The Lover’s Attunement and Powerful-Work

Creates the Capacity for Unconditional Love

Unconditional Love

Dancing, Sensual, Attuned

“In this love, you’re understood as you’re without mask or pretension.
The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious.

Where you’re understood, you’re at home.”

John O’Donahue, Anam Cara

Bears have done their own Work which is separate yet intertwined with relational Work. They have learned to compassionately and gently hold their own Pain and Self-Deception. And, so, in the dance of any one day, they are less dependent on practiced steps, less reliant on other bears. Awakened from slumber, bears are living in their own Power, and, so, in intimate moments they are spontaneous, moving toward each other, expressing through eyes, and play, and touch, synchronizing in their hops and spins, feeling each other’s pulse and presence and rhythm.

When the bears move nose to nose tenderly, expressing both sambas and sorrows, they have a Power to help each other heal.

 

Why This Painting?

The Artist’s inventiveness seeks a creative intervention to the real problem. As Inventiveness is always a directed flow of Loving-Work, it needs now only to be Attuned for her to imagine an Inspired Ritual response to Pain. The response must be powerful enough to make a difference, and that is always relational, in relation to the beloved, to the world, to all the living creatures in it. Now she must grow, must become Lover and activate the capacity for Unconditional Love. In truth, it is hard for mammals to be so vulnerable and connected.

This image of dancing bears calls you to be a Lover. Loving presupposes that you have awakened the Child’s mindful capacity for Loving-Play, and you share the Artist’s flowing sense of Loving-Work. You are alive in the world, beyond the Fallen who remain stuck and deadened in someone else’s matrix or are too frightened to open to Love.

Perhaps, as you are reading this, a relational dimension is growing. Energies are rising. You have an act-hunger, or at least a dance-hunger. Dancing requires spontaneity and sensitivity and creativity and promotes Attunement. To be Attuned is not just about physical attraction (though that will be part of the mix in a romantic relationship). At its core this is a powerful reality-shifting energetic state that allows you to see beneath the surface, deeper than the appearance. As you nurture your connection and devote a focus to the other, you are being encouraged to apprehend the surplus, the depth, the promise of this unique being (human or otherwise), to see the beloved “without mask or pretension.

Our society openly scoffs at such a deep connection, which prompts us to place limits on what we are prepared to understand and to embrace. Until we end up blind. This painting invites you to let the veils of reservation drop, move your ego and your fears aside, open your eyes, and risk the dance floor. Though there is no way to know ahead of time if any person in your present life will delightfully respond and show themselves as worthy of the dance, let yourself be the Lover that you came into the world to be.

Inside-Out:

Intimacy has the power to heal those we hold closest, but that presupposes we have done our own Work. When we love ourselves enough to care for our own Pain and Self-Deception, we’re less dependent on circumstances, people, places, and things, and less reliant on defenses to feel okay. We’re also less likely to blame others when hurt, less apt to act out of weaknesses or control agendas.

If you are recognizing there is potential in a relationship, but you are feeling blocked or confused, it would be worth the effort to investigate from where this impediment this derives—something present or long ago. Is intuition telling you something? Or are these ghost tales from another time? There can be many things linked to resistance, many having nothing to do with the other: instability in our careers, mental illness, domestic violence, sudden financial losses, or simply getting overwhelmed by some other area(s) of life. Consider therapy to address your barriers and burdens.

Upside-Down:

We live in a lonely society. If you are feeling the loss of intimacy, this can feel like panic and grief. Deep connection is a basic human need, and you do not need to settle for a passionless union or let yourself drift in a relationship along the path of least resistance.

If there was joy in a relationship and it has dissipated, now is the time for reflection. It is common to experience a sobering effect the longer you are together. Intimate behaviors get less focused, loving thoughts less inspiring; and compassion is less, eventually devolving into a relationship we never imagined we could tolerate. Consider whether the emotional core of an important relationship has been neglected for too long. Is it time to move on? Or is it time to decide to put the necessary effort into a passionate renewal?

Discernment

Your words in migration, thoughts

Into space, are potentially perilous

Between and at the essence.

Such an exquisite thing to discern you—

To open to new notions, seeing

The unspoken, the underpinning.

How fine! You are so unlikely,

The tempo of your is dance raw and rare,

An intersection of expressions,

Withholding and rekindling.

And this is not harmless but so

Political and moral, historic

And of the flesh, because

Understanding changes the world,

In a way that violence cannot imagine.