Comments on: The Calisthenics of Love

By: The Calisthenics of Love | The ManKind Project Journal

The Calisthenics of Love | The ManKind Project Journal — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:12:16 +0000

[…] You can also read a transcription of the video at Dmitri’s website: Live the Life You Long For […]

By: Dmitri

Dmitri — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:53:05 +0000

Thanks Alex!

I composed a longer answer here, but wordpress ate it. RRrr!

I’m experimenting with the transcripts. I’ll certainly take a go at sending it in the email if I keep it up!
Dmitri

By: Dmitri

Dmitri — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:48:37 +0000

The thing about the experience of Love is, it’s always a discovery.

It could very well be different every time you experience it — every time — for the rest of your life.

That’s part of the magic that we can get ever better at experiencing.

Best,
Dmitri

By: Dmitri

Dmitri — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:45:06 +0000

Hi Chris,

I’d suggest doing the “calisthenics” exactly as I described in the video:

Imagine you’re loving someone you love or something you love. Feel how for that to happen you have to be filled up with love. And feel how for you to be filled up with love, that has to come into you from somewhere else. And you can get those links in the chain. Now feel how it feels to move from the loving out to the holding love inside for you. Feel how it moves from that to the sense of receiving it as it pours into you. And feel it coming back to you. And feel it going out.

Let me know your experience of it.

Best,
Dmitri

By: Dmitri

Dmitri — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:42:47 +0000

Hi Eric,

I think I’m hearing you.. And I do NOT mean to say that one needs to “only” re-open to the flow of love.

“Only.” That makes it sound pretty simple. Pretty much not a big deal. Just flip a switch, right? Open to the flow! Will it into existence!

IT’S NOT EASY.

HOWEVER, in my experience with myself and those I work with, thinking in terms of a flow you CAN discover how to open up to is a GOOD IDEA.

I can’t speak for your experience, but often I see clients who’ve had this experience.

– They’ve felt cut off from a flow of love. They’ve been disappointed and angry about that.
– They’ve heard about this “flow of love,” and have looked for it.
– They didn’t find it when they looked. And maybe they looked a LOT.
– And not having found it, it reinforces their disappointment and anger, cementing the conviction that nothing is there for them.

What I’ve seen happen then is this: When they go to “look for it” again, they actually aren’t looking anymore. They actually are looking at their anger and disappointment…

Which reinforces the whole thing.

For the folks I’ve worked with, they’ve needed to get honest about how angry they are about not getting the Love they’ve needed, before they can honestly say, “I haven’t seen the love I want yet, but I am NOT done looking.”

Otherwise they aren’t actually looking for the flow of love. They are being in their entirely understandable anger, and looking for reasons why that anger is the “last word” in their lives.

I have no idea if this is your situation. Really. What I describe is simply what I’ve seen in my clients sometimes.

By: Dmitri

Dmitri — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:32:41 +0000

Well put brother!

By: Alex Stanhope

Alex Stanhope — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:06:10 +0000

Hi Dmitri, another great post thank you. I know you’re not explicitly saying that it is, but I think love’s not a zero sum game. I agree it’s important for me to receive love, in order to hold love for me and to give love, but I think the total amount of love grows when it flows through me.

Also, I love the transcript because I’m always reading your posts on my phone. Might you consider including the transcript in the email you send out to those of us on the mailing list? The mail client on my phone makes it much easier to read your content than my phone’s web browser.

By: Bob Garrett

Bob Garrett — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:01:34 +0000

I love the constant theme in your work of my being a vessel and a channel for “the blessing current/etc.” My understanding of being a mature person is that I have moved from my egocentric position to a place where my ego is in service to a “transpersonal other.” In my judgment, the closer I come in my own maturation to the feeling that my whole life and actions were really my being an agent for Spirit, the more I approach being a true Elder. Your work concentrates on that point where my human Self reaches towards the Divine and the Mystery reaches into this physical world to interface and connect with me. Thank you. Bob Garrett

By: Eric Belsey

Eric Belsey — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:12:23 +0000

And, as a quick addendum, if you’ve experienced “love as a verb” it can be hard to understand or even empathize with those who haven’t.You can’t know something is missing until it’s missing. Or it may be easier to empathize with those whose early home life was overtly abusive or economically neglectful. The idea that someone could “have everything” except this essential felt experience, is hard to accept, so being driven to work with it can seem like whining or “living in the past.”
E

By: Eric Belsey

Eric Belsey — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:29:11 +0000

Dmitri, I’ve been getting your emails for years, since I saw you at an MKP-connected workshop. (I am no longer associated with MKP, another story I’ll share in a PM if you are interested)
So let me condense down a long reaction to this post, and it has to start with a little wound worship. So my problem is that I was raised in a very stable family that slowly but surely climbed the ladder of economic success and security. My parents stayed together, and were very liberal Democrats, Unitarian Universalists, and while they are both alcoholics, it’s of the very high-functioning variety, they were never abusive, verbally or physically, they were the picture of support. I have a Master’s Degree in Religious Studies from Naropa and I am an urban farmer and musician, 41, and I live at home with them, kind of by choice, complicated deal there.
Anyway, here’s my quibble, this line: “And feel how for you to be filled up with love, that has to come into you from somewhere else.” So it took me years, with all of this apparent surface stability I was raised with to make a very important realization: that “love” is a verb. That loving is something you do. We may be able to give love the noun, but even that is the act of giving really. And that I had not truly experienced love as a verb, being the youngest child of 3 of a mother who was neurotic wreck, and a distant father. Years of inner work on the cushion and in all kinds of mainstream and alternative therapeutic settings helped me realize this. And the core of the realization, is that, burned into my cells is this deeply painful but real perception: help is not on the way. If I have the slimmest chance of receiving love from “someone out there” it will only come because I’ve successfully figured out how to give it to myself first. I literally sit on the cushion and visualizing holding, rocking and loving that little baby. I have one divorce under my belt, and I have a girlfriend who I don’t see very often. I actuallly need a level of intimacy and compassion that most women are unwilling/incapable to offer, and that of course scares the shit out of me too. The fact that my romantic situation reflects my inner “certainty” that help is not on the way doesn’t surprise me at all. But I’m working at it.
So anyway, I read this whole thing with intense skepticism, because it seemed to be written from the POV of someone who is used to receiving love “from somewhere else” , and needs only to re-open to that. My situation seems different.
Best,
Eric Belsey