Monday, April 27, 2015

Sexual Attraction: The Big Bang. ~ Dawn Cartwright

Sexual Attraction: The Big Bang.

Via  on Aug 28, 2012

It isn’t a bang, it’s a hum.

I went to a dinner party this summer, given by a gourmand friend with a knack for putting together shindigs that take off like a house on fire. The place was full of crazy-fun people, epic food, great music and an overall feeling of friendly inclusion.
It was a great night.
Then he walked through the door.
As is customary in this particular enclave, he greeted me with a much–longer–than–a–collision, slightly–shorter–than–a–slow–dance, bear hug.

And I felt it.

The hum.
black and white lovemakingLet’s get this straight; the hum isn’t your garden-variety sexual attraction where your loins seize up in a mating cramp upon encountering a favorable genetic match. No, the hum isn’t about propagating the species, at least not that way. The hum is also not about looks, which, let’s be honest, is refreshing to say the least. The hum is something you feel before it even comes around the corner.
It’s the feeling that, if you had antennae, the hum would be all and everything those antennae would ever be about. You feel the hum in your whole body, not just below the belt. It’s a feeling that feels more like you’re picking up signals from other galaxies (don’t ask me how I know what that feels like) than almost anything else.
When you feel the hum, you wonder why you ever do anything or spend time with anyone where it isn’t present. You feel the hum and you remember your reason for living. You feel the hum and you’re singing from the mountaintops even in the Bonneville Salt Flats.
According to physicist John Cramer of the University of Washington in Seattle, our whole universe began with a hum. Based on his analysis of radiation left over from the Big Bang, Cramer discovered that the Big Bang didn’t sound like a bang at all—it sounded like a large jet plane flying one hundred feet over your house in the middle of the night.

The Big Bang was actually a deep hum.

And it’s still humming.
Right on down to the quarks and leptons in our very own bodies.
The hum is what connects us all. Gives us that feeling of belonging together. It’s the theme shared by fractals, financial markets and starling murmurations; everything complete unto itself, yet indivisible from the whole, repeating ad infinitum.

It’s that feeling of coming home.

I’ve lost count of how many nights and weekends, how many air miles I’ve spent, filling time and distracting my body, in search of that one feeling that echoes from the genesis of time.
How could I have ever believed that keeping busy and being productive or the excitement of sex and romance could ever compare to the spaciousness, the non-static settledness, the relief, of feeling the feeling I was feeling right now, wrapped up in this man I’d just met?
Suddenly, an already remarkable evening went into full–on sympathetic resonance.
You know that feeling, right?
When the two of you bring out the best in each other, easily, as if by magic?  (Only it isn’t magic, it’s advanced physics linked to the deep hum of the big bang that is still resounding throughout the universe we call home.)
Of course you do.
Well, it was like that.
The hum is like that.

So, I asked myself. What’s the difference between Garden-Variety Sexual Attraction and The Big Bang, a.k.a., The Deep Hum? I came up with a list, which is in no way meant to be comprehensive. Here goes.

Garden-Variety Sexual Attraction vs. the Big Bang:

1. With garden-variety sexual attraction, once the passion’s gone, so is the relationship. With the big bang, sexual passion comes and goes but the hum hums on.
2. Garden-variety sexual attraction leaves you disoriented; you forget where you left your keys, your car, your underwear. Big bang sexual attraction puts you in the zone; you become a magnet for everything good in your life.
3. When you have garden-variety sexual attraction sex, it’s like having dinner at a Chinese restaurant; thirty minutes later you want sex again. When what you feel is the big bang, sex, or no sex, you walk around feeling perpetually satisfied.
4. Garden-variety sexual attraction is the urge to merge. With big bang sexual attraction, merging isn’t an issue, you pick up right where you left off fifteen billion years ago.
5. Garden-variety sexual attraction only happens with potential lovers. The big bang can happen with anyone and anything; friends, lovers, your dog, the guy serving your coffee, music, dusk up in Ojai. And it can happen even when you’re all alone.
6. When you feel garden-variety sexual attraction all you want to do is relieve yourself of the feeling. When you feel the big bang, you stop looking for a climax, in fact the climax becomes decidedly anticlimactic. You make love all night. And all day. And all night. And…you get the picture.
7. With garden-variety sexual attraction there’s a feeling something must happen or you will explode. With the big bang, there’s a recognition that you have now arrived at the place where it is all already happening. You have joined the cosmic love train.
And, just in case you’re in any way worried that big bang sexual attraction is well, unsexy, here’s another description of The Big Bang, this time from Mark Whittle, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Virginia: “[The Big Bang was]. . . a descending scream, building  into a deep rasping roar, and ending in a deafening hiss. As if this were not impressive enough, the entire acoustic show is itself the prelude to a wonderful transformation: the highest pitch sounds ultimately spawn the first generation of stars, while the deep bass notes slowly dissolve to become the tapestry of galaxies which now fills all of space.”
Sound familiar?

Saturday, April 11, 2015

If Your Relationship Is Failing, Here's Why ~ Dr, Margaret Paul

If there was one thing you could do to heal your relationships, would you do it?

I’m the kind of person who loves to understand the deeper reasons behind behavior, and I’ve spent most of my life learning about what creates loving or unloving relationships. In the 43 years I’ve been counseling couples, I’ve discovered that there really is one major cause of relationship problems—one issue that if you address and heal, changes everything.

The one cause: self-abandonment.

When you abandon yourself emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially, relationally and/or organizationally, you automatically make your partner responsible for you. Once you make another person responsible for your feelings of self-worth and well being, then you attempt to manipulate that person into loving you, approving of you and giving you what you want. The controlling behavior that results from self-abandonment creates huge relationship problems.
Let’s look at the various forms of self-abandonment and how they result in relationship conflict and power struggles, or in distance and disconnection.

Emotional self-abandonment.

When we were growing up, many of us experienced much loneliness, heartache, heartbreak and helplessness. These are very big feelings, and unless we had loving parents or caregivers who helped us through these feelings—rather than being the cause of them—we had to find strategies to avoid them.
We learned four major ways of avoiding these core painful feelings of life, and these four ways now create our feelings of anxiety, depression, guilt, shame and anger, as well as relationship problems.
1. We judge ourselves rather than accept ourselves.
Did you learn to judge yourself as a way to try to get yourself to do things “right” so that others would like you? Self-judgment creates much anxiety, depression, guilt, shame and emptiness, and can lead to many addictions in order to avoid these feelings. Self-judgment also leads to needing others’ approval to feel worthy, and your resulting controlling behaviors to gain others’ approval can lead to many relationship problems.
2. We ignore our feelings by staying up in our head rather than being present in our body.
When you have not learned how to manage your feelings, you want to avoid them. Do you find yourself focused in your head rather than in your body, more or less unaware of your feelings?
We emotionally connect with each other from our hearts and souls, not from our heads. When you stay in your head as a way to avoid responsibility for your feelings, you cannot emotionally connect with your partner.
3. We turn to various addictions to numb the anxiety, depression, emptiness, guilt, shame and anger that develops when we judge ourselves and ignore our feelings.
Addictive behavior, such too much alcohol, drugs, food, TV, gambling, overspending, work, sex and so on, can create much conflict and distance in relationships.
4. We make our partner or others responsible for our feelings.
When we emotionally abandon ourselves, we then believe it is someone else’s job to make us feel loved and worthy. Do you try to control your partner with anger, blame, criticism, compliance, resistance or withdrawal to get him or her to give you what you are not giving to yourself? How does your partner respond to this controlling behavior?
Many relationships fall into a dysfunctional system, such as one person getting angry and the other withdrawing or resisting, or both getting angry or both withdrawing. In some systems, one is angry and the other is compliant, which seems to work until the compliant partner becomes resentful. In all of these systems, each person is emotionally abandoning themselves, which is the root cause of the dysfunctional relationship.

Financial self-abandonment.

If you refuse to take care of yourself financially, instead expecting your partner to take financial responsibility for you, this can create problems. This is not a problem if your partner agrees to take financial responsibility for you and you fully accept how he or she handles this responsibility. But if you choose to be financially irresponsible, such as overspending, or you try to control how your partner earns or manages the money, much conflict can occur over your financial self-abandonment.

Organizational self-abandonment.

If you refuse to take responsibility for your own time and space, and instead are consistently late and/or a clutterer, and your partner is an on-time and/or a neat person, this can create huge power struggles and resentment in your relationship.

Physical self-abandonment.

If you refuse to take care of yourself physically by eating badly and not exercising, possibly causing yourself severe health problems, your partner may feel resentful by having to take care of you. Your physical self-abandonment not only has negative consequences for you regarding your health and well being, it also has unwanted consequences for your partner, which can lead to conflict and power struggles.

Relational self-abandonment.

If you refuse to speak up for yourself in your relationship, and instead become complacent or resistant, you are eroding the love in the relationship. When you abandon yourself to another through compliance or resistance, you create a lack of trust that leads to conflict, disconnection and resentment.

Spiritual self-abandonment.

When you make your partner your source of love rather than learning to turn to a spiritual source for your dependable source of love, you place a very unfair burden on your partner. When your intent in the relationship is to get love rather than to share love, then you will unfairly lean on your partner for attention, approval, time or sex. When you do not take responsibility for learning how to connect with a spiritual source of your own for sustenance, your neediness can create relationship problems.
Spiritual self-abandonment is related to emotional self-abandonment, in that you cannot commit to 100% responsibility for yourself without a strong connection with a spiritual source of love and wisdom.

Learn to love yourself rather than abandon yourself.

Learning to love yourself is the key to a loving relationship. When you learn to connect with a personal source of spiritual guidance and access the love and wisdom that is always within you, you learn to fill yourself up with love. While self-abandonment creates an inner emptiness that relies on others to fill you, self-love creates an inner fullness. Self-love fills your heart and soul with overflowing love so that, rather than always trying to get love, you can now share your love with your partner.
~

Friday, April 10, 2015

Tall Poppy Syndrome

Tall Poppy Syndrome
by Michael Webb

In Australia there is a phrase "the tall poppy syndrome." It
describes the condition when a person is uncomfortable if one
flower raises its head too far above the rest. They think it looks
unnatural, so what do they do - they cut it down to the level of
the other flowers.

Do you have the same habit with your loved ones? Some people have
the hardest time letting others take some praise. If our coworker
gets a promotion we tease them about what devious things they did
to get it. If our brothers and sisters brought home better report
cards we discounted the difficulty of the classes they took. We
find it hard to accept that some people are going to naturally rise
above others. That person might even be a spouse who makes more
money, has a better physique, more friends, or is better educated.

We also have this nasty habit of cutting down all the poppies
around us if we are feeling particularly low about ourselves. I
remember when my sister made a rude comment about my thinning hair
so I launched back an equally unkind comment about her thickening
waist. We could have acted more maturely and watered each other
with kind comments and encouraging remarks, but ignorantly we were
tearing up the flower garden so no one could enjoy its beauty.

Do you like to insult (talk trash, 'dis, cut, slice) others? Does
it make you feel like your poppy has grown higher? My personal
peeve is when spouses spout insults about each other in front of
their friends. They think their clever but insulting remarks will
make their flower look prettier but in reality your mate's flower
is wrapped around yours. If you cut theirs down, yours will be
butchered too. Whoever came up with the "sticks and stones" phrase
wasn't very bright. Insults are verbal sticks and stones and they
can tear up a field of beautiful poppies in no time.