Manifesting the Beloved: Clearing Space

Last month I wrote about the first part of my journey to manifesting the beloved, and how I met my Spirit Lover. This month I want to share with you the next part of my journey to manifest a nourishing and growthful life partner relationship. Ironically a lot of the work on this path has been about being with myself. When I first met my Spirit Lover two years ago and took vows to give up primary partnership with a human man for a year, I moved into a time of spending 3 nights per week with myself. I knew this would be challenging because I had 3 lovers in my life at that time. But I was determined. I knew that I needed that time with Spirit and with myself, to rediscover who I was. How could I attract an ideal partner without a knowledge of myself?

Connecting with my Spirit Lover 3 nights a week, and juggling 3 lovers on top of that, two years ago I realized that I needed to create more space for myself. Not only that, but it was clear to me that I was not really in alignment with my lovers. With 2 of them, spending time together was usually draining for both of us. I deeply loved the third, and I deeply enjoyed and felt nourished by his company,. I wanted to keep him in my life, but it was clear that we didn’t have the same desires for partnership. I felt intensely my fear of letting go, side by side with a desire for healing and manifestation of my heart’s desire.

But how to transition out of those relationships without creating hurt feelings? Would I wind up an old woman living alone with my cats if I cleared this space? How did I know that I was hearing Spirit correctly? Maybe I was deluded, and giving up these relationships would lead to nothing, or worse, to LONELINESS.

Spirit kept gently nudging me in the right direction by giving me powerful signs. The first lover left my life quite easily. He was initiating contact with me less and less frequently. I was hurt and sad, because I really loved this man. I felt refreshed by spending time with him, and felt enormous potential for alignment with him. But the key word here is potential. This is what always gets me in trouble with men—I see what could be, instead of what IS.

Suddenly one morning, as I was obsessing about why he hadn’t he called me back in two days, and meditating to let of my obsession, I was pierced by clarity: I could simply drop the rope. I could let go. If it was really time for me to clear some space in my life, I could start here. Even though this man was my favorite of the three lovers, the one I most wanted to keep in my life, I was clearly not his favorite. And the inequity in the relationship was draining a huge amount of my energy. Wouldn’t it be kinder to myself to let go? To stop fighting against what Spirit was clearly wanting for that relationship?

So I stopped calling him. When my thoughts turned to him, I directed them toward writing my book and loving myself with yummy novels, delicious food, and lots of sleep. I focused my attention on the other lovers in my life. Magickally, I felt a release after a few weeks. The road to release was a little bumpy–at one point I became aware that this man had chosen another woman to life partner with. Ouch! That hurt! And yet it was perfect. I wasn’t even too surprised. And although I had a lot of sadness, and anger, it was easier to let go because I knew this was Spirit’s plan for me. My Spirit Lover held me tightly at night as I grieved this loss with lots and lots of tears. My other lovers were even sweet in holding space for me to process it all. And I began to see the perfection of a divine plan unfolding.

With this man transitioned out, there were still two lovers that were very dear to me. In both of these partnerships I was only sporadically able to behave in a healthy way, or to feel joy in the connections. I had been seeing both of them for years, so letting go was hard. I really loved them, and I was clinging to keeping them in my life. Spirit decided to help me even more powerfully this time.

My body began to give me strong signals that it was time for another transition. Every time that I would schedule a date with a particular man, I would become ill within an hour of arriving at his house and be incapacitated for the evening. In the morning I would wake feeling fine, and would be fine for days until I had another date with him, when I would come down with the same illness again. I decided to listen to this really clear message.

This transition was harder. He wanted to deepen what we already had, and I was telling him that I needed to let go, to transition into friendship. It took a whole new level of courage to say no to romantic relationship with someone that I cared deeply about. But there were things my heart desired in a beloved that he couldn’t give me. Detachment came only with a mustering of all of my strength and courage. After many talks where I worked hard to be clear and compassionate in my communication, we were able to transition into friendship.

The third shift was the hardest. I was the most invested in this one, and I not at all happy about letting go. My head was telling me I wasn’t meant to be in romantic partnership with this man—but my heart was deeply in love with him. My body was very attached to the deep passion of our sexual and tantric connection. I had the overwhelming fear that if I let go of him I would never have that intense connection with anyone else. And I had sadness about all the possible futures I had dreamed of that could no longer come to pass.

Spirit stepped in again, as I watched this man go through a huge life shift. Over the course of a year he changed dramatically, and it became increasingly clear that his path was taking him toward monogamy with someone who could give him children. It hurt so much. The leaving took an entire year, as I went through cycles of hoping that something would miraculously shift and he would turn out to be my life partner after all. I was locked in denial and hope and loss. At times sleep eluded me for nights in a row. It felt like a shamanic death, like some part of me was dying in letting him go. In all of my life, including my two marriages, I had never felt this much pain in leaving. I had never loved this deeply. But this is where I learned that love alone is not enough. This man and I were simply not the right life partners for each other. Now that it’s all over I thank Spirit every day that we loved each other enough to acknowledge that and to let go.

After all the pain in this last breakup, I came to a real feeling of freedom and expansion. I was able to sleep again at night. I realized how much I had been limiting myself and my choices because I was in that relationship. The world became brand new as I started to see it through new eyes. I began to wake from my long dream and the fog lifted from my vision. I began to see all the things I had been neglecting in my life, all the paths I had not followed because I was focused on him. I began to find my way back to being true to myself. I was free! I was ready to fly like an eagle with this new lightness and explore the next step on my journey–removing the armor from my heart.