Dear Lover (4 page)

8

You embody both masculine and feminine qualities, although you may express them in different proportions at different times in your life.

If you find it easy to navigate toward your goals but more difficult to dance in whole-body ecstasy, then your masculine qualities are probably more highly developed than your feminine.

If you find it easy to flow while moving with sensual pleasure—while shopping, dancing, making love, and talking with friends—but more difficult to carry out long-term projects, then your feminine is probably more highly developed than your masculine.

Each person can develop both masculine and feminine qualities within him or her. With your masculine, you can learn to direct your life with great clarity and discipline toward very specific goals as a way to offer your deepest heart’s gift to the world. With your feminine, you can learn to flow lovingly in the midst of chaos—a room full of playing children, a friend sobbing in emotional panic—offering your oceanic energy and fullness as a deep love-gift from your heart.

Although you have both masculine and feminine qualities and gifts, at your core you have a unique sexual essence. Your sexual essence is your sexual identity. It has nothing to do with the gender of your body. Man or woman, your sexual essence is determined by what your heart identifies with most deeply: the unfolding drama of the
ever-changing flow of love and dance of life’s light
or the mission toward
unchanging and eternal freedom of consciousness.

Do you identify more with love’s ebb and flow in your heart or the adventure toward freedom? At the movies, do you cry more at love stories
or at films about justice and conquering all odds against an enemy to be free? Are you more moved by love’s drama or freedom’s mission?

Which words of your lover turn you on more, sexually? Imagine that your lover says to you, “I trust you and your mission, and I will follow you anywhere.” Now imagine that he says, “I love you and cherish the beauty of light that I see in you, and I claim your deepest heart as mine, forever.”

If you have a
masculine sexual essence,
then you are turned on by a lover who trusts your direction so much he is willing to surrender to your claim, submit ecstatically to your strength of penetrative love, and follow you anywhere.

If you have a
feminine sexual essence,
then you are turned on by a lover who sees the beauty of your heart’s light and who feels your love’s depth, worshipping your radiant heart with his integrity, passionately claiming your life with his strong presence.

A person who has a masculine essence revels in challenge, facing death, and overcoming all odds to succeed in a mission of freedom, whether that is a quest for financial, political, artistic, or spiritual liberation. Even watching sports—which are ritualized wars, challenges, or fights for freedom—can be so emotionally moving that a masculine-essence person often shouts and screams more during a football game than while making love. Is this more like you, or more like your lovers, past and present?

Most (but not all) women have a sexual essence that is more feminine than masculine, although the exact proportions vary and each person’s sexual essence is unique. Though you may enjoy using your masculine gifts to succeed in the world, deep down you probably have a more feminine essence that yearns for the flow of love more than a fight for freedom, although you may still feel uncertain about what you really want.

Your masculine “go” and feminine “flow” can be gifts, but they can also be used to create shells of safety and protection, confusing you and preventing your true sexual essence from offering your deepest love and gifts to your man, your family, your friends, and the world. You can inadvertently hide
behind your schedule book and the challenges of your career, while your true sexual essence yearns to be seen and touched, your body aches to be taken, and the deepest heart of your love remains unnoticed and ungiven.

You can seem stressfully concerned about
where
you are going in your life, even though, deep down, you may be much more concerned about
who
you are going with and
how
love is flowing. You can get caught up in the masculine fight toward liberation and your mission toward freedom, even though the deep bliss of love, or its lack, is much more central to your feminine heart’s fullness.

Your concern for career and self-sufficiency is obviously healthy, but your deepest fulfillment may await risking your heart wide open, offering your bright love to all beings, and giving yourself to be claimed—by a man of integrity, by a family of beloveds, by a world that needs your love. Love is the only way to live that won’t leave your feminine heart feeling unseen, ungiven, empty, and wanting—no matter how successful your professional life may be.

9

If you are like most women, you were born with a more feminine sexual essence. At heart, you are more identified with ever-changing life than with changeless death—as a child you enjoyed playing house more than playing war. You enjoyed playing with puppies and colors and make-up and flavors. You enjoyed getting clothing and jewelry—rather than weapons and games of challenge—for birthday presents. You loved to be seen, because you are identified with love’s light. Anything that adorns your light—sequins, sparkles, bangles—magnifies your happiness.

As a young woman, you may have dreamt of masculine saviors: horses, pop stars, white knights—any animal or human, real or imaginary, that could take you somewhere new, somewhere magic. Deep in your heart, you felt that someday a man would see your true beauty, your true light, your boundless ocean of love, and take you to the place you always wanted to be: surrendered open like the sky filled with moonlight, taken by your beloved into the bright domain of love’s bliss.

But at some point, you probably stopped trusting the yearning of your own feminine heart. You may have absorbed the anti-feminine attitude of your culture. Or possibly your family strongly emphasized masculine values.

For one reason or another, you probably became convinced that it is better—stronger—to navigate for yourself, to take yourself somewhere rather than trust to be taken by love. You became suppressed in your desire to be seen and worshipped as love’s light. You came to believe that guiding your life’s direction is more important than trusting the fathomless love-wisdom that flows naturally from your deepest heart’s radiance.

Maybe your parents found your little sister more pretty than you, so you protected your crushed heart with a shell of masculine ambition: “My little sister may be pretty, but I’m going to be a scientist!” Perhaps you felt how your mother was restricted and belittled by your father, so you protected your vulnerable heart with a shell of masculine control: “Nobody is going to tell
me
what to do. I’m going to be the captain of my own ship!”

If you chose to be a scientist because you loved science, or you chose to navigate your own life because that was your greatest bliss, then such decisions would be healthy and heart fulfilling. But if you chose to be a scientist because your parents ignored your radiance and your heart was crushed, or if you chose to guide your own life because you didn’t want to be hurt like your mother was, then you have created shells built of fear rather than a life moved by the openness of love.

As you grow from childhood to your teenage years, you may build yet another shell. You want boys to be interested in you. However, the attractive brightness of your feminine radiance remains hidden behind your shells of fear-based masculine directionality that surround your crushed and unacknowledged heart. So, on top of this acquired masculine shell of protection, you begin to create a shell of superficial feminine expression.

You buy the jeans that all the popular girls at school are wearing, checking out your butt in the mirror, wondering if this will get the boys to want you. You spend hours purchasing and trying on not only clothing but also jewelry, fragrances, and make-up—not as loving adornments of your abundant radiance, but because you feel love lacking. You feel unseen and unworthy because the masculine shell you acquired as a child is hiding the full love and true shine of your heart.

Your true feminine heart of vulnerable love-radiance—crushed or negated in childhood—has become surrounded by a masculine shell of fear: “Because my love-light is inadequate, I’ll direct my life toward success so I am worthy of love.” In your teenage years, a feminine shell of fear is then added: “Unless I make my surface shine, boys won’t notice me.”

Already, as a teenager, the love-radiance of your true feminine essence is hidden behind a masculine shell of protective and assertive directionality and a feminine shell of superficial “see me,” lack of self-worth, and covert manipulation of men’s attention.

Beneath all your shells, your deep heart is always full of love’s light. So, at heart, showing open as light and flowing open as love’s offering is the most ecstatic and true way to live. But your acquired shells have their own voice: “Beauty is only skin deep.” “My mind is more important than my body.” “I can’t trust men.” “If I want a man’s love I’ve got to make him want me.” “My professional goals are more crucial to my life’s happiness than who I go with or how much love I offer through my life and every breath.”

These are all lies, and your deep feminine heart knows it. Yet, you are confused, because your shells can be so strong. You can come to believe the lies of your shells, and therefore, you can live an entire life betraying your deepest desire: to be recognized as light, adored and worshipped as love’s radiance, offering yourself as a gift of love to be claimed by true divine masculine integrity, ravished open to God by love’s deepest claim of your heart.

Perhaps you try to trust a man and he eventually leaves you. Again you feel betrayed, so now, again from fear, you build yet another shell—“independent career woman”—that will protect you from being hurt or left in the cold by a man’s untrustable commitment. If your career is an expression of your love, then your heart can be fully offered through your profession. But if you are building a career because you are afraid of being hurt and abandoned again, then fear is woven into the foundation of your choices, and your career will always be tainted by doubt, loneliness, stress, and lack of heart-fulfillment.

Your radiant feminine heart of love may now be surrounded by a shell of masculine impetus (because your sister was prettier than you or masculine values were more important in your family), which is surrounded by a shell of feminine gloss (because your surface is what boys look at), which is surrounded by a shell of masculine ambition (because you are afraid of being financially dependent on a man again).

These shells may have become rigidified in your body, so your orgasms are shallow and your face creased with tension. These shells confuse
your mind with conflicting desires, now for independence and safety, now to be swept off your feet by a dangerous man, now to succeed on your own. These shells block your genuine emotional currents, so you feel stuck, sometimes numb, sometimes enraged, sometimes hysterical, but not very often does your deepest ocean of love-light spontaneously emerge as free, unobstructed waves of heart-open emotional flow, with the universe or with a man.

Furthermore, your shells attract men with reciprocal shells, men who have long ago lost touch with their deep masculine heart of truth, purpose, and impeccable loving. Shells of lies surround your crushed heart, so you attract men who are also crushed at heart and who are surrounded by lies. These men lie not only to you, but also to themselves. These men
live
a lie, just like you do.

Probably, deep in your heart, you dream of being with a man of great integrity, a lover of such care, strength, humor, wisdom, and depth of love that you can trust him utterly, surrendering wide open to be blissfully taken further open by love’s ravishing force, so your deepest heart is exposed to God’s infinite joy, and your body blooms in uncontrollable waves of divine pleasure.

And yet, you may
feel
more balanced—equally moved by masculine and feminine motivations—because step by step throughout your life you have betrayed your heart’s deepest desire as you acquired shells of fear that create confusion, neutralizing your deepest heart’s yearning.

One shell is built of your fear of being dependent, so it drives you to achieve a sense of emotional autonomy and self-reliance. Another shell is built of your fear that you are not attractive enough, so it causes you to compare yourself to other women, dressing and acting in ways to attract men even though you wouldn’t trust most men to enter you anyway, so you protect your heart and body even as you do your best to hook men’s attention.

You want the freedom to dress however you want; you want men to respect you as a person and not treat you like an object; you want men to find you sexy but not harass you; you want a trustable man to commit his love to you; you want a man to give you space and honor your own decisions; you know you are capable of deep love; you hold back your love because your heart is afraid of being hurt again; you move your body with masculine direction to achieve financial independence; you are tired and stressed and your feminine body is aching to be loved beneath your mistrust—all of your shells blur together and neutralize the true sexual gifts of your essence.

So when a man feels you, he no longer feels your deep gifts of love, but your shells. He feels your desire for independence and your desire to be wanted. He feels your push and your pull. He feels moments when your heart surrenders to be taken, and moments when your protection shields your heart from being hurt.

He is probably as confused about his deepest purpose as you are about your deepest desire for love. So, instead of persisting in committed loving, peeling away layer after layer of your resistance, lovingly claiming your true sexual essence so you can offer your open heart as a divine gift—instead, he casually enjoys what he can and moves on to a less complicated woman; you appear to be quite attached to your independence, anyway.

You may indeed have a genuinely balanced sexual essence—a small percentage of women do—but chances are you actually have a feminine sexual essence that is neutralized by layer after layer of acquired masculine and feminine shells of fear, and so you are creating confusion: What is your deepest heart’s desire?

If you have a feminine sexual essence, then you want to be truly seen, entered at heart, opened as love, and danced by love’s light. You are the aspect of this moment’s divine revelation that shows Herself as love’s radiance, and, naturally, you yearn to be taken by your man’s
trustable, penetrating presence deeper and wider than you can bear, blissfully. Likewise, he yearns to merge with your light. This yearning reveals itself as the one divine openness of love knowing itself through two bodies.

You want to be ravished by your lover’s desire to enter you and merge with your heart, and he wants to be invited by your surrender, the display of your body’s pleasure and the offering of your heart to be taken, entered, and opened beyond form. This is how two human bodies become one openness of love, expressing the divine revelation of consciousness and light, the interpenetrating He and She of every moment. This is true sex and divinity.

True sex is about divine intimate communion, heart-to-heart worship, opening as love’s bliss, offering your deepest gifts to each other. This two-bodied sexual offering prepares you for opening beyond yourself so you can offer your deepest gifts in every moment to
all
beings, opening as love’s light through
every
body.

With practice, your man learns to take every moment open to love’s depth, fearlessly and relentlessly, and you learn to fully receive every moment deeply into your heart—so you are actively receiving the ravishment of divine presence, pleasurably “forced” open by the moment’s thick fullness, offering your heart’s radiant surrender to enlighten the world alive as uninhibited love.

As you grow more open as love’s fullest offering, you still enjoy your career, your success, and your life’s direction as much as you want, but you don’t forget your heart’s
deepest
desire—you no longer negate your heart’s yearning to give and receive love, to be claimed open to God’s depth and offered open as love’s light through the heart of all beings.

Eventually, you realize that self-sufficiency is a transition phase. You are not responsible only for yourself; you are responsible for everyone. Your heart naturally opens with and feels other hearts. Your heart naturally responds to the heart-yearning of others. Instead of denying your own needs or limiting
your love to self-reliant independence, you realize that, more than anything else, you actually yearn to live open as a devotional offering of love.

Are you ready to feel your heart’s deepest yearning and the yearning at everyone’s heart: to receive love, to give love, to live open as love’s fullest light?

You may choose to be a corporate executive, an attorney, or a baker. You may choose to raise a family, start a school, or manage an organization. What you do with your life is less important than how you live it: encased in shells of fear or wide open, actively receiving God’s immense weight of love, ravished to your heart’s core by deeply feeling every moment’s divine intensity and presence, offering your love to enlighten the hearts of all those around you, including your lover.