SKILLFUL AUDACITY

Gertrude Stein defined love as "the skillful audacity required to share an inner life." It suggests that expressing the truth about who you are is not something that amateurs do very well. Practice and ingenuity are required.

It also implies that courage is an essential element of successful intimacy. You've got to be adventurous if you want to weave your life together with another's.





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RELATIONSHIPS NEED IMAGINATION

For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.

—James Hillman





WHY IS IT SO HARD TO FIND A SOULMATE?

"Why is it so hard to find a soulmate?" asks psychologist Carolyn Godschild Miller in her book Soulmates: Following Inner Guidance to the Relationship of Your Dreams.

Her answer: "Because most of us are actually searching for egomates instead. We place the most limited and unloving aspect of our minds in charge of our search for love, and then wonder why we aren't succeeding.

"To the degree that we identify with this false sense of self, and operate on the basis of its limited point of view, we aren't looking for someone to love so much as recruiting fellow actors to take on supporting roles in a favorite melodrama."





ACT LIKE YOU ARE IN LOVE?

I invite you to act like a person who's in love.

Even if you're not currently in the throes of passion for a special someone, pretend you are.

Everywhere you go, exude that charismatic blend of shell-shocked contentment and blissful turmoil that comes over you when you're infatuated.

Let everyone you meet soak up the delicious wisdom you exude.

Dispense free blessings and extra slack like a rich saint high on natural endorphins.





THE GUARDIAN ANGEL OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP

Imagine that the merger of you and your best ally has created a third thing that hovers near you, protecting and guiding the two of you.

Call this third thing an angel.

Or call it the soul of your connection or the inspirational force of your relationship.

Or call it the special work the two of you can accomplish together.

And let this magical presence be the third point of your love triangle.





INTIMACY COMES IN MANY FORMS

Whenever I write about romance and togetherness, I attract a storm of complaints from readers who are solitary. "How dare you imply that everyone has or should have a partner!?" is a typical protest. "I'm quite content being alone!" is another.

Let it be known that I do not believe your happiness depends on having a spouse or lover. What I do suspect, though, is that your soul needs some sacred relationship in order to thrive, whether it's with a good friend, a beloved animal, a beautiful patch of earth, the Divine Wow, or anything that's not you.

Whenever I invite you to seek deeper, wilder communion, feel free to interpret it as a call to explore any kind of intimacy that draws you closer to the secret heart of the world.





YOU HAVE A PIECE OF SOMEONE'S PUZZLE

"Everyone carries with them at least one piece to someone else's puzzle." So wrote Lawrence Kushner in his book, *Honey from the Rock*.

In other words, you have in your possession certain clues to your loved ones' destinies -- secrets they haven't discovered themselves.

Wouldn't you love to hand over those clues -- to make a gift of the puzzle pieces that are most needed by the people you care about?

Search your depths for insights you've never communicated. Tell truths you haven't found a way to express before now. More than you know, you have the power to mobilize your companions' dreams.





ELATIONSHIP LOVE SPELLS FOR BEAUTY & TRUTH LAB ALLIES

Are you in quest of a Soul Friend or a Freaky Consort? A Wild Confidante? A Master of Curiosity who listens better than anyone ever or a Lucid Dreamer with whom you can practice the Art of Liberation?

The Beauty and Truth Lab's rapturists have formulated a batch of personal ads for you to borrow. They have been designed to attract allies who are committed to the art of compassionate lust and blasphemous reverence.

If you're a Crafty Optimist or Mystical Activist or Ceremonial Teaser who aspires to put the elation back in relationship, you're invited to plagiarize any part of them for your own use.

Here's the link.





CAN'T OWN LOVE

You understand that you can never own love, right? No matter how much someone adores you today, no matter how much you adore someone, you can't force that unique state of grace to keep its shape forever.

It will inevitably evolve or mutate, perhaps into a different version of tender caring, but maybe not.

From there it will continue to change, into either yet another version of interesting affection, or who knows what else?

Are you making any progress in getting the hang of this tricky wisdom?





THE ORGASMIC ROOTS OF PRONOIA

"The Orgasmic Roots of Pronoia" is one of the few NC-17-rated pieces in my book. For those of you over 18, here's the link: here's the link.

PROCEED WITH CAUTION! This material has graphic references to love, lust, tenderness, bliss, and rapture.