Sacred Love: 12 Things at the Bottom of Everything**

For people who are treating themselves like shit, romantically. Or suffering from a major crisis of faith. Or both. And don't even realize it. *cough* my former self *cough*. Or anyone who knows that nothing matters more than love.

1. You have to know that you're sacred. If you want to be treated sacredly, if you want holy-fucking-yes experiences, if you're really honestly in it to win it: you cannot pretend that your body, feelings, desires, preferences, rhythms, health or happiness don't matter. THEY MATTER. Love is our gateway to the sacred. And all of your parts are meant to feel it. If you're not feeling sacred in your experience, it's not love.

2. You have to know that everything is sacred. The person you want to get something from. The person who took something from you, irrevocably. The honest-to-god terror you didn't want to go through. The person who's pissed at you for leaving. The loneliness, the desperation, the flailing. The quiet realization that changes everything. Nothing can be excluded from the fullness of the sacred. Bless your growing pains--expansiveness is surest the way to love. 

3. You have to really see and accept that everything material dies. You. Her. Him. The Us We Create That We Want To Last Forever. Nothing material lives forever. Nothing. In really seeing and accepting this, you're much faster, braver, ballsy-er for the things that excite your soul. You're also a whole lot more honest. You worry less, let go, go for it. And this is what we need--people brave enough to go for broke, because ultimately, nothing goes with you to the grave. There's no savings account or retirement plan for love. There's now, and how you choose to amaze yourself, or not.

4. You have to protect what you respect. Which means you have to figure out what you respect. Here are some recommendations: your body, your time, your heart, your quality of life, your inner-peace, you feminine expression, theirs, the thing you spent a lot of care building, the Earth. We're slowly waking up as a people, getting better at treating each other with respect. In the mean time, the best way to help the process is to say no (firmly) to anything that doesn't feel honoring or enlivening.

5. You have to figure out who you are and own it--LOVE IT. Let the haters hate. You can't blame someone for only loving the parts of you that you reveal. When you closet parts of yourself, you end up feeling victimized, misunderstood or isolated when those parts are neglected. It's unfair to the people trying to love you, and potentially very very dangerous. Sacred love reveals everything, does not waste its energy in hiding. 

6. You have to trust the unknown. You don't get to decide who's right for you or how long someone stays. You can't will meeting "the one". You can't push a cosmic connection into being. You will meet a lot of people who you love in one way or another, who are not meant to be your partner, in a long-term, traditional sense. If you stay open, you will let yourself experience that love and it will leave you feeling fuller, more alive and known. If you stay open, you will keep floating down the river until every single thing in you screams out, STOP. This is where I dock my being. This is who I want to rest and play and build and feast with. And even then, there is nothing certain but mystery and the moment's very real desire.

7. You have to expect heartbreak. Because everything breaks. Willing or not. But life and love are also constantly being born. Your heartbreak doesn't kill you, unless you want it to.

8. You have to practice suffering. Which is really just letting go. Because you cannot avoid it. Ever. And if you don't practice, when you're forced into it, you'll have no clue what to do with your unmeasurable desire to hold onto the impossible. (Which is fine. You'll learn. But practice helps). Bikram yoga's my favorite bootcamp for letting go. Discover yours. It will change your life.

9. You have to trust nature. That nothing stays dark forever. That winter is not infinite, nor summer. That you are meant to go through cycles of dark and light. That expecting anything else is highly irrational and very unhelpful.

10. You have to be a revolutionary. Look, we're in a culture of rape. No one likes it when I say it, but it's true. Material, emotional, psychological and physical assertions of power, from one or more people, onto another, without their consent, is happening EVERYWHERE. In the grocery store, the shopping mall, advertisements, classrooms, subtle conversational assumptions--and yes, our bedrooms. It's so pervasive that most of us are sleep-walking or dissociating because to really wake up is exhausting. You almost immediately need a nap just upon the thought of patriarchal degradation. So take one. And then wake up and experiment with your power and privilege (or lack of it). Because we are the only ones that will change the status quo. And the feminine divine is needed. Now. Start in the easiest place you can identify (bedroom, kitchen, workplace, body image). The payoff will be spiritually profound. Promise.

11. You have to stop trying to get somewhere. I know, I know...with all these "you have to's", if I were you I'd be thinking, This woman is giving me all these directions and now she's telling me to stop trying?! But it's important. Because wherever you are is where you need to be. Really. And when it's time for you to move, you will know it in your gut, your body, your heart, your psyche--exactly where and how.

12. You have to dream, especially when it hurts. This may seem contrary to #11, but it's not. It's been nearly a year since my ex-husband and I parted ways. In the darkest of hours, when I damn-near believed I'd be alone in a bed of sorrow forever, I wrote myself this little note on a paint-sample snatched from the hardware store. At the time, the words were near impossible to believe. But dreams don't come from rational places. They come from your hidden potential, and that potential is alive in the present. No scurrying on the hamster wheel to access it necessary.

**If you read this post thinking Fairy Language Does Not Compute, rest assured, this list is pretty talk for hard-earned, truly-learned realities. And the thing about those is this: it takes having them happen to know that they're real. Just like love. 

Is it possible to love others without first being loved? Is it possible to treat yourself as sacred, without first being shown radical appreciation? Is it possible to accept loss, without first experiencing the worst of it? I actually, honestly don't think so. But life is long. Everything is coming for you. Especially if you want it. This much, I believe with all the faith in me. Let the seeds be planted. It is enough.

As always, if you're longing for a sacred space for all your secret wantings to be held, permission to write to me personally. It's never too late or too soon to confess the radical truths of your unfettered, daring, timid, worthy heart.

love,

rachael

~~~

For related writings, the brother post to this piece lives here: Welcoming the Wildness of Love: 25 Lessons from a Year-Long Adventure in Dating.

To Roll In On Your Last Drop of Fuel

It's a magical act. One that takes heaps of faith and even more heaps of complete surrender. If I never get there, I'll get somewhere else. The Universe will send help if I really need it. I'll make it if I'm meant to.

In time, you will get impressively good at letting go of how things should be. In the process, you will learn that there is absolutely nothing gratifying in pretending to be or feel anything but sincere. This is exhausting at first because you're not used to being so true, but it quickly becomes you're biggest energy save of all. Soon, people start to see the unfiltered you. You begin attracting connections you've longed for all these years. Even the people you thought had no eyes for seeing, are reflecting the most honest of sights. Soon, you are called to step into your vision by those you most admire. And you are received in fullness...unbelievably so, after so much time chugging along, wondering if anyone wanted what you had to give. Wondering if you'd ever really see what you were made of.

Soon enough, you will arrive where your people have been waiting with balloons and watermelon and songs from the soul of the earth. You will lie on cool ground under a blanket of clouds and stars, and you will listen as the crickets cheer and grasses clap. Every bit of your journey has mattered, they say. Nothing has happened in vein. The moon will hold your heart like no lover ever could. And you will know that every lonely night of longing was leading to this deep celebration.

For jl, jb, dr & tg. Everything you long for is on its sweet way.

A Note on Wisdom and Growing Up Slowly

You can move molasses speed, sweet friend. There is no need to get wise fast. No need at all. (Not even for your job, your survival, your cash flow). When you walk an honest path, you will endure true suffering as your mind/body/spirit morphs into new shapes of being. Thank god. Your suffering is your salvation because it never stays forever--and when it's moved on and done with you, you will feel calm, content, slap-happy, even, over all the good times (echt-em... raging arguments) you two had together. Looking back, you will regard your suffering as your most trusted friend. Your most reverent teacher. Divine. And you will be right to do so. She was the one willing to offer up some tough love, as the rest stood by, afraid you couldn't handle it.

Suffering knows your strength. (And you are strong, no matter how pervasive your suffering. Promise.)

So take it slow. Feel every ounce of doubt, fear, inadequacy, loneliness, numbed-out-in-terror defenses. Breathe in how little you know. Let a 7-year-old comfort your fragility. Know how far into the dark you're willing to walk. Get dirty with the edges of your sanity. Say "fuck it" and then say it again. Cry and throw in the towel while everyone else crosses the finish line in record time.

To develop resilience with your suffering, you have to suffer. No need to avoid it. No need to cover up pain with wisdom, answers or ego. No need to get ahead.

Nothing feels more false than the hallow knock on ego's "answers". So let down the facade with care and compassion. Soften your body to the deep release of surrender. Sob if you have to. All day long is just fine. In the middle of the grocery store is just fine. At church when everyone else appears to be just fine... is just fine.

Your aching uncertainty is a jackpot of life experience.

Take your time with it, sweet friend. Walk slowly.

love letter to a changing heart

dearest heart,

i honor the dance you're doing between fear and faith. it's so hard to change patterns, isn't it? but you're doing a really great job. i know how easy it is for me to run you around without your consent, without checking in to see how you're doing. i want to be extra gentle with you during this transitional time. i want to extend my deepest form of love. i'm ready to ask, how can i be more loving? i have a feeling the deepest love i can offer includes persistence, patience and acceptance -- an odd combo, but an important one.

so here it goes:

i promise to persistently believe that you are worthy of gentle attention and slow breaths of awareness. i promise to insist that you are meant for calm strength and deep power. i promise to point you toward love-based action rather than fear-based avoidance over and over again.

i promise to be patient with the process of faith. i promise to give you all the time you may need. i promise to extend kindness and forgiveness as you inevitably fall into old patterns of fear and anxiety. those patterns are part of the process of faith. there's no linear end. there's a dance. i promise to let you dance as you will -- some nights sexy, some nights stepping on your own feet, some nights completely letting go with joy and freedom.

i promise to accept you for exactly where you are. to love all your sides and hidden parts. your shame, your pride, your ego, your humility. i promise to withhold judgment -- because judgment hurts us both. i promise to honor you as you are.

are you feeling any better? if not, that's okay. just know that you are in an incredible space of opening to the way things are. try, if you can, to believe that seeing is the very thing that points us in the direction of honest love--the direction of spiritual power. you're seeing. it's big. like, revolutionary big. you're there. trust me. just keep going.

all the love in the universe,
rachael

ps--if you're wondering where to go or how to move, dear heart, i'd say take one bold step in direct defiance of fear. fear's getting tired of hearing herself talk, anyway. it's true!

pps--i am so excited for you.

Word of the Year

Cammie at the top of the Rocky Mountains in July

2009. This is the year I've been waiting for since about 10th grade of high school.

It was then that I knew no one else's plan for my life would fit me quite as well as my own--even if it meant learning some things the hard way. It was then that I began my first real sketch journal, my first exploration into the creative cosmos. I read Thoreau and Emerson and sunk deep into Transcendental thought. I dreamt of abandoning my car and the suburbs for my journal and the woods. I read SARK and plotted impossible things like driving the perimeter of the great USA in 2 weeks with $200. I was full of desperate urgency--the now-or-neverness of rash teendom. "Reality be damned!" I'd cry.

And still today, I can't seem to shake that audacious attitude. But I've gained a sort of knowing that even if I damn reality, it will still be there--with or without my permission. And I've learned that it's better to say yes to it all--to impossible dreams, ingenious problem-solving capacities, hundreds of generous & believing supporters, disgusting inequality, moments of throwing in the towel, and the way my soul knows no answer but to hold onto hope. To say yes to all of these, and then to roll the dice, play the odds, and somewhere in my heart, believe they're in our favor.

Rolling the dice of reality takes something I'm just beginning to let into my life. Something even more brash and brave than dreaming impossible dreams. Something I didn't understand as part of the shake, as the other side of Adventure's coin.

It takes permission to be Vulnerable. To sink into the raw and naked unknown...that dear state of putting your big brave heart on the line and crying your truth to the universe. (All with the hope that somehow when your confetti of dreams fall, they'll give rise to possibility just as they hit the ground.)

My dear sage Jen said to me the other day, "Even when your life feels secure, stable and well planned, it's just an illusion. Because just as fast as you can create a beautiful 5-year plan, something unexpected can come along and wash it right away. Stable people have their lives pulled out from under them every single day."

Sitting across the table, my heart crept up into a cumbersome lump in my throat, about to pound its way out in tears. I know Jen's right. And I've been oscillating between working my ass off for some sort of stability, and surrendering to the inevitable Vulnerability of life.

The path before me is clear these days. This is my year--to sink in deep, to say Yes against my fear, to let go of perfection, to create from the pit of my heart. This is the year for the Vulnerable.

I hope you join me on this ride. I'd love your company along the way.