A Place of Peace

He held me tight all through the night
my soul was bound away from flight
within his grasp I was serene
safe and warm, my ego clean;
to have that place of sacred peace
is worth the gold on my life's lease.

The Missing Pieces

I understand the desperate need;
I understand the intense hunger;
I understand the pain, which borders on inconsolable loneliness and a feeling of isolation.

It is not a cry to be dominated, nor a cry to dominate,

It is a plea to be understood and accepted,
It is an appeal to be known,
It is a powerful hope that someone out there holds the missing pieces,
to our puzzle.

The War Within

The beasts are after me again, their long dark claws tearing at my sanity until I scream blue murder in their general direction and they fall silent for a short while. They have left me alone for the better part of 25 years; I was quite sure I had killed them back then, my young troubled frame fighting them off at every turn until finally, it seemed, I had won......until now.

Too much turmoil lurking under my skin, I suppose. The black creatures have sensitive ears, that much I remember; they were always listening for the shouts of agonized angst from within my head; licking their lascivious lips at my pain. So they have found me again, the creatures of calamity, monsters of misery.

I don't know where my soldiers have gone. They went AWOL years ago when they no longer felt they were needed. I do battle against my demons with what little ammunition I can find; but they're gathering strength and know I am worn and feeble, the perfect target for starvacious predators.

Vigilance is necessary with every breath; constantly I monitor the darkness that threatens to overtake my every move. If words could kill I would write an artillery of pages aimed at the hearts of my silent stalkers; shoot letters of rage into their black horrid eyes; fell them until they lay dead and bleeding amongst the vowels and the consonants, of my life.

What If......

And what if, the safest, warmest place you can think to be, is sitting at his feet

And what if, you take pleasure in his authority over you, as you float through your life

And what if, even the act of him punishing you, makes you feel loved and wanted

And what if, you feel you would do anything to please him

And what if, the knowledge that he now owns you, allows you to feel calm and secure

And what if, you trust him explicitly with your heart, your body, your life

What would happen then, my friend?

Let it Be

I want to tell you something and I need you to listen very carefully. I know that you have lived much of your life in secrecy, never feeling able to share your shameful fantasies with anyone; afraid to reveal them for all the darkness they contained. Thinking that others would shun and judge you if ever they were privy to the real you. Please realize that all those thoughts and ideas that you have buried over the course of your lifetime because they embarrassed and ashamed you, can now be released; you are no longer alone with your shadows. It is the dawning of your formerly fractured soul to become re-acquainted with its lost parts and learn to embrace the submissive self, with pride. There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel the power of a Dominant individual; of wanting to live under that power. You are responding to a calling deep within you and, providing you find a partner that will properly complement your particular flavor of submissiveness, you are capable of soaring to great heights under, and within, that power. When two people are living in a way that allows them to openly, and outwardly, express their true selves, nothing is impossible; all creativity and inner strength will flow uninhibited.

Go forth and sow your uniqueness into the world. Be you. Be true.

Song of the Soul

In the depth of my soul there is
A wordless song - a song that lives
In the seed of my heart.
It refuses to melt with ink on
Parchment; it engulfs my affection
In a transparent cloak and flows,
But not upon my lips.

How can I sigh it?
I fear it may mingle with earthly ether;
To whom shall I sing it?
It dwells in the house of my soul,
in fear of harsh ears.


A Tear and a Smile,
Gibran Khalil

I Feel You

I feel you
I know nothing about you
but I feel you
at least I think I feel you....
I feel something that feels very much like the "you" I think you are
but
I want to feel you more
I want to feel you so deeply that it hurts
I want to feel you in every crevice of my body
until the sensation of you becomes so unbearable that I beg you to stop
I want to bleed you
so that you ooze from my pores and run down my face
as tears
I will cry you...when you give me the chance
I will cast away my fears
and let myself flow
into you

Show me

Write some pretty words to me;
Express the music that lies within your soul,
Render me weak from vowels, and hot from consonants,
So I have no choice, but only the loss of self-control.
Melt me, with your gorgeous sentences,
Make me weak, from intelligence, wit and charms…
Show me you can take me,
Let me see with what you’re made,
Until I need to exist, within the safety of your arms…
Exhibit all those strengths so I might see,
That you’ll be more than able…
To Dominate me.

My Demons

I'm getting out of hand again
and need to find my Dominant friend
the one who knows just what I need
when my inner beast I start to heed
he knows just how to reign me in
and so the process can begin
of subjugating me awhile
in Daddy-fashion Dominant style,
he knows just how to cut the cord
and how much slack he can afford
or when to draw and when to fold
to make me do what I am told.......

because,

My demons now are dark and near
their whispers constant in my ear
they sabotage the words I say
to make the "good" me go away
they need to be crushed to the ground
and humbled by a cane-like sound
or spanked down with a hand would do
until my flesh burned through and through
until my screams subdued the force
these beasts within that run their course
which need your firm and Dominant hand
to bring me back to calmer land.

In the Stillness of the Night

In the stillness of the night
he held me close and made me right
within the silence of the room
his hands caressed away my gloom
under gentle, watchful eye
he touched my skin and made me fly
and his voice was in my ears
gently soothing all my fears
and his teeth were in my skin
carving pain's delicious sin
his heart,
his essence,
he did lend;
I'm blessed to have him,
as my friend.

On Friendship

Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Kahlil Gibran

Charli as a Desirable, Sexual Being?

My many years of living within a relationship based entirely on NON-sexuality has had the effect of making me not know how to respond to someone who finds me sexually appealing. More specifically, finds me desirable as a sexual being. As in, what are you saying exactly when you say that I am cute, or have nice breasts, or that I am very yummy? Are you objectifying me? Are you saying that that is ALL you like about me?

Now, on the surface you would think that I would be pleased to finally have someone "enjoy" me as a sexual person. But the reality is that, I am use to being loved for my humor, my personality, my character, etc., and NOT my body or my looks........so, for goodness sake, I have no idea how to handle someone who thinks of me as a "complete" woman!

The world is a very frightening place, Daddy.

The Comfort of Friends

Within your arms a calmness fell,
a hallowed place I don't know well,
within your kiss I squirmed inside,
where gentle yearnings still reside
within the soft, erotic space
I melted down without a trace,
of tensions that had come before,
I happened through your provocative door.

Nowhere to hide

Delicious Sin or nowhere to hide

In the darkness life is dear;
that is why he holds me here...
nowhere to wiggle,
nor to hide,
I struggle, as I fear inside
but sacred acts, and this is one,
are part of what we think is fun
while, technically, we play with life,
I feel the sharpness of the knife
and drip and moan and toss and beg
to feel his power, down my leg
and know that I belong to Him
absorbed in this delicious sin.



I am amazed
these days
I am amazed
at how I got it all wrong
at how bizarre the characters that make up my life are

How submissive do I want to be?

I am struggling with something. For the last couple of years I have been pondering this relatively new awareness of mine....the awareness of the submissive "self" within me. A self that, surely, has been there for most of my life, waiting for me to acknowledge and accept its existence. The last few months have been very difficult; leaving my marriage has left me floundering, feeling lost and without direction. I suppose it is because of these "empty" feelings that I have been questioning just how submissive I need/want to be as I go forward into my new life. My parents, especially my Father, raised me to be self-sufficient. He taught me how to use tools and fix things, how to change the oil in a car, how to build a deck. Within my marriage I was the "fixer", the "doer", the care taker of financial, and most other, matters. And now, as I sit here, alone for the first time in 22 years, I feel an intense yearning to have someone dictate my moves to me; to tell me what courses to take at school or where to look for a job, what steps to take, where to live, etc. I want to "react" to the direction of a trusted Dominant partner, one who knows "me" well, as opposed to dealing with the stress of having to figure it all out by myself.

It is very hard for me to even write these words; they go against everything that makes up the "me" that I have known for my entire life....and yet, I think that I have to begin to admit these twinges emanating from deep within.

I think I think I think....therefore I am, me.

So....just how submissive do I want to be?

*****************************************************

In the depth of my soul there is
A wordless song - a song that lives
In the seed of my heart.
It refuses to melt with ink on
Parchment; it engulfs my affection
In a transparent cloak and flows,
But not upon my lips.

How can I sigh it? I fear it may
Mingle with earthly ether;
To whom shall I sing it? It dwells
In the house of my soul, in fear of
Harsh ears.

From:
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran

The Important Things

look into my eyes

touch my skin

no, it's not overtly sexual...

it's the firm grasp of your hand encircling my wrist

it's the way you dig your nails into my back when your arm is around me

it's the gentle tug on my hair when we're walking down the street

it's the soft whisper of, "Daddy's going to make you cry when we get home", while standing in line at the grocery store

it's the way you look at me from across the room

it's the way you button up my coat before we leave the restaurant

it's the act of you shoving your fingers down my throat and giving me a "good girl" when I don't gag

it's the sound of your voice proclaiming "mine" as you pinch me until I gasp

it's being spanked *hard* because I've done something to displease you

it's having my face slapped for a similar infringement

it's knowing you won't let me get away with anything; that you'll hold me accountable for my actions, in any way you see fit

....that's how I know that you love me,
that you care,
that I'm Yours.

Reality Bites

Back to Ontario, where reality lives;
grown up decisions are begging to be made but...
those all around me are drowning in chaos,
while chaos is the last thing that I want to see,
shall I push them away,
disregard their pleas;
concentrate only on me?

And...

If I sit long enough without making a decision
maybe a decision will be made without me?
while I type out these words
all creatively like....
things will just happen, whilst I sip my tea...

Cause the truth will be told,
and I'll tell it in case
I've not glimpsed the direction,
that I'm meant to face...
oh sure I've had inklings,
and smidgeons or two,
but no clear-cut pathway,
of what I'm s'pose to do.

Shades of Love

I am learning about love. After breaking free of 21 years of isolation and confinement I am beginning to comprehend the myriad flavors and shades of love. I have been living a sheltered existence, only realizing one degree, one flavor of feeling, of being.

My new life is already full of wonderful people and they allow me to learn new things about myself everyday. I am so grateful for these amazing friends, guides and teachers; especially my Rainman, who has been by my side during my very worst storms.

These are hard times; tough lessons. Nothing is easy when emotions are on the line. I now know there will be many people in my life and that I will feel for all these people in different shades of love. But what is important, really important, is that this is OKAY. It is okay to have many people that I love, in my life. It is okay to have different feelings for each and every one of these people.....AND it is okay to love more than one person at once. This last one is a biggie for me. I have never easily "shared" my feelings among people. I have never considered myself capable of loving more than one person at a time.

These are hard times; tough lessons. I am learning......new lessons, new ways of being.

It is not easy.
I feel sad quite often.
I feel alone quite often.
But.....
I feel ALIVE.

....and THAT, must be good.

...on the joy of surrendering my breath

He leaned over toward where I was sitting on the sofa, shoved one hand down on my shoulder to pin me, and clamped his mouth over mine. I didn't know what he was doing but soon realized that I couldn't breathe, as he sucked the air out of my lungs. I started squirming; his pressure over my mouth increased until I thought I would pass out; then he stopped. I slumped where I sat, panting shallowly; trying to catch my breath and figure out what, exactly, he had just done to me. Two seconds later I felt his hands around my throat, squeezing......his grip was too tight! I started flailing wildly on the sofa as he kept an even pressure on my neck and suddenly everything started to go white and I could feel myself slipping away, which was when he stopped. Trembling and clutching at my throat, I looked up to see him smiling down on me. Tears were running down my face but I wasn't sure what I was feeling, other than completely overwhelmed and at his mercy; although confused and bewildered, it seemed I was quite enjoying being overwhelmed and overpowered thusly. Before I knew what was happening he had again clamped his mouth over mine in order to take whatever breath I had left to give him. By the time he stopped I was crying and shaking, totally unnerved; completely capitulated.

When he reached for my hand to pull me off the sofa I heard his voice somewhere in the air above me...."come on little girl, I have something else in mind for you"; as I allowed myself to be pulled along the hallway, weak from lack of oxygen and the sensation of being conquered, I could feel a huge idiotic smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.......

Is there anything more delicious than being

The Internet is a Dangerous Place

the internet is a dangerous place
a seriously strange and ominous space,
where 2 people become "glued" in the blink of an eye,
and how does that happen?
I still don't understand how affections can seemingly blossom so quickly;
even though I've experienced, myself, this very thing,
of falling in lust, then,
chewing up, swallowing, and regurgitating my emotions,
to start again,
I still cannot comprehend exactly how....
When you travel alone a similar thing happens,
you form attachments with fellow travelers you meet along the way,
and you can become extremely close to these people in a very short space of time so...
I suppose it's a similar phenomenon,
you are basically traveling with your internet companion,
traversing strange and new territory together and so,
the bonds become quickly fixed and tangible.
it's as if we enter the realm of unreality,
and forget where we are,
as though we mix up the real world and the virtual one,
and forget which is which...

the internet is a dangerous place,
a seriously strange and ominous space,
a refuge of joy and pain;
a mask of dreams and illusions,
that we don when we don't like what we see in the mirror of our lives;
but...
are people aware how deadly it can be?
does anyone really know how many are living on the edge of reality?
at times I am horrified by the thought,
because I know,
I have been there.....
and spoken with many who live in the virtual world,
and have yet to realize it,
people who are trapped by the magnetic pull of the stranger on the other end
a stranger they think they know,
so real, so very real...
yet not real at all.

True Confessions of a non-slut

I am not interested in men who only want me for sex
I can't do just sex
I need more for the experience to hold any pleasure for me
He has to be a good friend, at least a good friend; preferably someone who has the potential to be a full-time partner.
Does this make me less slutty? Probably.
I definitely don't think I fit the bill of your average run-of-the-mill, free-wheeling slut.
I am not bisexual, or "heteroflexible", or whatever the hell it is called this hour, and, reading through Fetlife profiles, it seems I am one of the few straight women left on earth.
Does this make me less slutty? Probably.
I am not an exhibitionist and have no desire to play in public.
Does this make me less slutty? Most likely.

Boring huh?

I want to share my life with a Dominant partner, someone with whom I can freely and openly express my submissiveness. Someone I trust enough to give away my consent to; otherwise though, I suspect my life will be rather normal.

Do I have a raunchy, deviant, sick mind? Yup! But my mind is much more raunchy and deviant than "I" am. It's okay, I am growing comfortable with my new role of (what I am) and not worrying so much about (what I'm not).

What I am:

A kinky, filthy-minded, submissive non-slut.

Amen.

In the Dark of the Night

Darkness, so much darkness
when slumber should win
yet hours tick painfully by
while thoughts spill to overflowing
between the spaces of what once was
and what is still to be;
the self-absorbed stream
of confused, relentless introspection
burrows its way deep and deeper
into my consciousness
until all I am
is yet to come
and all I was
is gone.

My New Reality

So here I am,
47,
single,
single,
single.....
I am single, as in, no longer married, no longer a Mrs.
wow
I have to tell you that this feels mighty strange after being partnered for 21 years.
Everyday brings a new smidgen of this reality to my consciousness.
Some days are good,
most are not.
The best word for what I feel, is lost.
lost,
lost,
I no longer feel responsible for another person's happiness on a daily basis,
I no longer have to cook, or eat, at a certain time,
I no longer have to carefully meter every word that comes out of my mouth for fear of saying the wrong thing,
I no longer have to hide myself behind the veil of a good and obedient wife,
but......
what "do" I have to do, what "do" I feel?
I am struggling to feel, period.
Sometimes I think that I feel something,
but then I find that I don't know how to interpret exactly what it is that I "am" feeling.
Connection,
I know that I long for a deep connection; to relate with/to a kindred spirit,
this much I know;
pretty much everything else I am just winging...
Reacting,
I sit and I react to what goes on around me,
family and friends are trying to motivate me into action,
but,
they have not just disentangled themselves from a 21 year relationship....
I need to sleep,
I have not had a proper night's sleep in over 8 weeks;
I am terminally tired,
so desperately tired...
I need to sit, and hear my thoughts,
I need to sit, until my new reality seeps into every crevice of my mind;

Only then will I be able to embrace my new life,
only then will I begin to live in it.

Beyond my Solitude

Beyond my solitude is another solitude, and to him who dwells therein my aloneness is a crowded market-place and my silence a confusion of sounds.

Too young am I and too restless to seek that above-solitude. The voices of yonder valley still hold my ears and its shadows bar my way and I cannot go.

Beyond these hills is a grove of enchantment and to him who dwells therein my peace is but a whirlwind and my enchantment an illusion.

Too young am I and too riotous to seek that sacred grove. The taste of blood is clinging in my mouth, and the bow and the arrows of my fathers yet linger in my hand and I cannot go.

Beyond this burdened self lives my freer self; and to him my dreams are a battle fought in twilight and my desires the rattling of bones.

Too young am I and too outraged to be my freer self.  And how shall I become my freer self unless I slay my burdened selves, or unless all men become free?

How shall the eagle in me soar against the sun until my fledglings leave the nest which I with my own beak have built for them?

Words and art, Kahlil Gibran

Body and Soul

BODY AND SOUL

A man and a woman sat by a window that opened upon Spring. They sat close one unto the other. And the woman said, "I love you. You are handsome, and you are rich, and you are always well-attired."
And the man said, "I love you. You are a beautiful thought, a thing too apart to hold in the hand, and a song in my dreaming."
But the woman turned from him in anger, and she said, "Sir, please leave me now. I am not a thought, and I am not a thing that passes in your dreams. I am a woman. I would have you desire me, a wife, and the mother of unborn children."
And they parted.
And the man was saying in his heart, "Behold another dream is even now turned into mist."
And the woman was saying, "Well, what of a man who turns me into a mist and a dream?"

From:
The Wanderer
Kahlil Gibran

My Best Intentions

Live with Integrity
I will not lose sight of my principles and values and will allow them to guide me

Feel
I will experience, fully, every little sensation that finds me

Touch
I will touch others with compassion, love, and a feeling of connection

Listen
I will give people my full attention so they will never doubt they are being heard

Speak
I will pause and contemplate before giving an answer or speaking my mind

Eat
I will eat food that strengthens and sustains my body toward a healthy state of being

Grow
I will strive to learn new things everyday and never stop challenging myself

Accept
I will accept people and situations without judgment or expectation

Nasty Girl

I'm a nasty girl, with nasty thoughts
but I keep them in a vault
cause it's disturbing to me
when, on occasion, I'm prompted to let them out...

I'm a nasty girl, with nasty thoughts
and I can't say I"m proud of what's in my head
Since a young girl, I've carried this weight
and held my emotions with dread...

I'm a nasty girl, with nasty thoughts
in constant battle with the darkness within
and as hard as I hope, and as hard as I pray
I can't make the darkness go far away...


Photo, Max Sauco

Pearls of Wisdom

In conversation with a friend today, I was reminded (by him) that I am currently in a most enviable position; that I will (likely) never again reside within this golden environment of opportunity and freedom, without attachment and responsibility; able to live or work anywhere I choose, or to "do" anything I choose. He told me to embrace it and run with it....to really live inside this wonderful space of privilege.

I had never thought of my new-found singledom in those terms before. His words empowered me and helped me to view my situation in a different light. I suppose that I have been busy fretting over my future, to the exclusion of actually recognizing my present situation with clarity.

The world is my oyster and I'm 100% free to seek the pearl.

How special is that?

Time to Cleanse

I am spending some time on Vancouver Island to feel the wind in my hair and let it cleanse my spirit and soul.......I plan to meditate and walk labyrinths and try to center my fractured being.

I will be gone for 4 weeks and within those 4 weeks I will come to some sort of conclusion about what direction my new life should take.

Questions

Stop asking me if I want this
Stop asking me if I like that
If you want to give it, I'll take it
If you like it, I'll try it
But...
if you ask me,
endlessly...
what I want,
what I like,
what I am thinking...
I'll say...
I don't know,
I'll say...
nothing,
because the truth is that...
I don't really know if I like it,
or if I want to try it,
or even, what I am thinking about it...
because you see,
this is all new to me,
and so...
I need you to be assertive;
aggressive,
take it like you own it
make it like you own it;
if it complains,
tell it to shut the fuck up
and just do it.
(but make sure it knows the safe word first)

What? Where?

is he/she...?
This elusive partner that most of us have dreamed of,
is he to remain an illusion, a fantasy....
We search, endlessly, for the "right one";
I hear people cry and mourn over their futile attempts to procure...
the "perfect" partner.

Are our expectations too high?
Do we pine for someone that does not/can not exist?
If this is so....our search will last until our death;
we will take our desires, our needs, with us to the grave.

...and that is sad.

We should not settle for less than we deserve but...somewhere along the line, our expectations have to line up with reality....what we think we need/want, and what we can realistically expect/live with, will have to learn to happily co-exist with each other.

Life is imperfect.
"We" are imperfect.
It's time we, not only think we know this, but seriously embrace this fact.
It is our only hope for any sort of happiness and contentment.

Not perfection,
but perhaps peace,
perhaps contentment,
perhaps managing to get the bulk of our needs met,
perhaps being allowed to go elsewhere to receive the rest of them...
We can sculpt our lives,
we do not/should not depend on one person to meet all of our needs;
this is impossible and places a tremendous burden on the relationship.
My husband expected me to be his everything...it was very stressful.

In my new life, I vow to lower my expectations and to realize/accept that people (including myself) are imperfect.

I vow to allow myself, to be happy.

My Life in Plastic

There is no security in my life right now. I am without a permanent address; without a job. This is an intolerable situation for a control freak like me, and so....I control what little I have control over. My entire life is organized into baggies. Big baggies, medium size baggies and tiny baggies. A baggy for every little item I own. I have an underwear baggy, a sock baggy, a makeup baggy, an electronic-gear baggy....well, you get the idea. I wonder, as I zip the Calcium back into the vitamin baggy, what on earth people did before the baggy invention?? How did people organize themselves, for god sake! How did recently-separated, need-to-take-charge-women, cope, when the chips were down?

I am grateful, very grateful. Baggies are my silver lining, my saving grace.

We all need someplace to put our crap. I may not have a home, but my life, what remains of it, is securely ensconced in plastic....and that affords me a smidgeon of organizational security.

I'll take what I can get.

My Bed

I am lonely
I am empty
devastatingly; inconsolably...
sad
I need to be held
I need to be held by the man who has loved me and taken care of me for 21 years
The man who has seen me at my very worst, and at my very best
The man who accepted me, regardless of what I threw at him
That man
I need to be held by that man
But...
that man is holding someone else
A new someone
And so, he can't hold me...
And it is all my doing.

It is my bed;
a cold bed...
and I can cry, and cry
but still...
there is no warmth
no rest
no peace
only sadness,
only me.

Musing

In the darkness she waits
expectantly
her breath slow and rhythmical
her creative mind
heavy and unmotivated
fingers perched over the keyboard;
waiting for the inspiration that will not come
realizing that what she needs most of all...
is stimulation,
a muse, perhaps?
perhaps
she should muse more herself
reflect deeper, more deeply
breathe in the creative aura of experience
and tap tap tap those fingers
furiously
like she did once before
when she was tapped,
tapped into her...
self, her independent self
her creative soul searching for something...
other than what it had
her mind thinking, almost constantly,
through her cunt;
yes,
that worked...
when her entire being was governed by her sexual desires,
she felt motivated
sexually
creatively
and now what?
too much shit,
too much life,
too much strife....but
one day
the body will contact the mind
and the mind will again soar...
with erotic, unbridled sexuality
and she will at last,
be free.

Irreplaceable Me

This weekend I sit here and ponder life. My ex husband has already found a new girlfriend (yes, she is 25) to spend his weekends with; my lover has found another woman to spend the weekend with....and here I sit, trying hard not to feel sorry for myself. If ever I harbored feelings of being "irreplaceable", they have taken the express train to Oblivion.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the notion of being someone's primary love interest has been on my mind lately. This is an avenue I did not properly explore while in my marriage. You see, my husband NEVER gave me any reason to be jealous. He always made me feel special and I never doubted how much he loved me...... I really never did; I now realize how lucky I was and I am so grateful to him for giving me that feeling of "continual love" throughout the years. Always I felt secure and safe and never threatened, and I now realize how nice (and special) those feelings were.

Although I was not faithful to my husband, I believe that I am a monogamous creature by nature. I continue to believe that it is possible to obtain the correct balance of freedom and growth "within" a relationship, to allow for many years of blissful co-existence. Finding the correct person to do this with, however, is the eternal dilemma.

The notion of being cherished as the most special person in someone's life is a good one; I am going to miss it....I do miss it. I am not good at sharing. I never wanted to share my toys when I was a child and I have no desire to be shared or to share the man I am in a relationship with. It is simply how I am built. In order to feel loved and secure I need to be the center of someone's world, as he will be the center of mine.

Okay, so I am not irreplaceable. Another lesson learned.

In the heat of the moment...

Upon further thought, over the last few days, I now realize how daft the blog post below was. First of all, the lawyer was a decent man, he was not pushing me to claim the full amount that I was entitled to under the law, he could tell that I was not about to even contemplate going that route. He was simply trying to educate me on my rights and wanted to make sure that I wasn't shafting myself.

And I didn't "cave"....I made a decision in the heat of the moment, which, I know from past experience, I should never do.

I also do NOT believe that this has anything to do with my submissive personality; only an aspect of weakness in my character which has much to do with always wanting to make everyone happy and not disappoint people. It has much more to do with my insecurity, than my submission.

Obtaining more "guts" and a stronger spine are something I intend to work on.

I have been informed, incidentally, that it is not a problem for me to change the agreement back to the way I want it. I am very relieved about this.

I will now excuse myself as I must return to my blissful visit with the Rainman. Coming to visit him has been my light at the end of this endless tunnel. It is amazing just how cathartic a little bit of love and D/s can be.......

Over and out.

Don't you see you have only yourself to be accountable to?

Whether a wounded child or a terrified adult, at the end of the day, there is only your own shoulder to cry on; your own arms which hold fast the aching flesh.

We all want someone to embrace us, someone to dry the tears and help the sorrow to fade.

That someone must be you

What a difference a day makes....

I awoke Friday morning feeling strong and positive. I was to toddle off to my lawyer's office to sign the separation agreement, which would enable us (husband and I) to finally commence with the rest of our lives. But, because I am gutless and spineless; because I (frequently in my life) have allowed myself to be "persuaded" (coerced?) by men, whether they be boyfriends, husbands, or lawyers....not only does the agreement remain pending, I have mucked things up royally so that it is bound to drag on for quite some time and cost us endless oodles of money.

What the hell is wrong with me? I am an intelligent woman; I am able to walk through most of my life with logic and balance, hardly ever falling on my face. And yet....put me in a room with a man capable of, what?...Dominant coercion...and, all at once, I am changing my mind about things and signing papers that never should have been placed in front of me in the first place.

I am been overly fair to my husband in our "agreement". This is what I want, this is my decision. I walked into the lawyer's office with full intention of only half listening to what he had to say, just so I could hurry and sign the document that I had drafted and researched, until it was exactly what I wanted. And then.....I am in his office for 2 hours and suddenly I am consenting to change passages; signing something that I will gravely regret 2 hours later. Lawyers being lawyers, I damn well knew he would try to change my mind about my "fairness" to my husband.

I knew, and yet I caved, and I am fucking furious with myself.

Is this spinelessness a side effect of my submissive personality? And if it is, why the hell do I continue to desire to be in a D/s relationship, with someone who will, ongoingly, be Dominating (molding, manipulating and coercing) me? Why on earth would I feel a need to constantly subject myself to this aspect of my personality, which I have always loathed?

Am I missing something here?

Jealousy and the Abyss

A very good read......

by William Pennell Rock

From the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 2, Spring 1983, 70-84.

Summary. Relationships -- and jealousy in particular -- provide an opportunity to come to a fundamental understanding of the self. Jealousy is the eruption of attachment. It can be transcended only through awareness. As we move with awareness into the core of this phenomenon, we pass through ungrounded expectations and beliefs, projections and delusions, envy, guilt, the loss of self-esteem, and the threat to security. The core is an existential problem; it has to do with illusion and the essentially fearful nature of the ego. In possessiveness, ego defends itself against nothingness. When we come to know and accept the nothingness at the core, jealousy and the pain of obsessive attachment cease.

Imagine this: You're very much in love with someone, and you have to go out of town. You know your lover's habits; you know he or she likes to go to bed fairly early, and that he or she gets up and goes to work in the morning. So you go away on your trip. You're gone for about a week, and then one evening you call, and there's no answer. Awful pictures rush into your mind. With great forces of will you stop them. The next morning, you call at eleven in the morning. His or her roommate answers the phone and says, "Gee, I'm sorry, She's not up yet, She's sleeping late." Oh god. Something is fishy. Something's going on. You don't know what it is, but your stomach is starting to churn. You're jealous.

What do you do when you're jealous? In a fever, you may try to find out if your lover has been with someone else. If he or she has, you go into a rage, a frenzy of blame.

It's an immediate response. You are angry. You feel violated. You want revenge. You want to stop what is happening, control the situation, manipulate whatever is necessary to protect yourself.

If you can cool down, if you can get hold of the internal automatic reactions that accompany jealousy, you might find out that you can indeed fix the situation. Often, what comes up as jealousy can be eradicated by simple communication. "I need to have more time with you." "When we go to a party, I don't want you to be with anybody else." "I need to have sex outside the relationship." When we leave these needs unspoken, they lie in wait until a situation exposes them. It is essential to get very clear and explicit with your partner about your needs and expectations.

Such solutions of diplomacy are important, but they remain superficial. A deeper opportunity is missed. Things are happening in this odious passion that present the possibility of entering new levels of self-understanding, to see who you are and what is the source of suffering.

The first step is to clarify what you are about in the relationship. If you and your lover want to evolve into more awareness; if somehow, somewhere, the glimmer of enlightened consciousness attracts you and you want to move in that direction, then you can make an important choice. What you choose is not just to increase your pleasure together, not even necessarily to protect the relationship or to secure it in some way, but to use the relationship as a means of coming to a deeper and more fundamental understanding of what is so.

RELATIONSHIP FOR TRUTH

How you see the relationship will affect matters from the beginning; for instance, what you share with each other about your realities. If both of you are there to create a safe and secure relationship, you will tend to conceal anything that might threaten it. Many couples come to live completely mendacious lives together. Gradually, they smother themselves in compromises. Love energy -- eros -- cannot pass between two lives lived in lies. Only truth is erotic.

If the relationship is seen as a means to knowledge, the paradigm shifts: The discipline is to learn to live uncompromisingly in your truth and to love the other without qualification. No easy task, but there is no higher., What you are loving together is truth: Everything real has to be shared; everything else has to be dismantled.

Here is a simple test to see where you are in this matter of relating. Write down all the things you have not shared with your partner. Contemplate this list, and there you will see the limits you place on the relationship, the degree of your commitment to the way of the lover.

LOVE AND ATTACHMENT

Now, on the path where relationship is a means for coming to self-understanding, it is necessary to clarify the difference between loving and being attached. This is a most basic distinction, because so much of what we experience as attachment, we call love. In fact, most of the institutions around love, such as marriage and family, are actually ways of protecting our investment in attached situations.

Loving someone is glorifying who they are in their uniqueness. Consider a flower. You see a flower that is really beautiful to you. You want to glorify that flower in its own natural setting, or else you want to pick it and possess it. Those are two entirely different ways of being. Love creates a thankful glorification of the flower. You love the other ­ you want to see the other thrive, enjoy, and grow. You want to see them become more of who they are, nor matter what that entails. That's the truth of love. It is unconditional.

Attachment is quite different. You want to pick the flower, sever it from its roots, and make it yours. You want to appropriate the beloved, make him or her be what you want them to be, conform to what is convenient for you in the relationship. Attachment is not care for the other; it's care for oneself. This distinction has to be understood: Are you loving, or are you attached?

If you are attached, you are going to experience the pain of jealousy. It follows that jealousy becomes the opportunity to see within yourself the truth of attachment. Not theoretical understanding, but existential awareness of attachment at its very roots. Only through this awareness can jealousy be really transcended.

PENETRATING TO THE CORE
The most extraneous and irrelevant way to deal with jealousy is trying to control your partner. It is also the least effective. Whatever illusions you may have as to who is to blame or who is at fault, jealousy is within you; not within the relationship. Manipulating your lover is a poor palliative. To control outer circumstances by making your lover behave or toe the line in a certain way is to miss the opportunity. You always miss the opportunity of jealousy -- indeed, any pain -- if you blame others. It is not that the other may not be to blame, but that in the matter of inner realities, blame is always irrelevant.

Manipulation of the other is external. Moving inward, we use the situation that created the jealousy as the occasion for clarifying communication and for negotiation. To do so is constructive for the relationship, but still peripheral, still not touching upon the real opportunity presented by jealousy. Moving further inward towards the core, we come to the personal level: yourself and your own reactions. This is the real field for dealing with jealousy: not trying to blame or fix your partner, but seeing who you are.

Really, jealousy is like an onion -- so overwhelming, so pungent, so difficult to be near. It cannot be ignored. It makes you cry. Yet the onion is an important food. In blaming and controlling, you are refusing to see that there is an onion. You are trying to avoid. In trying to see who you are, you take the onion in hand. You take a radical, internal view of what happened to you in jealousy. Now you peel off layer after layer of the onion until you reach its center. There at the core is the possibility of freedom.

DYSFUNCTIONAL BELIEFS

The first layer of the onion is your unexamined notions about how one should be in relationship. What are your beliefs? Do you believe that if you're in a relationship with someone, you should be with them exclusively and they should be exclusively with you? Well, where does that belief come from? Is it based upon some hidden idea that the other is your possession? Is the other an object to be arranged in a way that is suitable to you? Only if you possess the beloved can you tell them how to be. So, if you're inclined to manipulate and control in this way somehow subconsciously you have already made the lover into your possession. This is something to look at. Can one person be the possession of another? What beliefs do you carry about relationship?

The fact of the matter is, you are not actually in a loving relationship if you think that you possess the other, because the essence of the other is basically free. Whatever peripheral control you may exert, you cannot touch that inner freedom that a human being is. Whatever peripheral control you may exert, you cannot touch that inner freedom that a human being is. You may control your lover so that he or she appears to love you, but you cannot make a person love you.

Moving inward, look at the situation rationally or realistically. We each have our own sexuality, and we each have to take care of it as we can. Only some people can fit their sexuality into one relationship. So to have the belief that your lover should be able to so conform may already be erroneous. You are not responsible for the sexuality of the other. You can not take control of their sexuality. You do not own it. It is their own. And what they do about it is in a real sense their own affair.

This insight has probably helped me in my own dealings with jealousy more than any other. Somehow I had the idea that my sexuality and her sexuality were tied up as one. That is a beautiful experience. In fact, the relationship may go through a long period where there is a pure union of two sexualities. But to say that that is how it must be forever and oblige the other to behave in accordance with that belief will not work.

Erroneous beliefs inevitably contribute to the pain of jealousy. Take stock of your beliefs, and drop the ones that aren't functional. That's the first skin of the onion.

PROJECTION

The second layer is projection. Sometimes we suspect that our partner is being untrue to us. For instance, that night you called your lover, a thought immediately came to mind: "Oh, she's got somebody with her." One reason that you may have these perceptions is because you yourself are harboring thoughts of being "unfaithful." In fact, if you are in a relationship where you have an agreement not to be sexual with anybody else, you will almost inevitably start having feeling of wanting to be with others. Sooner or later, if you don't share those thoughts, or if you're not up front about the fact that you have such feelings, you will imagine that your partner is having them. This is projecting. Your jealous feelings may come from the fact that you feel like you want to play around, and so you suspect that your partner is doing it because you refuse to be aware that you are entertaining such a temptation yourself. A projected perception and a real one feel differently. We can learn to discriminate between the two. Again, the challenge is to be aware, to examine oneself.

ENVY

Another level that we have to peel off is envy. Envy is often mistaken for jealousy. I have experienced what I thought was tremendous jealousy, when in fact what I was feeling was envy because my partner was having a ball and I wasn't. Well, she's off having a good time with a boyfriend in New York, and I'm out here sitting alone. I want to have a good time with somebody. Envy is the frustrated longing for the other's experience. It is a different, more superficial phenomenon than jealousy.

GUILT

Another layer is guilt. Guilt can afflict you if you feel bad because you're jealous. Since the sexual revolution, some would-be liberated people think it's wrong to feel jealous. We are told that we shouldn't feel jealous, we should rise above it. So if you have this belief and you feel jealous, you're going to experience shame and guilt. But judgment is truly irrelevant. Jealousy is jealousy. It is neither good nor bad. It simply is, and it is an opportunity.

We must learn to peel away the skins of illusion, and get to the core. Really, what I'm talking about is awareness. The discussions of projection, envy, and guilt are pointers, but you have to bring to your own internal situation of jealousy your awareness. Ask these questions and investigate the reality of your feelings. In order to transcend a negative feeling, you must move deeper and deeper into your own authentic experience of it. Not what you read in a novel or saw in a movie. Not what someone has said you should feel. What you are actually feeling.

Becoming aware of the actual feeling and the true source often alleviates the feelings. You may experience what you describe as jealousy, but when you really examine the feelings, what is really there is anger that you were being left out of something that was fun -- envy. There's your partner taking a trip with someone else. You would like to go on that trip, and you're being left out. Those are not really feelings of jealousy. They are simply feelings of sadness or anger at being excluded from something that's happening, something that you feel you belong to in some ways.

The outer layers of the onion of jealousy really aren't jealousy at all. They're reactions belonging to other complexes. If you can see them, and separate them out from what you're really feeling, you can sometimes relieve the pain without ever coming to jealousy. What was really going on was moral indignation, envy, guilt or fear, or some other kind of feelings.

Up to this point in peeling the onion, the primary emotions are sadness or anger. Both are created out of expectation. You are angry with your lover, you are sad because he or she has violated your expectations. But you are responsible, because you have created and are holding those expectations. Desire, according to the Buddha, is the source of suffering. A tension is created in your consciousness between whatsoever is and what you would have it be. That tension is the basis of all suffering.

Once the anger and sadness resulting from our fractured expectations are peeled away, once blame is removed from the other and anger disappears, once we see the superficial feelings around ourselves that aren't really at the core of jealousy, we come to fear.

FEAR AND ANXIETY

The first fear we come to is fear of loss. Jealousy sees many things that can be lost. The fear of loss of the lover is the greatest. The rest of the fear around jealousy is in fact anxiety; that is to say, it does not have a real object.

The first anxiety comes from the loss of self-esteem. All kinds of self-doubt come up. You don't have enough money. Something's wrong with your body. You start projecting your own inadequacies on the other's actions. If your self-esteem is low, a jealous episode is going to be used as an occasion for proving that you are unlovable.

Examine the ideas that you have. You'll notice that they belong to all the old mechanisms by which you put yourself down. In other words, you were putting yourself down for these things long before the beloved came along to give you an excuse for doing so. Now you're just using him or her as a pretext.

So here's something else that you can do about jealousy: Start being aware that you are putting yourself down and that the inclination to do so is there independently of the jealousy-producing situation. Own your own tendency to put yourself down. Learn to deal with it yourself, and don't lay it on your lover.

Deeper than fear that comes from a loss of self-esteem is fear for the nest. One of two lovers is usually more concerned about the security of the relationship. Often it is the woman. Usually the function of the female in nature has been to keep the nest. It's almost as though nature gave her that fear out of protection of its own. The woman fears for her home, fears that the source of biological or family security is threatened. A man can also be possessed by security obsession. As women have become freer and more assertive men experience jealous insecurity more often. This is a deeper level of this onion of jealousy.

INFANTILE ANXIETY

Deeper than fear for the nest ­ and close to the core, are anxieties from infancy that are quickened by the present situation. Often, such jealousy is delusional ­ there whether or not there is any occasion for it. We can come to terms with many of these fears by looking deep inside and finding memory traces from our childhood ­ of being abandoned, for instance. These memory traces come from various losses or threats, beginning at birth. Later, you may want to win the special love of the parent of the opposite sex, but you may not achieve this primitive goal, so you feel constantly frustrated and inadequate. Or you become morbidly guilty and conclude that you should lose your oedipal goal because your incestuous wishes are bad.

You carry within you for the rest of your life memories of these early childhood traumas. Later, as soon as your lover goes for someone else, all that early trauma is triggered. Now if you move into a deep awareness, you can actually experience those childhood traumas, you can see that what you're experiencing in this present situation actually comes form a deep residual memory of abandonment.

All of these levels of the onion have to do with illusion, not with realities. They're from the past, from childhood, or they're illusions about the present, beliefs that are illusory, that don't relate to here/now reality. This is a very significant aspect of these anxieties that come with jealousy. If you have jealous feeling, and you start looking at them, suddenly you begin to see that they're not real. You are torturing yourself with unreal fears. What does this mean? What does it come from?

THE CORE ILLUSION

We are coming closer to the core of the onion. Reactions that are peripheral, the more superficial skins of the onion, are resting upon the core. The core is the source -- the first illusion. The core has to be there for the other illusions to be there.

At the core is fear of a deeper kind. In its first aspect, it looks like fear of aloneness. This fear, too, comes from a childhood situation, from memories of when your parents left you alone. There you were, freaked out in your crib, crying, and nobody heard you.

This core fear has also the aspect of fear of death. Again, something is going to be taken away -- your own being! That's how vulnerable you are. There's something about jealousy, that gut feeling, that is like the fear of death. It's that immediate, it's that real.

Something that's very like fear of death, interestingly enough, is fear of love. When we love, we move so much into the other that we lose ourselves. We use the expression "falling in love" because it's like falling into a great abyss. You lose your identity, your sense of autonomy. And that is exactly what happens when you fall in love. You lose your autonomous sense of who you are.

The fears of aloneness, of death, of love, all have the aspect of fear of abysmal nothingness -- the fear that there isn't anything. Death suggests this to us. When we die, we don't know what's beyond. The only thing we know is that it's not like here. So as far as we're concerned, it's just oblivion. Nothingness is there in our consciousness all the time. Jealousy brings us immediately to this fear of oblivion.

All these fears -- of death, love, aloneness, and nothingness -- all are like the core of the onion. In fact, they all point to this core. The core itself is existential. It has to do with your existence. Thus jealousy is not fundamentally a problem of relationship, not a problem of love, but a problem of religion. Jealousy is basically, fundamentally, a spiritual problem.

What I mean by "religion" here is not belief or morality. I mean religion in the fundamental sense of how you relate to your own existence -- your feelings, your senses, your inner aloneness ­ all of those realities that you experience but can never really communicate. Every human being relates to his or her own existence. Existence is God. In that relationship you're totally alone. In that you have no company. That is what it is to be a human -- relating alone and reflectively to your own existence.

The truth of your religion has little to do with going to a church or temple, but with how you relate to that which you can't articulate, which is within you, and true. The way you relate to this existence is the basis of religion, and this religious matter is the core of the onion. Jealousy in its core exposes how you, as a human being, relate to your existence.

THE EGO

Basic to the question of existence is the question, who is this "I" that's doing all of this feeling? Who is this "I" that loses self-esteem, that has a nest to protect, that is afraid? Who is this "I" that says "mine"? Who is this conglomerate of expectations? Who is this I?

In the East, they call it the ego. We use the word "ego" in the West in the sense of self-esteem; or in psychoanalysis, it is your capacity to cope with reality. When I talk about ego, I'm talking about something more fundamental. It is that which identifies, that which feeds on self-esteem, that which is the composition of all your expectations, that which perpetuates itself by possessing. In short, ego is that which can become jealous.

Ego and jealousy are both illusory. In your experiences of jealousy, you come to an insight that it is not real. You were jealous, and then all of a sudden you're not jealous any more, and you look back to when you were, and you feel that it wasn't real at all. It disappeared because it had no basis. That's what I mean about ego. Ego is that which we experience which is not real. Jealousy is also not real. Becoming aware is the joy you feel when you actually experience that unreality.

Let us consider envy again. Like all the skins of the onion, envy stands on ego. See how illusion works in envy. First of all, how do you know if you can be envious of another person? You see only outer circumstances and objects. You don't really know if the other is really happy with what they're experiencing. When you look at the other, what you perceive is your own projections. Don't even suppose that you can see another person's reality sufficiently to compare with yours in the first place. There's no way -- until we reach utter, silent awareness within -- that we can go into another and truly know their reality. But the illusion goes deeper.

In envy you are comparing the I -- which is your ego -- with the ego presented by someone else. Your comparison is based on an illusion that you are an entity and the other another entity, and you can compare the two, Only ego is "comparable." Only if you see yourself as an ego can you compare yourself in the first place.

Your comparison is based on illusion. The "you" object that you're comparing with some objectified person out there is really a subject -- internal, hidden, uniquely, incomparably yourself. All your subjective reality is being objectified and then judgement compared with an object out there that you perceive to be a certain way.

With envy, possessiveness, jealousy, ego itself, we are not dealing in moral or ethical issues. It is irrelevant whether these or any acts they come from are wrong or right. It is a matter of reality or illusion, of authenticity, of phoniness. When I talk about peeling away the layers of the onion, what I am asking you do is become aware. Through awareness only can we drop this illusion. And that which has illusions, that which can be jealous, is ego.

The feeling of abysmal jealousy is an eruption, a deep catharsis of ego. That's why jealousy is the great opportunity to stare ego right in the face. But it is difficult. It requires ruthless awareness, because ego is usually concealing itself. With deadly subtlety it masquerades as comparison, as blame, as the fault of the other, as problems that you have. It's hard even to have any grasp of it, because its hold on you is so subtle, so magical. It's always casting a spell over you. In fact, you believe that you are ego. That's why it's so hard to see. Thus, when jealousy presents the source of suffering itself directly before you, there is great possibility.

What creates ego in the first place? Existence takes care of me as a child in a womb. It keeps "breathing" me. Then why do I develop this illusory me that -- in the name of protection -- keeps me in pain, keeps me alienated, isolated, separated from others, and unable to trust in existence? Why am I unable to trust that I'm taken care of by the whole, by all that is? All of us live in fear, and that which lives in fear is the same as that which is jealous: the ego.

THE ABYSS

To understand the ego, we must return to the core of jealousy. We "fear" the same in love, death, and aloneness. It is existence, or God, pure being. But because it is not a thing (only ego sees things), it has been called in the East, "nothingness" and "emptiness."

Let me give you an experience that might give you some sense of this nothingness. When you're waking up in the morning you are in a twilight. You're just coming out of sleep, before your thoughts begin to form, some ground is there. Like a tremendous empty vessel, it's there prior to your thoughts. Things bubble up in it and become realities. They congeal, take on an identity, and form the ego that you think you are.

The words "vessel of emptiness" or "nothingness" sound as though they are describing something that is devoid of content. They don't have that meaning. They mean that for existence there are no things that are real. In other words, existence presents us with an undifferentiated flow of experience welling up out of a void, an abyss of the unknown. Only with our minds do we pick out things, interpret them, and say that they are real. Our minds say that things out there really exist in the meaning context and values we assign to them. What we actually experience is a moving kaleidoscope of uninterpreted fullness. And this moving, ever-changing phenomenon over which we have very little control, really, is a nothingness. It is a fullness in which there is no thing. So when you get right down to the basic religious question raised by jealousy, you have to question whether or not you really even exist.

In his great work Being and Nothingness, Sartre said that we as human beings so dread this ground of consciousness, this nothingness, that we have to create ourselves to be something. We are nothing. We are undifferentiated out of the great emptiness. We have no content. But this is so frightening, so abysmal, that we create ourselves to be something ­ namely, an ego. Being and nothingness is ego and existence, jealousy and the abyss. We are something fearful created out of nothing. Since somewhere we always know the something to be unreal, nothing is always present to us threateningly. My sense of my death is that it is always presented because nothingness is always there. Death is an accession to nothingness, a return to the source. So here we are, and basically what we come form is emptiness or nothingness. This is our basic angst.

A friend of mine experienced a lot of pain in her relationships. She was very compulsive, and possessive. She asked her teacher, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, about her pain, and he told her this: The ego, which arises out of the nothingness that we basically are, can have a negative or a positive response to the nothingness. The something that we are knows deep down that we're standing on nothingness. All of you know, deep down, that before the whole, you aren't anything. The negative response is subliminal terror. Against this fear of nothingness, you create the illusion that you are something. You back this project by preoccupation with realities, accumulating and possessing. That something illusory that you are is the one that suffers in jealousy. The entire structure is a negative or fearful response to nothingness.

But Bhagwan told my friend that this something-ego can also relate positively to nothingness. Only then can we move out of attachment into prayerful gratitude and heartfelt celebration of the other's being. Only then are we capable of real love. Only by saying a deep yes to nothingness, existence, the whole, do we come to be at home in nothingness. Eventually the positive response enables us to drop the something in favor of nothingness.

You are just a bubble. You were nothing before; you are nothing now. An enlightened bubble is not concerned with its bubbleness. It just is. It doesn't appear anything special, yet it feels all, sees all just as it is. That's why it is said to be enlightened. This is a positive, pure response to our given existential situation.

FALSE IDOLS

Most of us don't react positively. Instead, we shore up our ego realities and live in fear. But death goes on reminding us of nothingness; aloneness goes on reminding us of nothingness; and love reminds us of nothingness. All three of these are ways that we experience nothingness right here and now, and they are frightening. If you have a fear response to nothingness, you will cling in your relationships, you will have to be possessive. You will have to control others. These are all tensions and compulsions that reflect this fundamental fear -- this negative response to nothingness.

Thus ego in its fear protects itself from truth. This is the core of the onion. It is this core that you're really dealing with in jealousy. Many illusions are there, many external circumstances distract you from this core, but this is what jealousy is.

Given what is so, you have to turn yourself around completely and fall in love with nothingness. This turning brings with it the greatest religious insight: Nothingness is there to be relaxed into and loved. This is what they call in religion, surrender. You surrender to the nothingness and when you do so, it begins to give forth what you need. You have no control. There is no you that can control.

The you that controls is exercising the illusion of the ego. We are all in it -- all of us running around filling our lives with possessing, controlling, and manipulating. We are not really in control. Our manipulations are only superficial, but the ego would have us believe that we must be in control or else there is chaos. If you have much insight into how things around you really are, you will come to see this control for what it is. It is like a molecule thinking it controls the universe.

The whole organism of existence is moving in its own way, and we are just nothing. Nothingness is the organism that is the whole. You are not separate from that organism, and the sense that you are separate from it is the basic illusion of ego. It prevents the richness that the whole gives forth when we let go to it.

You can become possessive about God as you can about a lover. If you become possessive in religion, you lay a trip on God. He will be Rama, he will be Jesus, he will be dialectical materialism, he will be the state, he will be your God. "My religion is the only true one." "The God I believe in is the one and only." Anyone who is very rigid in his or her beliefs is manifesting the same principles as that which creates jealousy. In other words, the possessive person and the fanatic are involved in the same game. They build up the same kinds of resistance to the same primordial fear. So, if you are in negative response to nothingness, you'll become preoccupied with material possessions, you'll become obsessed with controlling a lover, or else you'll become very religious and rigid about your beliefs.

When you possess you become possessed. You live in a deep vulnerability based in illusion. The stomach-churning pain of jealousy comes from that vulnerability. That's what you're experiencing. The jealous moment is essential catharsii of this existential complex.

TO THE CORE

Now, a relationship with a lover or a relationship with God can reveal the ultimate. Through loving a lover or an image of God you can experience pure nothingness as bliss. But if you possess, if you have a God that you have fixed beliefs about, or if you have a lover that you jealously control, what you're actually doing is blocking your realization. Out of fear you are misusing that which can give you an experience of bliss. You are so controlled that you cannot be overwhelmed. And the ultimate can only make itself known when you allow yourself to be overwhelmed.

If you have this negative response to nothingness, the very base upon which you are standing is false. That false base is ego, the seat of jealousy. The possessed person, or the God or principle that you believe in, is only a projection of that ego. It is not real. You are relating to an illusion, a projection that you created to keep yourself from experiencing fear. Your eyes are closed. You can't really see the beloved.

And this is what happens to us. This is why we don't communicate in love. Because the lover is a false idol. Whether it's the person or whether it is a God, somehow it's false. Our eyes are closed to the reality, and what we're relating to all the time is our own illusion.

This is the basic mechanism that creates jealousy in the first place. What you really want from a lover, what you really want from God, is bliss. If you possess them, if you lay your trip on them, if you're relating to your own projection, you're stopping yourself
from experiencing this bliss. If you can't know joy through the lover, or through God because of the illusion that you've created, you can't really experience the bliss of love. You have to see this basic mechanism that is happening in your relationship to existence and know that as a jealous person you are making a choice.

Love cannot be channeled to one object. If you have one love object and channel all of your love there, what you are experiencing is attachment. Similarly, if you are jealous, you are not experiencing love, you are experiencing attachment. If you really love, then you'll experience an overflowing, you will experience love for all. It's a natural consequence of loving. It is not a natural consequence of attachment. In attachment, you're channeling all of your love in one direction. In love you're experiencing something in one direction that frees you in all directions. It's as if you threw a stone into a pond. Where the stone hits the water, radiations ripple outward. When you really love, it may be directed toward one object, but it radiates into love for all of existence. That is why love is said to be divine.

So this is the possibility that you have as a jealous person. When you work on jealousy, forget the lover and deal with your own relationship to existence. Go deep inside yourself, slowly peel away the outer layers of the onion until you come to the core that is your own relationship to existence. Then you will free yourself to love more.

My own love relationships have been guided by my teacher. In the last five years he has shaped all the significant factors in the development of my love life, because he wants me to reach beyond the neurotic needs of relationship. There was a time when I experienced a lot of pain in loving, a lot of jealousy. I felt that I was always living in fear of loss. I felt like I couldn't hold on, and I was in constant pain because of it. So I went to my teacher and asked what to do. His answer cut through to the core. "Simply love more," he said. "To cut right through fear of loss which is infantile in its source, right to the core of the basic relationship what you have to existence, go into more loving." In other words, if you love someone, go deep into your own unique experience of what that love is, and just let that be who you are. Surrender to it. Build your identity upon it. You are not a person who is jealous. Not someone who's trying to control. Not even someone who's fearing. You are love experiencing itself deeper and deeper within its own fullness.

"Your love is a boat," Bhagwan said. "Just go on, enter loving more, tending, penetrating -- and the boat, of its own volition, will carry you to the other shore."