a look into the mirror…

It is a philosophy that has been around for quite some time now. Enough that it is talked almost commonplace in the pursuit of healthier relationships. This philosophy of what I see in “you” is a reflection of what is really within “me” and if I don’t like what I see it implies that I don’t accept these things within myself. I want to take a deeper look at this. It seems to hold some answers to my current life delimmas…

Photo by Andrea Hansen

My anger, my resentments, my judgements… I can put those upon you and make the mistake of blaming you for them showing up. In fact, I can hold you accountable for their very existence. My fear becomes real through you, my partner in life’s journey and my stories yours to act out. I can give you the scripts and the punchlines and you will play your part…an agreement of the mirror.

and so, if I accept this to be true it must be true as well….what I see in you, what I love about you….those are parts of me too. Joy love, peace, truth, beauty, freedom….are all concepts you mirror as well. These words, these desires are the passions and pleasures I seek, a union of my own soul and spirit and this mirror…this mirror provides me a way to see into me…all of me.

Soul Mate?

Soul Mirror?

IN TO ME SEE.

Intimacy.

No wonder its so hard to always show up, to be vulnerable, to look into the mirror. Its not just the dark that is so scary. Its the overwhelming possibility of light. Potential love yet explored.

Choosing love…

This video was sent to me by my friend Joy. It came in my inbox along with other messages that got me thinking today about love. My world seems to be crying out for it. My community seems to be flailing around like a fish out of water wondering what to do. Thoughts of scarcity, fear of chaos and the gloomy pictures being painted by wallstreet and politicians are prevailing.

It occurs to me how important it is that we use the consciousness given us. That we do, as I’ve always said…USE OUR POWER FOR GOOD. Imagine, if tomorrow morning the world woke up and we all chose love instead of fear, chose change instead of apathy, chose freedom as our way of life. I don’t mean the illusion of freedom, I mean truly choosing to be FREE. Imagine what that would be like.

Enjoy this short video, hopefully it can help inspire you to choose a little more love today.

LOVE, Charlotte

The Heart of the Matter

The Heart of the Matter

Sometimes this secret time shared just between the two

Captures the imagination of the soul

A total pleasure that grows each time

with wonderment and pure ecstasy

Being in the moment of lost time – uniting -

Deeper into the depths of the body

Somehow the tenderness of the giving

is felt lovingly without spoken word

Endless desire increases with the giving back

Taking deeper the throbbing and pulsing

Until all senses so heightened

Quiver blissfully

8/25/08

Christine

Rhythmic Relationship

Sometimes, you just have to dance together! And that’s a fact.

Charlotte and I love to dance together. We met on the dance floor as a matter of fact. I was DJ’ing and she was the one who was always out there, just gettin’ it on the dance floor. Eventually I met her out there and we’ve been dancing ever since.

These days we have a great group going we formed, called Drum & Dance in Gwinnett. It is a community of drummers and dancers, and once in a while Charlotte and I will get out there and do our letting go. It is, after all, what dance is all about. Letting go. Falling into the move in the groove.

Sounds like that could come in handy in relationship, don’t ya think?

Rhythm in Relationship.

Forgiveness…fulfilling hope for men and women.

The need for forgiveness for me stems back to the distant relationship of masculine and feminine rivalry. Deep within my experience has been an unfolding path of learning to harmonize these two energies and to accept these reflective parts of myself. I somehow now manage the courage to take a deeper dive into this realm.

Men and women have danced both a passionate and destructive dance. Each with their beauty and equally lack of grace. The shadowed sides are full of blame and the seeking of love through pain. The beautiful and illuminated parts provide a space for love to grow and bring balance to each other.

My soul holds the memories of the pain and must somehow also know what’s possible, because I continue to keep plunging into the sea of this relationship. I can tell you that memories and scars of lost battles are lingering awaiting the chance to tell me to stop. The stories of my heart that accompany me as I dive into this journey scream out from the darkness of my past. The stories sound like
…love hurts, men can’t be trusted, if I don’t love too much I can’t get hurt, men will always betray you in the end, leave before they leave you, the only value I have is my physical body, if I don’t give him what he wants, he will leave, I have to give up myself to keep him… these stories aren’t just my stories they are the same stories of the many women I have counseled over the years.

The foundation of healing comes with forgiveness. The main perspective to keep is that forgiveness means freedom. The freedom is self activated when we give ourselves permission to let go of the pain of past hurt. It allows the energy we keep locked inside of us to be free for better things.

It occurs to me as I cycle through my lessons to be clear that forgiveness here means everything to where I am in my life and what I want to bring into it daily. It gives life and breath to my relationships and frees my soul and spirit to love more.

I have seen the collective pain of men and women and it does anger me. It also saddens me. I believe we are all equally here to offer our value and from men and women that value is different. Not better than only different. But equally important.

For me this was physically demonstrated when my love, keeper of my heart and trusted confidant was careless and knocked over my Peace Lily, shattering the pot and unearthing the poor dear. It had just begun to reveal it’s first bloom. I was furious. My mind went to the clumsiness of men. How they can be so single mindedly focused that they don’t catch the details. That things like plants and crystals (there was a previous accident that involved his butt and a treasured cyrstal…) were not in their radar. AND if that were true…would it be possible that my heart and my secrets were also vulnerable? It seemed an obvious jump…

Well….fortunatley the universe smiled down upon me this day and reminded me…forgiveness is the gift of love that changes everything. The plant, the crystal, these were only metaphors for a deeper distrust and once attention and awareness were given and forgiveness allowed, the past could heal and somehow I knew…not just for me…The peace lily was a great metaphor for me and the healing of all my relationships. It was mended and blooming in no time. In fact it blooms just in front of this photo…hmmm…very interesting you might say.

Allow a bit of forgiveness between the sexes…we both deserve it.

namaste’ blessings and love,

charlotte

To Give Love

When Love gives and expects nothing back (AKA “the Lover”)…the Receiver (AKA “The Lovee”) in the instant of receiving without feeling obligated to anything..gives Love back to the Lover…the Lover becomes the Lovee and the Lovee becomes the Lover…the Giver becomes the Receiver and the Receiver the Giver. How simple is that? We become both, started by simply loving another – we Love ourselves. Try it..try it many times. It will magnify. Love to the power of Love…see where it takes you.

Love…nanz

Love is…a wedding by the sea…

It’s a wonderful thing to be a witness to love. The fact that it continues to bloom everywhere provides me with great hope for my world.

Weddings are a favorite DJ gig for us. We are suckers for love and enjoy the opportunity to share with others. The trip to Mexico Beach, Florida to provide the tunes for this event gave us a chance to shoot lots of photos, play music, dance and enjoy time in the sun and surf.

Many blessings and best wishes for the life that unfolds before you Angela and Dave.

Enjoy the journey with us check out the slideshow…

The Difference between Universal Love and Romantic Love

Romantic Love everyone knows about. It is that wonderful falling in Love feeling – where nothing else matters. Giddy, floating on air, life has never been better feeling. You only live until the next moment you can be with your Lover. Mmmmm. I can’t wait to Be in Love again.

But wait – what is Universal Love? Love your neighbor? Do unto others Love? Yes – kind of – but it is only the tip of the iceberg. What if we truly acted like we are living, breathing bodies of Love 24/7? You Are Love! See what happens. You have seen the bumper stickers and the tee shirt slogans…”What would (somebody) do?” Well how about “What would Love do?” Be Love as you walk around – try it for an hour at first…whereever you go and whom ever you meet…Be Love – What would Love do? Whether it is at a bank or a gas station or in the park…or in a traffic jam…Be Love. Expect nothing …absolutely nothing back. You will be amazed. The Love that can shine back will Light your Love flame! It will ignite your heart. I am not talking about Romantic passionate Love…yet I am. Bottom line there really is little difference in Universal Love and Romantic Love…at the core. Love is this delightful energy that can only grow.

Sometimes in an effort to Love, people do good for someone then expect something back in return – if they don’t get a “return”, this act of good gets disgruntled. This is true in Romantic Love also. When one really Loves…nothing is expected in return. When there is a return…a smile, a laugh, a thank you, a glimmer…LOVE… it is like payday at the slot machine…bells go off…lights twirl…your LOVE is magnified. Ok now let’s do the math. How many times would we get to Love another and get Love magnified back until the whole world was In Love?! You Love one…then they Love one..then they Love another…LOVE² _, LOVE³⁶⁵_, LOVE^LOVE ! Won’t that be grand?

The world IN LOVE.

What if Universal Love gave you the very same giddy, floating on air, life has never been better feeling as the famed Falling in Love feeling? How cool would that be? We would not have to wait until the next lover in our life presented themselves to us – because everyone would be our Lover. It is addictive.

What if we treated everyone like they were Lovers??? How wonderful each day would be! Try this – you may find that it makes your Romantic Love relationship all the better.

YOU ARE LOVE…Be LOVE 24/7…We are LOVE Beings. Enjoy and delight in the giddiness of LOVE!

submitted by nanz

an unusual love story

Thanks to my friend Tara I got to enjoy this moment of love. “Love knows no bounds.” Thanks Tara, I love you too.

Jealousy, the destruction of a very good mind….

Jealousy has often been referred to as a monster for a reason. When it shows up it snarls and reacts in a way of survival, bearing its claws and teeth. As if it were a very basic part of our animal nature. It brings up the fight in us. We fight ourselves with the torcher of it’s silence or act it outwardly in the form of pain and manipulation resulting in fighting with others.

No one wants to admit to the feelings. It’s embarrassing and it feels childish. But it’s there. It is a survival instinct of our animal nature. It triggers our very basic fears of not enough. Fear of not having enough, being enough, not enough things, not enough love, not enough…

I have lived long enough to let go of my adolescent ways of manipulating for love. That doesn’t mean I don’t ever feel jealous. I do. I hate it. It’s painful. So painful that I refuse to feed the beast anymore. I’ve had to learn new tools. Forced if you will by the nature of jealousy itself.

First I found out what doesn’t work. To try to shut the “monster” up. I know the more I struggle with it the worse I feel. It’s like a shameful secret I don’t want to talk about. And yet, giving jealousy permission to be expressed leads to the feelings of safety I seek. I’ve learned to move through pain to love and find freedom through its expression. Yes, there’s magic in the telling, a true gift from a beautiful teacher. I’ve been shown that there is something to be gained from letting it out. And interestingly enough that something can be more love.

I think of the ways that it has come out throughout my lifetime and of the feelings it took to try to repress it. What misery and suffering accompanied it. Loss of control, fear, shame…all feelings that seem to be needed to try to shove jealous feelings down far enough so that I couldn’t feel the stabbing pain of those snarling teeth. From this place its expression did not work out well at all. In fact just the opposite. I acted out of fear and manipulated for the love that I wanted in hopes that I could control and feel safe. Which didn’t make me feel safe at all. Just more afraid. Those were the very expressions that taught me to try to keep the beast within quiet and forbid it being revealed.

Now, having moved beyond the ways of my child and practicing adult life I’ve come to offer a different expeirance. It’s about being afraid but willing, willing to share with intamicy my feelings. To be willing to speak what is true. To expose the fear for what it is, insecurities yet to be set free. Within this gesture I can move more quickly through the threat of becoming entangled in jealousy’s claws. There is a safety created in this act of intimacy that takes the threat away. To speak my vulnerability and fear of loss brings such freedom. Not granted or gifted from another but simply found within the space of my own heart.

Jealousy unexpressed becomes the lion of rage and the evil green eyed monster. Through expression some understandings can emerge. The greater the love we feel the greater the fear of loss and I’ve been told the only solution to that is to love more. Jealousy buried is fertile ground for rage to be born. In silence it becomes a killer. Expression is freedom.

The peace of my soul and the harmony of my inner world depend upon me taking the risk, loving deeper, trusting more and being free.

Charlotte