I've returned to the
Cowboy Cottage
from ten days in
Madrid
visiting with
my daughter Alexandra.
My relationship with
Alexandra
comes from a place of deep joy and unbridled love. It's the space which
validates and completes and fulfills all relationships.
It especially validates and completes and fulfills all
family
relationships: both the family I was born into, as well the family born
from me. It inspires me. It
moves me.
During this visit
Alexandra
represented me to her
friends
as the
source
of
Conversations For
Transformation,
and as
your Friend.
I didn't request she do this. I've never requested she do this.
Hearing it coming spontaneously from her was huge. I've already booked
flights for our next visit together in
Morocco in March 2011.
My eldest son Christian
has started his first year studying engineering at UC
Santa Barbara.
On the day
Christian
was born I promised him I would pay his college tuition. At the time I
didn't have a clue how I would fulfill this promise. It
was, literally, an impossible promise. Now he's at
college, relishing in his freshman year (in pretty much the same way as
I relished in my freshman year), and the freedom it is from his past,
and the
clearing
it is for his future. And somewhere along the way just in the
process of Life itself my promise to him got fulfilled.
My youngest son Joshua
is in his junior year at high school. Watching
Joshua,
the youngest of my three children, growing up and becoming increasingly
independent of me is bittersweet. But at the same time it's also
rich because through my relationship with
Joshua
I've gotten to fully understand and appreciate
my father's
relationship with me as I was growing up and distancing myself from
him when I was
Joshua's
age - just as
Joshua's
doing with me now.
The thing about my relationship with
Alexandra
and my relationship with
Christian
and my relationship with
Joshua
is it's the same thing as with all my relationships: they
all come fromtransformation.
There's no other way I live or want to live. What's truly great is the
people who know me (that is to say, the people who
really know me) tell me this
works
for them. All my relationships honor it. If I'm attractive to people,
it's because what they get from me (and sometimes may not even know
they get from me) is I'm consistent with them, I'm consistent with
who I really am,
and I'm
congruent
withtransformation.
People love that about people. Of course we do. It's entirely
appropriate we would.
You asked me a most wonderful question not so long ago which I'd like
to revisit now since in the interim, I've had some insight into it. You
asked me
"Are you getting laid?".
It wasn't just the question which was wonderful even as it caused me to
blink in surprise ("I can't believe you asked me that!" I
thought). It was the way you asked it. It was completely devoid
of intonation. It wasn't boy talk. It was as
bland
as "Did you have oats for
breakfast
this morning?". Noticing my blinking in surprise made me realize I
seldom tell the truth about sex. It made me realize I'm
covert about sex. The truth is I'm crazy
about sex - or at least
the
machinery
is crazy about sex. When I give over to
the
machinery
while at the same time not relinquishing my responsibility for it, sex
works.
And the thing I'm clearest about is anything I do and whomever I do it
with comes fromtransformation
and that's why it
works
- there's no need for me to fret my attention on it
working
nor on it notworking.
All I need to do is stop being covert about it.
With regards to generating these
Conversations For
Transformation,
I'm getting very good at this - to put it mildly. I can powerfully
create the space of
transformation,
possibility, and enrollment out of recreating you, and then I can write
something which brings the experience forth for people. Actually my
writing is only secondary. What's primary and paramount to me is the
experience it inspires people with:
You.
In sharing
your work
this way with about eight hundred people a week given two essays a
week, I discover facets of
the multifacted Self
like priceless flecks in the seams of the rock deep down in a gold
mine. I would never have gotten this deep and this valued without the
discipline of generating these
Conversations For
Transformation
with you. I don't need to write them into a book, and I may. I don't
need to have them generate
money,
and I may.
Conversations For
Transformation
are perfect the way they are. I have no real incentive and even less
intention to change the format in which they're currently delivered
free
via the
internet.
"If they ain't broke, don't fix 'em!". And they ain't broke.
They
work.
They're you. That's my intention realized.
You're always with me. You always are. Always. It's effortless. I miss
being with you. This never goes away. In spite of it, knowing
you're in the world
doing what you're doing inspires me and drives me to share the
exuberance
which comes with knowing you. This never goes away either. I'm living
into a future given by participating with you for the rest of my life.
Sometimes it's enormously frustrating to me that I can't
get what that looks like in actuality. I think if I was
totally certain of what it would look like in actuality, I
could more surely make it happen. So I'm just living into it like an
abstract, like a possibility, and will continue to do so. I'll
check in with you from time to time and stay on purpose.
Thank You for Everything. Thank You for the Gift you are. Thank You for
being the way Life
shows up
for me. Thank You for putting language to it. Thank You for bringing
Love to it. I Love You with Everything I got. It's the most thrilling,
the most exciting, the most validating, the most authentic way I can
muster to be
used up by my time
on
this planet.
I intend to continually and ongoingly
presence
our relationship and carry it profoundly into the future.
I intend to continually and ongoingly
presence
our relationship and carry it profoundly into the future out here in
the world because "out here in the world" is the only place I
can think of where it can be of any good at all.
This is what I do. And this is what I do because this is what I
do. There's no other ulterior motive. It's enough just being in
this conversation with you. And for me, being in this conversation with
you this way is a
privilege.
Nothing less, nothing more.