What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
Love Isn’t Transactional
June 28 2011
“Love isn’t transactional!”
A client wrote that to me last week.
This is a powerful insight for her. She has a history — as do many of my clients — of acquiescing to others’ needs and desires over her own. She’s spent most of her life doing her best to be the person she thinks others want her to be instead of allowing herself to be the person she is.
Through our work together, she’s finding her own voice and reclaiming her personal power and autonomy. Yet she’s also had times of feeling deeply frightened and vulnerable along the way.
Understanding that love isn’t transactional is a big step for her. It allows her to experience — rather than just knowing intellectually — that standing in and speaking from her truth doesn’t jeopardize her chances to feel cared for and loved.
In fact, quite the opposite. As she said to me, “From this perspective, I can see how I’ve always come to relationships from a place of fear. I felt as if I had to earn — or even buy — love from people based on what I did.”
She went on to say, “Now I see that I don’t have to trade myself — who I am and what I do — to earn love. And I see that I’m not at risk for losing love if I make a mistake or choose not to do what someone wants or expects. I can experience someone’s anger, and my own anger at them, without being afraid it will destroy the relationship. That doesn’t mean I can be irrational or abusive, of course — but when the relationship is real and the love is authentic, it perseveres beyond a disagreement or an angry moment.”
As she’s beginning to see, this insight has a powerful impact on how one experiences life and personal relationships.
When love isn’t transactional, it’s okay to be the imperfect human beings that we all are. It’s okay to have needs and wants that are different from what others may expect — and it’s okay to make decisions based on what’s really true for you.
Some of you know that my mother has been very ill for the past few weeks. On Sunday the 19th, surrounded by her core family and held in love by all of us, she made her transition from this life. Although her physical presence will be deeply missed, she and her love will always be with me and with all of those who knew her. Her lasting, living legacy is love; her philosophy, which she lived every day, is “Love one another.”
I offer you these thoughts from the perspective of my mother’s philosophy of love.
Love and authentic generosity
Love experienced fully creates opportunities for authentic generosity. When there’s no transaction involved — no expectation of what “should” happen as a result of a generous action — the action is freed to be exactly what it is, no more and certainly no less.
And then it can land and take root, freely received without the burden of expectation.
A client told me, “There’s something amazingly spacious about doing something or giving something spontaneously, without considering what might happen as a result. Even when I sometimes catch myself falling into old habits of thought and wondering why someone didn’t respond the way they ‘should have,’ when I rest in that space of love, it’s easy to notice, to laugh at myself, and simply allow the thought to dissolve.”
Love and vulnerability
As I mentioned, my clients often feel a frightening sense of vulnerability when they first begin experiencing how love moves and wants expression within them.
One client, raised in a highly intellectual family that suppressed and even shamed open expressions of emotion, was recently able to express her feelings of love at a gathering honoring a close family member.
“It wasn’t exactly easy,” she told me. “But so many people came up to me afterwards and thanked me for what I’d said! And somewhere in the days since then, I’ve realized that this depth of love ultimately can’t be harmed. It’s not possible for it to disappear or to be hurt.”
She added, “I’m not sure what it is in me that feels hurt or frightened or vulnerable — but I am sure that it’s not that foundation of real love.”
Love and experience
In opening to love and spaciousness, you might think — as my clients sometimes do — that you’ll no longer have to deal with grief, fear, struggle, anger, or other painful feelings.
Yet the human experience spans all aspects of what life brings to us.
I honor the richness of my mother’s life. I felt great peace and beauty in her passing, and her love is still very present in my experience.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t also feel deep sadness, or that I won’t miss her physical presence in my life. I do, and I will.
Yet opening to the fullness of life from the foundation of love allows us to deeply and completely experience whatever happens. Instead of grasping or rejecting, instead of filtering what’s happening, we can allow experience to flow naturally.
And when we meet our lives with love, there’s a depth, richness, and peace in every experience that’s simply not available from the transactional perspective.
“Throw caution to the wind and dare to love even the bee’s sting.” Adyashanti, from “Your Sweet Devotion” — a poem in his collected works My Secret is Silence.
“How does it feel to be a heart? For all I know is Love, and I find my heart Infinite and Everywhere.” Hafiz, from “How does it feel to be a heart” — a poem in I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy, translated by Daniel Ladinsky.
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