Passion is energizing and inspiring, a great big wonderful “YES!” that fills life with a sense of greatness and purpose. When you have passion, life is fun and juicy.
In relationship, passion is a deeply affirmative force. When there’s passion--for one another, for spending time together, for making love--you feel loved, accepted,cherished and desired. You feel on top of the world and you love it!
Every relationship has a honeymoon phase that’s filled with passion. You’re absolutely crazy about each other. You can’t get enough of one another. You gaze into each others eyes as you plan romantic dates and getaways. The relationship is fun, exciting, full of magic and . . . hot!
The months and years go by, though, and the delight and deliciousness fades into the background of everyday life.
“The thrill is gone.”
“There’s just no spark anymore.”
“We’re stuck in a rut.”
In the Rejuvenate Your Love Life seminars and coaching programs, couples learn techniques and practices to rekindle and sustain their passion for a lifetime. Those who go through the programs find that lovemaking becomes more fulfilling than ever before.
Sound good?
Here’s a head start for you: If you and your partner are making any of these 3 critical mistakes, passion doesn’t stand a chance.
Evaluation Quiz:
1. Has life become so busy and demanding that there is no time or energy for lovemaking?
2. Are the male/female differences that once drew you together now driving you crazy?
3. Do you judge your partner (and/or yourself) too often?
If you answered even one “yes,” read on.
MISTAKE #1: Don’t Have Time/Energy for Love
A strong, fulfilling love relationship is one life’s most precious gifts. It reduces stress, keeps you healthy, lifts your spirits, energizes and boosts confidence. It creates a happy, harmonious atmosphere at home for your children as well.
We all want that, right? But often in the race to keep up with daily life, intimacy with our mate falls to the bottom of our to-do list. Something to enjoy when we can squeeze in the time, and rally the energy.
“Yawn. . . I'm too tired for sex. And it's not just me. My partner is as wiped out as I am much of the time.”
“Eek! no time. My husband and I are like two ships passing in the night -- every night. We want to get together, but we can't figure out how.”
Sound familiar?
A relationship is like a beautiful garden. It needs love and attention to continue to grow and flourish. Without regular, nurturing attention, weeds (aka, resentments) creep in, and love becomes a sad memory of what it once was.
TIP #1: Invest in Your Relationship
You invest in your retirement portfolio. You invest in your home. Why wouldn’t you invest in your most valuable asset—your love life? It’s easy. Schedule regular love-investment activities.
Life is so busy we need to schedule important events in our day planners to make sure we remember to show up. Lovemaking isn’t any different. Keep a standing date for intimacy. Write it down. Maybe every Friday night, or Saturday morning while the kids are at soccer practice. And keep going on fun dates, too. If they’re gone from your life, the chemistry and excitement you knew in the early days will disappear, too.
Great lovemaking is about feeling connected to your partner, outside the bedroom as well as in. Find those moments when you can be lovingly present together, no matter how briefly. Consider creating “magic moments”—in the morning when you first wake up, before you head out for the day, when you arrive home, before going to bed. Make it a ritual you both look forward to. Look into each others eyes as you say “I love you.” Leave a surprise note in your partner’s briefcase or handbag. Send a flirtatious email, or a naughty text message. Greet your partner with a hug that lasts long enough to slow down and really feel each others presence. Whatever feels right—just don’t let a day go by without recognizing the gift that you are in each others life.
MISTAKE #2: Not Appreciating the Differences Between the Sexes
The sexual polarity between you and your mate is the attractive force that originally brought you together. And that same polarity later drives couples crazy, and drives them apart. He wants sex; she wants to cuddle. She wants pillow talk; he wants some ZZZs.
Have you seen the cartoon that shows a husband and wife each holding up a protest sign? His sign reads: “No Sex, No Love.” Hers: “No Love, No Sex.”
For women, sexual desire does not begin with a desire for sex. Rather, it evolves out of an experience of emotional closeness and intimacy. For men, typically, the reverse is true. Desire begins with a craving for sex and then evolves into greater depth of emotional intimacy. These two different sexual tracks are responsible for much of the relationship tension, sexual frustration, and lack of fulfillment that couples experience.
TIP #2: Learn to Understand and Appreciate Masculine and Feminine
Differences
The differences between the sexes remain a source of conflict only when those differences are misunderstood or unappreciated.
Ultimately, men and women want the same things—to feel loved, safe, desired, fulfilled, and totally turned on! What men and women need to feel that way can be very different.One of the biggest mistakes in bed is giving to your partner what you might want yourself. Often, that is the opposite of what will work.
When a man knows that touching his woman’s heart is the key to igniting her passion,and sees the positive results of his actions, he will be much more likely to find the pleasure in surprising her with flowers, or asking how her day went--and really listening. Conversely, when a woman realizes that the path to her man’s heart is through his loins, she is more likely to delight in treating him to sexy play that she initiates.
Understanding and appreciating how sex is different for men and women goes a long way towards building relationship harmony and inspiring passionate desire!
But remember, each man and each woman is an individual. There is no “normal” and no “usual.” You have to discover the specific way to touch your partner’s heart.
MISTAKE #3: Judging and Criticizing
It’s human nature to evaluate, compare, contrast, judge and criticize. We all do it all the time.
“Why can’t you remember to leave the toilet seat down?”
“You used to get dressed up for me.”
“Can’t you just hold me without always wanting sex?”
Judgment is often so automatic that we’re often not even aware of it. It can show up as criticism, conflict, resentment, anger, bitterness, self-doubt, comparison, shame, guilt,depression and dissatisfaction. And these feelings can become chronic.
Judgment is negation. It is the opposite of love, which is acceptance. In intimate relationship, the “NO” of judgment undermines our ability to tap into the “YES” of love and passion. They literally cancel each other out.
What can we do?
TIP #3: Acknowledge and Appreciate
While nothing kills passion faster than judgment and criticism, nothing builds passion faster than acknowledgment and appreciation.
“I love it when you rub my shoulders.”
“Your laughter is one of my favorite sounds in the world.”
“It was really great that you cooked dinner tonight. Thank you.”
Become mindful of any tendencies to judge and criticize, and refocus your attention to something you appreciate about your partner. Find opportunities to offer heartfelt compliments. Look for even simple opportunities to express appreciation.
“Thanks for holding the door for me.”
Scientists at the Relationship Research Institute in Seattle, Washington discovered a mathematical model that predicts with 94% accuracy which marriages will end in divorce. They found that happy couples have at least a 5:1 ratio between positive
interactions and negative interactions. For every one criticism or negative comment, there were at least five compliments. That’s the magic ratio. With 5 to 1 odds, passion
wins.
THE 3 KEYS:
1) Invest in your relationship by going on dates and expressing love in small but conscious ways each and every day.
2) Learn what your partner needs to feel fulfilled, especially the things that you wouldn’t normally do instinctively. Give that to each other and watch your passion rise.
3) Keep in mind the 5:1 ratio--at least 5 positive interactions to every negative one.
If you enjoyed this article, join us for “How to Recapture the Honeymoon Spirit in 3 Easy Ways” for experiential exercises on how to deepen intimacy and renew the passion and excitement in your love relationship!
Visit www.rejuvenateyourlovelife.com to reserve your spot for an upcoming Honeymoon Spirit introductory evening.
Author's Bio
Jan Robinson and Lucas Lehman are Professional Tantra Educators and Intimacy Coaches. They have supported hundreds of committed couples breakthrough the barriers to intimacy and bring deeper meaning, excitement, and fulfillment to their sexual love lives. Learn more at rejuvenateyourlovelife.com.
Collective consciousness is one of the subjects of sociology. Homogeneous groups of people, whether of religions, ethnicities, political parties, or nations will tend to adopt shared ideologies or social standards that permeate and govern their attitudes and behavior. For example, most Americans consciously acknowledge and value democracy as the most favorable form of government. And within a large homogeneous group, there will be subsets of collective agreement that interpret or apply the shared ideologies or social standards in various ways, or from a different perspective, hence we have conservatives and liberals and independents. The size and strength of these subsets can rise and fade within the larger cohort as attitudes and sympathies shift and adjust due to various influencing factors, some of external causes and some from within.
One of the well-known ideologies of Ronald Reagan - "Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem." - appealed to a subset of our collective consciousness that made him one of the most popular presidents among political conservatives. Reagan's ideology was often quoted in the most recent Republican primary campaigns as well as in the national presidential campaign. It is, indeed, a mantra of a conservative collective agreement. Someone might disagree with its ideological absolutism, but there's nothing covert about this political view.
Even if its specific social and political implications are less than obvious, the notion that less government is better government is a clear, overt position, IF it is indeed consciously understood for what it is. We are more likely to change our conscious agreements, if we intelligently observe and evaluate the consequences of our agreements. As a nation, the electorate majority may or may not decide to support this supposition. As a result of the publicity surrounding the recent banking scandals, public opinion appears to have shifted back to a need for more governmental intervention and regulation.
Unfortunately, we are not always fully conscious. And if not, we may too easily allow ourselves to be triggered into our "survivalist" collective unconscious.
The collective unconscious is not the content of sociological science. First observed and defined by Carl Jung, we are most likely to hear it discussed in the realm of analytical psychology. Jung referred to the collective unconscious as "a reservoir of the experiences of our species." He believed that the human species has an active unconscious code or instinct developed over many thousands if not millions of years and imbedded deeply in our psyches. It is not that much different in its origins and function from the primitive survival instincts of other living creatures. Aggressive "survivalism" is basic to our most primal nature, well hidden just under our "civilized" conscious surface. When feeling fearful and threatened, we can be triggered and converted into hostile actions against differing members of the human race. Given perceived threatening events, it is not difficult to capitalize on our primitive collective unconscious and then to incite a vengeful collective agreement to support of an aggressive attack on the perceived threatening peoples, even against a society or country that posed no real threat. We have a lot of evidence of this aggressive nature throughout history, and many adroit and powerful leaders have exploited it to their own end. Adolph Hitler is viewed as one of the consummate masters of the technique.
The events of September 11, 2001 created a political opportunity to incite a revengeful collective consciousness that became the driving force behind our invasion of Iraq, the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004, and support for many of the Bush administration's questionable policies. Since "9/11" and our county's international response to the events of that day, many of us became, with increasing intensity, "news junkies", and hence, drawn into an unfortunate and self-defeating collective agreement that triggered a deeper, more primitive instinct. One of George W. Bush's stated campaign goals was to "unite the country". And he did. With the complying assistance of a media that thrives on bad news, the Bush administration triggered our primitive, survivalist collective unconscious through the escalation of fear and desperation in order to create the political capital for the support of the "war on terrorism" as well as the justification for some of the re-interpretations of our constitution and our agreements with the Geneva Convention.
As with most Americans, my personal "addiction" to the political news reached its highest point of captivation with the 2008 presidential campaigns and election. In retrospect, my personal vigilance of our political situation was fed by the frenzy of speculation that permeated our news media. My personal obsession with politics over the past seven years was driven to a great extent by my increasing concern with the consequences of the pathological level of fear and desperation being imbedded more and more deeply in our collective consciousness.
Were we being conditioned to consciously accept and expect worldwide conflict? Were we becoming psychologically conditioned to accept, and perhaps take for granted our hostility and aggression toward anyone with a different collective consciousness? Were we being conditioned to win "the war on terrorism" at any cost, including the forfeiture of our country's longstanding values and integrity, even our own personal rights and freedoms? Were we being conditioned to expect, even initiate Armageddon?
Most of the commercial media thrives on bad news, because its producers and sponsors understand very well how we feed on the drama and how well it sells the "good news" offered in commercial advertising. The election of Barack Obama reflected a shift toward optimism and hope. But it did not take long for the media to shift its focus from the Bush drama and begin its amplification of the slightest potential controversy or conflict or challenge within Barack Obama's next cabinet appointment or the Republican opposition to his economic recovery plan. One of the most audacious and influential of the conservative media personalities has arrogantly declared his hope for Obama's failure as our country struggles to recover from the abysmal legacy of the previous administration that he, the media personality, supported. And the rest of the media swarmed to the story like ravenous sea gulls attracted to a bloated beached whale.
Are we we fascinated with obnoxious people? Are hooked on bad news? Are we addicted to, even anticipating the drama of a catastrophic horror story? Do we unconsciously want the excitement of a bloody fight or even Armageddon?
To often it seems that just as we begin our recovery from one catastrophe, some part of our fascination with anticipating the next misfortune draws us into a gaper's block. For sixty years of my memory, seemingly every opportunity was taken by some hysterical evangelicals to revive the "fear of God" in all of us by pointing to the prophetic biblical signs of the inevitable certainty and proximity of Armageddon. The present perception of worldwide woe provides no exception to this opportunism. The History Channel recently got into the act and aired a series of programs on the "signs pointing to Armageddon". Even among some of my new age friends, there wafts rather quiet, almost whispered speculations of the implications of the end of the Myan calendar in December 2012.
And then there's "The Web Bot Project." Created in the 1990's to help predict stock market trends, this powerful covert technology "crawls" throughout the Internet in search of keywords that trigger an analysis of the content of a given site. It then feeds this content into a mega computer that theoretically taps into the collective consciousness of our world. The project was intended to look for, analyze, and highlight "tipping points" on how the world market might move in the future. Interestingly, the operators of the project began to notice that the program was predicting more than trends in the stock markets.
In June of 2001, three months before the attacks of September 11, the Web Bot Project predicted that within the next 60-90 days there would be a catastrophic, life-altering event that would affect the world at large. The Project has predicted, coincidentally similar to the Myan Calendar, worldwide calamity near the end of 2012. Theoretically, the Web Bot Project made its predictions based not on objective events or scientific trends but on a global collective fatalism. It might be a temptation to blame the Bot Project prediction for potentially inciting hysteria through "digital hyperbole". The mega computer of the Bot Project has no vested interest in creating panic. It is our collective consciousness, our collective consumption of catastrophic drama and hysteria that is driving the prediction.
Are we doomed by our own worldwide collective fatalism? Are we self-condemned to create our own Armageddon?
During the seven years that followed 9/11, the collective consciousness of the American people gradually shifted away from support of the war and the oppression of Bush administration. This shift was tipped by several factors, especially those close to home including the administrations botched handling of the devastation of hurricane Katrina. The long-term contradictions of the declaration of "mission accomplished", the revelation and controversy of potentially illegal interrogation techniques, the apparent loss of our national integrity on an international level, and the blatant violations of the constitution and the law painfully wore thin on the American people. Ironically, our over-saturation of the continuous bad news appears to have overloaded our consciousness. Perhaps similar to the Schick Shadle method of aversion therapy, our collective frustration and exhaustion with our fear-driven survivalist aggression left a bad taste for more of the same. In its place was spawned a heightened desire for a positive, hopeful, peaceful change in direction. Barack Obama became a national phenomenon, a dominant collective agreement. This shift reached its summit in the 2008 elections, clearly evidenced by a record number of previously disenfranchised voters willing to stand in long lines for "torturously" long hours, not even certain they would make the polling deadline.
Fortunately, there is a lot more positive evidence that our collective consciousness has shifted. A majority of the American voters came to disapprove of the war in Iraq, and we voted in favor of change in the presidential election. Even with continuing bad news about the economy and intensified conflict in Afghanistan, there remains among the majority a sense of renewed optimism and hope for withdrawal from the war and our recovery from the economic recession.
I started writing this commentary a month before the elections of November 4. Looking back, it is remarkable how much my personal sense of wellbeing and hope has soared. The significance of the results of this election reflects a renewed consciousness that reaches well beyond its political implications.
As Barack Obama gave his victory address to a crowd of over 100,000 people in Grant Park in Chicago and his inaugural address to nearly three million in Washington, D.C., the television cameras captured the emotions of hundreds of faces. These were truly heart-warming, joyful images. Many cried for joy for the victory of hope over the oppression of the last eight years, but many tears were shed out of an overwhelming relief from the oppression of a collective agreement that once condoned legalized slavery and racial bigotry. This presidential election was the greatest conscious milestone for freedom and equality in this country since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862-63. But even more significantly, the election of Barack Obama may represent the a significant shift in our collective consciousness, from our fascination with fear, drama, and dominance to a more positive spiritual alignment with nature, hope, peace, joy, acceptance, tolerance, and love.
Rhonda Byrne's book and video, The Secret, first appeared in bookstores and online near the end of 2006. There appeared to be a coincidentally renewed interest in Wayne Dyer's books and videos on The Power of Intention. Both received somewhat instantaneous attention. Oprah Winfrey interviewed several proponents and teachers of The Secret, making it the "talk of the town". Almost immediately, everyone was talking about the power of attraction. Book and DVD sales skyrocketed. Law of Attractive support groups sprung up all over the country. It would be interesting to know just how many Americans created a "vision board" on their refrigerator doors or at the foot of their beds.
Less than two years after the release of The Secret in 2006, Oprah Winfrey co-produced an online study group focused on Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. In A New Earth, Tolle exposes the pathology of the "collective ego", and he points the way to a worldwide evolution of a new collective awareness. If we closely examine Jung's collective unconscious and compare his observations with Eckhart Tolle's collective ego and the pain-body, there are some striking similarities, the most significant among them the degree to which our collective thoughts determine our perspective and consequential actions.
The Law of Attraction, most simply put, states that "thought become things". But our collective thoughts generate not only things but also our peace and prosperity. Our collective consciousness can create entire realities. It creates poverty or prosperity, harmony or conflict, peace or war, heaven or hell. Awareness and focused positive thought are the keys to the most joyful and fulfilling of what we create.
If we are to create prosperity, harmony, peace, and heaven on earth, we first must be believe that we can. And we must shift our focus, our awareness on prosperity, harmony, peace, and the state of heaven on earth - not on fear, despair and catastrophe. This is not Pollyanna. We do, indeed, create our own reality, and the collective conscience is the most powerful application of the law of attraction. Among my more spiritually focused friends, there's considerable speculation about an evolving spiritual "enlightenment", a "new hopeful consciousness". The fact that someone as popular and "household" as Oprah Winfrey would risk here enormous success on featuring such controversial philosophy as that of The Secret or Eckhart Tolle's "Power of Now" is clear evidence of some kind of significant shift in populous trends.
This is our only hope for our recovery from the worldwide distress and the conflicts that threaten not only our peace but our survival. We must engage in a deliberate and conscious spiritual process; that is, it must come from the deepest part of our souls, from that part of us that is universal Spirit - our source of and connection with hope, peace, and love.
Author's Bio
Chuck Jennings, a.k.a. Life Coach Chuck, has over thirty years experience helping individuals make significant life transitions to create holistic wellness through building self-esteem, managing stress, spiritual recovery, and self-fulfillment. Chuck has earned his B.A., M.A., M.F.A., and Dip. LC. He is a certified life coach.
My cousin, as well as Freddie, sent me the following joke...Do read it with a pinch of salt and enjoy the humor. No insults meant to any grandma reading this post. My apologies if anyone takes offense to this for my intention is to entertain. Thanks and have a nice day.
Grandma is eighty-eight years old and still drives her own car. She writes:
Dear Grand-daughter,
The other day I went up to our local Christian book store and saw a 'Honk if you love Jesus' bumper sticker ..
I was feeling particularly sassy that day because I had just come from a thrilling choir performance, followed by a thunderous prayer meeting...So, I bought the sticker and put it on my bumper.
Boy, am I glad I did; what an uplifting experience that followed.
I was stopped at a red light at a busy intersection, just lost in thought about the Lord and how good he is, and I didn't notice that the light had changed.
It is a good thing someone else loves Jesus because if he hadn't honked, I'd never have noticed.
I found that lots of people love Jesus!
While I was sitting there, the guy behind started honking like crazy, and then he leaned out of his window and screamed,'For the love of God!'
'Go! Go! Go! Jesus Christ, GO!'
What an exuberant cheerleader he was for Jesus!
Everyone started honking!
I just leaned out my window and started waving and smiling at all those loving people.I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love!
There must have been a man from Florida back there because I heard him yelling something about a sunny beach.
I saw another guy waving in a funny way with only his middle finger stuck up in the air. I asked my young teenage grandson in the back seat what that meant.
He said it was probably a Hawaiian good luck sign or something.
Well, I have never met anyone from Hawaii, so I leaned out the window and gave him the good luck sign right back.
My grandson burst out laughing. Why even he was enjoying this religious experience!!
A couple of the people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they got out of their cars and started walking towards me.
I bet they wanted to pray or ask what church I attended, but this is when I noticed the light had changed.
So, grinning, I waved at all my brothers and sisters, and drove on through the intersection.
I noticed that I was the only car that got through the intersection before the light changed again and felt kind of sad that I had to leave them after all the love we had shared.
So I slowed the car down, leaned out the window and gave them all the Hawaiian good luck sign one last time as I drove away.
Praise the Lord for such wonderful folks!!
Will write again soon,
Love, Grandma
