Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream.
If you’ve found your way to my site and are reading this it’s likely because you have a dream of love. You have a vision, a deep longing, to grow a life with someone you love, someone with whom you share values and connection, someone with whom you can stand on a street corner in your seventies holding hands and kissing under the light of the moon.
If you’re like most of the people who find their way to my site, it’s also quite likely that the person standing before you is someone with whom you can create this life. Here is a partner who is everything that matters, who says yes where the others said no, who is devoted and honest, reliable and kind. Perhaps you dated scores of women until you found one that with whom it… just worked. Perhaps you’ve been with your partner since high school. Perhaps you had a sense on the first date that he was different. But now, while you know that your partner is special, you don’t feel as much love and attraction for him or her as you once did or you know you can.
The gratitude lists that grace my Conscious Weddings E-Course forum every week invariably bring me to tears. These are not generic lists of generic traits; no, these are intimate and detailed portraits that highlight the qualities and actions of extraordinary partners. So why are these people flocking to my forums? Because fear has clouded their hearts and they can no longer feel the goodness.
Gratitude is one of the most potent Loving Actions you can take to kick fear out of the driver’s seat. While it’s important to excavate the root causes of fear, it’s equally essential to take loving action that sends the message to fear: I hear you but I’m not listening to you. The gratitude practice is one of the 30 Loving Actions we’ll focus on in the Open Your Heart program. Alongside the 29 others, you can learn to open your heart so you can live the waking dream of a connected, shared life with your partner.
Because here’s the secret: Life can be a dream if we learn the Love Laws and Loving Actions that act like a prescription for what real love is all about. When we learn to see real love and not push it away, the dream grows like sunflowers in a well-tended garden.
The prescription we’ve been handed is faulty at best, dangerous at worst. We’ve been handed a bill of goods that says: Love is only a feeling. Love should always be easy. If you don’t die for each other and miss each other tragically when you’re away, you’re with the wrong person. The messages and images we’ve absorbed about love are an illusion but we’ve been told that they’re the dream.
The tragic and pervasive cultural illusion (and the more I work with clients from around the world it seems that the illusion may be almost worldwide) is that you can only fall in love with someone who fits what you think is your physical “type”; that externals have anything to do with real love; that the feeling of love is something that just happens to you, like falling into a puddle, and that if the feeling isn’t there from the beginning there’s nothing you can do to grow it; that sexual attraction is also a stroke of luck ; and that feeling in love is some kind of magic potion that comes from the other person, i.e.: “He makes me feel so happy.” This is all illusion, the cultural dream that we’re conditioned to believe.
The real dream is that the feeling of love can be cultivated.
The real dream is that attraction can be grown.
The real dream is that almost everything you learned about love is false.
The real dream is learning to embrace the wonderful partner who stands before you. The real dream is understanding the Love Laws and Loving Actions that will help you soften the fear-sentinals who stand guard around your heart, reminding you silently of past hurts so that you’ll never have to hurt again. The dream is creating such a strong foundation inside of yourself where you cultivate so much self-love and kindness that this fullness naturally radiates out toward your partner. The dream is showing up even when you don’t feel like showing up, recognizing that to be the sweet little old couple cuddled up on the porch swing at seventy requires a passionate commitment to move toward each other, softening the walls over months, years, and even decades until only the vulnerable, openhearted places remain.
Do you want to learn the Love Laws and Loving Actions that will help you live the dream?
