Why am I so afraid?

This darn poem keeps showing up for me. I'm struggling with committing to a woman I know I love, and feeling fear around losing my commitment to my life purpose of consciously compassionate community. She would help me to see the either or thinking in this process. Why am I so afraid?


If you want to change the world... LOVE a woman 
By Cassie Lyn

If you want to change the world… love a woman-really love her.
Find the one who calls to your soul, who doesn’t make sense.
Throw away your check list and put your ear to her heart and listen.
Hear the names, the prayers, the songs of every living thing-
every winged one, every furry and scaled one,
every underground and underwater one, every green and flowering one,
every not yet born and dying one…
Hear their melancholy praises back to the One who gave them life.
If you haven’t heard your own name yet, you haven’t listened long enough.
If your eyes aren’t filled with tears, if you aren’t bowing at her feet,
you haven’t ever grieved having almost lost her.

If you want to change the world… love a woman-one woman
beyond yourself, beyond desire and reason,
beyond your male preferences for youth, beauty and variety
and all your superficial concepts of freedom.
We have given ourselves so many choices
we have forgotten that true liberation
comes from standing in the middle of the soul’s fire
and burning through our resistance to Love.
There is only one Goddess.
Look into Her eyes and see-really see
if she is the one to bring the axe to your head.
If not, walk away. Right now.
Don’t waste time “trying.”
Know that your decision has nothing to do with her
because ultimately it’s not with who,
but when we choose to surrender.

If you want to change the world… love a woman.
Love her for life-beyond your fear of death,
beyond your fear of being manipulated
by the Mother inside your head.
Don’t tell her you’re willing to die for her.
Say you’re willing to LIVE with her,
plant trees with her and watch them grow.
Be her hero by telling her how beautiful she is in her vulnerable majesty,
by helping her to remember every day that she IS Goddess
through your adoration and devotion.

If you want to change the world… love a woman
in all her faces, through all her seasons
and she will heal you of your schizophrenia-
your double-mindedness and half-heartedness
which keeps your Spirit and body separate-
which keeps you alone and always looking outside your Self
for something to make your life worth living.
There will always be another woman.
Soon the new shiny one will become the old dull one
and you’ll grow restless again, trading in women like cars,
trading in the Goddess for the latest object of your desire.
Man doesn’t need any more choices.
What man needs is Woman, the Way of the Feminine,
of Patience and Compassion, non-seeking, non-doing,
of breathing in one place and sinking deep intertwining roots
strong enough to hold the Earth together
while she shakes off the cement and steel from her skin.

If you want to change the world… love a woman, just one woman .
Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel.
Love her through her fear of abandonment
which she has been holding for all of humanity.
No, the wound is not hers to heal alone.
No, she is not weak in her codependence.

If you want to change the world… love a woman
all the way through
until she believes you,
until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion,
her wildness have returned to her-
until she is a force of love more powerful
than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.

If you want to change the world,
lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs.
Lay down your inner war, your righteous anger
and love a woman…
beyond all of your striving for greatness,
beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.
The holy grail stands before you
if you would only take her in your arms
and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy.

What if peace is a dream which can only be re-membered
through the heart of Woman?
What if a man’s love for Woman, the Way of the Feminine
is the key to opening Her heart?

If you want to change the world…love a woman
to the depths of your shadow,
to the highest reaches of your Being,
back to the Garden where you first met her,
to the gateway of the rainbow realm
where you walk through together as Light as One,
to the point of no return,
to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth

I am burning in the fire with this one.
Somebody get a hose. No never mind. I need this to burn away.

Coming Up For Air

I really want to celebrate myself for a moment. I would like to honour my willingness to make difficult choices, and to see each opportunity as a chance to grow.

My first post on this blog was more than a month and a half ago. Then, I was in an open relationship with my partner and living with her, her husband, and their three children. Wow! What a choice!

I have been following my heart on a journey of community and fatherhood. My heart called me to this woman and I immediately joined her, and her family. We shared, it seemed, such a similar vision, including living in community, having a child together, sharing our work and our passions with each other. Our love was strong, there is no doubt. Our love is strong. But recently I realized how challenging this choice actually was.

I don't know any other men who have left their friends and community, moved to another town, and moved in with a nuclear family, while having relationship with the mother and wife. It seems kind of crazy. It seems overwhelming. I didn't have a bedroom of my own. In fact the only person in the house who did was the 14 year old daughter. The two younger girls share a room. And there was a bed in the master bedroom and a bed in the living room for the adults to negotiate each night. (I don't want to make it seem like there was a lot of negotiation. Generally it just sort of happened.)

Moving in with an established family of fourteen years is kind of like moving to another country. When you move to another country you have to adapt to the culture, you can't expect the culture to adapt to you. It is firmly embedded and reinforced on a daily basis. I was a little bit like the guy from another country. At first I struggled with acceptance. In order to fit in I joined. In joining a new culture I left behind a part of my own culture. The culture that was a part of my identity. I left behind a part of me.

It wasn't inevitable, or necessary, but it was how I responded to the situation. It lasted as long as it needed to. And then I realized, this is not healthy for me. I am not meant to give up what I have worked so hard to create. I am not a passive recipient of culture. I am a conscious evolutionary, a choice maker, a culture creator.

I want to be a father. And to be a father, I need to be a king, and a king needs a kingdom. Whether this kingdom is tangible or intangible, made from brick and stone, or purpose and passion, is not important. What is important is that a father create a space for his child to enter into the world in a way that honours his integrity.

I was out of my integrity in that home. Like a trapped animal backed into a corner I scratched and clawed my way to safety. I am not proud of some of my behaviour then, but I am proud of my ownship of my present situation. I have compassion and forgiveness myself and I recongize the incredible challenges I chose, listening the judgements by others who saw it as messing up a family, the stuggle for acceptance within the family, the unresolved tramas at play, the financial ambiguity, the resistence by other members of the family to the idea of our having a baby. The list could go on and on. But it doesn't need to. There is one piece that is most important. My purpose in life, what fills my existence with meaning, is to live and model empathy-based, co-creative community. I wasn't living up to this dream.

So now I have moved out. I'm not sure what the future looks like. But I know that I am committed to my purpose, and that it will guide me to the fulfillment of my dreams. I trust this.

There is a soul waiting to be born, waiting to find life through my seed. There is a community waiting to be born, built in part from my precious dreams. I am committed to listening, to loving, to saying yes. I am ready to receive all that I dream of, and more, in an easy and healthy way, and I trust that it is already happening.