spectrum, and although you may think it's easier to rejoice than to commiserate with someone, rejoicing, too, can be difficult. As a matter of fact, a lot of people feel so defeated in their own lives that instead of being able to celebrate with anyone else, they feel jealousy or self-pity. Indeed, unless you've really been able to feel your own joy, you may have a difficult time rejoicing, even with your beloved.
So in order to rejoice together—to double your joy, to share your beloved's pleasures, and truly celebrate them–allow yourself to rejoice first of all in your own life, about all the things that delight you, that brighten your day, that make your heart glad. Celebrate your victories, exult in your own achievements. Then you'll be well prepared to really rejoice with your sweetheart.
Rejoicing together is breathing in joy, being together at the moment of beauty (of soul-washing tears, of life-changing praise), in the hour of unbridled happiness, of sweet–or stunning—success. It is to be the loving witness at the epiphany of a talent (his book; her photography exhibit; his all-star game; her tennis match), to celebrate special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, life achievement awards. It is also to rejoice in all the cycles of your love–times and years you have shared, crises you have lived through, reunions that rekindled your love, and even all the good fights and their healing resolutions.
We must rejoice together because rejoicing begets itself. It brings us more joy, more hilarity, a greater sense that life is radiance, splendor, pleasure, and fun. So one by one and, above all, together, rejoice!
OPEN TO THE ECSTATIC ENERGY
In relationships, we join these energies with one another through passion and affection. Sexuality and sensuality are the media of our passionate connection, the arena where flesh and spirit meet; and affection is the medium through which we express our fond, caring love.
Sometimes in our overemphasis on verbal communication, we forget that we are also bodies and that as physical beings, too, we have a unique and powerful language. In our bodies, we “feel” and know things often before we can even begin to articulate them. Through our bodies, we share our love in an immediate, instinctual way that conveys a depth of feeling beyond words.
The language of the body is this energy, the invisible ecstatic pulse which is the essence of life itself. We often think of our aliveness only as form-the bodies we inhabit-and not as the force of life, or energy, that flows through them. In so doing, we miss the opportunity to feel our own aliveness, and, in relationship, to be nourished by that mysterious spiritual commodity that is another person's “energy.” Yet it is precisely the “energy”–of a city, a person, a particular piece of music or an emotional exchange–that actually moves us at the deepest level. Nothing reveals this more clearly than a body which, through illness, is being drained of its energetic essence, and no one demonstrates the existence of this energy more beautifully than children.
In our intimate relationships, when we shift our attention from the material form–what we look like, what we're wearing, how in or out of shape we are–and move it into the energetic realm, we enter the grand, new, mystical arena in which we experience love itself as an expression of this energy. Instead of feeling it only as an emotion, we sense it also as a mystic invisible pulse, the heart-filling throb, the luminous shivers that tell our bodies we have truly “felt” our love.
To move your consciousness from the awareness of substance to energy, and to seek the persons whose energy, for you, is ecstatic, is to immediately expand your repertoire of love. When you do, you will not only be able to talk about the love you feel, you will actually be able to “feel” it as the tingling, brilliant, ecstatic life essence in your body. So open your heart–and every cell of your being—to the luminous life-changing wisdom that is your soul's ecstatic energy.
STOP TRYING SO HARD
This inclination toward the difficult, demanding, and competitive is so much the hallmark of our culture that it has all but become a knee-jerk reaction in our personal lives as well. It is an occupation of the mind and a preoccupation of the personality; it is the antithesis of grace, of ease.
Unfortunately, the same sad predilection toward effort that we apply to work we also apply to love. We use the ghastly expression that we are “working on” our relationships, as if they were cars that needed repairs or gold mines from which with endless effort we might dredge up the sacred paydirt of a wonderful relationship.
When we look at love in this way, we degrade it. Love becomes a project instead of a miracle, and we miss the fruits of its marvelous quirkiness. We can become so involved with “working on” it, “sharing” our feelings, “trying” to communicate better, or “learning” how to negotiate, that love, the mysterious power that brought us together in the first place, is all but stifled in the process.
This isn't to say that a good relationship doesn't prosper from the appropriate forms of focused attention, but rather that if you become fixated on it in this way, you'll squeeze out all the juice and be left with nothing but an empty rind.
The truth is that most of the things we try for in life are just that-trials and trying. But when we slip, by accident, into the effortless space, we stand face-to-face with the miracle–and the lesson–that the things that move us most deeply are almost always a gift.
Love, real love, is a grace, unattainable through effort. It is a gift of the spirit, not a consequence of endeavor. It is not an outcome to be worked toward, but a treasure to be received. So when love magically, spontaneously appears, don't try; just let it in. And when your relationship whimsically, unexpectedly, grandly offers you beautiful moments, don't try to analyze or repeat them, just open your heart and allow them to burst into bloom.
CAST OFF YOUR PRIDE
Pride is what we have, do, feel, preserve instead of all of the above. It gets us through the rough times, allows us, in difficult circumstances, in spite of our feared inadequacies, to carry on. But pride, embedded, taken on as a personality trait, is a dangerous attribute. It stands between you and what is or might be: love, a new friend, the healing of an old wound, a better job, a kiss, a miracle.
When you get too involved with your pride–the way you think you ought to be treated, how important you are, how insulted you feel because “they” overlooked you–you miss what's right in front of your eyes—this beautiful, unrepeatable moment, to say nothing of the chance to step forward exactly as yourself.
Pride in relationship creates distance. If you want to be treated like a proud, kingly lion, you can be, but you'll be all alone in the jungle. Instead of coming to your beloved in vulnerability, revealing yourself, asking for what you need and allowing her beautiful love to flow in, you'll stand like the Wizard of Oz in her presence, all puffed up with your pride, insisting she be your accomplice in shoring up. your illusions.
We often use the phrase “pride and joy” to speak of who