Married: go on a non-date. Searching for someone: go on a non-date.

Week Three, Day Six: ENLIGHTENMENT

LIGHT = light

Lighten up

Lighten your load

Lighten their load

Go ahead and be imperfect

Sad truth, real truth. We are not perfect. You aren’t perfect. Your partner isn’t perfect.

If you are looking for someone, they won’t be perfect.

If you are looking for someone, you won’t be perfect.

Tips for finding someone:

DON’T GO ON A DATE.

Don’t make it at night.

Don’t include dinner and any alcohol.

Don’t include entertainment where you are looking at a movie screen or a stage instead of each other.

Don’t talk about your tastes, your school, your family, your childhood.

Don’t try to impress.

Don’t interview: this isn’t about finding someone to fit your mold.

DO GO ON A HANG OUT/ FUN TIME/ DISCOVERY FEAST

Ask the person to do something you like.

You like nature: ask them on a hike or a canoe ride.

You like books: ask them to hang out at a book store.

You like quiet conversation: ask them to coffee or to small meal for lunch at a quiet place that has cheap and high quality food.

You don’t like high quality food?

This book probably isn’t for you.

DO ASK ABOUT: WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO YOU?

DO SHARE: WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO YOU.

LISTEN AS MUCH AS YOU TALK.

MABYE WITH A TIMER.

MAYBE NOT.

Ask questions.

Give them lots of time for the answers.

Be happy.

Explore what happiness means to you.

Explore what happiness means to them.

Be present: what is going on right now for you.

Ask about their present: what is going on right now for them.

And what good is that going to do?

Well, let’s get real.

Sex is great and it’s only so many hours a day.

What are you going to do the rest of your time?

What makes you happy?

What do you enjoy about being with another person?

If it’s only going out to dinner and movies and whatnot, you’re going to have to stay busy to be happy, and your life is going to be a somewhat empty blur.

If that’s good enough, you wouldn’t be reading a book called Love, Lust and Enlightenment.

So, what's the game in the non-dating strategy:

Enlightenment Game # 14: Go on a Non-date

If you are married, have the non-date before or after the date, because married people tend to get stuck in stay at home and do nothing (which usually means wasting time on the Internet).

And after or before the date, spend an hour really getting to know each other.

Look for the light.

What is great about the person you are with?

What would you love to hear more about?

What vulnerable wish or desire would you like to share? (No complaints, or secret victim crap. But a desire: more love making. A vacation in Moscow. A Saturday in bed)

And if you aren’t married and don’t know each other yet:

Make sure it’s not in the evening and doesn’t include dinner nor alcohol nor any entertainment.

Talk.

Take turns talking.

Talk for five minutes each.

Ask questions in your turn if you want.

Talk about your deepest wishes for the most amazing life possible.

Do not complain, talk about, or “share” your prior romantic messes.

This is not the point.

This can come later, when there is a reckoning of “I’m not so perfect, let me tell you my prior fuck-ups.”

Not a good idea for the first non-date or two.

Just be pleasant.

Just be curious.

Just be honest.

Just be present.

That’s a lot.

Good.

And then, how can we get more to the “light” in enlightenment, and have our non-date be in the light, or the pre or post non-date for the married couple, how can we use this time together to be moving toward our greatest life purpose?

Ask.

Explore, not explain.

Be okay with the IDK.

Enlightenment Game # 15: Explore your and their biggest Life Purpose.

What is your biggest Life Purpose?

For many people, it is to understand their Life Purpose.

This is a very fine Goal.

This is a very fine purpose.

This can be the non-date that will change your life.

This can be the non-date that will eliminate the superficial person you are going to hate in three years.

This can be the time for married couples to fall back in love.

We always sense a deeper and amazing part of someone we commit to marrying.

And usually, we get lost in the busy-ness of our life together and forget the deeper purpose.

Our deeper purpose.

Our partner’s deeper purpose.

Our mutual deeper purpose.

This is gold. Hang out here and deepen and deepen and deepen.

Summary of Week Three, Day Six: ENLIGHTENMENT

If you are single, go on a  non-date.

If you are married, go on a non-date before or after the “date.”

Seek the light.

The light of purpose and glow that is central to you and to them.

The lightening up that comes from being heavy handed with ourselves and allowing ourselves to be children again: what is the heaven we want?

What is the big dream?

How much fun to explore this together.

What do YOU want? I mean, You, the real you, not the trained seal

Who are you?

How amazing do you want your life to be?

     
    Are you one of the people Love, Lust and Raw Enlightenment coaching is designed to help with life joy, delight, love and transformation?

Is this you????

You want more love in your life. Again: You want more and deeper love in your life.

This can take many forms.

You have a pretty good relationship and you want a spectacular one. This can take the form of having better communication, or better sex, or more fun, or resolution of “issues” that are never broached, or “just” plain old enlightenment.

Just plain old enlightenment means that instead of going through the motions, no matter how polite and well choreographed, you are awake and present to each other most of the time.

Including the hardest of times: when you are talking.

Or the even harder of hard times: when you are in disagreement and one or both want to slip slide slump into reactivity and conditioned responses that have been automatic for a couple of million years.

You have a dull relationship, and you are tired of the boredom and the stagnation and the lack of connection. 

This is common.

Gad this is common and all our electronic devices make it so much easier to ignore. You “just have” to check your email, or your phone, which is glued to your eyeballs, as your breathing almost stops and your posture hunkers over your little device.

And when you are finally ready and willing to talk to your partner, there they are, “too busy,” as they are hunkered over, hardly breathing, some oh so important text or Facebook hooey, and it’s so convenient to forget about you.

And even before devices, people read newspapers, watched sports, watched TV.

Still do.

Avoiding life and love and connection (and various “hard” areas to work through, and various vulnerabilities left unsaid) because we have our attention absorbed with anything but present based touch and talk and love and lust with our partner.

It seems a little better than loneliness, except this is often extremely lonely.

You don’t have a relationship: you’re single and tired of it.

You see the couples out there. You know a lot of them aren’t that happy, but at least they have someone to hold hands with. And sleep with.

You want this for yourself.

You are normal, of course you are. You have a deep wish for a wonderful partner, with whom you can have a joyful and awakened and loving and growing relationship, a relationship as a spiritual pathway to become all that you can be.

And you don’t have one.

How do you find someone?

What skills can you practice with friends and acquaintances to prepare you for having real and deep connection with a good person, if you meet them, great connection that can help you each decide easily of this is “the real deal?”

What is a waste of time in the dating world, and what might be ways to practice real connection, whether or not they are “the right one?”

(And: Is dating even necessary?

I don’t think so.)

 What is necessary is being awake and present, whether you are with someone or alone, or with nature or a pet or a book. You can be out to lunch, not present and sort of wasting time until sleep comes at night, or death comes at the end. But what could you be doing in the interim (your life) to have rich and amazing times as one moment becomes the next becomes the next, as the present flows and floods through us as our life keeps going and going and going.

Till it doesn’t.

You don’t have a relationship: you are divorced and not quite healed from it. Or far from healed from it.

Loving your enemies is crucial for a good life.

Forgiveness is essential to a  happy life.

Letting the nonsense go and learning from our mistakes is how we expand and become more and more amazing.

Divorce, like a serious illness, can be a wake up call. Literally: wake up to the present. And metaphorically: start changing things around so you don’t make the same mistakes the next time around.

This book will have tons of ways to let go of anger and hurt, tons of ways to be kind to yourself as you wait and search for another, tons of suggestions about how to find someone that is the real deal for you this time, lots of ways to become much more the person you wish you’d been the first time around.

If you want a fabulous relationship at the center of your life, then Love, Lust and Raw Enlightenment coaching might be for you. As the title page says text for a free 20 minute deepening into your big desires.

Want a great relationship: Tell the truth. All of it.

Another great photo by Michelle, at mischelle@zahavah.com

I am attracted to .....

I get jealous when you...

I forgot to tell you that .......

I have this feeling that.....

Something is bothering me, and I don't know what it is....

My stomach feels weird.....

I've been feeling that something is missing.....

I had a dream about......

This used to turn me on, but something is changing.

I need time to myself.

I want to talk about my life purpose. I need a listener.

I feel like we are forgetting something important.

Who am I really?

Who are you?


And so on...

If you want a fantastic relationship: tell the truth.
All of the truth.

Good.

PS:

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