with a great stone."
Amaterasu was greatly angered and in protest she shut herself in the Heavenly Cave and sealed it shut with a giant rock.
"In that cool place of silence and still water, I finally had peace. I lay down in the quietude, and soon wandered into deep dreamings."
As a result, the world was consumed with darkness. Without her, everything began to wither and die. Countless people gathered in front of her cave and devised a way to lure her out. They all sat around the cave and set up a mirror across from the entrance. Ame-no-Uzume, the voluptuous goddess of merriment turned over a wash-tub and began a sensual dance, tapping the beat on the tub. She exposed her breasts and lifted her skirts as she danced a divine striptease. All of the gods made a great noise of yelling and cheering and laughing.
"But it was not to last. In time I was awakened by a din and disturbance outside the rock-cave entrance. It was quite an uproar: I made out rowdy shouts and screams, and for a moment I thought my brother had come to disturb me even here. But, no, it was not his usual crashing jumble of noise — it was, no — was it? How could it be? By the door-stone the sound was much clearer — unmistakable now, the sounds of joyous celebration: music, cheers, and merry laughter. How can this be? Without my workings, the dark chaos of winter must descend. Are all my gifts given so cheaply held? The lore and learning, the wisdom of seed and soil, are these so swiftly forgotten?"
"I am so angry that at last I shift the stone slightly, to peer out at this madness. And within the dark winter, there is a small shining. I catch a gleam of the golden light of heaven, brilliant and beautiful. Its radiance and glory thrill me; such loveliness I have never seen. Forgetting my anger, I roll the stone aside and step towards the light."
Amaterasu peeked out to see what the noise was about. She asked the nearest god what was going on and he replied that there was a new goddess. When Amaterasu asked where she was, he pointed to the mirror.
"Tied to a tree is a small mirror, and the splendor shining back at me is mine. I have never truly seen my own beauty, caught as I was in my weaving; with my relentless work and busy mind I have somehow left out my own self."
Amaterasu had never seen herself before and when she caught her reflection, she stared at the radiance of her own form. She was so surprised and fascinated by her own nearly forgotten beauty.
When she was out of the way, the people shut the rock behind her. Having lured her out of the cave, the gods convinced her to go back into the Celestial Plain and all life began to grow again and become strong in her light. Once back in the Celestial Plain, she made sure that she was ready for her brother's harsh actions again by having a bow and quiver at her side.
"All around me are the welcoming smiles of my friends and neighbors, my own woven community come together to coax me from my darkness. I must never forget that I too am one of the strands."
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What do the goddesses remind us to do? Never, never forget our exquisite beauty? Be coaxed out of our cave by the merry-making, music, laughter, sensual celebration (and exposed breasts! ;-P) of others less bound by grief and loss than us? Remember our place in the warp and weft of things? Step into the plains of our life after an appropriate time of weeping, with the knowledge we are stronger now to bear the joys and pains of this crazy life?
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http://www.thaliatook.com/AMGG/amaterasu.html
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A while back I was interviewed by the "Punk Monk" Stuart Davis on Sex, God, Rock & Roll on "Relationship as Spiritual Path". Check out a clip of it here:
Stuart is funny. An amazing musician. The king of off-off-off humour. Sacred. A loving father. A stellar husband. Rocks the camera.
Close your eyes and open your legs, it's time for the full episodes of Sex, God, Rock & Roll! I'm on episode 4, and will be in the DVD box set that's coming out soon. Membership is $5 a month or something silly.
http://www.sexgodrocknroll.com/episodes/
And here's the article I wrote, after having so much fun with Stuart:
Sex and Relationship as Spiritual Path: can a relationship actually do what an ashram does?
by LiYana Silver, Relationship Specialist, November 2008
I am sitting in a filming studio in Boulder, Colorado, getting ready to be interviewed on the Stuart Davis Show, "Sex, God, Rock n' Roll." I'll be talking about Relationship and Sex as Spiritual Path; can a relationship actually do what an ashram does? It's going to be a good one.
In a pre-interview email, Stuart emailed me the following questions: Relationship as Spiritual Path: Can a relationship actually do what an ashram does; can a relationship actually do what a teacher-student relationship does? In what ways can relationship do what lineage, community, etc, does? In what ways do we use spiritual communities or teachers to "avoid" deeper engagement and relationship with our partners?
There's no One Right Way. This is a unique concept in a world that functions as though there is very much One Right Way. Our world loves the "either/or," "black/white," "good/bad" paradigm; our cultures raise arms around who are the chosen people, who's getting into God's kingdom, which diet is the right diet, is a homosexual marriage still a marriage?
Relationship can absolutely do what the ashram does. It just tends to do it in a sort of technicolor thriller, comedie noire, 3-D dramatique way.
The ashram asks of those who enter to supplicate, to prostrate yourself physically, emotionally and mentally at the feet of a master. It asks of you to give over of yourself in order to gain insight and maturity, to strip away illusion and delusion, to awaken. If you have a partner who has a basic grasp of the foundational elements of powerful relating (self awareness, communication, honesty, vulnerability and integrity), and you have a partner you can trust, your partner (or partners) becomes teacher, sensei and master – as well as and student.
The ashram offers you practice and challenges to rise to. Getting up to meditate at 4:00am in a cold zendo with aching knees and back, whether or not you feel like it, is a lot like getting up to breast-feed an infant or tend to your lover's food poisoning, whether or not you feel like it. Cleaning the meditation halls is a lot like cleaning the bedroom, sweeping away the dust and clutter to allow seekers to again tomorrow, free of too much distraction, lay themselves at the feet of intimacy and union.
The ashram offers you a physical and spiritual container, within which to examine who you are: Who are you in the glorious, open times as well as during the tough times? Come rain or shine, the ashram demands of you to do your practices. It's one thing to be a good communicator and a loving open being when the sun is shining in our relationship, but can we keep our hearts open and vulnerable in the midst of a painful, confronting storm when the shit hits the fan and it gets tough and scary? The cultivation of discipline, whether done in the ashram or in the relationship, is useful because of what it trains us for.
My rather irreverent assertion that relationship can be a vessel for growth, discovery and communion with the Divine, as the ashram can also be, comes from my experience with Vedic Tantra. Vedic Tantrism offers that there is nothing to transcend; the Divine is not out there or over there, separate from you; you are the Divine. The Divine is having a human experience through you. There is no where you could go, nothing you could do to escape the Divine. Being human is not a fallen condition. There's not a place of perfection we fell from and can claw, pray or self-flagellate our way back to. Vedic Tantra is inclusive, offering a way to see our shadows not as deviance from the Divine, but for further means of integration and experience of the full spectrum of the Divine. There is no experience that doesn't offer you, bundled inside of it, the chance to open to God. Relationship, when done with the intention and heart of a spiritual seeker, is an honorable spiritual path.
Lineages, like pilgrimages to ashrams, offer the beautiful structure of well-trodden spiritual paths, but don't necessarily have built in to them the elasticity to account for human and cultural development. Often in trying to transcend our humanity – our visceral, earth-bound bodies with their plethora of racing thoughts, storms of emotions and abounding sexual energies – is an excuse to push away life like a mirage, and can drive us even further from a union with the Divine. We have been taught, whether through Eastern, Judeo-Christain or through Puritanical traditions, to deny the body, kill the ego, cut out parts of ourselves and ascend above our messy humanity in order to commune with the Divine. But those same sought-after spiritual experiences are equally as accessible through the body, thoughts, emotions and ego; through an integration and understanding of our humanity. Rather than pretending our shadows aren't there or can be exorcised, we can embrace, include and integrate them.
When you choose life (and relationship) as spiritual path and choose to know and engage (rather than deny) every part of your being, the conversation with the Divine then happens right here, right now, not limited to churches, synagogues and ashrams. There is no spot where God is not, no place that is not holy; every moment becomes one where union is available. If you choose relationships, you choose to engage. Relationship is the highest-stakes, highest-reward spiritual game I know.
LiYana Silver is a Relationship Specialist, teacher, writer and counselor. Visit her website at ww.RedefiningMonogamy.com.
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