So here I am in Vegas at the New Media Expo — learning all about the wacky and wild world of blogging and podcasting.

So here I am with the publisher of of my podcast, The Fearless Lover, Susan and Tim Bratton of Personal Life Media, sitting in the hallway, talking to my beloved about my 17 year old and breaking trust and gaining trust and guiding him into the manhood as a man of integrity.

Integrity. Unlike television, with its shameful “news” divisions, false dramas and lost little white girls, and unlike television with its bloviating gasbags like Rush and Hannity — the new world of social media demands integrity. You will be outed if you are a liar. Character counts. Its a virtual community, yes, but the people are REAL.

And no matter what you’re posting or twittering or digging, it goes back to the oft-ignored slogan of the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel out my window here — “Love All. Serve All.”

And I am on the phone in a cavernous hall in Vegas - of all places - talking integrity.

What happens when my son promises no drinking at the house or on the property up in lovely Topanga while I’m away — and it happens? Even though just a little.

I publish The Fearless Lover to explore the spiritual roots of enduring love. I am about to heave all my dating advice books and audio series — The Right Man Online, Erotic Mastery, Tantric 101, The Complete Attractor, etc — over to a new heading: The Fearless Dater.

What is a Fearless Dater? It means bringing your whole self forward fearlessly and openly so that you can encounter another person as a whole and open being (I tell women, either convey that you are a whole woman, or guys’ll just treat you like a woman with a hole.)

And yet here I am, sitting on the carpet, cycling through a thousand thoughts on how to be the best parent I can be at the moment. How much discipline? How much consequence?

What my son will get is real consequences — loss of a trip he wants very much. But he will also get a vision of himself as a man of integrity — what I know, as his father,  — is his greatness, his offering, his gift to the world. It may take a few years…

But I want him to grow into a Fearless Lover. Not only of an intimate partner, but of truth, service, depth.

Discipline with one hand. Love and Vision with the other.

Any thoughts from you on that, oh parents or children of parents out there?

Fearful lovers lie.  Fearful lovers cling.  Fearful lovers may or may not see the truth.

If they do, the are afraid of how the truth will lacerate their safety.  They choose to swaddle their familiar life, or their hoped-for life, in lies.

And by doing so, suffocate exactly those things that are familiar, exactly those things that they hope for.

In other words, they not only kill what comforts them in the moment…

They snuff the breath of out of love…

This week I am thinking about TRUTH and fearless loving.

When do you see it?  When you do feel it?  When do you tell it?  When do you live it.

And, oh, yeah, by the way — what happens when your truths collide?  When does the truth of your ego self conflict with the truth of your highest “selfless”-self?

Ah!  you thought this was gonna be easy.

I’ll be posting on this in a few days.

Meanwhile — what you do honestly feel is the role of truth in fearless loving?

When is it self serving?  And when does it actually serve the ones you love, or love itself?

Love on…

Adam

Quick question –

What do your mom, Joel Osteen, Eckhardt Tolle and Conde Nast’s Portfolio magazine have in common?

Answer: They know something about the power of love.

In this week’s episode, we take an idea expressed by the toothsome evangelist, Joel Osteen, he of the ubiquitous airport bookrack about his work — and make it our own, about our life.

As you’ll hear, in an article in Portfololio, Mr. Osteen comments on the passion everyone in his company — his church — exhibits in their “product.”

They are charged up because they passionately believe in the message Mr. Osteen’s brand of spirituality offers.

In crass mercantile terms, they believe in their product.

What is your life product?

Consider this: it is the love you create.

In this episode, I explore how you can constantly and FEARLESSLY improve your product — and thereby create the full life of love you most desire.

It ain’t always easy. There are design flaws. Setbacks. Employees (like, um, your will, your discipline, your lovers) may quit midstream. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s so easy to love others!

It’s also pretty easy to despise others. I mean, let’s be honest. People can be cranky, selfish, thoughtless, cruel, wasteful, destructive, nasty and even talk about what a great, wise, informed President George Bush is.

People can astonish us with their venality. But they can also astonish us with the depth of their generosity and love.

Which do you choose to see?

Who among us hasn’t had venal moments? And who among us hasn’t performed unbidden acts of surpassing care and beauty?

Which do you choose to see?

Through which lens do you choose to see others?

Through which do you choose to see yourself?

Listen this week to my interview with the brilliant, warm and provocative Rabbi Bradley Artson. He has some powerful and inspiring words on how love begets love. And how it begins with no one else but…

… well… have a listen! And let me know what you think?

This is part 2 of an interview with Author/Teacher Will Johnson.

 

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Part 1 of an interview with Author/Teacher Will Johnson.

Sometimes the simplest practices can bring the most extraordinary results. In this two-part series, I talk with Will Johnson, author of The Spiritual Practices of Rumi,about how to achieve “union” with your beloved. Fascinating is how Will met his own “Shams” before he had even read Rumi, and how he has since made a life of teaching this practice. Rumi, of course, is the great Sufi mystic, beatific 13th Century street-rapper, whose simple words carry an uncanny ability to jar us into sudden expansive consciousness.
Will is a deep and gentle guide into this practice which so transformed the once scholarly Rumi, and is something that is certain to deepen your relationships and free you from the small boundaries of your “I” as well. Meet Will…

 

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In this show, we wrap up our three part series based on the work of David Deida — really only a sliver of his work, which is expansive, to say the least.  Here, we explore several specific practices to help men (and in some cases, women), hone the gift of masculine presence, freedom and directionality.  Men - if you’ve been wanting to create more sexual polarity with women — take notes — and do the homework.  Women, if you want your man to provide more structure and a trustable container inside which you can dance your beauty — figure out a way to get him to listen (but without TELLING him to).  Therein lies one of the gifts of the feminine, which we will explore soon in more depth.  Enjoy!

 

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This week, we continue delving into the work of David Deida, exploring how the masculine expresses love. Deida provides a lucid corrective to both the bullying female-diminishing “First Stage” of Masculine hubris and the “Second Stage” of the needy-weenie-wussy-pleasy mendicant love of guys who are afraid to express strong individuation and directionality. Deida’s famous “Third Stage” Man openly and fearlessly expresses purpose, presence and freedom, and lives in service both to this own high sense of mission in this world and to the heart-opening of those he loves. A tall order. And, ultimately, in most cases, the only real satisfying one for a man. Write me and tell me if this week resounds with you…

 

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What gifts do we bring to each other as men and women? As embodiments of masculine impulses and forces and of feminine impulses and forces? How are they different and how are they the same? There’s been a whole lot of confusion over what it means to be a man or a woman and all combinations thereof, during the past 40 years. We have outgrown the latest phase of history, where the masculine dominated, with production and violent change shaping social relations. Feminism succeeded in equalizing the right of both genders to be masculine — and now with a sense of equality, women are re-discovering that feminine power is unique. And men are being forced to realize that it is no less powerful. As men struggle to find a way of being in relationship with the feminine that is both powerfully masculine and self-aware, they are discovering the gifts of the masculine to be liberating — both from the brute stereotypes that preceded the modern age, and from the wishy-washy “soft” man that women find so emasculated — though wonderful feng-shui partners. This week, we begin our 3-Part exploration of the great gifts of the masculine, as we drill into the first two of the The Three Pillars of the Masculine — Purpose, Presence and Freedom — as I have culled them from the work of David Deida . Fully embodied, they are a gift — to everybody. Enjoy — and let me know what you think…

 

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Have you ever felt unworthy of love?

Have you ever harbored these thoughts…

“My heart is dark. I see the bad in people. Try as I might, wish as I might to be spiritual, I can’t help seeing love as neediness, kindness as a desperate attempt by lonely people to buy affection, and people’s day-face as nothing but a mask. How could anyone love me, me with a heart so dark? How could I possibly love anyone, with eyes so clouded by doubt, suspicion and a grip on the truth that no one else is brave enough to talk about? That love is a sham.”

Have you had days when you just didn’t believe love was anything but a sham?

And it only gets worse when you see lovers kissing? You think they’re just making a show of it? And even parents - you think to yourself, they don’t really love the kid — they’re just glorying in a reflection of their own ability to clone themselves. To confirm they are needed. That they EXIST!”

Sound familiar? Even a little?

The good news is — you are right. All those things are the truth.

But they are not the whole truth.

Lovers do make a show of their affection — but it doesn’t mean they don’t really love each other. They might just partly afraid that it isn’t real, or that it will fade without florid upkeep.

Parents do see themselves reflected in their children — but they also come to love the child’s quirks and independence.

The whole truth is that you can be needy AND also love.

You can be lonely and do kindness for affection and also still genuinely love the person you are serving.

One doesn’t obviate the other.

Love doesn’t need to be pure to be love.

To borrow a trope from Rabbi David Cooper and his title about the Kabbalistic understanding of God “God is a Verb” — LOVE is a verb.

It’s an organic, messy, growing, pulsing, shrinking, undulating activity in our hearts and bodies.

Sometimes it moves out through our lips or our fingertips.

Sometimes it flows out in our tears of grief.

Sometimes it knots itself in our throats and refuses to come out, terrified of being flicked away like a gnat.

Nobody is a pure anything.

But love itself is pure in the same way water from a spring is pure - but only at its source.

Which is how it bubbles out of the source in us — pure — if only but for a moment.

Our loving - the verb of what we actually live - tends to gets muddied right at the source’s mouth. Gets muddied by need and jealousy, fear and sadness, distraction, aversion and desire.

But it still flows.

It flows in complex muddy swirls, but it flows.

Look around you.

Wild, paisley, spiraling, confused, chaotic muddy swirls of loving.

Look within you.

Wild, paisley, spiraling, confused, chaotic muddy swirls of loving.

Dive in.

Swim around.

Splash with abandon.

I guarantee you will find, among the currents, at least one flume as clear as air.

And when you do…. drink deeply.

Roll that water in your mouth.

And you will remember what it tasted like when your loving emerged deep within you, pure as a spring.

And you will be inspired to practice: to let go of neediness and jealousy. To set down your fear and sadness like stale loaves of bread that can no longer nourish you. To gently refuse to accept distraction. To end your comfortable old friendship with those co-dependent hangers on, aversion and desire.

This is how you unmuddy the water.

Unmuddy the water.

And roll that water in your mouth.

And never forget its sweet flavor…

**

When have you found yourself in that pure current? Write me. What did it feel like? What did you learn?