So far I have covered ideas that we have choices in what we believe. We can be free from the concepts that there are ultimate “good” and “bad” choices. We know this because they cause a positive or negative emotion, which are illusions. And we know that not all “right” and “wrong” precepts are right or wrong. And finally, I gave you the “keyblade” to reconciling these ideologies: gratefulness. Now, we have our weapon, we have some of our basic treasure, we have deconstructed the first Dreamworld (our country, religion, and beliefs), so now we can start our journey into our first series of adventures to fight the “Heartless”.
All You Need Is Love
Let’s talk about “Love”!! It’s my favorite subject. Let’s break it down into further categories. The Greeks actually have several words we use today for “love”—
• agape (gratefulness) love of blessings, surroundings, food and other objects, community.
• philia (friendship) love of children, love of virtue; can also be love of dating and relationships, what we call romance.
• storge (affection) love by parents and siblings and children.
• thelema (love to do something) love which refers to loving what we encounter in our path, like a sport or a career choice or a creative expression.
• eros (spirit) love of one’s soulmate, true love, divine love
These words can all be used in our modern context. For example, I love my life! I love my friends, my church/synagogue/coven/community, I love great food, a good glass of wine, chocolate and sushi, etc. These are all examples of agape. I love to be cuddled and held (like in Shel Silverstein’s poem above, Hug O’ War.) I love being with my family. I love my darling children and how they have inspired my life. They are examples of storge and also philia. Of course, I love my job and my acting (thelema), I love my partner and my friends and adore them (philia), and I love myself, which can be categorized by many of the above love-names. But through my self-actualization and discovery, I have truly come to love my soul and the Universal conscience that is within me and everyone around me (eros).
We can separate words in the English language that most identify feelings associated with “love”. And thus we can create a plethora of understanding and emotional effects. I am going to break down some of them so we can see that “love” in these definitions is not centered:
• Attraction—the recognition of an energy from one person to another based on a physical or chemical reaction; the energy can be one-sided or two-sided; opposites: unaware, detraction.
• Affection—need to express or receive physical or emotional contact, opposite: isolation.
• Attention—the giving of one’s time and space to another, opposite: avoidance
• Obsession—the idea that one is imbalanced and fascinated with another; opposites: rejection, mutual attraction.
• Infatuation—the imbalanced attraction of one person to another without the other person’s return affections or attraction; opposites: equals, lovers, mates.
• Romance—the creation of an ideal construct within which to give and receive worldly sensual stimulations—tastes, touches, smells, sounds, visions, places and times; opposite: apathy, inattentiveness.
• Desire—the willingness to long after another and focus attention with one’s mind on having that person or event or experience, in any realm; opposite: loathing.
• Friendship—the sharing of one’s being with another through a connection of affirmations and likes; the deeper the friendship, the more accepting of the other’s dislikes and accepting another for themselves; opposites—enemies, strangers.
• Relative—being born into a system of family that through a blood or marriage contract, another human is connected to us; opposite: non-relative.
• Partner, boyfriend-girlfriend, mate—affectionate endearment regarding the commitment or connection with another human being, elemental belief of equality or ownership that states that neither partner can find emotional fulfillment with anyone outside the relationship; opposite: platonic relationship.
• Commitment—a generic term involving the verbal or written contractual agreement that creates a bond between two people (usually, but can encompass polygamous and polyamorous contracts as well); the ability to agree mutually to uphold promises that usually involve fidelity, emotional stability and often material wealth sharing (home, car, food, etc); opposites: break-up, open relationship, non-commitment.
• Marriage—a contract between two people, usually in writing and in verbal agreement, that is recognized by the government that oversees the living arrangements between these people as a binding and unbreakable agreement. It is and was designed to combine and quantify property of and between the two parties, including possessions, land, and children; opposite: living together, co-habitating, any of the non-contractual definitions above.
• Bond—in love, a bond is the spiritual, emotional or physical connection between two people. Marriage and contractual commitments do not require this. But true love (eros) does. In Chemistry, a bond is the electrically charged connection between two atoms; in love it is the same; opposite: repulsion, or solitary/singular; not connected.
• Altruism—the idea that both partners, mates, or connected persons are equally giving to each other; mutual gratefulness based on true and balanced love (eros); opposite: one-sided giving, taking, selfishness.
• Sacrifice—Giving of one’s self completely for the purpose of saving, helping or uplifting another or others; often one-sided, considered a highly honorable trait, and self-motivated—can be self-righteous or self-loathing in nature: opposites: rescued, receiving, taking and selfishness.
• True Love—the ideal connection of love between two people, a person and the Divine, or the combination of the three. This is the balance of centeredness in a relationship which is altruistic, mutually sacrificial, bonded, committed and permanent.
Adventure and Intrigue: The World of Love
Let’s explore this world we call Love. It has many paths, rooms, caves, hiding places, doors, treasures, weapons and healing potions. It can also be a difficult world to navigate, being filled with “heartless” or “emotional vampires” to conquer. I want to take the world apart and fill its rooms with the different types of “loves” and find out how you really feel about them. This is going to be exciting! (Experiencing my own elicited emotion as I write this).
If you had a map what would it look like to you? If you examined the last chapter (war, murder, killing, martyrs, rebels, and vigilantes), it would look rather dark and twisted, I suppose. Like Halloween represents the faces of the ugly and evil to ward off the dead. But you would think this map would be pretty, or fluffy, or fancy, or covered with Valentine’s. Or would it? What kinds of treasures will you uncover to find out about love?
When I think of love, I think of romance (agape). This is synonymous for me. It is your most elemental and natural form of love—the “ouside” layer, so to speak. But this is also the way my mind sees the world around me. I am a sensually heightened person. Therefore my physical experiences are akin to my memories. Most humans have this trait but some of us are more in tune with it consciously. So my romantic thoughts put positive or sensually feel-good memories onto the everyday world around me.
We are going to focus on the love factors we have outside us—agape, philia, storge and thelema. For instance, I love sunshine. I am a beach girl, so I love sand and surf and waves and the sound of the ocean as it comes in and washes my feet. I love the feeling of the sun on my skin. I love the colors of the water and the sky where they meet. I love sunrises and sunsets and find them fully empowering to my “warm fuzzy” feelings of self and being alive. I love the tastes of foods that remind me of the beach, such as fresh ocean fish and oysters and mollusks, so I am reminded of my beach experiences when I eat these foods. I love the tastes of tropical fruits which also illicit a positive and romantic feeling within me. And I love walking in the water on the beach, especially at sunset or at night, so I attach memories of holding hands with the ones I love to this as well. (All of these are examples of agape love and some can be like thelema, since we are doing something we love).
My children and I lived near the ocean for several years together. I have a very passionate and protective love for them (storge). And while I was living on an island in south Georgia, I went through a very emotionally damaging and difficult divorce. The children, of course, suffered greatly at the misappropriation of anger from their father because I chose to leave, so I suffered by not being able to see them, as did they as well. The strong feelings associated with loss were also very much a part of my beach memories, so I had to remedy the situation. So for several years now, I have driven through where we lived and taken my kids to the places where we used to play on the island. We hang out with my closest friends (philia), go ghost crab hunting (thelema), and eat at our favorite local restaurants (agape—the love of food). We play at the local park and I visit the theatre company where I once performed. It has always been a pleasure going “home” with them and making new memories.
I spend a lot of my free time and vacations with the kids visiting the ocean (mostly in Florida, but up the Atlantic coast). I have enjoyed the reconnection with the earth’s most inviting and comforting commodity. I truly feel a connection when I am at sea level; I feel alive! This is a gift I am grateful for and so the map of my experiences within the world of Love at this level (agape) are solidified for me as warm, pleasant memories with sand in my shoes. I fight the memories of the negative (“heartless”) by creating memories to fill the void.
Last year, my oldest daughter was able to spend the summer in Hawaii with her boyfriend and his family. It was a beautiful and memorable trip for her, which led her to have some great, positive memories. She also has a connection with her boyfriend and his family that has been solidified by the experience. I too had a reconnection when I lived in Alicante, Spain in 2004. This was a great way to reconstruct positive and intimate memories of my love of the water; I created a time and space of love and beauty for me. And it also gave me a way to explore what I really wanted to do and be in this world. I learned Spanish, I met a wonderful man who gave me loving memories, and I found my travel bug. So now the ocean to me is a quest. I want to see all the ports and seasides of the world, in every place on this earth, and I want to share it with the ones I love.
Connecting your mind with outside love memories is a wonderful way of making your way through this world with the lens of your brain focused on the nature and creation we have around us.
Finding the Divine Order in the universe by recognizing patterns of ocean tides, jelly fish migrations, hammerhead shark mating seasons, sea turtle egg laying, and so on can give us specifically imprinted memories that tie to emotions that can be transformed into a healing consciousness (the love we call eros). It’s the Natural Divine that allows us to “explore” this world we live in and connect with others who do the same.
Where do you find your blessings lie in your life? What memories can you draw upon to make these “love imprints” upon your soul? Who do you hold hands with or hug or cuddle with or sing silly songs with in the car when traveling? What foods, sounds, smells, events and sights do you remember?
Let’s collect some of these treasures in our bags and move on to do some “heartless” fighting.
Destruction and Rebuilding of Memories into Love
I am currently enjoying reconnecting with my son. Christopher is a great young man. But one of the most difficult things is to share with him these small and simple connections. He is very guarded and as a teenager very shy. I would love to have time to have a complete conversation with him. So I am going to write down what I would say and someday, if he gets past the last two chapters, he will remember the past and know that it is only a part of his life—there’s the future as well! And he will be able to center all of his memories within himself.
I find the most difficult part about being a mother who does not live with two of her children is that I am unable to teach to them daily how much I love them and the world around them loves them. I was blessed to have Jacquelyn live with me last year. We often spent days at a time talking about blessings, purpose, and we used a copy of Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws for Children to give home to the importance of self-actualization and connecting with the Divine and each other. Years of difficulty and life changes made it complicated for her and her sister to coexist, yet it was a difficulty we were working through. In a series of unfortunate events (or fortunate if you see the outcome), she has returned to live with her dad. So this too will be for her ☺.
I use the “keyblade” of gratefulness to fight the memories that were traumatic and dark and emotionally charged (“heartless”). Those memories, just like pleasant happy memories, serve their purpose. THIS is what gives us definition. Suffering is a part of life. We all have our “burdens” and “challenges” to carry. So what if we are able to create our own paths and maps and we focus on our own dreams?
Well, that is possible. In understanding yourself and allowing your dreams to be centered and focused, you can do anything you strongly desire. Desire is created by your connection with the Divine—seeing God (the Universal connection) throughout everything that is in your world. It’s like turning on the lights and realizing you had been walking around in the dark. And it can be created to connect with your environment, the people around you, and the soul within.
Let’s start with connecting with the outside connection to our world. Here’s what you do: First, get out your notebook (you can use the same one from before) and write down everything. It will give you an “outside memory” that is focused. The brain is so complex, it is often hard to remember memories that are hidden away. So writing them down (giving them space and time) is essential for recalling them again when you need them. Give yourself a lot of time and privacy if you can so you can write. If it is helpful, go to a park or a place that is away from others. This will add to the experience of being alone with yourself.
Making the Love List
Make a list of things you have done. Even list those things you want and are about to do. Go back to when you were small and had your first memories of sports, dancing, gymnastics, acting, singing, camping, Scouts or Girls/Boys Club, church choir, whatever it was that you were able to do. Then use your grateful-sword to say thanks for each one. This will build your “foundation,” creating your own Dreamworld. Write down another list of things you truly want to do. This second list, make sure you put down realistic and short-term goals as well as life-long goals. Like I want to pass Spanish class and I want to spend Christmas with my mom (hint, hint). Or I want to find a person I can apprentice with to teach me what I want to do and be. And I want to set my goal by this date and time.
These are your tasks. And you will write these lists over and over again in your life. They are also great memories. So anything you accomplished or experienced that you can attach a love emotion to, write down how grateful you are. Use this time as well to write down how you “feel” about each accomplishment—whether it was something you did you don’t ever want to do again, or something that makes you excited to do another task. Or maybe it’s something you are good at doing and want to keep doing more and more or make a life out of doing, such as your sport or your art or your studying.
Finally, make a third list of all the things that you like. People that want to date put down those things they like about themselves and other people. Sites like Myspace and Facebook both have these kinds of “lists” for you to fill in—you can use your existing lists and expand upon them. Do you like sushi as much as I do? Your favorite pizza, your favorite sandwich, your favorite toy when you were younger, your favorite vacation, your favorite books or TV shows, your favorite friends…anything.
Now you have a treasure box of all those senses around you that are positive in nature. You have created a love list. These will be helpful as you go through further emotions. And at the end, go through and say you are so grateful for all of these blessings.
We are going to explore the other kinds of “love” and how they have their opposites as well. This will give us more emotions to play with and “reconcile” with our “keyblade.”
Love and Hate: Polarized Emotions—Finding the Center
We are taught that “love” and “hate” are opposite emotions. They are not. True Love is in the center of the Universe in your mind, body and soul, and the emotions that are not true are at the opposite ends of what we saw as “good” and “bad”. We see that sometimes we want to work on a Positive Mental Attitude. We are told sometimes by parents that we need to “clean up our attitude” or “stop being so mean.” Now, unfortunately, often the people we love also look at sadness and loneliness as “negative” emotions, as they are so, but they don’t want you to feel those either. You need to be able to feel all your emotions—anger, rage, hate, sadness, jealousy, frustration, and hurt are all emotions that are from fear, but they are just off-centered. Happiness, joy, infatuation, affection, accomplished, and healing are all emotions that are from love in the sense that it is agape or philia or storge or thelema. The closer you are to gratefulness for them the closer all your emotions come into center, or eros—the Love connection with the Creator of your love and life and light.
It has been shown that brain waves function on a scale as well. The higher the emotion, the higher the brain wave. The lower the emotion the lower the brain wave as well. Interesting, science is now discovering though that more intellectually challenging and centered thoughts are creating longer-lasting, thicker brain connections that actually replace the rapid, fight-or-flight ones. So it’s not a matter of living in a temporary state of fear or happiness that benefits brain development. They are “fleeting” emotions. What is most important for human evolution is compassionate, True Love development.
Memories and dreams (future memories) can have attached brain waves to them. For instance, let’s say you wanted a bicycle. You asked for it for Christmas one year. You begged for it, dreamed about it, even found the one you wanted in a particular store. But you never got that bicycle. So all the future memories were positive until the time came and you were disappointed (negative emotion). So the memory then becomes negative.
Now go back and look at that thing you wanted. (Don’t use the bicycle example unless it was a bicycle—it could have been a snowboard or an X-Box or a Nintendo DS, or in my case a pony). And look at how you feel about it now. Ask yourself some questions: Do you feel sad that you didn’t get that object? Or did you learn that you can earn the money yourself? Or did you see that you didn’t really need it in the first place? Or have you decided you still want that object and you can now look at becoming more open to receiving it? (I truly don’t want a pony anymore!)
Go back through your lists once again. Pick some of your favorite things—experiences you have had, what you want to do, and what are your “favorites” so far—and write them out again. Answer the following questions:
1. Did you get to do that, experience that, the way you wanted to? Were you doing your sport, for instance, or playing your instrument or learning a craft because YOU wanted to do it or someone else gave it to you? Write down who and why you had that experience or were given that object.
2. Was it a positive memory? Do you see it as a helfpul tool? If you had not had that treasure would you still be the same person you are today?
3. Was it a negative memory? Did the experience remind you of someone you have lost? Do you feel sad or happy when you think about it or look at it? Did it cause a fight or a celebration? Did going on that experience take away from someone else’s experience? Or did you not finish your classes because your parents could not afford to pay for any more?
4. Write as many positive and negative emotions you can think of and attach them to each other. Then you say thank you for learning all of those treasures. And now you have “centered” that tool and made it whole. So now if you pick up that tool again (sport, craft, etc), it will be knowing it has both a positive and negative emotional result to it and you can continue it with love.
Awareness is the Key to Centeredness
Greater and Greater Vision: Creating Achievable Desires
When I was a young girl, I wanted to travel all over the world. It has always been my desire to see the many cities I saw in books, on television, and in movies. My heart’s desire is to be able to see these places with those I love most of all. Now, I am one of five children, and my parents, not having the same desires, didn’t see the need to travel as a part of a financial gain in their futures. Few I ever dated saw the need to travel for pleasure either, so I did not travel to anywhere I wanted to travel as a couple. Therefore, I have taken it upon myself to travel alone or with my children most often as I had mentioned before.
I want to create my own “agape”. So I plan my own experiences. I want to take a vacation, so I will use this example because every time I travel I gain insight into myself and others. I truly enjoyed the several times I traveled out of the country, so I am desiring to do so soon again as well. So here is how and why I will do so.
First, I know I am worth this trip. I am not going to limit its length because if I am to travel to speak and to network, it may take a longer time than I would normally anticipate. But I know I desire this trip to be a healthy and rejuvenating experience. I am going to visualize this trip as a way to create growth within myself, so I am going to use the seven areas of my life to fulfill this need:
• Spiritual—I want this trip to be to a place that I can be closer to the Divine. I want to be able to spend time with my God and grow closer to the center of myself by this experience. I want to go to places that have been historically spiritual, where other great people have gone or have practiced communicating with the Divine. Therefore, I may choose a spot that is rich in history, both “good” and “bad”, spiritually.
• Mental—I will plan parts of my trip and experience by choosing places I can go to learn more about myself, my world around me, the history of the people in this place, the way they used to live and live today. I will find guides and places to go where I can learn great things about great people.
• Vocational—I will plan to be on this trip to learn more about being an actor, a writer, a director/producer and a speaker to great nations. I will also plan to share this place with my children, whether they can go with me or not, by collecting things to use to teach them about my experiences. These are who I am and what I do, so I will find ways to incorporate those parts of me into the trip. For instance, I may plan to see a theatre show or a ceremony that will let me visualize the characters I am watching as an actor, writer and director. I will also look for people who have similar-minded goals to reach many people to teach and learn how to be centered and I will find out if they need me to teach and learn there as well.
• Financial—I will plan the trip extensively to find out how much I can raise and how much I need to go from place to place. This will even include how much I need to make sure I have the right visas, the right luggage or backpack, the proper clothing, the costs of meals and transportation. I will write it all down and research what it will cost me. There are fantastic guidebooks and websites that have all of these costs in detail as well as places to go and things to see, so I can use guides to plan the trip.
• Familial—Will I be able to travel with someone I love? If so, how much is this going to cost? How much time can they also have for me to go with me—a week or a month or the summer? How many activities can we plan together? Or if I am traveling alone, what do I need to bring to give back to them my experience—a new camera, a cell phone that works overseas, a computer I can bring, or will I just buy phone cards while I am there? Will I need notebooks to record all my experiences for them and myself? And what papers will I need to have my family look after my affairs while I am gone? And if I know the place may contain elements of danger, can I have emergency routines in place—I have heard of many who have been robbed or attacked during vacations and traveling, so I am realistic and aware that my family must be prepared just in case.
• Social—Will I want to spend time alone or with others while I am traveling? How will I safely and effectively meet those like minded to me that will be willing to share their country or city with me? Do I need to make friends before I go? Do I have friends or relatives that live where I am going? How can I create the blessings of teaching and learning while I am there?
• Physical—What will I need to make the most of my experience? If I am traveling on foot or hiking, will I need to work out extensively before I go? Will I need to prepare emergency equipment or buy special clothing for the trip? Will I need to have sunscreen and what can I bring into that country and what can I buy there? Will I need to drink extra water or will the water be drinkable at all? Will it be a good idea to bring water purifiers or food supplements? And is it possible to ship some of my supplies ahead of time to a friend or a hotel or a place where I may be speaking?
So now I will do what I have written about above. I will choose a place to go. I will choose a time I would like to go. I will choose an appropriate arrangement I can and will be able to afford. I will choose a way to pay for it, who will go with me, how much I can bring and what I desire to accomplish while I am there. Then I will start compiling the lists of what I need to do and who I need to contact before and during the trip. I will find out if the place I am going is friendly or hostile to foreign travel and will be prepared for whatever I foresee to be a challenge or issue. And I will visualize the trip in detail. Then I will know I will be going, how and why. I will be grateful for every part of my experience, from the creation of the desire to go to the planning to the challenges and for the experience.
Finding True Desires: Loving Your Self is the Greatest Gift of All
So now I have given you a template on how my experiences and those of others bring about desires. These are the gifts of loving who I am and what I do. In order to grow closer and closer to your Divine self, you must have experiences and times of growth! You can balance the challenges of your life by adding some of these positive ideas to them. But the outcome is the same—the closer you come to your center, the easier it will be every day to make your own life happen.
Take the first step: You are responsible for the world you created. That can be really harsh. Maybe you don’t like your parents. Maybe you feel lonely and like you have very few friends. Maybe you are angry or jealous or hurt because of someone around you. Maybe you don’t believe you are worth it!
But you ARE worth it all because you were created in the image of ALL of creation!! You are divine and perfect as you are, physical ailments and mental challenges and all. You are amazingly beautiful and your Creator loves you unconditionally. Your Divine Soul within you needs to be fed and remember these principles every day.
If you are struggling with something, no matter what it is, find a way to balance it. If you have negative feelings, we will look for ways to look at why you have those feelings and find positive reasons for having those experiences, then say thank you. If you are not able to do what you want to do and are restrained from doing it, then you should love yourself and plan to do things that may take a little time to achieve by removing yourself from those restraints. If you cannot leave whatever your situation, do not give your dreams away. They can still happen in the Divine time they are suppose to happen. Or maybe someday they will not be what you desire at all, but they led you to a greater and more exciting dream for your life!
We will dig deeper into the next chapter on why you have those experiences and people in your life that challenge you. You will find ways to grow with those like you and grow away from those who do not benefit you. You can learn to love everyone, from those that hurt you to those that guide you. Now that you have gotten through the Dreamworld of creating your own outside love connection and finding your own outer desires, we can balance the emotions that come at you from now on. We can work daily on the way we see our outside environment if we choose to center our inside environment as well!
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