If you step on the right path at the wrong time…
+ An excerpt from 'Evolutionary Love Relationships'
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Dear Reader:
I love working with people who are eager to tell their stories in written form. Lately I’ve been doing sessions with a variety of writers-in-process. Some are just beginning their first book and needing to understand the challenges to come. Others are already inside of their first draft process, and need to be held accountable so they can see it all the way through to completion. Still others are finished and trying to figure out how to get the book out there in a complex publishing terrain. Where before there was only one option—chasing a publisher to look at your work—there are now many other options. And thank goodness for that—I can’t even begin to imagine how many great books never saw the light of day because they weren’t seen and accepted by a traditional publisher. Now, everybody get’s a shot!
One of the themes that often comes up in the book-writing journey relates to the stages of the process. When I wrote my first book, I learned the hard way that you have to meet each stage of the process where it is. In other words, you can’t clarify something now that doesn’t usually clarify until later. For example, you probably don’t want to import a reader’s consciousness (adapting the book to how it will be received) into the first draft because that is usually when it is most important to get everything out of you (engaging a writer’s consciousness). Similarly, you may not want to fret over the name of each chapter until the book is near completion. You may not have the clarity you need until you are at the end of the process.
Books are written in drafts, and each draft has a different intention and consciousness.
If you do attempt to mix them all at once, you risk overwhelming yourself and retreating from the process. And not just overwhelming yourself—you risk re-energizing some of the internalized shame that you overcame in order to get here. Many of us who tell our story have come a long way on the road to self-acceptance. The last thing we need is to layer unreasonable expectations onto the writing journey. One syllable, one stage, one draft at a time…
In this way, the writing journey is no different than the self-creation journey. You can’t answer all your questions about your path at once. You just can’t. And if you try to, you will end up answering none of them. Because the questions have an intrinsic order to them. They build upon each other. For example, you probably can’t answer the question of your ultimate calling while you are still confused about how to heal from your trauma. It’s often impossible to see the path in its entirety, when there are still mountains of emotional debris in the way. It can be helpful to write all your life goals down, but stay with the goal that truly matters right now. Stay focused on the stage you are at, before seeking to address the next stage of inquiry. If you do it this way, you will unfold at the precise pace that you should. You will arrive at your own door (or completed book), right when you are ready to open it.
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Karmageddon
This is the moment when Bhagavan Das explained to me that he is the reincarnation of Anne Frank. For more mystifying (and occasionally mystical) moments, Karmageddon is free to watch on Tubi in North America. I am also told it is free somewhere on YouTube outside of North America. It is also available for download/DVD on this website.
Also starring Ram Dass, Seane Corn, Deva Premal and Miten, Wah, Robert Gass, David Life, David Newman.
Evolutionary Love Relationships (An excerpt)
As I slowly work through the writing of a ‘Healing Unresolved Love Relationships’ course, I am reminded of a poignant book that I published for Andrew Harvey and Chris Saade—Evolutionary Love Relationships: Passion, Authenticity, and Activism. I want to share one excerpt from that book with you. For anyone not comfortable with Andrew’s reference to ‘God’, please substitute whatever works for you. I tend to use the word ‘creation’, if that serves you. In addition, do not restrict the principles he shares to intimate love relationships. They have far vaster relational applications…
The Seven Requirements of Love (by Andrew)
“Chris has formulated the real principles of a new vision of evolutionary love as it now is appearing on the planet at the very moment when the planet is in extreme danger. What this vision offers humanity is a vision of coupledom, of relationship, not as a privatized escape from reality, but as the source of the fuel from which two beings united in passion can go out and become sacred activists and dedicate their inner and outer resources to helping the world. They can enjoy the fullness of divine human love in the depths of their own personal relationship, but also enjoy it in the ways that those healing depths make them powerful and strong and lucid and vibrant enough to go out into the world and pour out their gifts and resources for the transformation of the planet.
What the Divine Mother is now birthing in all those open to her is a vision of total relationship between heart, mind, body, and soul, so that through that deep sacred relationship, we can come into the unified force field of reality, become completely embodied and present, and use that inner love to express our longing to see the world transformed by justice and to protect creation. What is really at stake is this: If we continue to have a vision of relationship as purely personal, purely private, and something that we cultivate only for our own pleasure, we will keep feeding the tragic narcissism that is now ravaging the planet on every level. The real thrust and purpose and meaning and divine importance of relationship is to give us the fuel to take on the world, the passion to embrace the struggle for justice, the energy to keep on pouring ourselves out for the creation of a new world.
It is critical to remember that this crisis we are facing is a crisis in which the sacred powers of love in the human soul are being diverted by distraction, by greed, by ignorance, by the pursuit of power, so that they never irrigate the world and transform it. What is needed is a vision of evolutionary relationship as a relationship that helps us come into the real, take responsibility for it, and enact our sacred purpose with a partner, and for the world: when two lovers come together in this dynamic love consciousness, they create a transformative field of sacred energy, from which both can feed to inspire their work in reality.
There are seven requirements necessary, I believe, for this tremendously potent vision of evolutionary love to emerge in the world.
The first requirement is that both beings need to be plunged individually into a deep and passionate devotion of the Beloved, by whatever name they know the Beloved, because without both beings centering their life in God, the relationship will never be able to escape the private circle. From the very beginning it must be centered in the Divine. It must be a relationship that is undertaken in the conscious presence of the Divine for the Divine’s great work in the Universe. Only a relationship that is centered in God, and that has God as the prime actor in the relationship, will be able to bear the vicissitudes of authentic love, of dealing with the challenges of life and service in the world.
The second requirement for an evolutionary love is that both beings must develop a mastery of solitude. In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke wrote: “Authentic love is where two solitudes border, protect, and salute each other.” They “border” each other, they don’t infiltrate each other’s domain. They “protect” because they realize that the solitude that each one has is the source of inner wealth and inner revelation; they “salute” because they understand that the work of solitude, the work that goes into solitude, the heart work, the yearning, the longing, the deep contemplation of one’s gifts and one’s faults, is a sacred work that is the secret foundation of healthy relationship. In too many relationships in our current narcissistic model, what threatens the person most is the solitude of the other. In a true evolutionary relationship, what can exhilarate one person the most is the other’s solitude, because they know that solitude has the potential to make them a billionaire of generosity, of insight, and of creativity.
The third requirement is that in a true evolutionary relationship there is an equality of power, and that equality is born out of a profound experience of the sacredness and dignity of the other person’s soul. This new relationship that is trying to be given to us by the Mother is what I call the beloved-beloved relationship.
One person isn’t the beloved and the other only the lover. Both partners recognize in each other the unique face that God is turning to them in order to bring them the essence of divine truth, which is embodied love. From that recognition of each other as the Beloved flows a natural movement of passionate honoring and service of the other’s life. This gives each person the freedom and the energy and the joy that they need to go out into the world and fulfill their destiny. This is crucial because in the past there has been a vision of inequality of power. The male has often had the power and the female hasn’t. Dominant and submissive roles between two people have been seen as inevitable. Now what’s emerging is the mutual recognition of holiness and sacredness expressed in tantric rapture, in an adoration and worship of the other in the core of life…