Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Hopefully Romantic

I am not a hopeless romantic, I am a hopeful romantic. ~ Byron Tuck

I too am a hopeful romantic and in my book, BEing the Present (http://www.beingthepresent.com/, #25), I wrote about loving fully with 100% of yourself, not 70, 80 or even 90% of yourself, but with 100% of yourself. That is what I aspire to. That is what makes me a hopeful romantic.

I was recently totally touched, re-inspired and reminded to remain a hopeful romantic by an article written in the Huffington Post by Arjuna Ardagh about Why it is Wise to Worship a Woman!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arjuna-ardagh/goddess-worship_b_660896.html?ref=fb&src=sp
The article was so right on!

When I read the article, I felt paralyzed. Here is this man who wrote a post on Facebook about his wife … No one and nothing comes close to the woman who is now asleep in the bedroom.
He received many responses to which he further responded and posed some insights that were deeply moving.

He wrote…
That's where the whole thing starts for all of us, when we realize that we don't yet know how to love. And that's that the big question that you have to consider: "Is that okay with me?" If not, and here's where you have to be honest with yourself, is that OK with you? Is it OK to die one day without the heart's gift having been fully given?

What struck me was that I have never loved in that way, that he so beautifully described, yet I believe it is possible. In fact, I recently asked myself that question and realized, that until recently, I didn’t love myself and so in no way could expect a partner to show up, if I didn’t start with loving myself. It has only been in the recent past that I finally fully love and accept myself that is where it starts, before being able to worship another, we must worship ourselves and not settle for anything less than someone else worshipping us. In fact realized that I’d prefer to be alone than with anything that isn’t totally additive in my life and doesn’t leave me in a place of awe, as so eloquently written as Arjuna’s love and divine worship of the feminine.

What further captured my attention was something he explained that I only recently started to understand about myself. He wrote of a time he was in Bali and was taken to a sacred temple that had many concentric circles and layers – the deeper a devotee you were, the further into the depths of the temple you were allowed and only those who had committed completely and totally were allowed into the inner most sanctuaries to experience the beauty and divinity. He likened that to a woman’s heart. I nearly fell over.

I had recently described to a friend that intimacy with partners has never come easy for me – not sexual intimacy, but real intimacy, spiritual and emotional, intimacy. I have described it in much the same way as he did. It is as though I have layers of walls around me and I let my friends in deeper than I let partners in and somehow I never fully understood it until I read his explanation and description.

The very essence of every woman's heart is the peak of wisdom, the peak of inspiration, the peak of sexual desirability, the peak of soothing, healing love. The peak of everything. But it's protected, for good reason, by a series of concentric walls. To move inwardly from one wall to the next requires that you intensify your capacity to devotion, and as you do so, you are rewarded with Grace. This is not something you can negotiate verbally with a woman. She doesn't even know consciously how to open those gates herself. They are opened magically and invisibly by the keys of worship. Step through another gate, and she will show you her outer gift-wrapping…Step through another gate with your commitment, with your attention, with the small seedlings of devotion, and she'll open her heart to you more. She'll share with you her insecurities, the way that she's been hurt, her deepest longings. Some men will back away at this point. They realize that the price they must pay to go deeper is more than they are willing to give. They start to feel a responsibility. But for those few who step though another gate, they come to discover her loyalty, her willingness to stick with you no matter what…And so it goes on. Somewhere around the second wall from the center, she casts the veils of her personality aside, and shows you that she is both a human being and also a portal into something much greater than that. She shows you a wrath that is not hers, but all women's. She shows you a patience that is also universal. She shows you her wisdom. At this point you start to experience the archetypes of women, who have been portrayed as goddesses and mythological figures in every tradition.Then, at the very center, in the innermost temple itself, all the layers of your devotion are flooded with reward all at once. You discover the very essence of the feminine, and in a strange way that is not exactly romantic, but profoundly sacred all the same, you realize that you could have got here with any woman if you had just been willing to pass through all the layers of initiation. Any woman is every woman, and every woman is any woman at the same time. When you love a woman completely, at the very essence of her being, this is the one divine feminine flame. You discover the magic ingredient which has lead every man to fall in love with a woman.

When I read this I felt renewed and re-inspired as the hopeful romantic that I am. One man wrote, "I feel my heart is closed down. I live in my head a lot…” It made me laugh, sounded like me. Particularly being an Aquarius woman, I recently read a perfect description of us Aquarian women that resonated for me in my romantic life…

Aquarians prefer intellectual partners and communication is very important…if you find conversation that fascinates them, you are three quarters of the way to seducing them. However, if you push for the physical too early, before they figure out their own feelings, it could be the end of their interest in you.

With these two articles a lot became clear, it explained a lot. I am in my head a lot and I do love an intellectual partner. It is safe, but it is also what turns me on and it is what allows a slow entry through the gates, walls or concentric circles, as Arjuna put it, into the depths of my heart, soul and being.

I am a hopeful romantic and I do look forward to that intellectually stimulating, heart opening, awe-inspiring, worshiping partner and relationship and know that it will come and that it is possible. Thank you Arjuna for your beautiful article. It served as a great reminder to me to stay true to being the hopeful romantic that I am, and to not apologize or settle for anything less.

You can find me at www.facebook.com/pilarstella and www.facebook.com/pilarstella1 and twitter @pilarstella.

3 comments:

  1. WOE Pilar! So beautifully expressed by both of you. What a bountiful gift of understanding and expression. Thank you for sharing!

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  2. Thank you for sharing your heart, wisdom, and romantic writing discoveries.

    Joy and Love to YOU Pilar!

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  3. Thanks it is amazing sometimes the deeper into ourselves and our exploration we go...good stuff comes out...every time...much love to you both ;) p

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