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March 12, 2023

Chalay, Munay, and Ayni: How We Engage Determines The Quality of Our Relationships

Tags: Andean Mysticism, Reatonships, Juan Ñunez del Prado, love, transactional relatinships, self worth

As separate, individual, human beings in an ever unfolding Creative Universe we are all in relationship with absolutely everything outside of ourselves. In the Andean spiritual traditions everything in the created universe is made of a conscious living energy called sami. To be, is to be in relationship with all that is. How we engage in general determines how we are engaged with. With this in mind it might be worth taking a moment to stop and reflect upon how we approach being “in relationship.”


July 01, 2019

The Seduction of Seduction

Tags: Romantic Love, The mating game, ethical love

There is a romantic narrative in our culture about being swept off our feet and succumbing to some sublime pull from the Mystic, to be overcome, ever entwined, and enthralled... It is the theme of many a mad love story. We long to surrender our cautious minds and merge with the infinite world of our hearts, if only we could. It’s hard to put your finger on it but there is something sexy about seduction, about someone pulling us into compliance, oblivion, about the surrender of our will to an infinite One... 

It is almost as if we come preprogramed for it, and perhaps we do. Who hasn’t felt a biological attraction to someone who really does not have long term partner potential. When we have been seduced by someone we find compelling, we feel transfixed, taken under their spell, pulled in beyond our control, charmed. Perhaps our innate biology has embedded within it this override button that says “To heck with it, YES!” Perhaps this is how we have continued to exist as a species... seduction, the ultimate mating enigma, creating endless strains of biological diversity. For many there is something magical and intoxicating about this. We will override our morals and ethics to comply. We give up our riches and our bodies, our marriages, our minds, even our hearts. It is a strange phenomena indeed. 


February 01, 2019

Love, Connection, and Attachment

Tags: Receiving Love, Spiritual Intimacy, Munay

Love. It is everywhere! It is in the air, the birds, the bees, the trees. It’s the wind riffling through your hair, the rain falling gently on your face. A vast and infinite reserve of care, delight, and support, love is the essence from whence all Creation comes. And yet, we tend to think we can’t have it unless another agrees to give it to us. This leads us into scarcity, dark alleys of soul numbing negotiations for connection, and mistaking our attachments to others, for love.

Many people block love because it makes them feel unsafe. You can bring wheelbarrows of it to their doorsteps and they will continue to bemoan their barren existences, never recognizing that they have created this dearth themselves by shutting it down. The real work starts inside. If you are blocking a connection to love because people you have loved in the past have harmed you, or extracted an unbearable cost from you for it, start with  connecting to something safe. Nature loves all her children, no exceptions, and asks nothing in return. Try sending a pulse of goodness out to a tree, for example, and wait. She will respond in kind, but it is up to you open up and let it in! 


May 01, 2017

At The Edge Of The Forest

Tags: Fairy Tales, Forest Mystics, Munay, Impersonal Love

As our legends have it, there is usually a mysterious man or woman who lives just outside the community, at the edge of the forest. They have been rumored to have strange powers, and because they are always alone, they are often feared. Rarely do they have partners, nor children, but animals are quite instinctively drawn to them. You may even see an owl or a raven perched on their shoulder, or perhaps a wolf or deer standing near their walking stick.

There is a reason they live at the edge of civilization. It is quieter there and their connection to Nature is profoundly more accessible outside the distractions of civilization. Further, they may have gifts and wisdom that don’t quite fit in with the cultural paradigms that have spawned them, so they retreat from the pressures of assimilation, and beat to the rhythm of their own drums. 


July 01, 2016

Looking For Love

Tags: Love, self love, relationships, unconditional love

Looking for that ultimate soulmate, someone who loves you unconditionally, even the darkest bits you so skillfully tuck away? This is the goal of a lifetime for many. When we find it we feel we are finally “home.” So often, however, this perfect relationship takes a turn in the night. Studies show this often happens about 18 months in. Something happens. Someone pulls back or starts trying to control the other, temperaments wear or a job takes front seat. Illnesses set in or our needs go unmet. Judgments flare and we polarize, pulling back. This, however, is when the real journey to finding unconditional love begins! 

The hardest thing to accept is that this disharmony has everything to do with you! Whatever the other person is seemingly doing wrong, you see it through your filters and react to it based on your experiences from the past. We… are creating half of the dynamic. A person may be unavailable for some reason, perhaps because they are overwhelmed or because they are are distracted by an obligation. Their pulling away may have nothing to do with you… or it may be in reaction to you, but because it has happened so many times in your life before, you react in anger. How dare they abandon  you? What is most interesting is that the other person is reacting to your actions through their filters too. ​


February 17, 2016

Are you loving from your wounds or from your heart?

Tags: Love, Wounding, Infinite love, Control

Are you loving from your wounds or from your heart?

Your wounds say it will never last,
they say that there is not enough,
and they say there must be something wrong with you
because there isn't...
they say this person will hurt you...
Control the objects of your affections, they say, so you are not further
wounded.

Your heart says love is everywhere, in everything.
It says you do not need to hold onto it in another,
because love will never go away.
It says you may see me in the eyes of a small child today
and in the whispering of the winds tomorrow,
but I will never leave you...

Forms come and go...
let the pain from their loss, dissolve into the darkness,
the deep velvety darkness
that fills the space between moments,
the gaps between forms...
In that womb,
that exists between each ending...
And before each new beginning,
you will find it...
Love that beats like a steady base line
that pulse that comes through your heart.


April 11, 2014

Your Mind Is Not the Path to Your Soul

Tags: Ego, evolution, Intellect, Love, Spiritual path, Thought

Trying to navigate our spiritual development through our intellect is like trying to teach a fish to ride a bicycle! In fact, it is our intellect that gets in the WAY of our spiritual development by shoving our lessons into shadow and trying to "claim" spiritual prowess without having done the work.
When we come, instead, from the compassion of the heart, we bypass the ego's claim on victory and align with the truthfulness of the soul.

It is here that our deepest work is done.


December 04, 2013

Who Is Keeping Score?

Tags: acceptance, awareness, blame, Empowerment, forgiveness, Love, Shame

The Creative Force creates always from a neutral place of Love... It is not punitive, it does not punish us for past deeds...
Instead it is we who punish ourselves... It is we who interpret things "going awry" as punishment... In fact, these are just moments for growth and evolution, no more, no less...

And it is we who perceive others' actions as punishment when we feel less than... because we have been taught to live in shame...The shame that comes from the sense of punishment has long been used to control people. Doesn't our cultural mythos say we were all born to "original sin"? This creates an uphill battle for salvation from the get go... It creates a person who is easily manipulated by shame... When we can accept circumstances without overlaying cultural morality onto them then the focus shifts to awareness and responsibility. Yes, karma exists... but WE create it, good and bad...Be responsible for your actions. Be aware of how your actions affect others. Forgive. Forgive others and forgive yourself. No one else is keeping score!


November 13, 2013

Authentic Self Love

Tags: acceptance, control, Empowerment, judgment, Love, self respect, Shame, Truth

It can be painful to see the subversive plots we lay to attract attention and love... When we are still hiding it from ourselves we will have this undercurrent of self loathing... because our higher self wants to be authentic and we know we can't respect ourselves for being inauthentic. This keeps us looking outside ourselves for the validation we know we can't give ourselves yet... and the cycle continues... But when we see our grand schemes for what they are, wanting to be loved, and when we can own them, we can drop the subversive behavior that sickens us about ourselves. In the end we find we love ourselves much more because we are authentic, and we can then look to others for it much less...


September 24, 2013

Is It Really Someone Else that Loves us?

Tags: attachment, Being Present, blame, control, Doubt, Intellect, Love, Negativity, Perception, Projection, Separation

The consciousness of love runs through us as a continuum, like an ever flowing river to the sea... but we chop it up and attribute it to individuals. We think when those individuals leave us the love stops. The illusion is that it came from those individuals. It "came" by our opening our hearts to them and letting it flow through us.
It is always there to flow through us if we let it. So often we hold back. So often we nip and bite at, we criticize and blame the ones who love us so as not to be disappointed, hurt or controlled by them. When we do this it is we who cut ourselves off from that river... and we who create the illusion of isolation. We then look for it someplace else... when where we need to look is inside.


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