Open Your Heart | Conscious Transitions

To See Beyond Attraction

By Sheryl Paul, on August 12th, 2018

There comes a time in a relationship when, if you’ve done your inner work, you see beyond all externals into the essence of a human being. Clients who are struggling with the attraction spike often ask me, “I’m constantly checking to see if I’m attracted to my partner, and when I’m not I get a pit in my stomach. Will the day ever come when I look at him/her and just find her attractive?” Not only will you find your partner attractive, but you’ll stop checking. At some point, when you’ve worked enough with fear walls and rejection/projection layers, your partner is just your partner, and when you look at him or her you’ll look through eyes that see at the level of being.

This reminds me of something a woman named Jill, who I interviewed for my book and again for my e-course, said when I asked how she … Click here to continue reading...

When Infatuation Leads To Dead Butterflies

By Sheryl Paul, on July 29th, 2018

Love is a verb. This is one of the great truths about love that our culture fails to teach, one that, even when we understand the principle, we need to remember it and practice it over and over again. I think of marriage or any long-term, committed relationship with a willing, open partner as an opportunity to practice loving – the active form of the verb – day after day and year after year until it becomes second nature. The culture teaches us that we’re supposed to know how to love from the day one. What that really means is that we think we’re supposed to feel in love early on. This isn’t possible. Like any skill, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at loving. From the practice the feelings arise – a nice frosting on the cake of love – but we don’t practice loving so that… Click here to continue reading...

Trust Your Gut

By Sheryl Paul, on March 4th, 2018

It happens in an instant: your partner comes to you for a kiss or sends a flirty text and your body tightens and recoils. Your habitual, culturally-conditioned mind interprets your physical response as “truth”: “This is my body’s way of telling me that something is wrong in our relationship. I’ve been told my entire life to trust my body, that my body doesn’t lie, so if this was the right relationship surely I wouldn’t have this negative physical response. Everyone tells me to ‘trust my gut’ and here it is. My gut is clearly telling me that this must be wrong. And now my panic button has been hit and I feel like I can’t breathe.”

If we understood how fear works, we would be able to offer another interpretation, which might sound something like this: “My body is registering fear right now. From what I know about fear, the … Click here to continue reading...

Shrink Fear Grow Love

By Sheryl Paul, on February 25th, 2018

When the fear-fog clears, when the projection that has kept him separate from you and sealed a barnacle over your heart finally shatters, you see your partner as if for the first time. Not only do you see her clearly, in all of her sweet and simple splendor, but the delusions of separateness fall away, and you can see how under the hooks of

hair or

teeth or

height or

education or

ambition or

boredom or

do we have enough to talk about or

he’s wrong for me or

she’s not attractive enough or

I’m always irritated or

mannerisms or

humor or

social fluidity or

so-called chemistry

lives the voice that says:

I have loved you all along.

In those moments of clear-seeing, like sunshine after rain, it’s as if there is no “me” or “you” but only us, or maybe it’s fully me and fully you that makes the … Click here to continue reading...

I Love You Go Away

By Sheryl Paul, on February 18th, 2018

Among the many misconceptions that people have about love – that it’s only a feeling, that the feeling of being “in love” should exist from day one, that attraction is static and based on external attributes – the faulty belief that often gets swept under the rug more than any other is that love is ambivalent. What does this mean? It means that:

Love includes doubt Love includes indifference Love includes boredom Love includes numbness Love includes irritation Love includes the need for space Love includes doubt Love includes – dare I use such a strong word – hate

We live in a culture that thrives off of definitive answers, which essentially means that we squeeze life into dualism: you can either feel happy or sad (but never both at the same time). You can either feel attracted or not attracted, but certainly not both within the span of an … Click here to continue reading...