What Now? Part Two

What Now? Part Two 

One afternoon a few months ago, during meditation I inwardly heard divine guidance advise watching our DVD copy of the film, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing, a very significant movie for me in previous years. I also saw and heard an inner picture of a fireworks-type explosion, where doing so would really open things up … and it did! That event led to my explorations of what I called The Unfettereds. The first one was unfettered Love, meaning basic Love without restrictions. So that was the lens I used through which I looked at my past, present, and future.

I have also been able to use experiences from the past 15 years, starting in early 1999 when I began writing God's River of Love. At that time I purposely started out from the position of being an individualized part of divinity overall, of divine Oneness, while also continuing to function appropriately culturally. I was primarily identifying with the essence of my Being. Another way to think about Oneness is—it's synonymous with fundamental Love.

In retrospect I have seen that a major restriction I had placed on basic love had been making Jim and Kim overly large, whereas in right-sizing terms basic love now flows from and to me freely, where I am creating a love that includes everyone and everything … and also, I am now focusing on more fundamentally loving myself (more right-sizing).

I think unfettered freedom is closely connected with basic unfettered love …  while I also think that the designs each of us sets forth naturally make  connections with others. From this perspective, there is more conscious responsibility and additional options to change the game and results in one's life. From my point of view, I am fully responsible for everything I energize to start with … and am also responsible for all my responses to others. But I'm not responsible for what another person does with what I set forth.

After all that, I explored unfettered compassion, and then unfettered clarity that I continue to be amidst.

What has become increasingly clear is that gender roles were and are everywhere, in all cultures. I see cultural gender roles as usually being central to one's Identity. Fortunately, from the beginning of our relationship Jim has energized many beliefs about gender equality and fairness, while at the same time he was using mixes of cultural male patterns he learned amidst a very competitive environment. And I too had used mixes of patterns I learned to use to be a cultural female … while for decades, Jim and I have both been playing around in going-beyond-cultural-gender definitions.

Over the years there have been many dynamics between us in terms of our cultural gender programs. On dozens of occasions, Jim and I have had  conversations about our role expectations as we were growing up—me as a cultural female in southern California, and he as a cultural male in the Midwest. Then last October 2nd, on his 80th birthday, Jim played a round of golf, and stated later that he had satisfactorily completed his decades-long golf focuses, that in the future he'd probably play a round occasionally. It seems that music and as yet unknown other interests are more front and center in his life now. He has said he is creating A Whole New World, with fresh designs for himself, and new operating patterns.

Currently, in our individual ways we are both choosing to go beyond cultural gender roles and their limitations, while also continuing to function appropriately in exchanges with others.

to be continued