How to Love a Man Like He's God - This American Girl

gooodbyewinter

 

About a year ago I experienced for the first time what many people call “love at first sight.” I can better describe it as looking into the eyes of a man and seeing the heart of God. It was one of the most beautiful, transformational gifts I have ever received.

 

But at first, it was a total mindfuck.

 

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It all started when I left Costa Rica last December with plans to do what I never thought I would. Leave behind beach paradise and travel to some of the coldest places on Earth in the dead of winter.

 

Crazy as it sounds, I decided to go on this pilgrimage because an oracle reading told me to. I asked how I could heal emotionally and the cards, literally, showed me snow. I didn’t have a better suggestion, so I went with it, desperate to release the wounds that I had held onto for so long. And a voice within me whispered that if I followed my heart to Europe that winter, I would finally find true love.

 

Which has essentially been my reason for existing for as long as I can remember.

 

Lapland Finland

 

Since my first Kindergarten crush I’ve considered myself an absolute love addict. I have been over the moon in love with every man I have ever had. Each every one of them, at least for a moment, was “the one.” Whether it was my fourth grade boyfriend who I held hands with once or a relationship that lasted for years, I adored them like Adonis’ and longed to be worshiped like Aphrodite.

 

A thousand times “I love you” could never be enough. A million kisses could never be enough. Hours upon hours between the sheets could never be enough. I’d cling and caress and canoodle and swoon. Even the times when I pretended to be “cool,” I always wanted more passion more affection more attention.

 

Innsbruck

 

And of course, that intense adoration has a shadow. Because when you see a man as everything, you lose everything when he leaves.

 

I felt absolute devastation when I was separated from the one I loved, even if for a few hours. I had an obsessive attachment when the relationship clearly needed to end. I suffered wildly dramatic heartbreak when it did. And there was something so deliciously addictive about breaking up and making up over and over again.

 

You might even say that I’ve always loved like Radha.

 

This American Girl

 

In Hindu Mythology, Radha is the goddess of romantic longing, eroticism, ecstasy, and bliss. She is the beautiful, wide-eyed, emotionally charged teenager who wears her heart on her sleeve completely. Her eyes sparkle with wonder, her smile beams with joy, and her love is so expressive and intense that it inspires ecstasy in everyone around her. Radha embodies the things that I love so much about myself, and also the things that I fear so much in myself.

 

Most often she’s known as the lover of Krishna, who is the physical manifestation of universal beauty and love. Everyone loves Krishna, but because Radha takes passion to a whole new level, her love for him transcends all. Radha loves Krishna like he’s God. But Krishna’s path is to be love for all people, which also means that Krishna sexually loves all of the women in the town. This incites tremendous jealousy in Radha.

 

Lapland Finland

 

For years she experiences orgasmic bliss in their moments together and devastating pain when he goes with other women. She gives him all of herself, heartbroken knowing that her love can never be fully reciprocated. Then the day comes for Krishna to return to the kingdom where he came from and he leaves Radha forever. She is simply beside herself. He aches for her as well, but over time he moves on. Though Radha never forgets about Krishna.

 

If you’ve ever loved with that intensity, and hurt with that intensity, you know how addictive it can be. But it can also be the very trigger that finally breaks you open and changes your life forever. Which is exactly what loving like Radha has done for me over the years.

 

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It began when I felt so broken from the on again off again love affair with my ex in Seattle, that I was desperate enough to do anything to feel better. I didn’t know how else to end my addiction to him, so I packed up my entire life and flew to Costa Rica.

 

Costa Rica quickly became my lover. Long walks on the beach and silent sunsets and nights spent in the jungle brought me deeper bliss than I ever knew existed. I redirected my love for my ex to the nature that surrounded me. Adventures to hidden caves and climbing on tree vines on beach cliffs became my addiction. I had never felt so happy, so ecstatic, so orgasmic, in my entire life.

 

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But the thing about lessons is that they don’t go away when you do. They repeat and repeat until you finally give them the attention they deserve. And the men will wear different faces but they will all play the same role until one day you become your own Krishna.

 

So as soon as my journey in Costa Rica began, I fell in love with a local surfer. I had many hesitations but my romantic nature took over and my heart melted ooey gooey like chocolate in his hands. My love for Costa Rica and my love for him became one.

 

Punta Mona

 

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know the disappointment that would soon ensue. The incredible pain that replaced the ecstatic bliss when he smacked my heart like a piñata with dishonesty, disrespect, and dismissal, once, twice, so many, too many, times over the years.

 

It hurt me to the point of no return. If someone I loved was capable of treating me that badly, love didn’t make sense to me anymore.

 

Though the beautiful thing about being broken beyond repair, is that you suddenly become desperate to do anything to make it better. You become so desperate you make healing a priority. The last time I felt that desperate I flew to Costa Rica. This time, I turned to yoga, which fortunately awaited me in an open-air platform at the end of my jungle road.

 

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Through the practice of yoga and hours upon hours of alone time on deserted beaches, I began to heal the parts of myself that I could ignore when I fixated on the love of a man. I became my own best friend and I felt peace and contentment with nothing more than my breath. I learned to soothe myself and to be everything that I had always looked for in another. I let nature hold me and practiced the ultimate form of yoga, communing deeply with the cycles of the moon, the rise and set of the sun, and the whispers of the trees.

 

Romantic relationships had always been my path to seeking wholeness yet they always left me feeling dissatisfied, disappointed, and alone. Yoga showed me another way. Yoga showed me that I didn’t have to seek wholeness. I was already whole.

 

Punta Mona

 

But as I turned inward, I shut people out. Not just men, everyone. Friends told me they saw me closing down. My mom cried that I never let her hug me anymore. To protect myself from being hurt again I retreated to my metaphorical island. I developed a disdain for men and I proclaimed that I would never love again. Cause when you love like Radha, your love is just too damn dangerous to unleash.

 

The more I retreated into my meditations the more I disconnected from the vivacious playful flirtatious flower that I’ve always known as Camille. I went from being the tease in the backless red dress dripping on the dance floor to the yogi fasting on coconut water and going to bed before ten. I became conscious and centered yet completely closed emotionally and sexually. I was grounded and healthy but life lost much of its sweetness and fun.

 

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Then I went to Southeast Asia.

A place that will shake you so hard it’s impossible not to wake up.

 

I became open again simply because every day shattered my idea of reality. I was forced to be vulnerable because I was so goddamn confused. I was forced to feel because there was so much stimulation all of the time. And everything around me was so different that I felt that little girl wonder awaken again. With so much distance from Puerto Viejo and the man who had hurt me there, I slowly felt safe to let my little girl play again.

 

And one day in Thailand, I fell in love again.

 

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I tasted that familiar sweetness on the tip of my tongue. I knew I was in trouble and dangerously at risk for loving him as intensely as I had loved all of the men of my past. So I wouldn’t let myself. I didn’t trust him, I didn’t trust any men, and most importantly I didn’t trust myself. I rejected him, dismissed him, and denied myself my true feelings. But even after we said goodbye I couldn’t seem to release him from my heart. No matter how much I had pushed him away, the longing remained.

 

There was progress though. Despite the difficulty, I didn’t shut down. I stayed open. I wanted to love again, and this time I wanted someone who could love me in return. With that openness, I was ready to finally learn what love really was.

 

Punta Mona

 

After spending nine months in Southeast Asia, I returned to Costa Rica to become a yoga teacher. Men had come and gone over the years but yoga never left my heart. My love for yoga only grew. Yoga never hurt me. Yoga always held me. Yoga gave me everything that I was willing to receive. In my heart I felt like I was getting married to yoga. I had never felt that committed to any man.

 

My training opened my heart through yoga in ways I never imagined. Yoga wove into ever fiber of my being and showed me not only how to breathe and meditate and move, but how to exist in a crazy, unpredictable, often shattering world as a loving, compassionate, purpose driven human being. I began to understand love in a context free from desire and wanting. I understood love as simple kindness. (Read more in How Practicing Yoga Changed My Life.)

 

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I continued my practice as I left the sacred retreat center and went out into the world. That’s when the real work began. I was faced with the Costa Rican man who had broken my heart so many times in the past. This time instead of lusting after me he hated me and blamed me. One night his sister, three times my size, even physically assaulted me. His anger broke me again and again, but instead of closing down I filled the gaps and holes with love. (Read the whole story in Why I Practice Love.)

 

It would have been easy to continue the cycle of abuse, but instead I responded with compassion. More importantly I filled myself with such compassion that there wasn’t space for him in my world anymore. With time, I healed a situation that appeared irreparable with the incredible power of simple kindness. And finally, after years of struggle, I was ready to let him go and let love in. (Read more in How I Healed a Toxic Relationship Through Meditation.)

 

Murren

 

That’s when winter beckoned me.

 

Weeks prior to my departure for Europe, I remember feeling certain that I was going to find the love I had been seeking there. I had worked so hard to let go of my old patterns and manifest exactly the kind of love that I deserved. So I flew to Finland, knowing in my heart that true love was waiting for me.

 

Which it was.

I just had no idea that the love that would actually greet me, wasn’t the love of a man.

It was the love of God.

 

Innsbruck

 

God, love, light, energy, source, life, Om, whatever you want to call it. Truth is one but goes by many names. I’ve felt “God” many times in meditation and alone in nature. In the ultimate blissful state that comes after a deep yoga practice when form disappears and all that exists in the spaciousness in its absence. Staring out along a coastline at sunset and feeling the colors bleed into my body, becoming one landscape with all that is. But this was the first time I had ever felt God in another person. And that was… confusing.

 

Lapland

 

From the moment I met him every part of me melted. I became flooded with the same kind of love I’ve felt floating in the Caribbean staring at the white sand beach dotted with palm trees. I knew nothing about him and yet I knew every piece of him. I looked into his eyes and I knew the depth of his soul. I felt that familiar attraction, passion, and desire, but I wanted nothing from him. Simply being in his presence filled my heart with such love, it was more than enough.

 

Most amazingly of all, I was a different person around him. I had no walls. I was an open book. I didn’t play any games. I expressed myself with absolute authenticity. And what truly shocked me, what that nothing could trigger me. No matter what he said from a place of ego, I knew the truth of his soul, and responded from a place of true, honest, love. Something I had never known how to do with a man before. He may have been a stranger, yet I loved him so much that all I could be was love.

 

But the feeling definitely wasn’t mutual.

 

St Anton am Arlberg

 

The attraction, sure. It’s not like he didn’t want to sleep with me. But it was instantly clear that we were on different journeys and he wasn’t open to me like I was to him. He was looking for casual and from the first glance I loved him with the utmost devotion. At times he was awkward and distant and clearly confused by the hearts that exploded in my eyes. If no one has ever loved you like God before, it must be a strange feeling when some girl you’ve just met does.

 

Though really, I didn’t care. I just felt blessed to be able to love him for those few hours before we said goodbye, and he caught a flight to the next city.

 

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When he did leave, I felt no suffering. Another first for me. I felt happiness in my longing. I didn’t know if I would ever see him again, but that one interaction felt like… enough. I also knew that despite the fact that I had truly fallen in love at first sight, we clearly weren’t made for each other.

 

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When we serendipitously reunited in Germany for Carnival, Radha’s evil twin kicked in. She seduced me into the fantasy that perhaps he and I could be meant to be. She didn’t understand how such a connection could be made and not be. She lusted after the feeling I was blessed to experience once because she wanted to taste it again and again and again. And really, who could blame her? If you’ve ever had love like this, you know how good it tastes. So part of me held on.

 

I went from taking nothing personally to taking it all personally. I went from feeling God to feeling pain. How could I meet someone and instantly experience the kind of bliss that monks spend years meditating to achieve, and not have him be the one? How could I “just know” and then know nothing at all? Synchronicities and my intuition didn’t make sense to me anymore. So I closed up again.

 

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And because nothing made sense on the inside, nothing made sense for the rest of my time in Europe. I wandered around, confused and uncertain where I was meant to go and why I was even going. I doubted my intuition and allowed it to confuse me instead of guide me.

 

 

Winter ended and I hoped for Spring to melt away the frustration. It didn’t at all. I felt less and less sure as I wandered down the coast of Spain and eventually got extremely lost in Morocco. Since leaving Southeast Asia the year before I had lost all passion for travel, and no matter how many countries I traveled through, I couldn’t seem to get it back. (Read more in What I Learned From Going to Places Where I Never Wanted to Go.)

 

Finally I knew that it was time to go home.

 

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Tired of feeling lost and uprooted, I spent the summer in my hometown Seattle putting every ounce of passion and desire I had ever felt for a man into my business. I could have cared less about love or sex all I wanted was to succeed. I spent my days in cafes redesigning my website. I stayed up late at night writing. Every bit of lust in my body went right into my work.

 

Which… worked. My blog went completely viral. I got millions of views within weeks. I started selling ebooks like crazy. I advertised my first ever travel retreats and they sold out in less than a week. For the first time in years I was financially stable and started receiving the fruits of the labor I had put in over the last three years of blogging. It showed me that when channeled properly my energy is powerful instead of exhausting. I directed the passion I have always had for men into my work and it made me famous overnight. I wondered where I might be now if I had done that all of my life. (Read more in How to Manifest Miracles to Create the Life of Your Dreams.)

 

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When I finally returned to Costa Rica after a year away, the passion for my business waned. I was in the rhythm of Pura Vida again, where the wifi is slow, the beach beckons, and a trip to the grocery store turns into a three-hour conversation. Without the love for my business, without the love for travel, and without the love for a man, life felt a bit dull and boring. My business was successful, I had money, I was living in paradise, I could travel to anywhere I wanted, and I was content on my own, yet I felt restless with undirected energy.

 

Costa Rica

 

But I was finally starting to get it. I was finally starting to realize that I’m someone who thrives off of romantic love. Loving like Radha doesn’t always make life easy, but it certainly makes life more delicious. I saw that this part of myself wasn’t something to fear or repress. In fact it’s my greatest source of inspiration. It’s what made me fall head over heels for Costa Rica, what kept me blogging on islands without wifi in Indonesia, what made me want to wake up and dance in my underwear, what got me so devoted to yoga in the first place. It’s something to channel in healthy and empowering ways. If I wanted to taste life’s sweetness, I couldn’t keep Radha contained.

 

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Loving irrationally, as I often did, had a very painful side no doubt. But I saw that the pain can in fact be a portal to bliss. Over the years that pain had revealed the depths of my heart, showing me my every wound, until I dug deep enough to recognize the light that I’ve seen in the face of every lover, in myself. Again and again and again.

 

Though I realized that there is a yummier, less devastating way to do it. By radically loving myself. Re-directing that over the moon blinded with passion love that comes to me so naturally inward towards myself, so that I didn’t need a man to break me open first. No longer seeking the soul mate and healing after the disappointment when he wasn’t “the one,” and instead becoming my own soul mate and basking in the fulfillment of already BEING the one.

 

Puerto Viejo

 

Which is exactly what I decided to do.

 

I started loving myself as intensely as I had ever loved a man. And not in the detached meditative way like I had in my yoga teacher training where I found bliss laying on a wooden floor after two hours of yoga. In the erotic physical emotional way like Radha loved Krishna, where every waking moment is an opportunity for nirvana. ‘Cause clearly, that’s what I was constantly seeking in the face of every man I loved. (Read more in my post How I Found My Soul Mate on the Road.)

 

Punta Mona

 

I still meditated, I still practiced kindness and compassion, and I still taught and practiced yoga. But I didn’t become love by simply detaching from my ego, I became love by finally allowing my ego the love it had always yearned for. I allowed the true loving nature of my soul to flood every juicy human part of me.

 

And it made everything else sparkle. It made life come to life. It re-infused me with the passion that made life worth living. It brought me right back to the first time I ever came to Costa Rica. My love affair with my body re-inspired my love affair with my home.

 

Tulum

 

A couple of months later I went to travel through Mexico and Guatemala. By that point I was so in love with myself that I was in love with everything.

 

After a year without wanderlust, I fell in love with travel again. After almost giving up, I fell in love with blogging again. After doubting myself for so long, I began loving my intuition again. After a long journey in opening up my heart, I began to love everyone I met. After a lifetime of learning that the world isn’t safe, I began to love so powerfully that nothing could frighten or faze me.

 

Tulum

 

That’s around the time that I began to understand why I had fallen instantly in love with that So Cal boy in Finland in the dead of winter. Because I asked for it, and I was ready for it.

 

I asked to experience true love, and that’s exactly what I was granted. I got to feel what it was like to love without barriers. To love free of judgment and expectation. To feel passion and yearning without suffering. To witness myself love so deeply that I felt no insecurity. Above all else, I got to speak and be seen without a mask.

 

Tulum

 

What a truly divine gift. Because when I loved a man like that, I awakened to the depth of love within myself. A love that always exists whether I’m looking a man in the eyes or not. Simply feeling that for a moment taught me everything that I had asked to learn. It didn’t matter that it amounted to “nothing” because it truly amounted to everything.

 

At the time I felt heartbroken and rejected because I couldn’t see the whole picture. I couldn’t see that I was capable of feeling that kind of love for ALL things. I attached that feeling to him, which is why I felt the loss when he left. But time showed me that I could feel that love for every flower, every tree, every butterfly, and every human being. I witnessed that I could feel that love for my work, for my art, for my travels, and for every waking breathing moment of life.

 

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When I realized that I had that power, I made it my goal. I made it my mission to love everyone and everything the way that I had loved that one man. I wanted to look everyone in the eyes and see the heart of God. Because only then would I actually see anything.

 

Which is exactly what Radha decides to do after Krishna leaves.

 

Tikal

 

Years after saying goodbye to Radha forever, Krishna asks his friend and yoga teacher Uddhava to go and check on the village where he once lived, and to especially check on Radha. When Uddhava arrives at the village he discovers that all of the women have gone mad. They’re clean and dressed beautifully and adorned in jewelry, but they’ve all gone insane.

 

They hug trees and caress their cows, calling them “Krishna.” They walk around starry eyed, saying, “Oh Krishna, we love Krishna!” They sell their wares on the street saying, “Come buy Krishna!” They have gone mad with their love for Krishna.

 

Lake Atitlan

 

So being the yoga master that he is, Uddhava brings them together to meditate. He directs them to turn their awareness inward, to use breath control, to find Krishna within their own hearts. Radha, amused, looks at Uddhava and says, “You just don’t get it do you? You yogis close your eyes to search for God. We see God with our eyes open. Everywhere we look we see God. Everything we see is Krishna.”

 

Radha managed to transform her heartbreak over losing Krishna into something utterly beautiful. She didn’t shut down. She didn’t retreat. She didn’t dull her senses. Rather, she took the love she had for Krishna, the love of God, and she reflected it onto everything around her. She couldn’t possibly feel a lack without Krishna’s love, because Krishna’s love was everywhere. There was nothing to yearn for, because there everything was.

 

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And because I can love like Radha, my life took a similar course.

 

I returned to Puerto Viejo after three months of traveling, high on love and rainbows. I became a full expression of ecstasy, dancing to hip hop on my bicycle, hula hooping down the beaches at sunset, opening my heart through the goddess of cacao, and taking every moment as an opportunity for ceremony. I kissed trees and stroked flower petals and thanked the fruit that grew in my yard for feeding me. I looked at strangers, friends, and acquaintances with the same hearts in my eyes that I had once reserved just for a man. I gave the affection and attention I once gave to my lovers to all of the people who I loved. Everyone and everything around me lit up with this love.

 

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Ready to take emotional risks again, I let myself love the Costa Rican guy who had hurt me so badly in the past. But in a totally different way than I had before. I decided to love him like he was God. I looked him in the eyes and thanked him for every lesson. I bowed to the divinity within him. Nothing he said triggered me and he treated me with a kindness and openness I never expected to receive. I felt hopeful that perhaps we could finally be friends.

 

But eventually my shadow came to the surface. It scared me to be so open. The more I gave into my fear, the more I descended into the shadow. And then one day, I fell back into the old pattern. I became blinded by my desire for him and because he had never changed his patterns, I got hurt again. Even though I already knew his game, it still hurt like the first time. And the pain made me want to shut down again. I couldn’t believe that after all of my healing, I had let myself get back to that place. (Read more in my post A Heart Open Can’t Be Broken.)

 

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That’s precisely the time that Radha came to help me.

 

Amidst all of the drama, my wonderful friend and yoga teacher Danielle recommended a book to me called Awakening Shakti by Sally Kempton. In her book Kempton, a world-renowned yoga teacher and meditation facilitator, introduces the Hindu goddesses and through meditations and storytelling invites the reader to invoke these feminine deities in times of need. As I scanned the goddesses, I instantly felt attracted to the one named Radha.

 

Chefchaoeun

 

I could relate to the story of Radha and Krishna more than I wanted to admit. I saw the absolute beauty in the story, and in my own story, when you can take the romantic devotional aspect of love and reflect it against all things. But I was still having a hard time with it.

 

I was having a hard time with the outcome of the story, because I knew how to feel pure ecstasy in the simplest of things, and yet I was still suffering over this man. No matter how much joy and love I felt climbing on trees and playing in the ocean and smiling at strangers and having cuddle puddles with friends, I still felt heartache whenever I saw or thought of him. I loved everything around me and it still hurt to love him.

 

Chefchaoeun

 

Not to mention, as a devoted yogi, I believed that Uddhava’s path, of turning awareness inward to feel love, still held water. The path of yoga, of calming the mind and focusing the breath, seemed way safer to me than a path of irrational vulnerable erotic romantic love. I wondered, what transformation did Radha have to go through in the years between Krishna leaving and Uddhava returning? I couldn’t help but wonder if she had to first turn inward, like Uddhava suggested, to yoga and meditation, to cultivate the self love to start seeing love all around her. And I couldn’t help but wonder how much more difficult her journey might have been, if instead of staying away, Krishna had come and gone over the years to re-attach to Radha, like the men in my life have.

 

Chefchaoeun

 

At the same time I didn’t want to deny the Radha that so clearly lived within me. Experience had shown me that I’d rather be broken and raw than not feel anything. Attachment may bring suffering, but there’s something beautiful about caring that deeply. Besides, my capacity for pure ecstatic love is precisely what makes me so lovable. The joy that explodes in my smile or my giggle or my dancing or my singing or my playfulness inspires that much more joy in others. Loving like Radha can hurt like hell but it can also make life super fucking amazing. Not just for you, for everyone around you.

 

So even though she scared me, I committed to working with Radha in my meditation practice for a week.

 

Playa Chiquita

 

Every day I went to the natural reef pools at Playa Chiquita and would practice my Radha meditations that Kempton shares in Awakening Shakti. As I focused on sending Radha’s love to everything around me, I explored times where it felt safe to love like Radha. I thought when cacao opened my heart to orgasmic ecstasy that I felt for every stranger in the room. I thought about how much joy it brought me laying in a cuddle puddle or giving Reiki to friends I love. I saw the jungle and extended my love to every vine-covered tree with every heart shaped leaf.

 

But fuck, I was still scared.

And I still felt insecure and heartbroken over that guy.

 

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Then Kempton led me down another path. She guided me into a beautiful garden where Radha and Krishna sat waiting for me. They took me by the hands and Radha looked into my soul with her flirtatious eyes. Radha sweetly said, “Feel the depth of my love.” “Feel the depth of my love.” “Feel the depth of my love.”

 

That’s when the pieces came together.

 

Puerto Viejo

 

Oh, holy fucking shit. Could I RECEIVE the love of Radha? This was almost beyond my understanding. Could I receive a love that deep? I didn’t know if I had ever even tried. I had always been so focused on loving AS Radha, I never even thought of being loved BY Radha.

 

I meditated on feeling the deepest love I could possibly imagine. I meditated on feeling the love of Radha. I placed my hands at my heart and inhaled the word love. I gave myself Reiki and asked to receive the purest love in existence. I felt myself in that soft cottony bubble that Reiki often brings me.

 

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That’s when I saw the face of my mother. I felt her love. Which hit me hard. Wow, she loves me like I’m Krishna, I realized. She loves me like I’m God. I tried to inhale her love, but it was so deep and so vast I couldn’t yet receive all of it. So I tried. I meditated more and more and more on receiving love. I inhaled the love of the trees around me. I inhaled the truest, most motherly love that exists, our Earth. I asked myself to finally receive the love of my mother, the love of nature, the love of God. A love that I have never fully received, despite it being right there, overflowing with love for me.

 

I realized that no matter how deeply I had loved, in the purest truest sense of the word, there had always been something missing. Because I was missing the other part of the equation. I deserve to be loved as tremendously as I’m able to love.

 

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You can give and give and give and give compassion and see and seek divinity all that you want. But if you don’t receive, you’re kinda missing the point. It’s like constantly exhaling without every taking air in. Which doesn’t work for more than a few seconds.

 

You can only give out as much as you take in. You can only receive as much as you’ve decided that you in fact deserve. And no matter how much you love the world, unless you love yourself with the deepest devotion above all else, life just doesn’t make any damn sense. Which is kinda what Uddhava, my fellow yogi, was trying to teach Radha and the rest of the devotees.

 

Puerto Viejo

 

Radha bestowed me with the sensuality to taste life in all of its deliciousness and yoga graced me with the consciousness to transcend it. I’ve been given the gift of this body and these senses, which ask for nothing more than to feel. And I’ve been given this consciousness and this breath that asks for nothing more than to be. Both paths are worthy and both paths are divine. But both require the openness to allow that which I express to fill me back up again. Everything in life asks for balance.

 

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It’s hardly the first time I’ve been given this reminder, and I doubt it will be the last. Just like the breath, it’s a never-ending dance. The beautiful thing is, you will always be given another chance. With each inhale you decide to love yourself so deeply, that all you express is love on the exhale. You decide in every moment to see the God within you, so that God is all that you see around you. If you decide otherwise? Life will just give you more triggers and opportunities to do the healing you need to decide to love yourself and others more than you ever have before.

 

And hopefully, with practice, deciding to love gets easier. Hopefully your life becomes filled with more moments where you decide that you are as worthy of devotion as the most magnificent king or the most ancient tree. Hopefully, your life becomes filled with more moments where you decide to love yourself, and let yourself be loved, like the Goddess that you truly are.

 

Because those moments are the ones worth living for.

 

Lake Atitlan

 

Which is precisely why in a few hours I’m flying back to Guatemala. To spend a month living on Lake Atitlan studying the ancient practices of Tantra. A path that seeks to love all things with all of the senses with all of the awareness of God. A path that I hope will guide me towards finding the balance between being a walking orgasmic throbbing open heart and a totally grounded centered conscious human. A path to learning how to make loving on this planet a little more heart opening, and a little less heartbreaking. A path to awaken me to the infinite love within my heart, so that I can experience the infinite love within each of yours.

 

See you there.

Namaste.

 

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