LESS EGO / MORE SOUL

The secret to desire in a long term relationship…

I just watched this TED talk and felt compelled to share it.

“In long-term relationships, we often expect our beloved to be both best friend and erotic partner. But as Esther Perel argues, good and committed sex draws on two conflicting needs: our need for security and our need for surprise. So how do you sustain desire? With wit and eloquence, Perel lets us in on the mystery of erotic intelligence…”

“Then said a rich man, Speak to us of Giving.

And he answered:

You give but little when you give of your possessions.

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?

And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the over-prudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?

And what is fear of need but need itself? Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much which they have – and they give it for recognition and heir hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all.

And you receivers – and you are all receivers – assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives. Rather Together with the giver on his gifts as on wings; for to be over mindful of your debt is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother and God for father.”

~ Kahlil Gibran

“Awake.

Shake dreams from your hair
my pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
the day’s divinity
First thing you see.

A vast radiant beach and cooled jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by it’s quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.

Choose they croon the Ancient Ones
the time has come again
choose now, they croon
beneath the moon
beside an ancient lake

Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
everything is broken up and dances.

Indians scattered,
On dawn’s highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child’s,
Fragile eggshell mind

We have assembled inside,
This ancient and insane theater
To propagate our lust for life,
And flee the swarming wisdom of the streets.

The barns have stormed
The windows kept,
And only one of all the rest
To dance and save us
From the divine mockery of words,
Music inflames temperament.

Ooh great creator of being
Grant us one more hour,
To perform our art
And perfect our lives.”

- Jim Morrison, Ghost Song

- Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

“Any experience which makes you feel like such-and-such a sort of person is by default an ego-based experience as it is something which traps you within a cage of self definition.”

- Unknown

“Two people in the same location experiencing chaotic events can have vastly different emotional responses.

While one person might be paralyzed with fear, anger, and resentment, the other person might experience the moment as humorous.

He or she “gets” the cosmic joke, which is the sudden and unexpected realization that the reality everyone experiences as “real” is nothing more than the fabrication of their own minds.

When chaotic events disturb the status quo, a doorway briefly appears, an opportunity if you will, to jump upward in consciousness, to wake up from the dream spell.

But waking up from the collective dream only occurs if you are prepared to step across the threshold.”

- The Hathors >> Read more about this here.

“Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you thing necessary. Than ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question: Does the path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart and the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.”

- Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan

Life is 10% “what happens to you” and 90% how you react to it.

- unknown

Q: Who am I?

A: Who cares?

“Of this I am certain: something happens every time I stop fighting with the way things are. Something happens to every one of my students when they stop running their familiar programs about fear and deficiency and emptiness. I don’t know what to call this turn of events or the freshness that follows it, but I know what it feels like: It feels like relief. It feels like infinite good-ness. Like a distillation of every sweet fragrance, every hearstopping beauty, every haunting melody you’ve ever heard. It feels like the essence of tenderness, compassion, joy, peace. Like love itself. And in the moment you feel you recognize that you are it and that you’ve been here all along, waiting for your return.

When you forget, which you always do, you suddenly understand that kindness to anyone – a plant, an animal, a stranger, a partner – brings you closer to this. That taking care of your body is taking care of this. That taking care of the earth is taking car of this. And that you’d turn away from anything or anyone that asked you to leave this because this is what you’ve wanted, this is what you’ve longed for, this is what you’ve loved for eons.

You know without knowing how you know that every step you’ve ever taken, every person you’ve ever loved, every task you’ve ever accomplished has been This meeting This. You returning to yourself. And that hell is nothing more than leaving this. Heaven is already here on earth.”

- From Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth