“Thank you both so much for the heart intelligence circle. I had been feeling anxious, stressed, and extremely emotional the last two weeks in regards to my relationship. I felt heard, seen, and felt in ways that were so nourishing to my heart. I’m feeling more settled, joyful, and like myself again.   It was a lovely group of individuals, and you both masterfully managed the energy in a way that made everybody feel supported and validated.Thank you for making me feel included. I usually feel like a bit of an outsider in any group setting, but at your gatherings I always feel  accepted for who and how I am.” Dave

The Art of Love is learning how to become even more conscious in the ways we invite love into our lives. The depths of love have many aspects that require specific elements to be embraced by her mysteries.

We will explore how we give and receive love.

We’ll take a look at what we do in relationship that blocks the love, creates contraction, and pushes love away.

We’ll look at how we want to show up, so that we feel safe and nourished in her gifts.

In the beginning of intimate relationships, we tend to show up at first in our glorious, beautiful, polished self. It isn’t until later that our shadows emerge, and we begin to see unconscious relationship patterns that don’t work.

“Love is the Great Attractor that brings
everything together.” Tomas Heartfield

How we originally learned about love was in our family of origin, or whomever we were raised with. Watching how they transacted love with each other, and with us, gave us our original love template. We also were influenced by our society, both by those in our immediate experience, but also by movies and TV and books and now by whatever we see and read online.

Then we tried to figure it out ourselves with various partners, stomping on toes along the way and having our own stomped on most likely. If we were fortunate, we read some books or went to workshops where we got some help with how to communicate more compassionately, and realized somewhere along the way we might have married our mother or father–whoever we still had “stuff” with that we had not been able to work out. Those are the interactive patterns we bring to each other, unconsciously hoping to get the response we want with our partner, that we didn’t get in our families.

When someone doesn’t transact love in the way we want or think they should, we contract.  We begin blaming and judging ourselves, and one another. We pretty much always think we are right; our partner is wrong. We feel sad, angry, disappointed, scared, helpless, hopeless. Then we make up, feel good for awhile, but if we don’t see and understand the pattern clearly, it repeats, and we keep playing the same unconscious game.

If we want to become better at transacting love, we have to look at the patterns we have adopted unconsciously.  And…Consciously practice new patterns that help each other feel safe, heard, and cared for, so we can learn, and love can grow in love together.