Living In A State Of Love: Levels Of Consciousness Series

They say that we must Be Love. What does that mean? What does it feel like to truly have love for all people? How do we interpret all aspects of our lives, even the hard ones, through the eyes of love? This is a continuation of our Levels of Consciousness Series that can all be found on my profile.

Transcript

So this is a continuation of all of our talks about the levels of consciousness.

So for anyone who's new,

This is all based in a book by David Hawkins called Power versus Force.

And it's about the difference between living either forcefully in the world to get what we want,

Being affected by the forces of other that change us and take us off our soul's path,

Or actually living in a state of power.

And it's very interesting when we live in a state of power,

Because when we live in a state of power,

We live from the inside out,

As opposed to being sort of thrown around by everything around us.

And this is really important when we talk about a state of love.

When you imagine,

Because we talk about that,

You know,

Especially in spiritual circles,

That we need to just be love,

We need to just love everyone,

We just need to feel connected to everyone.

And we're sitting in our lives,

In our relationships,

In our families saying,

What are you talking about?

There's so much cruelty,

There's so much meanness,

There's so much passive aggression,

There's so much,

How can we possibly just be love?

And so then we get confused,

Because we start to do this kind of,

You know,

Spiritual bypassing or emotional bypassing,

And we say,

Okay,

You know what,

I'm just going to ignore what's going on,

I'm going to ignore all that,

And I'm just going to love this person.

And we kind of put on this weird false smile.

And at that point,

We stop actually paying attention to our feelings,

Our actual truth,

In order to try to be this,

I am just a loving being,

I'm connected,

I am just loving.

So we do this thing,

Because deep down we know it's real.

We know that this level of consciousness is not only possible,

It's really healthy for us.

It's really good for us.

It's almost our human birthright.

And so we aim for it,

Right?

It's what we know is real,

But we don't understand why we're not experiencing it.

We don't know why it's so hard.

We don't know why we have to bury who we are in order to feel it,

And then it doesn't work and all kinds of crazy ends up happening.

So this is David Hawkins,

Map of Consciousness.

So you can see how high love is on this chart.

Love is way up here.

So in the bottom there you can see shame,

Guilt,

Apathy,

These numbers.

These are frequencies.

These are frequencies of an emotional state that we perceive the world in.

And like I said,

On my profile you can see we go really deep into all of these levels,

Where they're really valuable and what happens when we get stuck in them.

And then guilt,

Fear,

Desire,

Anger,

Pride.

When we experience love in any of those realms,

It hurts.

We try.

We try really hard to be loving.

We try to connect.

We try to do it because as humans we're made to love.

So we try,

But somehow they get twisted.

Somehow we miss it.

Somehow we get pushed away.

It just doesn't work.

Then we come to courage,

And the change here,

The number one change here,

Is that we start working from the inside out.

Below courage we experience love from other people.

We need love.

We define love as how do you love me?

How do I experience love from you?

Because we need it.

Because we're hurting.

And we're going to go through this more in those lower levels.

Everything below courage we actually experience the whole world from outside in.

Even pride,

Which is really high on the scale just below courage.

Pride comes from how you perceive me.

So if we experience love in a state of pride,

How you love me is part of my pride.

But it's all about other loving me.

And it's a very personal love.

It's a very.

.

.

When something goes wrong we take it personally.

Because it's almost like an attack on us.

Or it makes me feel good.

Because our world is dependent on other below courage.

As soon as we hit courage,

Life starts coming from the inside.

So love in a state of courage is me loving.

You know it's not about needing you to love me back.

I just love.

If we both happen to kind of love each other at the same time,

Awesome-paw-some.

If we want to do stuff together,

Even better,

Right?

If we have Eros,

Well maybe we'll have some soup later.

But it's not about the other person.

My sense of well-being doesn't change because you don't love me.

Because I just love you anyway.

It's a completely different way of even understanding love above courage.

So then we continue up into neutrality,

Willingness,

Acceptance,

Reason.

And we'll talk about these in a moment.

And then we hit love.

Love has a rating of 500.

This is a logarithmic scale.

So if you imagine this is 10 with 500 zeros.

As opposed to at the bottom,

Shame,

Which is 10 with 20 zeros.

When we resonate in a state of love that we are just love.

And it's at a resonance of 500 on this scale.

You imagine the effect of that.

Like this is you beaming genuine love.

This isn't like I'm feeling like crap but I'm just going to beam light out to the world.

This is genuine.

You are a walking tower of light.

You are just love.

There is nothing else.

I always,

You know,

Every so often you meet someone like this.

And they're the kind of people,

And they may have other issues and things.

But they're the kind of people that when you're describing them,

I'll say to someone,

They're the kind of person that if someone doesn't like them,

There's something wrong with that other person because you can't not like them.

Like I remember I had an uncle like this.

I had two uncles actually like this.

I mean whether they had other issues or where they resonated,

I don't know.

But they felt like love to me.

When I was around them,

All I felt was love and not personal love like they loved me.

They were just loving,

Loving beings.

And I've told some of you guys this story before.

One of my uncles,

When he died,

He died of lung cancer when I was,

I don't know,

19 I guess.

And he was so loving.

Like the effect of this man on the world around him.

And he was such a humble person.

He just,

He was quiet.

He was a pianist.

He was a church organist.

He taught music in the schools.

He was a choir leader.

And when he died,

We went to his funeral.

And the place was packed.

And again,

This guy wasn't a charismatic person that had a million friends.

It wasn't like that.

But he just,

He just radiated this quiet love.

And then he would write music and his choirs would sing this music.

And when they would sing it,

The love in the song would be channeled through their voices.

Like it was just kind of magical.

And he didn't mean to do it.

He wasn't,

You know,

Some super spiritual guy or anything like that.

This was a long time ago.

I was only 19 when he passed.

And at his funeral,

We were sitting there.

And there was this mass choir at the front.

And it was all the choirs from his church,

From his schools that had happened over the years,

Anyone that could be there.

And they got together.

Like I don't even know how many were there.

Hundreds.

I don't know how many were all in the front of this church.

And they sang the songs he had written in like five-part harmony.

Tears rolling down their faces.

Like it was just one of those moments in my life that it's like experiencing.

I can't even,

I don't actually have words.

But you're sitting there experiencing what's real.

Experiencing God.

Experiencing true humanity.

True whatever it is we're here to experience.

That's what I experienced that day.

Like I,

To this day,

I don't,

You know,

I have no words.

It was just amazing.

And that's what I mean.

Like love isn't about do I love you personally.

Not what we're talking about today.

We're talking about the joy of being human and allowing love to flow out of us,

Into us,

Just allowing it to flow.

That's all we're talking about today.

And when we can live in a state of just love,

Just loving,

We're so happy.

Like it's not a service to humanity.

It's not anything like that.

We just are so filled with love.

It just naturally pours out of us.

So that's why it's really interesting to talk about this today because somewhere deep inside we know this.

We know that we're meant to love.

But we get cheated out of it.

And we get caught in situations where there should be love or we should feel this love.

We should feel free to express this love and we should also be receiving love.

But we're not.

And that breaks us apart.

That does something in our soul that creates depression,

That creates anxiety,

That creates despair,

That creates feelings so alone.

You know,

Again we can often feel very alone because we sense that no one loves us.

But we have it backwards,

Right?

In this,

In this level of 500,

It's just about loving.

It's about going out and just loving,

Loving people.

Maybe it's going to an old age home and just loving people and reading with them and spending time with them.

My first teacher,

Jim,

He defined love as connection.

It was just simply how human beings connect.

That human beings are naturally social creatures.

And that doesn't mean we're meant to go out and party and get together and do stuff.

And that's not what social means.

It means that we're meant to be connected.

We're not meant to be alone.

We're not meant to be isolated.

Human beings thrive when we have connections to other people.

And we can define those connections however we want.

But we do very well when we are connected to others.

And of course historically,

Because we've lived in a time where there wasn't love.

We've lived through centuries,

Millennia,

Where love was called all kinds of things.

Well,

I'm just doing this because I love you.

I'm just telling you this because I love you.

I'm doing this for your own good.

And we've defined love as jealousy,

As possessiveness,

As all these things.

But it isn't love at all.

It's something else.

So we come today and we say,

Well then what is love?

What is it all about?

It's funny.

So I teach Tantra and I've been teaching it for a long time.

And when I would work with people,

I would do workshops or I'd teach online.

There was always this struggle to actually feel this incredible merging of souls.

What is this tantric love,

This tantric intimacy?

I mean,

Tantra is obviously way more than that,

Which is what we're going to talk about today.

But how do we do that?

Why can't we just feel this exceptional flow of divine energy through this union of souls?

Why can't we do that?

Why is it so hard?

And then after a time,

People kept asking me,

They kept saying,

You know,

What book can I read to help me get there?

And because my journey through tantra wasn't through learning from books or from teachers,

I had to write a book.

So I wrote this book,

Tantric Intimacy,

Which I'm going to talk about in a minute.

And I realized that the foundation of true connection,

Of true tantric living,

Was love.

And that we had to completely redefine it.

We had to redefine everything we believe about love and relationships,

Intimate parents,

Children,

Friends,

Colleagues,

Us in the world and strangers.

We had to completely redefine it because everything we understand about it before actually pushes us apart.

It actually creates walls.

It actually creates animosity.

It actually creates power struggles.

And as long as any of that is present,

We can't connect.

Let alone completely drop all of our guards,

Open every cell of our body and merge with another being,

Which is what we're made for.

And I mean whether friends,

Intimate,

Whatever.

But we have to redefine love because it's just been so twisted up.

And so in this book,

What came to me were the three kinds of love that they speak about in the ancient Greek philosophy.

The agape is the foundation.

And I'm going to talk more about this in terms of all these levels of consciousness.

But agape is the kind of love that we simply just love.

This is what we're talking about.

This foundation of feeling connected to every single soul on the planet.

We don't even have to know them.

We just know that we're connected.

We are all here.

We are all in it together.

And so in this agape,

There is such respect that every single person here has a journey.

We all have a soul's path to take.

We all came in with different challenges,

Whether it's karmic or family or pain or trauma.

We all came in with different gifts,

Different things that light us up.

And that creates a very interesting version of self.

And as soon as we understand that about each other,

There's no judgment.

There's no anything because the bottom line is if I really look inside myself and I realize how complex a being I am and how much of myself I don't even understand,

I don't even understand what drives certain behaviors,

And I'm slowly unpacking all of those unconscious realities throughout my own life,

Well,

If I was to look at you,

How would I ever judge what you're doing?

I know that you're just unpacking your own unconscious bit by bit and learning in every moment.

That's all.

So this is this beautiful agape that just says,

You know what?

Do you.

And if you do something mean to me,

I'll probably avert my path.

It's not about just putting up with weird stuff,

But I'll totally respect your journey.

So when we're in this place of beautiful non-judgment,

Kindness rules.

Kindness isn't something you do.

We just naturally are kind because I naturally genuinely believe you're on a path and you're on a journey.

So why wouldn't I be kind to you?

The last thing you need is someone being mean to you or cruel to you or sarcastic with you or biting with you,

Jokes with a jab and all these kind of things.

Why would I do anything like that?

I know you're struggling just like we all are.

It's all good.

You know,

This is agape.

And then sometimes we meet people who we have a real affinity for.

For some reason,

Our souls go,

Oh,

Hi.

Want to be friends?

Like there's just something that that person jumps out out of a hundred people and we go.

I like talking to you.

And then feelia,

Brotherly love,

Feelia begins to deepen the love.

Right.

And feelia is it's when we can trust this other person.

They become a confidant.

They become someone who no matter what,

We can count on them.

You know,

They're there.

They're our friend.

They they'll stand up for us.

They understand us.

They love us at a deepest,

A deeper level.

And then every so often we meet someone who has this little extra something something.

Right.

And eros blooms.

Eros has this like for whatever reason is a different spark.

Something.

And it's funny because eros isn't something that you can make happen.

It's either either there or it's not.

If you simply have a gopic love for someone that's that's what it is.

That's reality.

If you have feelia love then that's the reality.

And for some people for some reason there's eros.

You know and we don't know why it's there for some and not there for others.

Part of our very interesting complex multi-dimensional selves.

I don't begin to understand it and I don't even know if I really want to.

The mystery is kind of exciting.

It's kind of more fun to live in the question on that one.

So these are the three levels of love and a friend of mine.

Well she's actually my daughter's friend.

Beautiful lovely girl.

She's an artist.

And I asked her if she would draw a representation of what I was talking about.

So I had written all this out and I sent it to her and I said can you draw me something that describes this in a relationship.

And she drew this tree.

And how agape is the foundation the roots of the relationship.

Kindness is where we get all the nutrition.

It's where we get all the water the soil that and it's also the foundation of the relationship.

And then philia is the trunk and the branches the strength of the relationship.

And eros is all the blossoms and the leaves.

And it's so beautiful and there's so many ways to look at this and this is why kindness.

If you look at agape.

Why kindness is so important because every time we aren't kind.

It's like one of those roots are snipped.

Little cut little cut here little cut there.

Right.

And every time those roots are snipped.

We get a little weaker the relationship becomes a little weaker.

The tree starts to die just a little.

It doesn't die right away but it starts to die just a little.

You know.

And this is really really important and this is what this is what we're going to talk about more here.

Why kindness.

Kindness is what connects us.

Those are the roots of the agave agape.

Those are the roots of the tree.

Every time we don't have kindness.

Everything else falls apart.

Philia falls apart.

The trust falls apart.

And Eros becomes lust.

Eros becomes something completely different and disconnected.

So what I want to do.

Is I want to talk about.

How this how love because understand every one of us.

Knows we it's like in our soul we understand what love is.

Like Plato used to talk about the pure states of being.

And one he talked about love.

And we've sort of you know.

We talk about platonic love.

You know and then oh well that just means you don't want to have sex.

But what it really is.

Is pure love.

Just connection.

Just pure love.

No expectation.

It doesn't matter whether because of that love you choose to play racquetball.

You choose to have sex or you choose to drink coffee.

The love.

Is the point.

The platonic love is the point.

You know.

And it isn't that he's saying that you know.

Love that also includes Philia and Eros.

There's something lesser about that.

But it has to begin.

With the purity of love.

The purity of agape.

So it's really important for us to understand.

The things that look like love.

Because we're all wrestling.

In some of those areas below courage.

You know so before we can talk about living in a state of love.

In that 500 level.

It's really important for us to understand what love isn't.

But because we know this deep in our soul.

Every single one of us.

Has connection to this pure love.

We seek it.

Regardless of our circumstances.

Whatever situation we're in.

Whatever love relationship we're in.

Whatever intimate relationships we're in.

We try to find this.

And we don't know better.

You know if we've never seen it.

How would we know?

This must be love right?

I mean.

It's all I've ever experienced.

It's the only reality I've ever experienced.

And I know that love is real.

So this must be love.

Right?

It's very.

It's not.

It's a pretty natural state.

So when we look at our chart.

Let's look at the bottom ones.

Let's look at shame and guilt.

Imagine you're living.

In a space of shame and guilt.

So you feel badly about yourself.

Self worth is kind of in the toilet.

You feel guilty maybe from.

Your upbringing.

Maybe it's good old Catholic guilt.

Maybe it's shame because society says you shouldn't have done that.

Or.

Where you were born or what family you were born.

Whatever there's so much shame and guilt in the world.

How would we experience love in that state?

Very fearful.

Because.

If someone loves us.

And someone says wow.

I really I'm in love with you.

The first thing is this contraction.

Because.

Because we're filled with shame and guilt.

It's like.

Oh I don't.

It's okay that you love me but.

At some point you're going to find out what a horrible person I am.

You're going to find out.

You're going to know.

You're going to know that I'm not actually a nice person.

You're going to find out that I'm.

Like if you knew everything about me.

You wouldn't love me.

You know so.

You probably don't even love me.

You probably just want something from me or.

You know I'll just keep you at a distance and I can't fully connect with you.

So.

This person cannot connect because the shame and the guilt.

Are holding huge barriers up.

To true connection.

Because we're so afraid.

That the other person will.

Feel about us.

The way we feel about us.

So love is almost impossible.

You know.

And it's still important we can all get there.

We just have to begin that journey inside the shame and guilt and say.

Hold on a minute.

I'm a human being.

Just like everybody.

And I fully deserve love.

And we stop judging ourselves.

It's sort of that reaching for courage or reaching even for this pure love and saying.

Hold on a minute.

I am a divine being.

You can't tell me that I'm wrong.

You can't shame me for what I've done.

This is just my journey.

And maybe this is where we really start loving self and we say.

It's okay.

Maybe I've done things that I shouldn't have.

But you know what?

We all make mistakes.

Or we all acted in ways.

You know people always ask me.

You know because I was married for 20 years and.

Do I regret things I said or did or could I have done things differently.

And the truth is.

I acted exactly as a 23 year old young person would have acted.

I truly did my best based on where I was.

That's it.

There's no judgment of it.

It's just.

You know are there things today if I knew then what I know now.

A hundred percent.

But I didn't know it then.

It wasn't like I had an option that I could fast forward my life into a consciousness 30 years later.

That's not reality.

And that's guilt and shame.

When it's not just simply imposed from other.

That's a whole other spiritual journey letting all that go.

So then when we jump up a level we go into apathy.

So in apathy we don't want to be controlled by others.

We don't want to feel shame and guilt.

But to be able to actually feel love in that state is also impossible.

Because we've intentionally disconnected from other.

Right.

Because remember everything below courage is about other.

Either forcing other or feeling life from other.

From other people.

So in apathy we've cut ourselves off.

We're like I'm not going to feel anything because so far everything I've felt is just pain.

So I'm not feeling anything.

So when we feel nothing we also shut out love.

So if you're in love with someone who's apathetic we're in big trouble.

Or if we feel apathy we're in big trouble when it comes to feeling love.

We jump up to the next it's grief.

So this is where we're beginning to actually risk feeling love.

We're risking connection.

You know if we imagine love to be connection we're risking connection.

So now I'm connecting out to other people.

But of course now comes some fear because I could lose them.

Now what is love?

How do we define love when we live in a state of grief?

Because I loved that person and they left me.

I loved that person and they passed away.

I loved that and I've now lost it.

Now all of a sudden what do we say?

What are the mantras?

Love is pain.

Love is difficult.

Love hurts.

Right this is how we're defining love.

Love is this roller coaster of emotion.

This is what we believe love to be.

Because that's our primary emotion right now.

You know it's but is it true?

Is love pain?

Is what we're talking about today pain?

But in that state love is pain.

And don't get me wrong I mean we could be resonating in love in 500 and lose someone and we cry.

Right it's not a it's not grief is a very natural emotion.

Don't get me wrong when we get stuck there whole other world.

But the natural process of grief or the natural process of anger and all that very very healthy.

It's when we get stuck there that's the danger right.

Because these it's interesting like what gets us stuck there?

These mantras these ideas well love is pain.

Yeah well you know may as well jump into the fire you know that's how it goes.

And we start repeating these over and over and over again.

Even being married or being in a relationship that's difficult.

Yeah well love is tough right.

I mean that's just the way it is that's apathy talking.

That's when you're in a relationship and you've given up on ever actually experiencing anything beyond.

You know who took the garbage out and having sex every Tuesday or something like that.

That's apathy talking that yeah well you know honeymoon period ends and then.

You know love changes and we start to philosophize about how love changes after that.

And it becomes very comfortable and you know you don't expect all that passion and stuff anymore.

That's apathy but we define this as love right.

And it's very safe it's safer than shame and guilt.

But it's apathy nonetheless.

Then we jump up into anger.

Anger stronger than guilt and apathy and all that.

What does love feel like if we're stuck in anger?

Well everything they do pisses us off.

We have jealousy.

We have all kinds of possessiveness.

We have every reason in the world to be flying off the hill.

Well don't you know I love you.

What's wrong with you and how could you do that.

And you know and this and love becomes this vehicle for feeling all this emotional juice.

You know so if you're always angry at the other person you kind of go.

Okay why am I always angry at this person.

What is this anger?

What is underneath this anger?

That's the question right.

What's underneath this anger?

That and this is where a lot of the people who were studying with me they were like.

Well if you don't get angry once in a while I mean are you even in love.

Do you even care if you don't get jealous and if you don't do this if you don't have.

I mean that's what love is right.

You know if you're not angry about how they did the toothbrush I mean do you even care.

You know are you just apathetic.

Then we jump up from anger and we head into pride.

What if we're living in pride.

Well what does love mean there.

Love means finding a partner who looks right.

Who has the right job.

Who has the right body.

Who is the right age.

Who is the right I don't know nationality.

Who is the right whatever.

Because they're part of my pride place right now.

Is that love.

You know or if we lose that love it hurts my pride.

Oh so you're saying you don't love me.

Is that what you're saying.

We're super defensive like because our pride is really driving us.

This is really really important.

Right.

And so as soon as someone says well I just don't think this is going to work out.

Right.

It's like shot to the heart.

How could you say this like this is all like my entire self-worth and sense of being is wrapped up in this.

So then we head into courage.

Courage to love.

Courage to be loved.

Courage to love someone who might not love us back.

Courage to let someone love us and actually receive that love.

To open ourselves up and when they say you know you're a really great person.

That we look at them and we say thanks.

That means a lot.

You know that when someone cares for us or wants to make love with us or whatever.

We receive that.

Imagine.

Imagine not assuming that they want something.

Or imagine not being afraid that they're going to find out our little secret and then they won't love us anymore.

Because this is different.

Especially if they too are living in a state of courage or above.

They're also very self-aware that everyone's got stuff.

Everyone's got a past.

Everyone's got stories.

Everyone's got regrets.

Everyone's got things.

It's okay.

What are we going to do?

What do we want to build?

Why did our souls find each other on this journey?

And above courage we come to neutrality.

How does love live in neutrality?

Neutrality is like it in the lower levels it feels like I don't care.

Feels like apathy.

But neutrality is just I love you anyway.

I love you whether we live together.

I love you whether we're meant to be together.

Whether we're married.

I just love you.

I see you.

I see you as a human.

I see you as a being.

I recognize you as someone.

But there's no pressure.

There's no possessiveness.

There's no requirement.

There's no anything.

We just love.

And like what I'm talking about now feels very foreign,

Right?

If we're stuck in a fear space or a oh yeah I skipped fear.

That's interesting serendipity I guess.

Because of course fear fuels so many of those other levels,

Right?

Fear of loss.

Fear of abandonment.

Fear of you know rejection.

All these things and this is huge.

These aren't like oh look at you all afraid of rejection.

That's not it.

That's a huge deal.

When I was first single you know I loved being married.

Mostly not mostly I loved him.

But I was afraid of being alone.

I was afraid of what that meant.

I was afraid that I wasn't lovable.

I was afraid of everything.

And then when we divorced those fears still existed.

But now I was 44 years old and on the single scene.

And I was terrified to have to reject men.

This is what I was telling people.

That I was telling people.

Telling myself that well it's hard to date because I don't want to have to say no to people.

And I don't want to make them feel bad.

But then eventually I go deeper into myself and I realize it's me that's afraid of rejection.

It's me.

Because I'm so afraid of rejection.

I don't want them to feel how I feel when I'm rejected.

It had nothing to do with them.

It was all about my own.

And once I got over that.

I talk about it in the book.

I went through a period of celibacy because I realized that I had a few issues.

Around relationships.

And I really started to truly love self.

And I really went into this different space and I realized that rejection isn't what we think it is.

Sometimes our paths just don't line up that way.

And that's it.

It's not actually interesting and it's not personal.

Then the rejection piece didn't matter so much.

You know then that neutrality almost blossomed.

Because you'd go on a date.

And if it's meant to be then the sparks will be there and if it's not meant to be then they won't be.

And you met a new person.

That's all.

It's not personal.

It doesn't go against you or anything else.

And you just continue.

I met some really interesting people that also had great perspectives like that.

That yeah I've met so many interesting people.

It's so cool.

You know and you know it's kind of great.

The next phase up is willingness.

Willingness in love.

What does that look like?

Imagine just pouring your heart out.

And you're just willing to step into whatever.

And again we're also this is a divine thing.

This isn't like someone asked you to do something and your soul is like uh-uh and you're still willing.

This is in this is an alignment with your truth.

And so you're encouraged too right so you know that you can say yeah that doesn't feel right for me right now.

But it isn't you're unwilling to step into your own truth.

But you know that you have to walk your path.

Then we keep going up to reason.

I think reason.

Acceptance.

Acceptance.

Imagine loving in a state of acceptance.

Imagine even in your any relationship you're in right now with partners,

Children,

Friends,

Everything.

Acceptance.

We did a big talk on acceptance.

Huge deal.

To actually truly stop trying to change people.

Can you imagine actually looking at this other person and fully accepting that they are on a journey.

This is their path.

This is where they're at right now.

Nothing to change.

Nothing to fix.

They are on a path right now.

Whether we choose to be on that path with them or not.

Whether or not the universe has given us a hundred signs that we're not on that path with them right now.

Or the universe has given us a hundred signs that we are and we're meant to learn things.

You know,

Like I remember even when I was married when it started to sort of dawn on me that maybe there was something actually amuck.

Maybe this wasn't okay,

This marriage.

And I would pray and I would say,

Am I meant to stay or am I meant to go?

And for many,

Many years the answer was stay.

So,

I accept that and I guess I'm meant to learn stuff.

So,

You pay attention more and you speak your truth more and you try to find kindness and you try to find the way or you learn or whatever.

Imagine looking at someone and saying and genuinely accepting them.

Not saying,

I accept the way you are.

I just,

I just wish.

That's not acceptance.

Acceptance is genuinely when you look at another soul and there's no judgment,

There's no nothing.

We're all again,

We're all just kids in the sandbox and we go,

Yeah that's Johnny.

It's like the ultimate book if you've ever read the Tao of Pooh.

And you look around and you know that some people are ewers and some people are owls that never stop talking.

And some people are like rabbit who just love to work and some people are this and some people are that.

Pure acceptance.

No one tries to change Eeyore.

No one tries to change Owl.

No one tries to change Piglet and say,

Piglet you shouldn't be so frightened all the time.

They just love each other.

They just accept.

So,

Then let's fly into love.

So,

Imagine that within us.

So,

We are encouraged.

We feel neutrality in the world.

We are existing.

We feel willingness to step wherever we're meant to go.

We have acceptance for all around us.

We have reason that we actually understand.

This great quote by Leo Tolstoy.

If you understand everything,

You can forgive everything.

You know from this state,

From this neutral state.

From this acceptance state.

You understand everything.

Because we can see ourselves in all things.

We're not polarized.

We're not this is right and this is wrong.

And on top of all of that is love.

Just love.

It's so simple.

It's almost so simple.

It's so quiet.

That we just see people and we love them.

And we love the earth and we love ourselves and we love,

We just love.

Does that person want to live with us for the rest of our life?

I don't know.

But I love them.

Is that what our call is?

Is that what our assignment is this time?

I don't know.

If it is,

That'll be an adventure and if it's not,

Then there's another adventure.

It isn't about that.

It could be.

Now imagine this agape,

Philia,

Eros in this state of love.

So do I require love from anyone else?

No.

Because I literally am love.

Right?

It's just,

I just love people.

It's like the most beautiful thing to get to love other people.

It makes us feel good.

When we get to love,

When we look at someone and we actually practice loving them with no strings,

No nothing.

They don't have to do anything.

We just get to love them.

Love flows through us and it nourishes us and it makes us happy and we feel human and we feel divine and we feel amazing.

And then we meet someone and we kind of think,

Wow,

I have a little extra something something for you.

And they go,

Really?

That's weird.

I kind of don't really,

You know,

Have that for you.

And it's like,

Oh,

Okay,

Cool.

The other interesting thing at that state of love,

You love more people.

There's no scarcity.

A lot of our love ideas are based in scarcity.

But if you don't love me back,

I'll never find someone.

Let's say the desire is to find a partner.

Then you think,

Oh my God,

There's no one else out there if it's not you.

But this is a scarcity idea that it has to be this one person out of the seven and a half billion people on the planet.

But when you just become love,

Possibilities are endless and you're not missing anybody because love is flowing through you,

Whether or not there's someone in your life or not.

It's a very,

Very different perspective because,

Again,

Everything comes from inside.

Below courage,

It's about do they love me because then that helps me feel good,

Right?

But above courage,

You're just a soul having an experience on the planet.

It's very different.

You are exploring love.

You are exploring connection.

You are exploring putting it all out there.

Can you feel that?

Can you feel the silence in that?

There's no drama.

There's no anything.

It's just this lovely feeling.

Cool.

How do you feel the love for someone if they are verbally abusive?

So the thing is,

When someone's abusive,

You as a person still feel love.

When they are abusive,

They push you away.

So there's no connection there.

Right?

If someone's being abusive to you,

They're not connected to you.

There's no love there.

They're not loving you.

So if you're in a relationship with someone who's verbally abusive,

You can kind of let them.

To me,

It's just an adult having a temper tantrum.

So it'd be like if one of my children were freaking out and losing their mind and having a tantrum.

I still love them.

Right?

I mean,

I hold them while they have their flailing tantrum.

I love them.

They're my children and I'm meant to raise them.

If I'm in a relationship with someone who's abusive,

I may also hold them like the two-year-old they're acting like and allow them to lose their mind.

But if they don't grow out of it,

You know,

Whether I love them or not is one thing.

Whether I choose to continue to let them have tantrums around me is a completely different thing.

Again,

This is sort of that acceptance question.

You look at someone and you say,

For some reason,

This person is lashing out in anger.

This is where they're at in their journey.

I don't know why.

I don't know why they have some need to make other people feel less than them,

But they do.

And from there,

We make choices.

We make choices whether or not we want to be in an intimate relationship or married to them or live with them or whatever.

But that's our choice.

It's actually the acceptance of where they're at that allows us to make those choices.

You know?

I'm on the journey to love myself.

I don't know where to start.

It's interesting.

I think imagine instead the journey to loving self is the field,

The journey of connecting to self,

Like replacing the word love with connection.

So we actually so in tantra,

For example,

One of the first things we do is you do this mirror gazing,

Eye gazing.

If you were the partner,

You might look into their eyes.

But if you're on your own,

You look into a mirror.

And the first time I ever looked into a mirror like that,

I cried and cried and cried because I realized how disconnected I was from who I was inside.

So the journey to loving self is just about listening to self,

Connecting to self.

Forget the love word.

Just connect to self.

And in every moment,

Honor your feelings,

Honor your truth,

Honor who you are.

And then it just slowly builds.

You know?

I have a talk also.

I don't know whether it's on Insight Timer or on my YouTube channel that came from Insight Timer.

All about self-love.

There's a lot of I've done a lot of talks about self-love.

So definitely check out either on my profile here on my on my YouTube channel.

There's a lot.

Huge deal.

Because that's why we that's why we struggle with love.

Because we're disconnected to self.

So how can we possibly actually connect with another person?

Right?

If we can't if we're not connecting within,

It's almost like,

You know,

When I started dating,

It was so funny because you start to get into that dating culture.

Then you start to learn about what happens on dates and this and that and ghosting and everything,

You know,

Bizarre things about dating in this time.

And I remember someone saying that when you have the first meeting,

If you meet online,

That the person sends the representative,

You don't actually meet the real person.

So in a lot of ways,

When we don't love self,

We actually only ever let the other person see our representative.

We don't ever let them inside.

We just keep them here.

And the first step is for us to turn around and actually connect with self.

And when we love ourselves,

When we actually look at ourselves and go,

You know,

You're awesome,

You're okay,

You're whatever,

You're what you are,

Then someone else loves you.

And you're like,

This is who I am.

And it's not like,

Here's all my bad habits.

You better like them all.

Not that.

But it's really loving self and saying,

Yeah,

There's been some things I've regretted.

How come Eros type love makes so strong feelings,

Sometimes total bliss and sometimes just wonder what just happened.

So one of the big things when I was writing Tantric Intimacy and I was really thinking about this idea of Eros.

It's a fascinating thing to write a book.

Sometimes I write books to flesh out ideas.

You know,

It's one thing to personally have an idea or even have things that you teach to your circles of people or your students or your whatever community.

It's another thing to write something that's supposed to be applicable to everybody.

So it causes a lot of,

For me,

It's a lot of long tubs,

Long bathtubs,

Because it's sort of that having to sort of find the truth in there.

And it was really interesting to discern the difference between Eros,

Or what we often describe as erotic love and lust.

And lust is that connection,

It's that sexual desire without that intimate connection,

Without the foundation of agape and philia first.

And again,

If people want to,

You know,

Lusty relationships are super exciting and passionate and,

You know,

All that kind of thing.

In the same way that in the animal kingdom,

That desire to mate,

Right,

That,

You know,

This life force coming through me.

And it's just all I've got to do is go out and mate and it's like super powerful.

Lust is great for that.

Eros is very different.

True Eros.

Eros blooms in this incredible,

In like that tree,

In this tree of safety and connection and trust and kindness and respect.

That kind of Eros takes you to the moon,

It takes you to,

It connects you with the consciousness,

With the quantum field.

You are literally,

One man,

Lovely man I was with,

He used to call it when we made love,

He'd say,

I don't understand,

He says all of a sudden,

It would just be like poof.

That's how he described it.

Poof.

And that's very different than the passion and whatever of lust,

You know.

How do I move through the questioning and second guessing while forming love connections with self and others?

The key is to really listen within.

You know that sometimes when we're in relationships,

There are little white flags that go up or little yellow flags or whatever you want to call them that make you go,

Did I hear that right?

You know,

There's these little things that make you say,

Oh,

Wait a minute,

This isn't smelling right.

And it's okay to say something.

The problem is,

Is that when we,

When we live in a state of fear,

We live in a state and we've had a lot of difficult experiences,

Especially growing up,

We assume that maybe we're wrong.

It's like we gaslight ourself.

We're like,

Oh,

No,

You're just sensitive from the past and you're just reading this wrong and this person's done all this.

So it's this beautiful journey inside of listening.

I'm feeling this inhibition,

I'm feeling that.

That's valuable.

That's perfect.

And it's just that's really the connection is here's what I'm feeling and you can check it with the person or whatever.

But it's just,

It's just that's the journey inside,

Not to that person.

Do I trust you?

Do I trust you?

Do I trust you?

To trust me.

That's,

That's the journey.

Every other person.

It's like,

And this sounds really cold,

But other people are just players in our lives.

The journey is always ours.

Doesn't matter who we're with.

It's always our journey.

Whether we choose to be with someone,

Whether we choose to merge with someone,

Whether we choose to choose to open ourselves and love them and care for them and all those kind of things.

It's our experience of loving them.

It's our experience of caring for them.

It's our experience of receiving love.

It's always about us,

Which sounds very self-centered,

But it's always that.

So if you're in a new relationship,

It is,

Isn't that interesting?

I'm feeling this.

I wonder if that's accurate.

I wonder if it is an old pattern,

But it's my journey.

You know,

And we together are on a journey together.

We are both autonomous,

Sovereign beings on a journey.

Both playing with each other and deciding,

Do you want to walk together for a while?

Do you want to explore our connection for a while?

That'd be nice.

That'd be fun.

But it's still our path.

It's still our journey.

How do we teach our children to love themselves?

The one big thing for me is again this agape.

When my kids were little,

That's when I got sick.

I had breast lumps and things like that.

And I had spent my whole life not loving self and people pleasing and trying to be everything to everyone else.

And my kids were two and four then.

And so my journey,

My spiritual journey was to really actually come to the place where I mattered.

Like if I'm going to hear divine guidance,

If I'm going to actually live this soul's path that I was meant to live,

I've got to be home.

I've got to actually be here.

I've got to actually be listening to the guidance inside of me or else I'm just living someone else's path,

Which doesn't make any sense.

And so one,

My kids would have witnessed me doing that.

Me making difficult choices in the name of my own soul's path.

In the name of I don't,

You know,

They would say how come we want to,

We're going to do this and I'd say I don't know.

That's just what I feel called to do.

And then of course we naturally,

Once we do it for ourselves,

We naturally do it for our kids.

If we are truly in a space of self-love,

We will want to cultivate self-love in our children.

And we will have this agape bubble that they are raised in.

That whoever they are,

Whatever their soul is meant to grow into.

If you imagine a child like an acorn and within that acorn is the blueprint of a mighty oak tree.

And I know that's a well used metaphor.

But all I want to do as a parent is create a situation where they can grow into that tree.

Do I know what the tree is?

No,

It's not a little version of me.

It's a little version of something else.

But I don't know what their tree looks like.

So the best thing I can do,

You know,

Back to our tree analogy,

Make sure it's a beautiful soil,

Lots of water,

Lots of sun.

But I have nothing to do with how they grow up.

They know that.

They have intrinsic wisdom.

They have the wisdom of the kernel within them to grow into whatever soul they're meant to grow into.

I think it's the best thing we can do as parents.

Because then all of a sudden they're like,

Well,

I don't know what to do.

And it's like,

Well,

You know,

It's your guidance.

It's you.

I mean,

My soul has ideas about my soul's path.

But I don't know what you should do.

You do.

And that's to me the best thing to do with children.

Well,

Thank you guys so much for being here.

I'll see you later.

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