Flower and Sun Part 2 of 3

Did you miss the first part of this blog? Find it here: Flower and Sun Part 1.

This week’s blog is about the next step in the flower and sun exercise: To feel what it would be like to stay in this marriage of flower and sun in our own chest, even while around delightful other people. Gently, gently, stay in this marriage. If your eyes are shut, that’s fine. But gently start to peek at your partner…  

We can go in and out. It’s a moment for asking, “Ah, can I stay with my marriage while also seeing someone who has a flower and sun in their chest, and gently experiment with this?”  

It’s fine to be very awkward, to go in and out, to feel for, “How much can I twinkle at another person before I’ve stepped out of my marriage? Hey you look good to me!” and then pausing, okay, okay, okay. I’m coming back into my own marriage here.  

Again, let yourself notice another person, while possibly feeling, “Wow, hi, great to see you.” Now my flower is looking at your sun, and I’m shining all my sunshine at your flower thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great to get into goodness knows what?”  

Let’s come back again to the flower and sun marriage in our own chest, so that we can be with another person without inadvertently seducing them out of their marriage. See if you can feel, from the deepest love and compassion for your partner, that me-first feeling of, “My dear, I do not want to break up your marriage—nor my own. No matter how fond of you I may become, no matter how dear to you I may be, I do not want to break up your marriage—nor do I want you to break up mine.”  

Let them know, by sounding the note on a me first basis, “We could love each other a lot. We could be very close and very dear. But I do not want to break up your marriage any more than I want to wreck my own.”  

Here in my chest are flower and sun, lover and beloved, veins and arteries. We belong together, just as in your chest: The veins and arteries, the bridegroom and the bride, at the same time as we say, “Hey, you’re looking lovely today. It’s really good to see you,” from within our marriage, while supporting the other person’s marriage.  

It’s good when we have this continence of love within ourselves first, as our foundation. We don’t get ragged to bits in our relationships, because our basic needs are met. Our basic healthy need to be loved completely is met by our own arteries, and our basic healthy need to give our love completely is met by our veins’ willingness to receive it. That way, if it turns out that my love for you is unrequited—at least that day when you are grouchy as hell and putting the groceries away—I’m not happy about it. But I’m also not devastated. Okay, I’m in my marriage. That’s good. That’s more than its basic life support, which allows us to be far more forgiving of other people’s comings and goings, and their readiness or unreadiness to meet us in love and exchange. 

This foundation on the inside—this completely natural, normal arrangement of veins and arteries—this magnificent prevention or rehabilitation of many forms of major heart disease—is also a tremendous preventative for complete craziness in relationships, where wishful thinking brings us into situations where we need something so much…  

We need a place to give our love completely. We need a place to be loved completely. Our need for this, if not foundationed in the most basic way in our own chest, can lead it to missing some of the clues, or rushing what might have ripened if we had been less precipitous.  

When we have our own marriage in our own chest, then in our outside relationships with other people, we can take our time. We can allow natural pacing. We can allow ourselves to notice how it’s going, with far less urgent desperation. Oh how much I would love a partnership, to have good and clear and sane and healthy exchange of love. But I’ve got a really good marriage here at home in my chest. So I don’t have to fool myself. I don’t have to pressure you, or me. I don’t have to make desperate moves. Wishful thinking is not even tempting anymore, because I have what I need here at home 

There are ever so many situations in our outer life that can be re-foundationed in health. When our flower and sun in our own chest are in their natural holy marriage, we can come to the outer relationship teaching the flower and sun exercise to everyone that we love. I don’t mean necessarily speaking it out loud. I don’t mean necessarily playing them this video—although it’s available. You can do that. Go ahead.  

You may, however, just be there with a cashier as you fumble for exact change. There you are with this cashier, feeling for, “Am I about to seduce this cashier out of their marriage in their chest? Just in the name of friendliness? Or is there a deeper, more respectful, kinder, healthier, love to be exchanged?” If I ask her how her day is going, while in the marriage in my chest, and sounding the note to remind her and teach her about the marriage in her chest, then we love in a far more simple and satisfying way.  

I encourage you to take this exercise, practice it on your own, and then begin practicing it with partners—partners who know that you are practicing it with them, and partners who don’t know that you’re practicing it with them—in order to feel how it supports and deepens the marriage in your own chest. Feel also how it changes the way that other people are, when they are with you—and as they walk away into their next interactions.  

Meanwhile we practice, when somebody is trying to seduce us—because maybe that’s what they call friendliness; maybe that’s what they call connection—to be staying in our own marriage, and gently escorting them back into theirs: “Hey, my friend. There’s something really nice going on back at home. Why don’t you get back into that embrace with your dear one, instead of shine so much sunshine on me?”  

We can share… Yeah. Flower and sun

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To learn more, check out my Fire Seasonal Resources, the Whole Heart Connection archive, or join me at one of my upcoming live Whole Heart Connection workshops.

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