Patrick Hinchcliff

If you choose intimate relationship as the crucible for your own awakening and healing, you extend an open invitation to *everything* that is unresolved within you to come to the surface – to show you in excruciating detail those areas of your heart that have been numbed and abandoned, and are now calling for your love, attention, and awareness. There are parts of you that have been crying out for your holding for so many years now; it is your beloved that will reveal these to you.

The beloved, like no other, will take you right into the unknown. She will root out all of your hiding places and reveal your nakedness. She will show you that even those most scary and disturbing parts of yourself are pathways home. This is her gift to you.

It can be helpful to look into each of your relationships to start to see the landscape of the (unconscious) agreements you’ve made with “the other” to avoid the experience of too much exposure, vulnerability, and uncertainty. It is quite natural to unconsciously start to define a “good” relationship or a “great” partner or “my one and only soul mate” as one who doesn’t really question these agreements, and who supports your enacting of the survival mechanisms which arose in your early environment. It doesn’t take much – just a few words or not returning a phone call or a particular glance or some apparent distance or simply seeing how your needs are just not getting met – and you are raw, tender, vulnerable, unprotected, and unsure; the ground has fallen away. The beloved has arrived, bearing gifts from beyond.

The survival-level panic comes rushing in, the anxiety has returned, confusion has filled the space between. Where did the beloved go? Where is the love? Am I safe? I have given so much; will I be met?

This is the opportunity of a lifetime, to metabolize that which the beloved has activated. By entering the unknown with your beloved, by stepping into the groundlessness together, you will meet these orphaned pieces of your own heart. They only want one moment of your holding, your care, and your touch. Be naked, be willing to fall apart, be willing to break open, take the risk that love always demands! Let love take you apart and put you back together again, over and over.

Love is not safe. The beloved’s touch is the end of your world. There is nowhere to hide for you have now come to see that your heart is everywhere! You will always be touched, you will care so deeply, you will remain vulnerable forever to the transformative movement of love. You are left as a transparent vessel through which love can pour out into this universe, reorienting everything it touches; everything that is less-than-whole within is burning away, friends, and the beloved is revealing your translucence.

On my flight from Denver to Oahu yesterday, I sat next to a lovely couple who must have been in their early to mid 70s. I was struck by how attuned they were to one another – the slightest cue from one was met by the other and responded to. I could literally feel in my body that they each felt fully contacted by the other, while from time to time they would go silent, return to their own individual activities, infusing the environment between them with a warm, tender space. They remained connected, but separate simultaneously – and would meet each other’s glance from time to time as if to assure the other that all was well in the world. No words needed. It was as if I could feel their mirror neurons coming online together, empathically in resonance with one another, tuned into just what was needed in a given moment.

For some reason their dance, their play, their love… it really touched me, so much so that I actually found myself crying. I didn’t want to make a scene or make them uncomfortable so kept to myself as much as I could (I know, those that know me, it’s not like me to ‘not make a scene’ or refrain from ‘making others uncomfortable,’ especially when it comes to tears, love, vulnerability, and falling apart. I really was trying to behave; it was only 45 minutes into a long flight after all).

It was then that they pulled out their video player and were going to watch a movie together. I was curious how they would be able to remain connected and do this as there was only one headphone jack on their iPad. Would they alternate? Knowing them (as I had for about 20 minutes now), I was sure one would just sacrifice the sound for the other, and they’d switch periodically. Before I realized exactly what was going on, the gentleman pulled out a Y-shaped thingy which allowed them to both plug their headphones in at once. I lost it. It was so perfect – and so them. Just more attunement and connection, this time taking shape as some weird looking modern electronic device. The tears flowed even more in reveling at their sweet connection.

They finally glanced over at me, my intention to not create a scene lost to the crushing power of love that flows between two people. They both just smiled at me and the man patted me on the shoulder, his eyes near bursting into tears himself. We all just shared a moment together, outside all time and space, with me so grateful that they allowed me into their sacred world for just a moment, and into the mystery of lover and beloved as it unfolds here, into eternity.

Postscript: I just shared this post with them (couldn’t help myself). Now the three of us are just sort of silently weeping together, holding hands… as we descend into Waikiki… three new friends, held by the beloved and her mysterious ways, and the sweetness of a Hawaiian sunset. I feel quite confident I could die now. To know even one sliver of this love… I’ve been given so much more than enough.