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A Sensual Journey into Personal Alchemy... By Diana Rose
An Ancient Ceremony of Love for Those Who Want to Love in Honoring Partnership...
Selected Testimonials “…this amazing and wondrous book, The Gift, by Diana Rose... The Gift could well be as revolutionary as it seems. I have no way of knowing, but it’s got a better chance than American Foreign Policy..." "...The Gift offers its readers and the world a healing that is almost impossible to describe in words... "...a highly readable and practical guide into an ecstatic realm of sexual intimacy between loving couples. " "...Before I read even the first page of The Gift, Mary Magdalene came through to me, pulsating ever increasing waves of love until I was shaking all over..." A. Manering, Intuitive Counselor "...I would love for The Gift to be in the hands of all young parents -- or any couple who want to become parents. .. The Gift speaks of the state of mind, the state of heart for conception." "Diana Rose has brought forth a book that has the potential to spark a revolution. To balance the energy of sexuality in our culture will only make a global change we desperately need." -- Sara Pelfrey, Owner, SoulFood Books "Sparking a Revolution. embodying the sacredness of sexuality, empowering partners to be in a loving and balanced relationship. This is The Gift by Diana Rose. Discover the alchemy of The Gift at Soul Food Books & Cafe in Redmond WA, or visit dianarosethegift.com. My name is Sara Pelfrey, owner of Soul Food Books & Cafe, and I invite you to join the revolution..." Send Commentaries or request to be added to the Diana Rose E-mail Newsletter: ____________________ Privacy Policy: "Love him as you have never loved him before..." The Gift II
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July 10, 2008 "Loving Past Hurtful Words: A Conversation with Myself..." On July 10th, a message was received which contained a small "play," the consideration of a conversation upon a request for forgiveness, the consideration of hurtful words, how to love past them...the path of listening, the path of forgiving. In love, it happens that the conversation that we have with ourself is perhaps the most important conversation we have; and if we want to learn to love again, as we have never loved before, then we must first rethink the conversations with ourselves... --- A Conversation with Myself... "If I truly love him, if he has honored me in the past but says some hurtful words, should I listen to him when he tells me that he wants to talk to me, to ask my forgiveness for the hurtful words? If he asks my patience and seeks to talk with me? He asks, he says, because of the past we have shared together -- things we have meant and been to each other, things we have loved in each other. And that he wants to bank on that, hoping it will be enough for him to have this time with me now to talk. "And I say to him, it is not because of our past together, or any bank or any indebtedness that I will listen to you -- but because of the 'knowing...' It is because I know you. "And I said to myself, I know that I must eventually come to see through his eyes in order to see through my own eyes; through all eyes. That is a hard thing to know but I think it is true. As I must eventually come to see through eyes that look upon me and see one who has hurt them or made them feel unworthy. If we are all One, then these are our eyes, too. So when the tables are turned, I believe I must listen to you when you want to ask my forgiveness. Because I would want to be in a universe where others would listen to me if I asked for their forgiveness. "But especially if I know you, how can I say, well, I will not listen to you when you want to speak with me. Is that not the beginning of deeper knowing? Perhaps not just knowing of you or others, but more, knowing of myself? "No, if I listen, it will be because of knowing... In love are the grains of knowing, and like kefir grains in milk, even in sourness they can grow all that is sour around them into something new and wonderful. "No, I'd like to know, to understand that better state of empathy even when it feels impossible for me. I must try to know the place where you were in your heart when you said these things, things said from deficit, I think, not fullness of heart. Not richness of heart. "Hurtful things are always said by the one who feels hurt. Who feels empty. But without understanding it appears the other way around. "How can we not try to understand these places that cause us the most trouble? I cannot live in a state of not understanding this place where you were -- because then I do not understand the larger story of my own hurt; right now I might interpret it only in my own sense of personal unworthiness -- but that is not its real story. If I truly want to love myself very very much, I must eventually come to the place in the road where I know you -- not where I love you only, but where I make the space to know you. So that I might know you where you were then, when you said those things; so that I do not take them in, and take their meaning for me only but know, too, how you took them in, how they were meant for you. Where were you, to risk hurting yourself in hurting me? I must know that place if I am to know you; if I am to know myself. "And I must come to the place in the road where I come to know who you are now that you ask to speak to me, to apologize and ask for forgiveness; and allow that you might have come to a place in the simple act of speaking of forgiveness, that is not the place you were before. Perhaps we are not in the same sense of deficit, when we begin to want to talk about forgiveness, to ask another for forgiveness, to listen to thoughts about forgiveness. Perhaps this is not the same place we were when you said hurtful things and I felt hurt. "Saying hurtful words to another must come from a sense of deficit of soul, from a sense that the heart is not safe. They cannot come from a full heart. And likewise, feeling hurt must come from a sense of deficit of soul, from a sense that the heart is not safe. It cannot come from a full heart. So are we not in the same place, you and I?... "Now what I most do not want to feel, I am discovering in my consideration of this conversation -- I most do not want to feel deficit. Hurt is deep. But I know I can be hurt and survive. But deficit -- that threatens me more; it is that which makes me feel vulnerable to hurtful words. Hurt is a short-lived moment, but deficit is a long-lived, defining moment. So I must learn now how in this moment to understand that perhaps we were both, together, in that place on the road. And in your wanting to talk to me about forgiveness, I will listen because I was there, too. Because ultimately I must know me and you better now, if I am to become better at loving -- even if we are not always together, I must know us better; and this is our moment of knowing. Perhaps as human beings we must come to love the moments of knowing, too, in order to experience deeper moments of loving what is known... "Ultimately I must know you as I know myself. We might more easily love our neighbor as we love ourself, than to know our neighbor as we know ourself. Might I know you as much as I love you? Let us see if I can do this... Let me find out more about who I am. "And so I will sit, as I have sat with you before, and I will listen to you speak and tell your story, and talk of forgiveness, if it is an act of honor and that honor is in your words. But even if it is still dishonoring in your attempts, and you ask for forgiveness only to try to control me or seek dominance over me in order to feel at ease again, still I will listen to your story and I will listen if you ask for forgiveness and consider what in me must grow; what in me I must understand' what I must be now to forgive as if I were the Supreme forgiver... How can I be that? The one who comes to self-understanding which allows forgiving more completely, not less completely. Sometimes I wonder, why can't this forgiving be the end of it? Sometimes I forgive others, but still finding the anger or pain occurring to me again; I forgive again. But I just want it to be over. So my question for myself is: How can this forgiving be over? For I think in it is the answer to the question: How can this pain be over? It must be coming from within me... "And then I thought, I must come even to forgive myself for coming to this place of hurt with you. Hurt is the last thing I wanted to share with you. But even when it is hurt we share, is not understanding and listening a better way past this moment than not listening and not seeking understanding in this painful moment? Is not pain always a lack of understanding? "Hurt springs from within, it does not come from the other side flung, even words that seem sharp. I do not take them into me unless I feel deficit, unless I have made a place for them. It is not a place of love and so the hurt comes in. But I do not have to take it in. Anymore than a mother takes in the hurtful words of a restless irritable child -- she nurtures him and tries to see through his eyes, give him a feeling of being loved even when he is an irritable and angry child; even the irritable, angry child must be loved completely. She just knows to do this, to balance with love; but she does not take in his hurtful words to herself, and she does not refuse to listen to him, and she does not refuse to forgive him. Because the mother is the Great Forgiver; when we are raised by this mother, it is so that we can learn its model. So if your words hurt me, it is not that which hurt me, but my taking them in as true which hurts me, my forming them into something else in me. Am I hurt? If I looked back upon this 300 years later, would I have better understanding of who was hurt? The one who said hurtful things and knew it -- or the one who heard the hurtful things and took them in, could not see the real communication or the beauty of the lesson. Who was hurt here? Who learned? Who do we become when we say hurtful things? And do hurtful things? I know that in all good conscience I do not want to be that being and do not like myself when I fall into that place...; why would I not extend that same desire to you? That perhaps you did not want to be that being and do not like yourself when you fall into that place, and want to talk to me about it, one with whom you have shared love? Who else can you talk to about it, who would truly want to know you when you speak? "Perhaps the one person who will listen to my application for forgiveness will help me the most to know who I am, and to somehow seek redemption that is fully within me, modeled simply in their being willing to listen. Can I not give to you that same benefit of desire? The desire to find redemption inside you, when applying to another for it? Perhaps when one asks you for forgiveness, it contains within it the steps for forgiving yourself. Perhaps when we do not want to forgive another it is because we do not want to forgive ourselves. "And then I try to think, too, how would I want you to respond if I asked you the same -- to listen to me, to listen to my thoughts and my asking you for forgiveness? I would want you to listen to me . At the least, just listen to me. And in this listening perhaps will find new parts in our story. If once you loved me, and you now you have said hurtful things to me and I felt them as hurt, then at the least, is there not something else for us to know here, something else for us to learn, to understand about each other? How can two people who have loved each other deeply or who want to love each other deeply not listen to the story more carefully, to understand what has happened? How can we be so sure that we know it all? And I thought, if I were in your place now, would I want you to be sure that you already knew what I would say and close the door on me? I would not. In the end, this is a journey, it seems; I on my way to find a way out of a hurt that does not want to forgive, you on your way to find a way out of a hurt that wants forgiveness. Perhaps we should start there. And remember the whole path, that began in deep love, and all of its steps and touches, and not this one part of the road where there is hurt. Else how will we come to know roads or get anywhere at all? If we do not know all of their parts? Yes, I will listen to your story as I would want you to listen to my story but knowing that in it is my story, too, and that you will tell me things I do not know about our path... "Is not hurt is a feeling that arises out of stories in the mind...? We tack the hurtful words we hear onto our stories of private deficit that we play out in our minds; they become the inner dialogue that we use to intensify our place of deficit. The one seem to prove the other and we are racked with despair. Sometimes this even helps us see the impossibility of such hollow; could we really be one of such deficit? We come eventually to see that we could not. "But sometimes it is a long, long time that we use the words in our minds, the stories only to intensify feelings of hurt as if they were a magnet and we are drawn to them. Before we learn that they are not true... It may be that we simply start with listening completely to each other, trying to know each other anew - to know another as we would be known -- then we would find new words and new stories; then perhaps we would learn not to feel hurt at all, because of the deeper knowing of ourselves in these inner conversations. Can we not extend to ourselves that same desire -- can we not seek to know ourselves as we know others? Can we not come to know each other with a fuller heart? "In the end, perhaps that is the lesson of love. We are learning not just to love ourselves and to love another -- but to love with a full heart and without deficit. A full heart without deficit is simply: As compassionate as we would wish someone else would be with us, if we had said or done something hurtful. Would we not want them to be completely compassionate? Would we not? Would we not? Would we not? How can I so quickly deny you that which I would so fervently wish for myself? Again and again and again? "Then compassion, whether I seek it or you seek it, must come from a full heart, not an empty one; I can no longer deny this. It is a two-way street; my wanting compassion from others, their wanting compassion from me. So if I refuse to listen if you want to talk to me, to ask for my forgiveness, I must acknowledge that I have an empty heart. Because with a full heart, I would have the capacity to listen to you and to try to learn from what has happened between us that led us here. For we came here together. I did not come here alone and you did not come here alone. We came here together and arrived here in this moment; and if we can talk together just a few minutes, fully listening and being together aware in this moment, perhaps it is the most important moment of a lifetime. Now is that moment. It came to me that now is always that moment. I do not want to miss it. "Perhaps a full heart is the state of complete listening -- and our other attempts at listening are not listening at all but defending ourselves... When we are measuring ourselves against our partner or another, weighing on scales of who hurt who in the past or who loved who most in the past -- a banking system, not a loving system. If we are in a loving system, you and I, then I must be with you and try to listen with a full heart. I must learn this. It must be that the only way I can learn to listen with a full heart is to practice listening with a full heart. I do not know how else to learn it. It seems to me to be an act of giving as much as forgiving. And I don't know how I can give when I feel hurt by you. But perhaps giving, the last thing I want to do right now, is the first thing I should think of doing. Perhaps it is in the 'giving' part of for-giving that we will learn its true meaning... "And even if I get it wrong, even if I find myself again feeling dishonored or in some way I dishonor you even though I do not intend it, at least I am trying the path of listening with a full heart even though I least want to now; and in that trying I am becoming closer to who I want to be than if I did not listen at all; than if I did not practice being who I really want to be. I do not think I will ever find my way home, into the compassion I want to feel, ultimately, if I do not listen to one who asks my forgiveness, listen even to one who does not ask for it. Because compassion is a personal thing, an act within the self much more than an act outside of the self. Perhaps when we think of "saving face," we should think of saving face within ourselves, being the best that we can be when it is only us who see that face... Might we then be free? "Might compassion be the ultimate freedom? "Not to listen and not to forgive might be a form of bondage worse even, than the bondage that another might try to place us in because of their own deficits, fears of being abandoned and without nourishment. But not to forgive binds us forever to the overseer, to the one who tries to place us in bondage -- the one from whom we take in the hurtful words because of our own deficits. Living in that bondage must also be an act within the self, if compassion is an act within the self. Thus, it is something I can control completely. I do not want to know that I can control it completely, I do not want to take on that responsibility for myself; but perhaps that is the only true beginning of forgiving myself, knowing that I can control these acts which are personal acts within me. Knowing that power is within me is part of the coming to know myself completely -- and I have avoided it. Perhaps, in the end, it is coming to know power within us that we fear most. It sounds so strange, but its size and dimension are so great and we do not think of ourselves as so great. But it is the power of compassion within us that is the greatest -- the power to love. And we do not seem to feel that we know how to handle great power within us. Most of all, to use that power simply to love ourselves. How can we come to handle this? How can we come to handle this together. To handle this together when we are in love?.. For it is a very very great power we hold in our potential together... "If it came to be that two people who have tried to love each other deeply, find in their hearts also deep compassion as well as deep love, then that is a higher form of love, going beyond love into being with and knowing. If I truly listen to you and try to learn as a being who honestly wants to learn to love -- as I would want to be heard if I were asking forgiveness -- would I learn that perhaps love is a different thing than I first thought? Perhaps love is not a thing of a moment of passion but a thing of a lifetime of compassion... "And so I will listen. I will listen to you speak your words and as the universe which loves things and births things is within me, I will remember not just that I love you, but that in the beginning of the universe I was you and so I would be if the universe ended. "And so I will listen to you as if it were me speaking, and I will try to understand your language -- for it is not one I know yet. I see that. Perhaps it is the language we should study most: the language of the Other. I am on a quest to know its alphabet. And I think that in your words asking forgiveness, in the heat of my hurt, may be some of its letters... I would not want to miss them... "And I would not want to miss you..." --- "And if ever before in some one of my lives of lives, I have not listened to you when you came to ask forgiveness, I want to say to you this day, Beloved, this moment of all my moments, I listen now. I listen to you with a full heart. I listen to you with Roses..." _________________________________________________ I Put a Rose There And it came to me, an understanding of the poem given in the book of poetry, "The Eternity of the First Kiss" -- "I Put a Rose There." And somehow I realized that I had just done that; I had just put a Rose there, in some ancient story known only to an ancient, wiser part of me... -- Diana Rose
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