Beyond The Horizon, Part I

or: Love, On The Wild Side

Excerpt from MORE LIFE - relearning what we already know
Section II, Chapter 7-11 Excursus: Love, On The Wild Side
Teresa Zimmermann, June 2022; Edited January 2023

Love Will Out.

My favourite book in the world¹ is not in print since over 20 years. I don’t know why David Deida would stop pouring the foundation, the groundwork of his brilliant contribution into the world, but he (or anyone managing his rights) will have their reasons. So I will quote and relate to this early work relentlessly to make sure that the gorgeous rawness of his findings is breaking others open as it broke me open. Because – and I cannot stress this enough – love will out.

Love and romance are two different things. David says. And as there is so much to discover beyond the horizon, I call this Part I – without any intention of deciding how many there shall be.

Love vs Romance

Love is openness to whatever arises (yeah, simple as that), while romance describes a pattern of entanglement based on attraction. A part of this attraction can be sexual polarity, but it foremost rests upon our imprint. Who we are intrigued by and attracted to is usually² based on our early childhood experiences. I for example had a father who was so much fun but barely around, always managing one of his many companies. And when he was there, he offered me profound insight into life. Jeanny’s dad was both highly intelligent and mentally ill, but keeping her safe from the world’s cruelty. Until today we are intrigued by men, who are travelling CEOs with powerful cars (fuck, yes), a good watch, three-day-stubble, chinos, Raybans and witty banter covering up all that depth (although I can do without suede shoes, really. Enough of the 80s already) or in Jeanny’s case, mentally challenged highbrows of two metres in height clad in uniform with a tendency to overprotect. Same Raybans. And witty banter.

Love in the sense of utter openness is usually confined to intimacy, which is a sacred space, where two (or more) individual perspectives connect right here right now. It is Hosting Love and, in that sense, it transcends time and space. The “Sacred” in this love-space is the “un-condition” – the full embrace of all sensations, the ones we would say we love and those we’d struggle to. And while loving intimacy seems to describe something pure and, well, sacred, it is just as unpure and worldly, as it beholds all states of consciousness. As long as it includes the frequency of unconditional love, it releases itself as openness. If intimacy is still diminished by conditions, its character is of a smaller space, allowing for vertical love, selective intimacy, where we connect with certain emotions whereas we dismiss others.

So close, no matter how far

It couldn't be much more from the heart

Forever trusting who we are

And nothing else matters

Nothing Else Matters by Metallica; Songwriter: James Alan Hetfield / Lars Ulrich © Creeping Death Music

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Love Hattrick

Personally, the reason, why I’m able to embody unconditional love is for three factors:

Firstly, I have had sufficient peak experiences, which have created a somatic marker within my body intelligence. I have loved so deeply, and been loved so deeply, and if only for mere moments, that I can recognise it as a distinct sensual experience. And because of my embodiment practice I can actually reference it. I can “go there willingly” - with more or less effort

Additionally, fully activating this first of all fully non-dual emotions is to basically love every emotion below, or rather within the realm of human experience. If there is any single humanly possible state of consciousness, which we cannot fathom and embody, we love, indeed, but precisely not unconditionally. So some years ago I went about doing just that. I went within to seek every single emotion I had projected outwards and started to own it and love it. Then I went about the ones I find hard to reconcile. I faced my murdering streak and my need to destroy - that feminine creative nature to rage, when rage is necessary for growth³. My superficiality and the pretentious prick I can be. Especially when it comes to design matters and debonair dressed men smoking Marlboros. There is love to be found in any human behaviour, however tiny the aspect. As long as we are alive, we embody love. Finding that spark in any perspective is something I still do as a daily practice. Or as David says⁴, we need to "squeeze our love through that small of an opening" sometimes.

And last, there is a few people, who mirror my full capacity for love, one of them being my daughter, as of course, this is what children teach us. One other - the one who made me grow the most - I have loved since I met him, as a young adult. “At first sight” indeed. After a brief relationship, even though we’ve been apart for over 20 years, we’ve always had this “entanglement”. Relationships on both sides have started and ended in part because of it, children have been born nevertheless, embedded in the love we shared with others. The moment I checked in with him in my early forties, I came to understand that he, or rather my feeling for him, was a constant. (And I was happy that he still smoked and drove a decent car.) So after much contemplation, suffering, admittance and helplessness, I had decided to let him go forever, overwhelmed by the complications this entanglement always seemed to bring. I simply decided to rid myself of this connection once and for all by embodying the grief of the possibility of his non-existence, his death. Including the absolute loss of him during one (both particularly devastating and freeing) embodiment session into my personal realm of “love perspectives” has had an unexpected effect: While I grieved with all my heart over losing him “this time forever”, I came to let him go - until 6 weeks later the feeling of connection suddenly rushed back like the first breath of air after reanimation - I was literally gasping, when I again felt this connection, but so fierce and resilient, there was nothing that could harm it. And I understood that I never can lose love. No-one can ever take the feeling of love within me away, it simply is, beyond all conditions, even in the face of someone’s forever physical absence. Whenever I go there, reach out, my sense of Self is enveloped within the sense of this particular other Self, and two individual perspectives become non-dual while we are staying ourselves.

'Cause no one can deny

This love I have inside

My Endless Love by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross, Songwriting by Lionel B. Richie / Jr. © Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Every once in a while, I offer this feeling of “undeniable” to him and receive another facet of joy, withdrawal, wonder or insecure exchange, irritation, recognition, misunderstanding, laughter or physical connection, and I take them all in, loving them more or less easily, but eventually I always integrate yet another perspective of love.

This feeling of being open to any human response is far from constant. Whenever I shift my focus from it, even in parts, I slide out of it. On a bad day I yearn for openness but can only reach it with intense effort, and on some good days, I allow life to fill me to the brim, my heart about to burst out of my rib cage any moment now. Both ends of this everyday embodiment make it a bit hard to get anything done though, I have to admit. My inner yearning and my desire to focus (on whatever task at hand to follow my purpose) are often enough debating, if opening up to all there is, is a reasonable past time. And of course, it isn’t, as love is beyond reason.

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Love, as in openness “from afar” is of course easier to undergo, than everyday more or less conditional love. We are so used to consider love as something we do with another person, actually ONE other person, at least at one and the same time. What we call our love life is usually far away from the openness that is love. It’s rather romance, or what may be left of it - while being open to each other has become more difficult with time, as our desire to protect our boundaries has overcome our desire to open up and surrender to each other. Jeanny and I are practicing this openness with more or less success. We have slowly “unconditioned” our bond, still do, growing beyond our instinct to protect our hearts and allowing for more love to enter our lives. Eventually we changed the form of our relationship from “couple” to “polysecure” to “polyintimate” to simply “family”. We have received lots of feedback while we let others witness our challenges to free ourselves from the cultural imprint and daring to love both more wildly and more carefully, more like it felt right to us - and ended up granting each other the freedom and love to be with others while continuing to love each other as human beings. David starts his book with a similar story – a story of freeing each other, and the pain and release and opening and helplessness and bliss this brings.

A lot of the feedback we got was not in favour - until we understood that our choices will always be challenged, as we challenge them as well. We challenge ourselves. So eventually, we created the much-needed safe space for our growth process, created conditions for this challenge, which foster our own sense of safety rather than inviting insecurities of others. Lesson learned.

Love is simultaneity

Its already a challenge to love two or more children “with the same measure”, but two adults, whoa. The reason for serial monogamy is not only rooted in history. Today, where most people, no matter their gender, sexual orientation or else defined identity no longer need the service of protection or nurturing, we are simply overwhelmed with the intensity of “too much love”. What a tragic human error to believe that there is such a thing! While we have condemned the love of more people as misguided lust, greed, abuse or other projections of lack, there is a growing and quiet movement towards the liberation of conservative patterns of entanglement between adult humans: So many of us choose various forms of polyamory, testing our capacity for more love. Many are fully aware of our attachment styles and romance patterns, seeking a responsible, mindful and transparent way of living and loving with less constraint but more vulnerability and grace. With our boundaries and resilience in mind, as the charming term “polysaturated”⁵ indicates this stubborn, weird belief of too much love.

Too much love will kill you

Just as sure as none at all

Too Much Love Will Kill You by Queen, Songwriter: Frank John Musker / Brian Harold May / Elizabeth A. Lamers / Marianna Toli; © Universal Music Publishing Mgb Ltd., Emi Music Publishing Ltd, Duck Productions Ltd

What a beautiful idea it is, to reconcile simultaneity with the traditional forms of love, with ancient and post-post-modern ones. Because love is love. Not only between all the diverse human identities but also between any number of humans at any given time. I will always love the ones I shared my life with. And why wouldn’t I. For the people “I have ever loved now inhabit my heart. I claim their form and take their shape and nothing happens that isn’t love already.”⁶

Once we are ready to surrender the illusions of time and space we finally come to understand, that love has no conditions. And love allows us to do just that. It breaks open this door through time and space, rendering us timeless.

When I’m in your presence,

I feel like a small earthling,

Who is still fully aware of the sacredness.

You render me child.

You Render Me Child by Teresa Zimmermann, January 2023; not a song yet.

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And no, I cannot hold that stance for long. To quote my favourite line in this book, which is quoting Ken Wilber in a totally different and still aligned context: “What about my fucking humanity?”⁷

Both, the embodiment of unconditional love and the encounter of it in another life form are traditional spiritual practices in many cultural traditions. I had no clue about that, when I grew into understanding this experience of non-duality. By transcending all levels of information exchange up to the quantum level of entanglement, where one particle always shifts with the other, without any delay and no matter how big a space between them, we eventually transcend this human duality. We - embodying love - become one with another, who is making love possible by witnessing it with a heart so open, that it beholds our love and theirs. And this may happen either just within oneself or mirrored by another: Polarity opening up to all humanly possible perspectives and melting into unity. In countless sacred marriages.

This gift, to be able to embody so much love for whatever arises in the people I love is the most powerful emotion I’ve ever hosted. It is my very own miracle, and it makes growing beyond myself not only possible, but it thrives it. There are always others, more I learn to love. Some of them wear Raybans, of course.

PS: If you’d like to read something of David’s work, that is actually still in print, try THIS.

1. „Waiting To Love. Rude Essays On Life After Spirituality” by David Deida, Plexus 2001; If you find a used copy on amazon hold on to it for dear life!

2. Simon says: “I really like this, and agree, and it’s GameA and, as such, makes a lot of sense to me to say usually based. But the bit of me that wants to go wide, intergenerational and into those types of connections jumps up and says hello, what about us, too…” (Original Editing Comment by Simon Divecha, Jan 16th, 2023)

3. Suppressed rage creates all kinds of civilisation diseases if suppressed, and therefore, needs a safe container, some protected space to be ventilated. Took me years to create that within myself and for others. Ongoing construction work.

4. Video recording 2021, part of “Dear Lover - A 6-Weeks Online Women’s Immersion”

5. Term coined by Jessica Fern, “polysecure”, Thorntree Press, LLC 2020

6. „Waiting To Love” by David Deida, p. 78

7. „Waiting To Love” by David Deida, p. 41