If a woman is really paying attention to her man she will no longer need to ask him, “Honey, do you or don’t you like nuts in your brownies?” She will already know. And even if the woman prefers to have nuts in her brownies, if he prefers no nuts there will be no nuts in the brownies. In this way we avoid the immature reactions that shatter sanctuary, and we maintain a softness and a gentleness that sustain the possibility of communion.
Again, it should be mentioned here, this process/work is simple, not easy. This is why the phenomena of a Woman who is awake and in communion, and leading Man through the Labyrinth, is so rare.
Adoration has to be so important to you that the conditions that would normally cause you to react, even internally, just do not matter anymore. Period. You and only you choose your internal priorities. When the Gremlin part of you is looking for an easy, tasty meal, you can detect the hunger before it becomes ravenously out of control, and you can intentionally feed the Gremlin some other food on your own timing. Declare the tender, precious being of your partner as off limits for Gremlin feeding. Stake out your partner as a Gremlin-free zone.
SECTION 16-F
What to Watch Out For
Before you succeed at bringing the Woman to life I want to offer you a few words of warning – information to help you avoid certain unnecessary but common and potentially painful events. If you can avoid the painful events, perhaps you may sooner convince your mind-body-emotion system to again knock on heaven’s gate. Here is what to watch out for.
1. Sometimes It Works, Sometimes It Doesn’t
There is a story about a man who read in a book that by using a certain kind of focused attention an ordinary person could “burn” holes through clouds. He looked outside. It was quite solidly gray and cloudy. He called to his young daughter to come out with him; he would show her an interesting trick.
They put on their coats and walked out into the yard. He said, “Wouldn’t it be great if the sun would shine on us for a bit right now?” She said, “Oh yes! That would be wonderful!” He looked up toward the sky and “burned” a hole right through those clouds. The sun shone gloriously upon them. After a few minutes he stopped. The clouds filled in the hole and the sky was all gray again.
For years afterwards the daughter would plead with her father to come burn holes in the clouds. She wanted to show her friends. She wanted to learn to do it herself. She wanted to believe that it could be done. The father always refused to try again. One day, in desperation, the daughter finally asked him why he would no longer try. His answer was simple and relevant to all of us. He said, “It might not work.”
As with burning holes through clouds, the same possibility is true of consistently creating radiant joy and brilliant Love. It might not work. Just because it worked one time is no guarantee that it will ever work again.
Radiant joy and brilliant Love is a wonder. Countenance is ecstatic. Wonder and ecstasy are an inherent part of daily human experience. Because they are natural and arise from an organic innocence, they might not work. Fallibility is part of the play. Yes the mystery exists. No, you cannot always go there. You can only go there when you can go there.
To try and fail is embarrassing enough. But to try and fail in these days of technical mastery where everything should start with the flick of a switch, this is closer to religious blasphemy with an attached death sentence. We want our technologies to work immediately and without fail. We are not accustomed to having to wait. We do not accept an attitude that says about the miraculous, “Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.” We want our miracles to work all of the time.
Maybe you have had a glimpse of how big the universe really is. Maybe the curtain parted slightly and the Goddess and King lived in the same moment together. Maybe Archetypal Love flooded through you one day in the presence of another human being and you were so overwhelmed that you could not comprehend that such magnificence could ever happen again. You tremble at the thought of trying and failing. But if you let your doubts stop your actions then the uncertainty is over, because you already have failed.
Years of conditioning about our preferences, opinions, insecurities, expectations and so on can fall away in an instant when intimately exposed to the glorious radiance of a Woman brought to life. But sustaining the falling away of the conditioning takes discipline. This is just as true for the Woman brought to life as it is for the Man who awakened her. Continuing to live with the woman as if in any moment she could awaken takes tremendous spaciousness. The spaciousness is about allowing people to have the space to be completely themselves in our presence, with absolutely no expectation, criticism, judgment, opinion, or even analysis from us.
When Archetypal Adoration wakens Woman, Woman leads Man through the Labyrinth. Either person’s psyche can interrupt the process. The interrupter can even be the internal masculine part of the woman that screws things up. The masculine part of the woman may show up in many ways: as moving suddenly, as being focused on the goal rather than experiencing the present moment, as taking actions instead of being-with, as hardening opinions into rigid positionality. That is why it is important to understand that Adoration occurs in a domain that is outside of ordinary human interaction. Woman will not come to life in the domain of ordinary human relationship. It simply does not work.
What If?
What if we are one of the “… few fortunate ones … who are satisfied and fulfilled by a human partner, feeling we have met the goal, realized the wish, found the dream, as lucky as we are and as wonderful as this is, have still missed the mark. For the ‘partner’ that is so longed for is God”? What if “… by the time we’re grown up, we’ve completely displaced this deep and powerful longing onto the mundane human domain and been convinced by magazine articles in teen and women’s magazines and feel-good movies, or feel-bad movies, that it is the perfect human mate that is the answer to our prayers and our yearning desires. But in fact it is God, union with God, seeing the face of God that is the ‘partner’ we seek and since God, the ‘partner God’ is already at hand, is not in any way, except perhaps a psychological way, separate from us, not at a distance, of course we broken-heartedly call out for this Union, the union that we know instinctively, or instinctually, whichever applies, is the only thing that will complete us. And we are already complete, we just don’t know it?” What if “… we realize the true nature of our longing, and realize that this ‘partner’ is already where it needs to be, here, now, exactly synchronous, not-separate, then we can relax, stop requiring our human partner to be God, to be the perfect man or woman, and be open to a working, successful, loving, caring, tender human partnership. Want it all? You can have it. Why not? But first things first. Stop searching for what you already have in order to find what would please, even thrill you, that which is also closer than we can possibly imagine when we are assuming it is so impossibly far away?” (Lee Lozowick, The Little Book of Lies and Other Myths. Prescott, Arizona: Hohm Press, 2005, 170-171.)
2. Watch Out for Psycho-Emotional Recoil
If you succeed at entering paradise together, if you bring the Woman to life and She leads the Man toward the Heart of the Labyrinth, take care during the next few days to minimize recoil. It is quite common that if the night is one of the most intensely intimate between you and your partner, then the next morning will be one of the most ferociously separate. Psycho-emotional recoil can be vicious, erupting out of the most ridiculously meaningless conflicts, yet creating the most painful scars that a relationship must bear.
From the psychological perspective, recoil from intimacy makes sense. The Box is there to defend us and protect us. If we let someone get closer to us than the limits of our psychological mask, that person has the power to undo the mask. Our Box then experiences that person as our most threatening enemy. From the Box’s perspective, the possibility of future intimacy with that person must be destroyed, at all costs, in order to preserve our future identity. To destroy the possibility of continued intimacy, the Box
gives us the experience that everything about our partner is clearly distasteful. The Box instigates a righteous rampage, like rounding up wild horses that have escaped from their corral. Perceptions that were recently expanded through experiencing deep intimacy are suddenly and furiously contracted by the Box.
Unconsciously perhaps, we think that we must live out both the positive and the negative aspects of the Taoist yin-yang symbol all by ourselves. We may erroneously conclude that too much joy has to be balanced by an equal part of hatred because we all know that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” Not true, from a larger perspective. Although equalization may appear to be a natural law, it is only a superstition. The ultimate balancing takes place on a bigger scale. There is already so much suffering in the world – you do not have to add to it in any way. The world could actually use a few more people living out their relationships in endless ecstatic joy. You could volunteer for the job.
3. Beware of Archetypal Exclusivity
Once we have brought the Archetypal Woman to life we may tend to want to continue the relationship only with the Archetypal Woman or the Archetypal Man and ignore the human woman or the human man. Excluding the human nature of our partner will not work. Our human partner is still human! When union with the Archetypal Woman is realized, the integration of this realization includes continued relationship with the human partner.
Human men and human women can create circumstances that mirror relationship in higher and subtler domains. But, we cannot live on the top of the mountain. There is no food or shelter there, no work, no movie theaters. We must come back down off the mountain peak to live with each other. It is through our daily living with each other that we prepare ourselves for our next journey up the side of the mountain into the rarified atmospheres.
SECTION 16-G
Your Divine Beloved
As long as we understand that our partner will always retain their humanity, we can extend our experience of them to also include their divinity. In the flush of directly experiencing Archetypal Love, the possibility arises that we could be one another’s Beloveds. It is the mood that brings us to this possibility. The mood of Archetypal Love is inexpressibly sublime. Because of the sublimity of the mood, we conclude that the mood itself is divine. We divinize the mood. Then, because our partner is needed to create and sustain this exquisite mood, we divinize our partner. The divinization of our partner is not true, because our partner is and always will be human. And yet, something hangs on. The residue of the experience of Archetypal Love will not fade away. We are somehow convinced of the divinity of our partner.
Regarding our partner as our Beloved does not become a problem as long as our attitude is held in its proper context. It works as long as we do not put our partner onto a pedestal above us in status, and then use the inequity as justification to expect certain behaviors from our partner, or use the inequity as an excuse for our own irresponsible behaviors. Divinizing our partner will not work in the ordinary human relationship context because our ordinary human perspectives cause us to distort the inequity into a problem. Remember, Archetypal Adoration occurs in a domain that is different from ordinary human relationship. If you can remember this, then regarding your partner as your Beloved creates precious surprising moments of delight, joy and ecstasy where none could otherwise be reasonably expected in your day-to-day life.
PART VI
How To Do It
CHAPTER 17
Protecting What is Real
If you skipped ahead and came directly to this Part VI – How To Do It – you will probably be disappointed. The answer to the question “How to do it?” cannot be gotten through being clever and jumping ahead. There is no jumping ahead. You must work where you are.
If you read the book straight through and came to this page the long hard way, you might still be disappointed, the way you might be disappointed with Tiger Woods’ answer to the question, “How do you consistently shoot five under par?” You might hear his answer. You might write down his answer. You might memorize his answer. You might even understand his answer. But this does not mean you will be able to shoot five under par.
The tantalizing scenario has been painted before your eyes. The door is open. Elysium fields lay vibrant and gorgeous before you. Honeysuckle-scented spring morning air gently caresses your face. This is what is possible in your relationship: endless radiant extraordinary and Archetypal Love.
But how? How? Don’t you just hate that?
SECTION 17-A
No Jumping Ahead
Radiant joy, brilliant Love … just beyond the thinnest of veils. But how do you get through that veil? How do you get over there? You may be wishing for your dreams to come true. You may hope that love comes and stays. Then, some hours, days or weeks later you suddenly remember, “Oh. Whoa. Where am I? There was a time when I wanted to have love come and stay… What happened?” In that instant, you realize again with a start that it did not work!
Again you stopped practicing. Again you were not able to make love stay. You wanted love to come and stay, but instead you fell asleep. And in your sleep you behaved in a manner that sent love away. Again! Aaarrrrggggghhhh?!?!
Discovering that your love-banishing actions form an oft-repeated pattern sends a cold horror creeping down the back of your mind. The internal adversary has more strength, speed, subtlety and persistence than you do. The opponent never sleeps, but you do. This enemy never goes away because you carry it within yourself. The prickly sensation of its hot breath on the back of your neck reeks of moral corruption and old garlic. The foe manifests in so many ways through internally twisted reasoning, habits of interpretation, hidden purposes, fantasy projections, and long forgotten core decisions that still influence your life today. You know all this already!
Is your desperation desperate enough to keep you from falling asleep? No.
The kingdom of heaven is always at hand. Your chance to enter is not.
How do you use the chance when you have it? Is there a method?
No.
If there is no method, is the only way to get into heaven to improvise?
Ask it this way: If there were a method would love be authentically alive, or would it only be a trophy?
How can there be success if there is no method for success?
The good is in the wanting. No effect is the payoff. The Benediction is in the mood itself – so keep wanting!
– Lee Lozowick
A man was complaining about never getting new customers. “Do you ask new potential customers for a contract?” he was asked. “No.”
Another man was complaining about not finishing his writing project. “Do you make time each day and write?” he was asked. “No.”
Another man was complaining that his children were estranged and his wife always nagging at him. “Do you speak and act toward your dear ones with respect? Do you listen to their hearts?” he was asked. “No.”
The efforts needed to enter radiant joy and brilliant Love are as straightforward as the efforts needed to create new customers, finish a project or grow a family. If you engage in certain practices, you are much more likely to succeed in your efforts than if you do not engage those practices. The practices themselves do not guarantee results. But without practicing, reaching results are a thousand-fold less likely.
Sometimes in trying to enter radiant joy and brilliant Love you may think, “If only an expert healer were here to smooth our old emotional wounds with warm healing salve. If only these harsh thoughts could be extracted from my mind. If only a master teacher of Tantric sex were here to guide our moves! It is a noble thought. But if you let wistful fear stop you, even for an instant, from going ahead and trying experiments in exactly the way that you, right now, can do them, you are making a big mistake. The great lovers, who could already do with certainty what you are faced with trying to do with severe doubts, are not here. They are not here. They are out there in their own lives and stories, challenged beyond their maximum limits
to create Archetypal Love in situations you could hardly dream of. The person who has the greatest chance to make the most of the circumstances that you are in is you. Because you are here. Just do your best. Pay attention. Keep learning. Try again.
How to do it? Use your attention to pay attention to your attention. Find and keep your center. Make “now” a sacred space. Know your true purpose and keep it presently in mind. Stay unhookable from other purposes. Listen. Feel. Be. Don’t only think. When you are wordlessly moved, then move. Keep practicing.
SECTION 17-B
Pseudo-Archetypal Substitutes for Love
Our culture abounds with alternative, easily-reproducible substitutes for true wonder and ecstasy. With little effort you can find close approximations that are certain. You probably already have a list of favorites – like chocolate, alcohol, overeating, egoism. What we tend to ignore about these approximations is their cost. We pay a very high price for guaranteed ecstasy and wonder.
When you cover your walls with reproductions of art, when you place artificial plants in your room, when you eat frozen and pre-packaged foods, when you listen to CDs but never go to a live music concert, or watch TV but never visit the theater, when you stay in Westernized hotels in third-world countries, when you only say prayers that you did not make up yourself, you lose something priceless. What you lose is your connection to authenticity. You replace authenticity with convenience.
Radiant Joy Brilliant Love Page 70