I sat down to write the following posting last night, but something completely unexpected came forth instead.  And that was wonderful…but what I wrote, “Do I Feel Beautiful?” was not what was actually kicking around inside of me.  Ha!  At least not what I knew was kicking around inside of me.  I am going to try to write out what I still am aware of that is trying to get said and see if by the end it has been said, at least for today.

The sun shining upon you can feel good.  One can recall how that felt, during the night.  Carrying that feeling along with you, until the next day isn’t hard.  But when the next day is gray and then the next, the warm traces begin to fade.  The memory of sun warmed skin is replaced by the desire to feel it once again.  Or it could be something simpler, like the desire to just be outside in the open air and then to be knowingly placed inside for a very long time.  How do we survive things like that…environments like that?

Being human can feel like that.  Along our way towards understanding the fullness of being human is the experience of the limitation of being human.  It can feel like a long stark walk on bleak beaches.  And then there can be a kind of rising sun on the inside.  A light is seemingly lit from the inside.  A light that is “seemingly” lit but in fact was there all along.  It burns with a love that does not falter ever again.  And when you look into the world you then see this same fire in everyone.

Then the weather doesn’t really matter.  This experience leaves you feeling BEAUTIFUL and it is real.  What is “bleak” to you when the sunshine is on the inside?

I have had the chance to find out.  Feeling beautiful heightened my sensitivity to those times when it shifts out even a fraction.  The only times I don’t feel it have become powerful teachers in regards to how it took me so long to know about Beauty in the first place.

I would experience myself in nature, sitting against a tree, or meditating, or lost in bird’s flight, completely aligned with what is out there and in here…then notice it changing when around others.  My personality would emerge to make up for the ways in which my true nature and heart did not fit with the person I was talking with or spending time with.  I am primarily referring to people I have been in partnership with.  In the world I actually love being around people who are wired differently.  I love the diversity of human experience.  I don’t need the people in the coffee shop to resonate with my experience.  But I did find, in partnership, that it was the one place that resonating had to be there. I found myself becoming intolerant of having to not be myself, in order to keep the relationship in alignment.  What it made me see, was how easily Beauty takes a back seat and let’s NEED do the driving.  The need for companionship.  The very human need to just be close to someone.  The need to have a life in pairs and to not live alone.

I always figured that losing yourself in relationship was the wonderful part.  And I discovered that it is.  If it is the kind of relationship where the beauty that you are is met by someone who you feel beautiful with.  But if your Beauty is in the backseat, waiting to be looked at…accepting glances from the front…get out of the car.

In the last relationship I was “attempting” I had never felt more seen by another person.  And, conversely never experienced being so completely unseen, undervalued, under—everything.  It was, like most things in my life, intense learning.  I had to come to the place of realizing how profoundly it affected me, to not be seen as the beautiful man that I was.  Because after my awakening, everything seemed beautiful.  And if I was in love with someone who couldn’t see it…so what?  I could roll with that.  The sun was on the inside after all.  But you know what?  It FELT diminished.  Oh yes, it was there.  Always.  But choosing to be with someone when it literally was not valued or cherished, in the ways I cherished theirs….what it did was create an inner eclipse.  I lived in a state of eclipse, waiting and holding on while their moony ways cast shadows I could never escape.  I learned how I had, from childhood, found ways to live like that everyday.  From this woman I finally saw what I was willing to do to my beauty, in order to receive a modicum of being seen to another.

When did I know I had turned the corner?  When did I know that I was no longer going to be able to relate to the world or a partner in a state of eclipse?  I was talking to my therapist.  A totally cool therapist.  He combines birth chart reading, joint chart readings for partners and past life information.  I was in anguish and trying to express in one sentence what was trying to dawn inside of me.  I felt that the whole awful thing was going to explode in my chest if I didn’t find the words.  I finally was able to tell him how it felt to be with this person.

“I feel less beautiful when I am around her.”

It was startling to hear those words.  And that was finally, the end of that, and the beginning of a whole new way to relate to others.  I don’t need others to see me for me to feel good around them.  But there is something so incredibly vulnerable about partnership and close friendships for me…that yes, in that context, feeling beautiful is my yardstick for if I am going to stick around.  If I can go from doing yoga in the forest and then have this person walk up and I don’t have to shift in order to relate to them…yummy!  My heart has a home.

And yes, if I have to shift, that is also yummy.  There is still so much value in the polarity between people.  In a way it makes for more to share.  But the level of vulnerability isn’t there.  And everyone needs a safe place to be completely vulnerable.  And if you don’t feel your beauty, with the people where you have chosen to feel vulnerable…

All I know is that more and more, everyday, I make sure that I choose to relate with others, in ways that leaves my beauty intact.  And that this really has nothing to do with where they are coming from.  It has to do with what I choose to open to.  It has to do with honoring my way at all times with every person.  It means being uncompromising with Beauty.  It makes every single interaction a valid learning moment.  A chance to offer myself a centering moment when with another.

I am so glad to have finally seen how, in my relationships, I allowed myself to be seen as much less than beautiful, as valuable.  Because I did not yet see my own value, I was in alignment with them.  I also was amazed to see that I had the full sun shining in my heart…but yet, mysteriously could simultaneously have coexistent self hate.   My cycling with this in partnership ended, when I was finally willing to accept that I was of tremendous value and could experience self hate in the sunlight…and that my company was still worth a thousand sun rises.  That is how I saw my partner…but I never allowed myself to be seen that way in a lasting way.  My mind needed to catch up with what my heart knew.  Self-hate had to be integrated in a loving way.  I vibrated right out of the density and landed inside of myself in a new way.

When that happened, I got out of the backseat and have been ever since.  And feeling less than beautiful has been my litmus test.  If I am not, it means I am not being true to myself while in the presence of another.

Yep…this is what I wanted to write about last night.