LOVE, PEACE & UNITY

What's dating got to do with war and peace?

Before I interviewed Sacred Union coach Emilia Eneva Nagy a couple of days ago, I spent a few minutes tuning in and aligning myself with the purpose of that conversation and my work in the world.

At the root of everything I've ever created and offered over the past 20+ years of teaching, facilitating and writing is a call both to embody and foster more love, peace and unity in the world.

I take my vow as a Priestess of Love seriously.

It may not seem obvious when these days I'm talking about dating, but for me there is a direct correlation between bringing awareness to our ways of intimacy and relating and the kind of world we co-create.

Sex can be a making love - literally.

Conscious relating can be a path of awakening.

Sacred partnership can amplify our well-being and soul gifts.

And just like all these expressions of relating, dating can initiate us into growth, healing, connection and mastery. Or reinforce personal and societal shadows, division and conflict, not least between men and women.

As a tantrika, I can't help but see every facet of life as an opportunity to awaken. Dating no less so than chanting mantra or meditation.

But I've got to say, I had a few days of wavering in my purpose when T bombed Iran on the Solstice.

Having enjoyed a beautiful, sun-kissed day here in Glastonbury and attended an evening ceremony on precisely that theme of love, peace and unity, I saw the news of what had happened. And felt my heart and spirit plummet.

I had the darkest dream that night - a nightmare really - of a love-less tribe taking over the world. They lacked compassion, were violent, brutal and self-serving. I was alone in facing them. I wasn't afraid, but felt helpless to stop them and wondered where my tribe was. Because I knew that if there were more of us, we *could* make a difference. I couldn't do it alone.

For several days afterwards, my heart was heavy and painful. So much grief and despair for humanity. Frustration and intolerance too.

I questioned how I could promote my upcoming course on dating when so much devastation, violence and suffering was being perpetrated and experienced?

How can we carry on with anything, really, if we let the full magnitude of such senseless destruction and trauma in?

I imagine the mother whose child has been killed; the desperate father dodging snipers to search for food; the terrified families whose lives have suddenly been uprooted; the wailing babies who've lost their mothers..... and I wonder how on earth peace will come when humans keep doing this to one another.

I don't ever want to turn a blind eye.

I don't want to deny or forget.

My heart cries out for peace and unity.

And if I contemplate what I can DO to change things (and I do), I feel overwhelmed and helpless in the face of such an apparent monolith of life- and love-denying structures and thought-forms.

When the day came to interview Emilia, I was still sitting with some of this (plus a bizarre experience with a boundary-violating house-guest) and a part of me wanted to remain hidden and isolated with the process.

I'm glad I didn't.

At the start of our conversation she referred to her ancestral family dynamics as those of "war." And I could so relate.

I often say that my karma was to be born into a family where the shadow masculine and feminine were at war with one another, in order to transmute this into my dharma as bringer of love and unity.

Not everyone who follows me would know this, but before my switch to the conscious embodiment and relating path, I was studying for a PhD about war and gender. Wishing to understand at a more macro, yet still human-centred, level, how being male or female intersected with initiatives and personalities making war/seeking peace.

As part of this journey I spent a summer in Oslo at a peace research course, where representatives from active war zones - including Israel and Palestine - studied together.

If I were to synthesise everything I've learned through the contemplation and study of conflict from so many angles - including the ancestral trauma of my grandfather, who was a medical orderly in the First World War, as well as my parents, who came from poor, working class families living in London through the Second.World War (they were just 10 in 1940)..... it's brought me to conclude that:

- violence begets violence

- violence is traumatising

- unresolved trauma creates intra- and interpersonal conflict

- intra- and interpersonal conflict create relational, societal , national and international conflict

and

- the imbalance of or separation between masculine and feminine within is a primary cause of intra and inter-personal conflict

The only way out is a shift in consciousness and competence in communicating and relating.

Love, peace, unity.

Not as cute buzzwords, but as an embodied reality that, in turn, can only come about through the humble dedication to cultivating awareness, healing, understanding and connection through the heart, not the mind. To transcending our conditioning sufficiently to be able to recognise ourselves as more than what we identify with/as and then living in devotion to the unification of that greater part (which in my inner experience IS love, peace and unity) with our humanity.

I'm choosing to delay the start of my course as the intensity of this past week completes its integration within me (my masculine honours my feminine in her knowing on that) and return with fresh commitment to the path of love, including, yes, Dating as Devotion. Putting my heart and soul into being a beacon for conscious love-ing feels like the ultimate response to world events for me and I honour that each of us will be called to respond differently.

If you missed my interview with Emilia, find it here. I hope you’ll find it illuminating and inspiring !