Here is a free meditation recording on passion from the classes on Romantic Love that I recently did, enjoy!
With metta,
Toby
© Text and audio Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not use without permission
Tag: romance
Tomorrow I will be doing a class entitled “The transformative power of bliss and ecstasy – Connecting to the experience of enlightened love” . So, I gave myself 20 minutes to write down some conditions that I felt were important for developing bliss and ecstasy in our life in general, and romantic relationships (as in all 5 types of romantic relationship). Here is what I came up with:
- You need to have a right relationship to sex and sexuality, avoiding the extremes represented on the one hand by imbalanced religion: Sex is sinful, and on the other hand by secular culture where indulgence in debasing and carnal sexuality are encouraged. Avoid the extremes of either guilt or over-indulgence.
- You need to have a healthy diet and take appropriate exercise. This means a diet that nurtures and preserves the long term health and wellbeing of your physical body. Blissful and ecstatic states cannot be sustained by a body that is filled with impurity and low vibrations. For example a sugar high may bring short term pleasure, but in the long term exess sugar desensitizes and degrades the body, making it very difficult for consistent, stable blissful states to be maintained in the body or mind. Similarly and physically unfit body that you don’t value enough to take care of is not going to provide you with a stable basis for deep bliss.
- You need to be open and have the courage to face both deep pleasure and deep pain in your romantic relationship. Bliss and ecstasy cannot flow through a body mind where deep levels the emotional being has been repressed. Go beyond your comfort zone!
- You need to know that you are deserving of bliss. If you don’t like yourself and love yourself, you won’t let bliss into your life even if the conditions are staring you in the face
- You need to meditate and create special time to experience the divine each day. Bliss and ecstasy can be stimulated occasionally by outer objects and circumstances, but fundamentally deep, stable bliss relies upon some form of inner connection to source.
- You need to enjoy the experience of being naked! The natural sensual spirituality of your own body and of your partners (even if you are well over 45!) J
- You need to practice joy, gratitude and appreciation each day, and practice communicating these to your romantic partner
- You need to be able to accept deep bliss. Superficially it seems like anyone would say yes to bliss. However, to our ego, bliss is as threatening to our self sense as pain and misery. If you really open to bliss, you will be transformed and changed. Your negative ego won’t like this and thus will try and close you off to too much bliss.
- For sensual pleasure to be connected to inner spiritual bliss, they need to be combined with awareness and restraint
PS: If you enjoyed this article and would like to find out how you can use the latest meditation technologies to enhance your bliss and joy, then click here: Digital Euphoria
© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first. Contact info@tobyouvry.com
In my previous article on the five types of romantic love I placed the dynamic of romantic love in a larger context, to include our relationship not just with other people, but also ourself, the world/the Universe, landscape and our “art” or work.
What I want to do in this next few articles is have a look at four basic stages that any romantic relationship needs to go through in order to connect us to deep levels of authentic passion and creativity.
When I talk of passion and creativity here I am not referring just to a temporary increase in our creative energy, but a connection to deeper life forces that is continuously sustained over a long period of time.
The four stages of romantic love as I have named them are:
- Attraction and desire
- Relationship
- Union
- Creativity
In the article below we will begin by looking at stage 1, attraction and desire. I will focus mainly on the relationship between two people, but bear in mind that it can apply to the other four types of romantic experience as well.
Stage 1: Attraction and desire
Romantic attraction and desire are often seen as the antithesis of the pure, spiritual experience of love. However, if you look at the state of mind that you enter into when you first “fall in love” with a person, a place or a type of work or art, you will be able to see that it has many magical and spiritual qualities. For example
- The whole world seems more alive and vivid
- You seem to be in a kind of telepathic communication with the person you are romantically involved with
- Daily problems and anxieties fall away
- You have more energy
- There is a natural sense of timelessness which is in fact connected to the timeless world of spirit
Attraction and desire are the starting point for ANY romantic relationship, whether the couple are on a high level of consciousness or a low one. Attraction and desire are as natural as breathing and eating for us!
(those last two lines are my answer to the question posed by the title of this article by the way!)
One of the keys to successfully negotiating and enjoying this period of intense attraction and desire is to look closely at the motivations behind your attraction and desire.
- If you feel attracted to a person because you feel a glaring LACK or POVERTY within yourself, then it is likely that the attachment and desire is going to lead to experiences of pain and suffering in the next stage of the romance.
- If you fall into an attraction and desire for someone even though you feel a comfortable sense of FULLNESS and ABUNDANCE within yourself, then it is likely that you will be able to transition to the next stage of the romance where “reality sets back in” without too much problem.
Exercise for appreciating and enjoying desire and attraction
Recall a time when you were in love with someone for the first time (or if you are at that stage in your relationship now, look at what you are experiencing now). Spend a while re-creating the feelings and experiences associated with that time. Creatively imagine your way back into the feeling and texture of your mind, body and emotions at that time. Breathe with it and enjoy it for a while.
Now let go of the specifics of the romance. Forget about the person you were with, the time, the place and so on. Just focus on the essence or essential feeling that is left inside. Breathe with this for a while.
What you will find if you do this is that experiences of desire and attraction lead us quite naturally into a mystical, enraptured, timeless state of consciousness. Most of the time we fail to capitalize on this because we mistake the object of our desire for the STATE OF MIND that he/she evokes. However, if you can let go of the object of your desire and focus on the state of BEING that has been evoked in you, you will find yourself connecting to something timeless, universal and full of life-force…
© Toby Ouvry 2010. You are welcome to use this article, but you MUST seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@tobyouvry.com