DIVE 1 from warrior love

Dive 1

Choices

My waking thought: It is safe for me to grow, even when life requires tough choices.

Let me ask you, the reader: Who would be fearful, critical, or jealous of you if you changed by loving yourself and then, shining that love and the powerful miracle within you to create a whole new way of being and living? One consequence of your changing could be attracting new intimate relationships into your life, new ways of being creative, new ways of living with the earth. A whole new vista of life could open up.

Who would not want you to change and grow into a powerful person in your own right? Would it be your partner, your children, or people who think they know you?

Raising awareness and consciousness through therapy or self-help groups or books, or teachers who cross your path may bring the realization that your life needs to change. Often self-made confusion through feeling fear can mask the true change that is happening. Lots of inner excuses tell us not to change: “don’t rock the boat.” There is one part in us—the “old us”—that wants everything to stay the same. However, our deeper desire is to become true to the person that is deeply buried under this fear. There is, I believe, a time to rebirth the miracle we were born with. This can happen when we nearly die or experience a crisis or catastrophe such as a partner leaving. I think we re-connect consciously with the heart energy of love. We can call this power Divine Mind, Universal Mind, God, Goddess, or Higher Self. We do come back to our spiritual home of being truly spirit having a temporary human physical body.

Deep change

This deeper change I now face. I have come to encounter, digest, and assimilate the challenge of my second wife and I going our separate ways and doing this with as much kindness, wisdom, love, forgiveness, and truth as we can. I love her, yet our ways of seeing and experiencing love and reality are not compatible.

In my first marriage, I found it so hard to believe I could change and grow. I am not blaming my partner. I was frightened of what others might say. I left after twelve years of not being myself. You see, I never knew who I was. I just reacted to survive. I did the best I knew how with the awareness I had then. Fear paralyzed me to the point that I blamed parents, sisters, schools, church, and most of all myself!

As my arrested inner child dictated, all I knew was, I must never tell the truth. People will hurt me and make me feel stupid. The man I was then was confused, had no real self-knowledge, and was filled with such hurt. I was on the “inner telephone,” as one of my teachers put it, so I never really listened or learned how to live with authentic, responsible, personal power. My chatterbox was full of self-doubt.

Sound familiar to you? I thought, everybody else must change before I can be free to make new choices. I became the classic victim, and of course, my main thought was: There is no money to be free!

I thought of all the reasons why I could not change. The word can’t was in the forefront of my mind. Now can remains after removing the apostrophe and the t. I had no faith or trust that anything “out there” or within me existed that would assist me in making a positive change. I became a taker, a victim, and my own worst judge. I bored everyone with my hard-luck story and felt sorry for myself.

Being responsible with compassion and self-compassion

This book is written in contrition, not shame. I know I am not a bad man. I take full responsibility for the poor choices I made in the latter years of our marriage.

I realize I have taken from those I love by keeping secrets and by lying about my need for an intimacy that my partner could not give me. I believe she has changed, and now I cannot give her what she truly needs. The person I have become is not perfect, and, thank you, reader, I hope you are not. Perfectionism is a killer; it hides who we are. That’s not an excuse. I risk feeling shame at present, and I wake in the middle of the night feeling desolate and imagining people gossiping about my choices and behaviors. Yet I am learning to have what research professor Dr. Brené Brown calls, “self-compassion” to “develop shame resilience.” Not listening and recognizing the need for change can be so painful if, like me, you have learned to lie for fear of losing love or because you feel unlovable.

Wanting others to change rather than changing yourself

One truth I realize I wanted my partner to change to how I wanted her to be. I felt I would be happy then. But I cannot change anyone, only myself. I know this in theory, yet I denied my power and responsibility to come out and say, “I am changing. It’s time to be honest about who I am and what I need.”

One big lesson I learned is that, when I choose to stay silent and not say what I need in a relationship, I hurt my partner as well as myself. I know now I cannot earn anyone’s approval by hiding behind the deception of getting my needs met elsewhere. And I am not going to beat myself up for changing as a human being.

However, I could have listened to my inner power, which so often prompted me to be truthful. But I was too afraid of the consequences. I thought that by being honest, I would hurt those I loved. This circular thinking deepened my confusion. So, reader, listen carefully to what is changing within you. Remember that the longer you delay being honest, the more hurt will come to you. So many of us—men especially—isolate ourselves, pretending to be okay while running scared inside. We compartmentalize our secret lives. Eventually these secrets unfold, often prompted by crisis, and then we are encouraged to be truthful in every area of life, past and present. Well, my partner choosing to leave me is my prompt.

The fear of lack and not deserving

While I was growing up, I never felt there was enough money, and this linked indelibly in my consciousness to the lack of love in my original family. As a result, I gave up my power to earn my own money when I married and, most importantly, my ability to charge a fair price for doing what I was clever at, which was working with people as a therapist, counselor, and group leader. I loved my work and did it with as much patience and love as I could muster. Yet I felt somewhere I was not worthy.

This became a large area of resentment for me and for my partner. I relied on another person, my wife’s kind father, to provide financially for my family and me. This does not bring self-respect.

Taking back my power

I truly want to take responsibility with heartfelt forgiveness and love for what has happened. An old proverb says, “You get what you think about whether you want it or not.” So I watch carefully what I think and say. And moreover, I watch what I put into my mind daily. What do you think and say about your life moment-to-moment, day in day out? Are you critical with your mind to your wonderful body? Well, read this story:

The Stag at the Pool

A thirsty stag went to get a drink from a pool. Having satisfied his thirst, he lingered for a moment, looking at his reflection in the water. What fine antlers I have, he thought. They spread out so wide and look so strong that I’m sure all the other creatures envy me. Then he noticed how thin and weak his legs looked. If only my legs were as impressive as my antlers, I’d be a very beautiful beast indeed!

As he was thinking these things, a lion spotted him and began to give chase. The stag took off and easily outpaced the lion in the clearing, but as soon as the stag entered a wood, his antlers caught in the branches of some trees. Try as he might, he couldn’t disentangle himself. In fact, the more he struggled, the more trapped he became. Soon the lion caught up with him and attacked him. With his dying breath the stag said, “Oh how mistaken I was! I despised my legs which were keeping me from death, and I boasted about my antlers which have been my ruin.”

Insight: Sometimes we could benefit from choosing to value what we value least. What aspects of life do we take for granted—despise even—yet would cause us to feel impoverished if we were denied them? Perhaps it is finding love within ourselves and then realizing we are truly lovable. As A Course in Miracles puts it succinctly: “Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love and find yourself.

A secret: We become what we think about! So I choose warrior love and one aspect of warrior love is self-compassion.