Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / 27: romantic longing 🤎 part 2 | love poems, self-defined romance, removing barriers to love

Transcript

27: romantic longing 🤎 part 2 | love poems, self-defined romance, removing barriers to love · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

• 0:00
  I was dreaming of a kind of love that came in a different packaging and had I not been
• 0:04
  away, I would have been like, that's not my packaging, that's not my gift.
• 0:08
  Bye bye.
• 0:09
  Returns is in there.
• 0:10
  So let's separate the packaging from the substance.
• 0:12
  Hello sunshine and welcome back to paradigm shift with I understood a place where we reframe
• 0:19
  what is and reimagine what could be.
• 0:21
  I hope you enjoy today's episode.
• 0:23
  It's paradigm shift together.
• 0:25
  I just want to remind you that you are so precious, you are so magical and you have not even
• 0:33
  begun to taste all the love that this universe has to offer you.
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  There is so much love ahead of you that comes in so many shapes, textures, forms that are
• 0:46
  beyond your wildest dreams.
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  I truly believe that there is friendship coming your way.
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  There is deep connection coming your way, there is deep love coming your way and what
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  I want to invite us into is to remove any sort of conceptual barriers between us and love.
• 1:03
  How can we reframe what makes us feel unlovable as what qualifies other people to love us?
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  If there's something that you feel no one will ever accept about you, then that is the
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  bar for loving you.
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  And I know it seems like no, no one will ever be willing to climb that bar because I don't
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  have evidence of that now.
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  I promise you, we live in a universe that is so much bigger than any of our imaginations.
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  And so just as there are things outside of your current perception that do exist, there
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  is love outside of your current imagination that will exist for you.
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  Today I affirm that for you, I manifest that for you and the love of my life has come
• 1:42
  to me in the realm of friendship and so I'm really manifesting that for you as well.
• 1:48
  Today we are in act two of our conversation on romantic longing.
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  We are speaking to that pain, that craving, that yearning for a romantic partnership
• 2:00
  that we currently don't have access to.
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  We are tapping into all our dreams for how we want to be loved and how we want to give
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  love, all the cute and precious fantasies that we've created in our imaginations.
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  And we are saying, okay, we are going to integrate and accept our longing instead of trying
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  to reject it and deny it.
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  We spoke about that a lot on act one.
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  And we also spoke about the fact that longing is love, longing is erotic energy.
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  And it would be such a shame to not let that longing live somewhere, to not let it flow
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  through us in a loving way in some way.
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  So for example, the longing that I feel for romantic love is something that I'm also
• 2:41
  channeling into the way that I interact with you and speak to you.
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  And I think there's romance in so much of our lives, or they could be.
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  And it's about how can we define romance for ourselves?
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  And then with that definition, realize that it's much more available than we originally
• 2:58
  had thought.
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  So I'm very excited because in act two of our conversation, we are going to let the
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  curtains rise, ta-da-da-da, and what we are going to reveal is a forest, okay, a forest
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  on stage.
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  There are trees, there's lemon trees, there's peach trees, imagine trees that
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  bear no fruits, but are just as relevant.
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  There are sunflowers, there are roses, there's every kind of flower, there are butterflies
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  that are flying around and there are birds chirping, making their own nests.
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  And it's just a majestical forest.
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  And we're going to speak about why this is a forest on stage in a moment.
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  At first babe, I want to read you a poem.
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  If you shall be so kind as to allow me to do that, I want to read you a poem.
• 3:47
  Also if you're watching this on video, I know that the lighting keeps shifting, I have
• 3:51
  no idea why.
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  And I'm trying not to let it bother me.
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  So the universe is just testing how strong my love is.
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  Okay, anyways, so sit back and relax, take a deep breath, that's accessible to you.
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  And if you're driving, of course, you know, stay alert.
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  And I'm very grateful to be accompanying you on your journey, a little day together today.
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  So the poem is named idea.
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  And it's by a poet named Kate Beyer and I found it while researching for this episode.
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  Okay, listen in.
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  Before I read you this poem, I want you to tell you that let's think about this forest
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  on stage.
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  And if we imagine the forest as an allegory for love, a metaphor of love, we see that
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  love is abundant.
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  Love has so many different manifestations.
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  And as I said, love is made to be scarce in our world, but there are so many different
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  kinds of love, you know how scientists study different species and different organisms.
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  There are so many different species and types and kinds of love that exist on our universe.
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  We could say there's the love shared between friends and then there's the love shared
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  between parents and children who are loving.
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  That's not even capturing the fullness of how many species of love there is.
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  I feel like if we were to really study and document love seriously, we would be able
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  to see, you know, I know there are languages where there's like 26 words for love, for
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  example.
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  And so I just think that there are so many different kinds of love.
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  The forest represents how every single love is fruitful and abundant and has its role
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  to play in the ecosystem of life.
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  And yet we are pedestalizing romantic love.
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  And I know that we yearn for it and we crave it.
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  But how can we open our eyes to the abundant love in our world, in our universe that's calling
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  us in or that we can call in as we spoke about being in the practice of being loving, being
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  a force of love in this universe through our art, through the way we relate to people,
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  through the way we treat people, through who we reach out to and how we do so, through
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  the way we exist as a manifestation of love on this planet.
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  So we get into a very psychically dangerous situation when one form of love is put on a
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  pedestal, is put in the top of this hierarchy that shouldn't exist.
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  There is a quote by Bell Hooks that's so short and so powerful.
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  She says in the book Communion, value all deep bonds equally.
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  And I think that tells us so much, value all deep bonds equally.
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  What does that invite you into?
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  What is a deep bond that you may be value less than a romantic relationship, either conceptually
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  or if it's in your life already than in your life?
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  And finally, I want to read you this poem that I found while researching for this episode
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  because research should not only involve the facts as defined by the scientists, but the
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  love as defined by the poets.
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  This poem is called Idea and it's by a poet named Kate Bayer, okay?
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  I hope that you enjoy it.
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  I will enjoy this life.
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  I will open it like a peach in season, suck the juice from every finger, run my tongue
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  over my chin.
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  I will not worry about cliches or uninvited guests peering in my windows.
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  I will love and be loved, save and be saved a thousand times.
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  I will let the want into my body, bless the heat under my skin, my life.
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  I will not waste it.
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  I will enjoy this life.
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  So I want to let those words trickle into your soul, into your spirit, into your body.
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  And I also want to share why they mean so much to me.
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  And I want to go into the lines of the poem and really unpack what I am hearing.
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  And you may hear something else and I wish we could create a collage, a mosaic of all
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  that we hear together and interpret this poem collectively.
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  I think it speaks to this insistence on enjoying life in spite of the narrow opportunity
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  for enjoyment that is laid out by the cliches, by the status quo.
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  It's an insistence on sucking every drip of life juice and of eros that life has to
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  offer us.
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  I will enjoy this life.
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  I will open it like a peach in season, suck the juice from every finger, run my tongue
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  over my chin.
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  It's just savoring.
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  It's not letting any drip of life go to waste.
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  I will not worry about cliches.
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  It's like I'm not going to judge how well my life is going according to this romantic
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  paradigm or this paradigm or that paradigm that is trying to impose itself on me.
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  And then when it says all uninvited guests peering in my windows, I view that as a commentary
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  on the judgment of others, often our friends, often our family, but people who are uninvited,
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  we have not invited them because we are only inviting people who are there to support us,
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  who are there to just observe and enjoy and celebrate the way we unfold in each moment
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  and the way that the moment unfolds us.
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  I will love and be loved, insisting that in spite of not matching or feeding into
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  the cliché, I will know love and I will know what it is like to be loving.
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  And I think that is so, so powerful.
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  This is a forest of love.
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  Just because the oak tree of romantic love is not something that may be fully accessible,
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  I'm not going to ignore all the other love that can exist in my universe.
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  I will insist on love.
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  I will take the longing that I have for romantic love in our case.
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  She's not saying this and I will channel that into the insistence on love being at the
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  center of my life.
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  And then she says, I will save and be saved a thousand times.
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  And the reason why I think this line is so powerful is there so much rhetoric or language
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  around, I don't need anyone to save me.
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  And this complete rejection of dependence, that it's embarrassing, it's not okay detachment
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  right?
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  I see so many people coaching you on how to be detached, detached, detached, detached.
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  And I think that always is a wisdom of contradiction.
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  It's never that something is completely wrong, but you have to have the counterweight, right?
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  We cannot have a world full of detached people.
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  We see what that amounts to.
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  We need to attach, we need sensitivity, we need caring and we need saving.
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  It's okay to need salvation.
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  And in fact, romantic love is a paradigm where many people do feel saved.
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  They do come to understand that they are lovable through that paradigm and the opposite.
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  But this insistence that I will save and be saved is so precious because it acknowledges
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  we all actually need saving.
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  You know, we talk about our healing journey, the idea of healing and the idea of being
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  saved, they're very related.
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  I do believe in many ways my best friend saved me because I didn't even realize how emotionally
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  isolated I felt because, although I had close friends, I didn't have an everyday friend.
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  I didn't have someone who knew the minutia of my days.
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  I didn't have someone who cared to know how I was unfolding every single day.
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  My littlest thought is his greatest curiosity.
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  And that saved me because I've always felt like I have, I'm a good listener, you know,
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  I'm the one who listens and it's not to say that I've never made friends who are amazing
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  listeners, but we're not everyday friends, like we don't speak all the time.
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  And I think each friendship, just like the seasons, has its own cyclicality, has its
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  own rhythm, has its own seasons.
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  Some friends you see every year, some friends you speak to every few months, you have to
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  find your rhythm.
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  And unfortunately, this is often not found through communication on right?
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  What are your needs?
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  What are my needs?
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  What are your constraints?
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  What are mine?
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  It's more just like what ends up happening.
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  However, frequently the other person or you respond.
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  But with him, it's like this daily sharing of my inner world.
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  And I think that is something that I believe we all need.
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  When I think about loneliness, realizing how it's not just that people feel literally
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  alone, because I felt very lonely when, especially when I moved to the US or my word, it
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  was so painful.
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  And yet I was surrounded by people.
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  It's that there's no one who you truly feel like understands you.
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  So you feel like you are always isolated emotionally, even if you are not physically isolated.
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  And then there are people who experience both the compounding effects of both the physical
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  isolation and the emotional isolation.
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  There's also ideological isolation where you feel this loneliness because no one around
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  you has your same values.
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  And you can't have the types of conversations you want to have and you can't obsess over
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  the things, same things you're obsessed over.
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  So you're creating this whole world and you're occupying it.
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  You're listening to podcasts.
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  Someone was mentioning on my sub-sac.
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  She listens to all these incredible podcasts that are feeding her, feeding her a liveliness,
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  feeding her curiosity, her eros, but she has no one to talk to about those podcasts.
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  That to me is such a form of isolation because we need to have a shared world with at least
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  one person in our lives and so many of us do not have that.
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  So the reason why this is related is I will save and be saved.
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  Someone I can't, like we can't save each other.
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  We have to believe that.
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  A friend can save you and you can save someone by treating them in a way that they are not
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  used to being treated as.
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  You can save them.
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  You can save them from their low bar for what love should feel like.
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  You can save them from their experience of what friendship can feel like.
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  You can save them even from assumptions that they had that turn out to be false.
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  Like my best friend always says how he always like kind of assumed that he was too much
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  and our friendship has saved him from that notion.
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  He knows now you're never too sensitive.
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  You're never too loving.
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  You're never too curious, but you just haven't met someone who can meet you at your level
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  of sensitivity, at your level of curiosity.
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  And so I think that taking away this individualistic language around I don't need anyone to save
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  me.
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  I don't need anyone to, I just want to detach.
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  I don't want to care.
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  Like that's never going to be me and I would bet that if you're listening to this podcast,
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  that's not us.
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  Like we are the opposite of indifferent over here.
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  Like we do care, but the paradox of that is that sometimes gets us hurt because we're
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  out here and like one sided friendships or one sided experiences where we are listening
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  and we are caring, but we don't necessarily feel listened to or cared for in the way that
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  we are seeking.
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  So I love this just acceptance.
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  We all need saving and we all can save.
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  It's both the practice and it's the ability to receive.
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  Okay, and she says I will do that a thousand times.
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  So that's again, the abundance of the forest that there are so many ways that we can love
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  and be loved.
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  There are so many ways we can save and be saved.
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  Have you not ever had just one little person, one stranger say something to you and just
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  save you?
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  Yesterday, I was feeling so, so hearted myself for being, you know, inconsistent with
• 15:23
  this podcast.
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  And even though I know I'm not a machine, I deserve rest.
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  I mean, things happen at their own time, divine timing, the universe, all of these things.
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  I was feeling a sense of disappointment in myself.
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  And I like to sit with my feelings and not try to rationalize them away because that disappointment
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  is energy that I need to listen to.
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  It's a voice within me that is telling me, okay, babe, like you don't feel good when
• 15:47
  you do this.
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  It was also a voice telling me like, oh, this is a lesson to learn how to love yourself.
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  Even when you are not acting in the ways you feel you should.
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  And I had spoken to my aunt early in the day and then later in the day, she said to me,
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  you know, you really opened me up today.
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  I feel so good about our conversation and you're so easy to talk to and you're such a
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  good listener.
• 16:07
  Thank you so much.
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  She's kind of on her path of refinding herself in her 60s and just refinding herself
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  as Steven herself worth.
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  And it was just so precious for her to share that with me that I had that impact with
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  her.
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  I really feel aligned when people say things like that to me like you're really, thank
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  you so much for listening.
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  And that's also why I'm really excited to get into the interview episodes next year.
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  I just had to take a break from them.
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  And I'm soon going to be sharing an episode on my process and thinking with that.
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  But anyways, all I want to say is a little thing that someone says to you one day can
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  save you, a little text that they send you.
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  Someone takes you out of the blue.
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  I was just thinking of you like you think of me.
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  I didn't know that.
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  Oh my goodness.
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  Thank you.
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  That's so precious.
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  You've saved me because now I feel a little more seen, a little more whole, a little
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  more saved, okay?
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  So let me continue with this poem.
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  I will let the want into my body.
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  Now this is everything we've been speaking about.
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  It's saying.
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  Oh my word.
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  It's actually like profoundly sensual and just vivid and really, really precious.
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  I will let the want into my body.
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  So I will not pretend, preclude, block, wanting from my body, from my actual being.
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  I will let it in.
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  And you know that feeling, wanting is in our bodies when we like see something on TV
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  and we're like, I want that.
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  I want to be held like that.
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  I want to be looked at like that.
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  I want to be seen like that.
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  I want to be regarded like that.
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  I want that.
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  We feel that in our in our hearts or in our bodies.
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  And then there's a sexual wanting of like, oh, I want this person or I want this experience.
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  And if you are a sexual person, your sex life in your imagination, 100, your sex life
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  in real life, zero, maybe negative 100, like Dave's is going down in the imaginations
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  of the people and not much place else.
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  Like Dave, if I was having the sex life that I have in my imagination, oh my goodness.
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  Wow.
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  I think it would heal me.
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  I think it would save me.
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  I really think it would.
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  So yeah, that lives in the body, that wanting, that craving, that yearning.
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  And she's saying, because remember, she's saying she's going to suck every little piece
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  of juice and little piece of, you know, there's no piece of juice.
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  She's going to suck all the juice out of the peach of life.
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  And that includes the wanting.
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  Ah.
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  Because we want, you know, we want, okay?
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  We desire.
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  We long.
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  We crave.
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  No, no, no, no, I don't want that.
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  I don't want that.
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  Oh, we could just let the one in, okay?
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  I will let the one into my body, bless the heat under my skin.
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  So again, I feel like this is eros, this is passion, this is, ooh, this is craving.
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  This is sexual energy in my mind, right?
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  It's an embodied experience of sexual desire in my, that's how I interpret it.
• 19:04
  You might interpret it differently.
• 19:06
  And I love that for us.
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  As I said, I'd love to create a mosaic of understandings.
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  And then she says, my life, I will not waste it.
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  I will enjoy this life.
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  And so what's really wonderful is she's finishing the poem, how she started it.
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  And so it's really kind of this sacred proclamation or this declaration.
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  What is the other word that I'm looking for?
• 19:26
  It's not a declaration, it's not a proclamation, it's eros.
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  So I think it's kind of like a vowel.
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  I think that's maybe because you'd think of the idea of saying I do as like a vowel
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  and she's making her vowel, which is I will enjoy this life.
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  And she is challenging that that enjoyment doesn't have to exist in an institution
• 19:46
  that's been defined for you.
• 19:48
  So what I want to ask you, how can you define romance for yourself?
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  What to you is a romantic moment, experience, relationship.
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  What is it in tale?
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  If you had to really document, okay, I'm building a romantic energy.
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  This is what it would comprise.
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  So for me, let me tell you about my definition of romance.
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  I would love to, am I what I'd be on it?
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  Okay, thanks for asking.
• 20:15
  So firstly, it is attention, a deep kind of attention.
• 20:21
  It's looking into each other's eyes, although I do struggle with that,
• 20:24
  but it is something that I've tried to work on.
• 20:26
  But it's also attending to the details of what someone says to you.
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  Oh my gosh.
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  It's sexy, wonderful, precious.
• 20:34
  Like someone who is so in tune, not as in they are trying to predict,
• 20:41
  they are literally trying to get on your frequency.
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  Everything you say to them is a world that they will not leave untouched,
• 20:51
  obviously with respect and with boundaries and all of those things.
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  But for example, the people I feel closest to are the peoples,
• 20:59
  like the people in my life who are my best friends and who I instantly feel drawn to,
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  are people who are deep listeners, like deep listeners.
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  They're listening between the spaces of what you're saying, what you're not saying.
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  They're referencing something you said last week.
• 21:15
  They're referencing something you said, you know, two cents a go.
• 21:17
  Earlier you said, ah, what do you mean?
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  Do you listen to me?
• 21:23
  Oh my goodness, stop.
• 21:25
  And I know it should be like, oh, the bar is so low.
• 21:27
  No, babe, how many people on this planet earth feel like they have one person in their life
• 21:31
  who truly listens to them?
• 21:34
  Literally, I feel like the world would be changed if we all had that.
• 21:38
  I think that when someone deeply is with me, like they're with me,
• 21:43
  as in they're attending to me and obviously I'm just sharing what I receive.
• 21:47
  I love doing this and that's the whole thing.
• 21:50
  I love listening to people, but I think when you're a good listener,
• 21:52
  when you are a deep listener, that sometimes ends up feeling like one sided.
• 21:58
  Like you are just there to be someone's sounding board or therapist or I don't even know.
• 22:03
  And it gets tiring, you know, it's an emotionally draining thing.
• 22:06
  And so when I meet people who are the same, who are deep listeners,
• 22:09
  and who are like, oh, I'm so sorry, I've been talking for so long.
• 22:11
  And it's like they have it.
• 22:12
  I'm like, you're talking, but it's so considerate because they don't want to dominate the conversation.
• 22:17
  They want you to, they want to create like a shared world with you.
• 22:20
  And I always say that as well, I'm like, oh, I've been talking for so long.
• 22:22
  How about you, you know, and then they're like, no, no, no, keep going.
• 22:25
  And I'm like, ah, this is so sexy.
• 22:26
  I love it.
• 22:27
  So to me, that's romantic.
• 22:29
  And you may be like, isn't that just why is that romantic?
• 22:32
  I think this is a personal question.
• 22:33
  You know what I mean?
• 22:34
  Like when Audrey Lord says each of us needs to define from within based on all our experiences,
• 22:41
  what is erotic to us?
• 22:42
  And to me, there is nothing more erotic than feeling like, oh, my word, you and me,
• 22:47
  space and time doesn't exist.
• 22:48
  We are here to give her.
• 22:50
  I'm the most important thing to you right now.
• 22:52
  You're the most important thing to me right now.
• 22:53
  We are in a cave.
• 22:55
  Okay.
• 22:56
  All of each others in a world and we are just trying to seek a deep and deeper understanding
• 23:01
  and appreciation and love for each other.
• 23:02
  So that's attention.
• 23:04
  The next is affection.
• 23:05
  Obviously affection.
• 23:07
  It's the way that someone speaks to you.
• 23:09
  So it's high my love.
• 23:11
  It's high bay.
• 23:12
  It's high angel.
• 23:13
  It's high my sunshine.
• 23:14
  Baby you.
• 23:16
  It's a way of affectionately speaking to someone.
• 23:19
  It's saying, I hope you sleep so well.
• 23:21
  How did you sleep?
• 23:22
  Like just someone who is lusciously caring about your life in a way that we are taught
• 23:28
  to only expect from romantic partners.
• 23:30
  So every single day my best friend asks me, how did you sleep?
• 23:33
  And it's just like, that's so precious.
• 23:35
  What I was saying about how like for me, it's really become intimacy has really become
• 23:39
  about the little moments.
• 23:40
  And can I share those with you?
• 23:41
  Can I share the minor inconveniences, the tiny pleasures?
• 23:45
  Can I revel with you in the details?
• 23:47
  That to me is intimacy and so many of us are missing that.
• 23:51
  And if we think about living in community, how we were designed to be,
• 23:55
  we would know that my new show of each other's lives because we would all be together.
• 23:59
  So we would know this was in trip to Iraq on Tuesday at nine.
• 24:03
  Well, it wouldn't even be Tuesday and it wouldn't even be nine.
• 24:05
  But when the sun rose yesterday, this was in tripped and are they okay today?
• 24:09
  You know, the minutia of our lives would be instantly relevant and they would be
• 24:13
  not entertainment to distract us.
• 24:15
  So we would be deeply enriched in each other's minute details.
• 24:18
  You know what I mean?
• 24:19
  And I think that's really, really intimate to me.
• 24:22
  And so there's the attention.
• 24:23
  There's the affection affection speaks to how we refer to each other.
• 24:27
  It speaks to how we speak to each other.
• 24:29
  So speaking to each other, just with this oozing love, you know, that comes through.
• 24:33
  That to me is romantic.
• 24:36
  The third thing is appreciation.
• 24:37
  Just someone who they just really appreciate you and they are really,
• 24:42
  really loving and they're expressing of gratitude for you and you are to them.
• 24:46
  Like I love writing my best friend a letter on like how grateful I am to have him in my life.
• 24:50
  I love words of affirmation and affection and appreciation just like this oozing language of love.
• 24:57
  And I think something that I think can be really romantic that I have an experience as much outside of
• 25:03
  romantic relationships or romantic sexual relationships is physical intimacy like cuddling and those things.
• 25:09
  I haven't explored that in friendship, but I mean, you know, that's cool.
• 25:13
  Like hugs are wonderful and like when someone rubs your arm would I have one of my friends who she's so physically affectionate.
• 25:19
  Like she'll always just like grab you in this way that feels so nice and wonderful.
• 25:23
  And so I think that's really beautiful.
• 25:25
  That is right example of romance in friendship for me.
• 25:27
  And then the next pillar of romance to me is sexual for me.
• 25:31
  It is this sexual feeling of just like desire craving intimacy touching just all of the things of really,
• 25:40
  really treating each other like just divine sexual energy.
• 25:44
  I don't know how to explain it letting the want into your body.
• 25:48
  And so now when we take romance and we take those pillars,
• 25:51
  even though with my best friend that last pillar is not within it,
• 25:54
  it's still romantic to me because it has all those other pillars.
• 25:57
  And so it's such a personal thing.
• 25:58
  I would love to for you to instead of having this paradigm be defined for you.
• 26:03
  What does romance mean to you?
• 26:05
  When have you felt like, Oh, I was actually in a romantic moment that time.
• 26:08
  So for example, I was daunting with my aunt the other day and it just felt so embodied and wonderful.
• 26:13
  And she was like, Oh, we haven't done this together in so long.
• 26:15
  And I was like, that's romantic to me.
• 26:18
  You know, so romance transcends any category of relationship to me,
• 26:22
  even though it may be difficult to wrap your head around or like,
• 26:25
  maybe you just don't agree, which is totally fine.
• 26:27
  But for me, it's really the idea that not everything is sexual.
• 26:30
  Some things are sensual.
• 26:32
  And for me sensuality and romanticism are also very connected.
• 26:36
  Like, Oh, I forgot that.
• 26:37
  Oh, my word, I forgot that.
• 26:39
  So the sensual experience of like lighting a candle, how someone treats you.
• 26:43
  And can I get you a code?
• 26:45
  That's so sexy when anyone does that.
• 26:46
  I'm just like, that's romantic.
• 26:48
  When someone is just going out of their way to bring a sensory experience into your world,
• 26:54
  burning a candle, burning incense, buying your friends flowers or it doesn't have to be something you buy,
• 26:59
  writing a letter to your friend, um, experiencing something together,
• 27:03
  like watching a movie together can be really romantic, even if it's like with a friend.
• 27:08
  You know what I mean?
• 27:08
  That's what I believe.
• 27:09
  I remember one time when I was going for dinner with one of my best friends.
• 27:13
  And then she walked in and I was like, Oh my goodness.
• 27:15
  She's mine.
• 27:17
  She is mine.
• 27:18
  She's not actually mine.
• 27:19
  But I was just like, Oh, like my heart swelled.
• 27:22
  And you're like, Oh, baby, you're secretly in love with her.
• 27:24
  It's not a secret.
• 27:27
  I am in love with her.
• 27:28
  And she's my friend.
• 27:29
  Okay.
• 27:30
  So like, no, it's not a secret.
• 27:31
  I'm in love with all of these people who I've just mentioned.
• 27:34
  Yes, because my heart is the forest.
• 27:36
  Like it has space for so much love.
• 27:39
  And especially for these people who listen to me, who treat me with lots of affection, appreciation,
• 27:43
  desire, like they desire me.
• 27:45
  You know what I mean?
• 27:45
  They pursue me and I pursue them.
• 27:48
  Like if you send someone a TikTok or you know pursue, like, are you not desiring them?
• 27:52
  You know, you're making them feel like, well, you matter in this universe.
• 27:55
  And I'm thinking of you.
• 27:56
  And that's sexy morning texts sexy evening text sexy romantic desirable.
• 28:02
  You know what I mean?
• 28:03
  So that's how I feel.
• 28:05
  And I've said that like 12 times.
• 28:06
  You're like, okay, we understand.
• 28:07
  We love you and we support you, but we get it.
• 28:10
  So I would invite you to define romance for yourself.
• 28:13
  Let's break out of this media and capitalist and a match normative and heteronormative definition of romance.
• 28:19
  Let's define it for ourselves outside of any sort of paradigm of hierarchy and of normativity.
• 28:24
  Okay.
• 28:24
  The last thing I wanted to leave you with before we say toodles.
• 28:28
  Goodbye is how can you remove the barriers that stand between you and love?
• 28:36
  And you're like, baby, if I could do that, I'd be doing it.
• 28:38
  What I mean by that is this sometimes we have deep conceptual barriers.
• 28:42
  I could never be loved.
• 28:43
  No one will ever love me.
• 28:44
  And I wonder if you could invite yourself to see everything that you think makes you unlovable as something that qualifies other people to love you.
• 28:54
  Everything you feel ashamed of or makes you unacceptable, unlovable is what qualifies other people.
• 29:00
  What tells you that what gives you the peace of mind to know, okay, this person loves me because they accept this thing that to me is unacceptable.
• 29:08
  And I know you think that that is inconceivable.
• 29:11
  Babe, we live in an inconceivable universe, right?
• 29:14
  There are literally stars that we can only see because of the speed of light.
• 29:20
  Okay, being so slow, therefore we can look into the past.
• 29:23
  Are you kidding me?
• 29:25
  Like that's the planet we live in.
• 29:27
  There's literally gas that allows us to breathe.
• 29:31
  We are literally sustained by forces in our bodies that we don't even understand.
• 29:35
  We literally dream magical dreams and visions.
• 29:41
  We are living in the impossible.
• 29:43
  So we need to literally embrace the inconceivable.
• 29:48
  You know what I mean?
• 29:50
  It's like just because I can only see these things doesn't mean outside of my line of sight.
• 29:55
  They aren't so there isn't so much more.
• 29:58
  So what I want to invite you to is there are things far more impossible out there than you being loved and you receiving the exact love of your dreams.
• 30:05
  Yes, babe, it's not actually impossible.
• 30:08
  It's removed the conceptual barrier and they'd say stranger things have happened.
• 30:13
  That I can say with a with a fucking certainty stranger things have happened.
• 30:17
  Okay, so why not me?
• 30:19
  Why not us and with that when I say remove the conceptual barriers.
• 30:22
  I also mean why not start to see that actually what if there's even more loves than I was taught to even dream of and long for?
• 30:33
  What if this romantic longing wants to speak to me in a different way than the message that I was expecting to receive?
• 30:40
  And will I be ready to hear it when it comes?
• 30:43
  So for example, how did me and my best friend become best friends?
• 30:46
  He DMed me about TikTok.
• 30:48
  We hadn't seen each other for six years.
• 30:51
  He went to college together.
• 30:52
  We weren't even that close in college.
• 30:53
  We had a great connection, but we weren't that close.
• 30:56
  Then six years later, he DMs me.
• 30:59
  He's like, how do you deal with all of this TikTok stuff?
• 31:01
  I'm a creator and I love all of your content.
• 31:04
  And I just want to like ask you for your advice on the mental health side of TikTok.
• 31:08
  He sends me voice notes.
• 31:09
  I'm like, let's get on a phone call.
• 31:11
  We get on a phone call.
• 31:13
  So begins slowly, but surely a desperate love affair.
• 31:16
  You know what I mean?
• 31:17
  A wonderful and just it was just like it could be a movie of like these two people side by side.
• 31:22
  Hey, babe, on the phone.
• 31:23
  I was in hours chatting, chatting, chatting, chatting, chatting.
• 31:26
  And so romantic love did arrive.
• 31:28
  But it didn't arrive packaged the way that I thought.
• 31:30
  And then that love trickled to my other friendships as well.
• 31:34
  And I started to be like, oh, wow, romantic love is possible in friendship.
• 31:37
  So essentially that was a conceptual barrier that I had.
• 31:41
  Like I was dreaming of a kind of love and I thought I knew how it would come.
• 31:44
  So let's separate the packaging from the substance.
• 31:48
  So I thought romantic love would come packaged as a romantic partner.
• 31:51
  It came packaged at the substance of it, though, was those things, the intimacy that I was craving.
• 31:57
  The feeling heard that I was craving the affection, the attention, the deep attention and the appreciation.
• 32:04
  And then the central experience of love, right?
• 32:08
  That came in a different packaging.
• 32:10
  And had I not been away, I would have been like, that's not my packaging.
• 32:13
  That's not my gift.
• 32:14
  Bye bye.
• 32:15
  Returns is in there.
• 32:17
  So how can we remove the conceptual barriers, this lighting thing?
• 32:20
  Oh my goodness, between us and being loved, recognizing that the substance of our
• 32:26
  craving is what we should really be trying to define.
• 32:29
  I just want someone who really cares what I think about Mondays.
• 32:32
  You know what I mean?
• 32:32
  That removes the conceptual barrier because you now are like, okay, now I'm a level deeper.
• 32:36
  Now I know what it is about romantic love.
• 32:39
  I'm actually seeking because it's not like, oh, I just want these words.
• 32:42
  There's something in the experience that I really want.
• 32:45
  And then within that, there's kind of like a ranking of what I want most.
• 32:49
  You know what I mean?
• 32:50
  So yeah, I would love to have a sexual relationship with someone, but that's not what I want most.
• 32:53
  What I want most is intimacy.
• 32:55
  What I want most is someone who carries and reflects and mirrors my full itself to me.
• 33:01
  And I do that to them.
• 33:02
  What I want most is someone who I feel like deeply has my back.
• 33:08
  And ideally I want more than one person and I luckily I'm so grateful to say I do have more than one person.
• 33:12
  I focused on one of my best friends, but I have incredible best friends who really, really just see my
• 33:19
  higher self with my full self and love me for it and really see me and really seek to keep understanding me.
• 33:25
  And I know I'm really focusing on me, me, me.
• 33:27
  Yes, I do the same to them.
• 33:29
  I love them.
• 33:30
  I deeply seek to understand them.
• 33:31
  I deeply seek to show them love.
• 33:33
  But what I want to say is that that's the substance.
• 33:38
  And I'm okay with not having the sexual side.
• 33:40
  You could not be okay.
• 33:41
  You could be like, no, no, no, I'm not okay with that.
• 33:43
  I'm okay with it right now.
• 33:45
  I feel full.
• 33:46
  But yes, I do so long.
• 33:48
  I do long.
• 33:49
  I do long for all the things.
• 33:50
  And I want a space for the love of people to be like, yeah, we crave.
• 33:53
  We long and here we are craving and longing.
• 33:57
  So with that idea of removing the conceptual barriers between you and love and you and romance and really starting to
• 34:06
  see it as something that is abundant or really inviting you to see abundant possibilities.
• 34:12
  They may not have transpired.
• 34:13
  You may be like, but I can't base that in any fact.
• 34:16
  What if your eyes, your vision, your perspective?
• 34:19
  What if your heart and your eyes and your soul became more open to the idea of abundant possibilities of love?
• 34:27
  Abundant possibilities for love.
• 34:29
  The forest where we started on stage, all the different kinds of love that could come your way.
• 34:35
  But if you're looking down at your phone in the forest, you're not going to get to experience.
• 34:39
  If you're looking up and if you're embracing and you're staying open-hearted, which means accepting rejection, which means, you know,
• 34:45
  accepting that some things will seem like a butterfly and be a hyena.
• 34:51
  I don't know the, I don't know what to say.
• 34:52
  But essentially just staying open, open-hearted and open-minded, sliding into DMs, responding to DMs,
• 34:59
  reaching out to friends that you've lost touch with that you've always felt like, wow, we should actually be closer.
• 35:04
  Journaling to yourself, writing yourself love letters, treating yourself with that romance.
• 35:09
  That's something that we haven't spoken about on this podcast episode, but I believe that so much.
• 35:13
  I love writing myself a love letter.
• 35:15
  All the words you crave hearing from someone else, give those words to yourself.
• 35:21
  And I know that's not enough, but start there.
• 35:23
  Start writing to yourself exactly as you would want.
• 35:27
  Hi, my angel, you are so divine and I love, love, love, the way that you, you know,
• 35:33
  oh, just find ways to challenge the romantic paradigm, to queer it.
• 35:40
  In whatever way feels fun and flirty and interesting to you and accessible to you, okay?
• 35:46
  It could be just waking up every morning and saying, I love you so much, my angel, and you're talking to yourself.
• 35:52
  Exactly how you want to be spoken to that way.
• 35:55
  When another person comes along, you will know what it sounds like to be spoken to with love.
• 36:00
  Romantic yourself, I know that romanticizing yourself is something that is so prevalent in the culture,
• 36:05
  but I do believe how can we romanticize ourselves, but in ways that are less tied to consumer culture
• 36:10
  and to the performance of romanticizing ourselves. Anyways, with this idea of removing conceptual barriers between us and love,
• 36:17
  I wanted to share with you this poem by Rumi. I want to leave you with this poem.
• 36:22
  Thank you for being here today and I'm always so grateful for our dates.
• 36:27
  If I was with you, I would be burning candles, you know, we would be in this sacred kind of container of intimacy and of sharing
• 36:37
  and of hearing and of being heard. So thank you for sharing this space with me.
• 36:42
  The poem is called Looking for Love.
• 36:45
  A strange passion is moving in my head.
• 36:49
  My heart has become a bird which searches in the sky.
• 36:55
  Every part of me goes in different directions.
• 36:59
  Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere?
• 37:05
  How can you start to see the one that you love, the one that you long for, the one that you are dreaming of?
• 37:28
  All the ones, how can you start to see them everywhere?
• 37:33
  I love you so dearly. I see the one that I love in you and I hope that you see them in me.
• 37:39
  I'm sending you all the love today and I cannot wait to see you on the next episode of Paradise Shift with I Understood.
• 37:47
  I hope some paradigms have been shifted for you in today's conversation.
• 37:51
  As always, if you can, please leave a five star rating on Apple and Spotify.
• 37:55
  Like, comment, subscribe. I love you so, so much.
• 37:58
  Okay? I love you. Join me on my substab links in the comment section.
• 38:03
  Go there. Okay? Love you so much. Love you. Bye.