Roger Balmer
(Talk given at ZEGG Summercamp 2000)
This paper sets
out a new concept of faithfulness in love which has developed
out of my own ongoing experience with love. In order to
provide the framework for the ideas I will first describe
that experience in the context of my own love life.
I love three women.
I am in a long-term
relationship with one of these women which has been going
on now for 11 years. The other two women have been in my
life now for four and two years, respectively. Because I
am committed to keeping my love life transparent and very
open, all three know each other, and know how I feel about
each one. I have been working and continue to work to deepen
and sustain these relationships through contact and shared
activities. It happens that I am able to meet all of these
women in a deep way. Each friendship has evolved into a
significant and meaninful intimate sexual relationship.
At some point in that process it became my highest priority
to see if I could sustain stable love relationships with
all three of these women.This consumed a great deal of time,
energy and work, but I felt that it was worth it for me
personally and also important for research in liberated
love. In the end I gave this personal project first priority
in my life, subordinating my participation in the community,
my contact with other women, and sometimes even my own spiritual
practice to it.
Love Does
Not Know Any Limits
I found and still
find this time important. I believe that the so called multiple
relationship is a natural path from the intimate love into
the community. The thought of fidelity and commitment has
already been correct only the vessel was too small. You
can not have only a little bit of free love. Because love
does not know any limits. On a journey to Thailand in spring
I have thought about the following question: How do I lead
a spiritual life? How do I submit my ego to guidance from
the Source? If I question this seriously I can not leave
out the topic about love. Here I realised: The way I have
been organising my lovelife so far there has been far too
much management and calculation, and not enough life which
flows on its own. There is for example the thought of sharing
myself equally in the love to more than one person, as if
there was a certain linearity and the same amount of energy
would flow at all times to all places. This would only correspond
to scientific logic but not to the logic of love and Eros.
There are times
- like the one when I met my second girlfriend four years
ago - when a lot of energy flows into the love with a new
arriving person and this, of course is a critical situation.
In this situation the old lover has to be well centred within
herself for not to start comparing, and additionally my
second lover was about 13 years younger than my first one.
Another topic is that a man likes to keep everything under
control. It is difficult enough to control one woman. And
if you have three at the same time this can turn into a
full time occupation which keeps you away from everything
else.
It is about an
active opening of the heart
During the development
of these thoughts I understood that a change was necessary.
It is about a new direction which I call active opening
of the heart. The passive heart opening for the women and
for love I have studied and learned well in my life. My
heart opens for them and I let it happen. The active heart
opening on the other hand contains a conscious decision
not only to receive but to create, which means to build
spaces outside and within myself where trust and intimacy
can happen, where love can develop. This is for me directly
connected to the love community. Since the beginning I have
said that the attempt to create a love relationship between
only two people is very difficult and mostly fails. The
natural extension of intimate space in a couple and also
in a multiple relationship is, in my opinion, a love community.
This is an organism
where no more fear pulsates between people and the love
between two is protected and cared for through the mirror
and support of others. And so the relationship of a couple
can be lifted onto a higher level. Some things are extremely
difficult to talk about between the two, for example if
you want to tell your partner: You are not my main source
for sexuality at the moment. Or: You are intellectually
not interesting for me at the moment. I need other people
now to inspire me. Just try to talk about things like that
between two people on their own.
What does fidelity
mean here?
Now to the basic
thoughts. I will start with the old concept of fidelity.
In a socialist dictionary it sounds somehow like this:
"FIDELITY: attachment, reliability, the devotion to a person
(fidelity in marriage) or to a topic (fidelity to a company)
or in intellectual sense (to the principles of proletarian
internationalism)."
Or more modern in O'Neills "The open marriage" :
"Fidelity in marriage is a measurement of limited love,
lowered growth and not enough trust. It destroys it own
purpose because it creates the roots of mistrust and limits
the growth and also the love of both partners."
If the heart
is added to fidelity as in the word "treuherzig" ('of a
faithful heart' - ingenuous) the cultural view on this topic
is shown clearly: naive, not knowing, childish, guileless,
foolish. All in all we could say people are touched by the
soppy story of everlasting fidelity but nobody takes it
really serious.
Here the attempt
of a new definition: Fidelity is basically a natural state
of a human being. Those who love each other and are attracted
to another will circle round each other in orbits of different
distances, sometimes forever. Love between people is in
itself permanent, if its magnetism is not destroyed by inner
stagnation, stowed conflicts and active heart locking. Some
people still think it happens to them, they had somehow
fallen out of love, love had slipped away from them. And
then they react differently: The more emotional ones for
example say: "It's enough! I can't stand it any longer!"
Others do it very slowly, they withdraw energy from their
love so it bleeds out like a wrongly cut beetroot, until
nothing is left. This is an active locking. If you can not
remember consciously how you locked your heart you have
to spend a lot of money on psychotherapy, partner connection
rituals and sweat lodges.
A new form of
fidelity is the fidelity to the higher person of the other.
It is no longer the agreement based on fears, which we think
saves us from conflicts. We can see this higher person and
full potential clearly when we first fall in love with each
other. During this time we can see and anticipate the potential
of a human being. Afterwards it is about the active state
of fidelity. This means even after the state of first love
to continue to trust into the seen and anticipated. Therefore
a clear and level-headed way of falling in love is necessary
so that at a later time - when we are not in this fire anymore
- we still know what we love about the other person and
where the journey leads to. This is a lot more consistent
for me than the short time of romantically being in love.
It is the beginning of a change from a more emotional love
- where everything roars up, all feelings and longings become
ebullient - to a recognising love, where everything is accompanied
by the intellect and still gives space for the feelings.
This is the art.
The perspective
of possible eternity replaces the desire for short-term
fulfilment
Fidelity is
selfless. It does not question if the other stays at my
side but supports their development - even if it is against
the own desire for short-term fulfilment. Because the perspective
of a possible permanent friendship replaces the wish for
immediate fulfilment. Fidelity also means to love the erotic
being of the other in his/her deepest lust and fulfilment,
which attracts him/her to others just as much as the sexual
connection together. It means, not only to tolerate and
to ignore, but to love.
This is for me
an intersection for peace between man and woman. Am I able
to meet my partner open-hearted and sensual if she/he just
comes from somebody else, maybe even still with the glance
of happiness in the eyes and maybe even with a sensual longing
for me? Can I meet her/him in this moment without competition
or a rest of contempt.
Fidelity means
to dig out the "dead bodies" of relationships and put them
into the light. This putting-into-light also contains inner
clearing and changing work with the experienced or caused
pain in the own biography. It is often a key issue: Has
the pain locked me or have I understood to open through
the pain? If I keep my heart closed to people I have loved
in the past I will draw the veil again into my new, actual
love because you can not lock your heat partially. And this
means, as long as you have an unresolved past always something
sticks to your soul. It is an illusion to believe that you
can separate and win energy through this because the pain
is gone. On long term you have to invest a lot more energy
to be able to get back into a state of being able to love,
to not fall into the locking.
This concept
of fidelity leads into a spiritual dimension because it
also means to recognise the intellectual and spiritual connection
with the partner. Every thought of envy, hatred or jealousy
that I nurture and identify myself with creates an injury
in the spiritual net of our connection. If for example you
are really identified with a malicious thought this can
cause a telepathic line into the dreams of your partner,
enter the dream of the other. This means for me to take
very serious that thoughts create reality. Especially in
connection to people who we love. Also a part of fidelity
is to be able to disappoint your partner to stay true to
yourself or to confront him/her if he/she has become unattractive
by inner stagnation, to be able to love him/her permanently.
It means not to break up the contact and leave the other
where he/she is but to support him/her according to your
love so he/she can change and this often involves to see
your own anger and be able to work with it. Do you know
the delight in the face of a friend if you have managed
to communicate your own legitimate anger? This creates opening
not fear. If it is not already poisoned. I know it, the
delight in the face of my girlfriend if I express in the
right moment with the right energy what makes me angry.
Fidelity means
to question your own position over and over again and to
be able to react to the mistakes of the other with clarity
and generosity.
True-hearted
(treuherzig) in the newer sense is who does not use their
friend to fill their inner emptiness but uses him/her to
find back to themselves.
You have to create
the world that can be embrace
This is close
to the context of the next thought:
Do not try
to find in a person what you have lost in the world.
Your lover can only be a key to the world. Somehow every
deep loving contact with her/him, whether a wonderful deep
sexual contact or a intimate conversation where you open
up your soul, is a spring-board into the world. You want
to embrace the world! But we have to create the world that
can be embraced. Elemental love experiences as described
above carry within the germ of a change of life towards
a fearless contact with the world. To be faithful also means
to understand that we are historical beings imprinted by
a wrong directed cultural history of love. Michael Wiesmann
said last week in his speech, he believes that 75% of the
men are really 'mummy´s-boys'. I would correct the
number upwards, to 95%. The fact that many women still secretly
look for the strong man who redeems them sexually and intellectually
means for 95% of the men not to react with retreat and fight
any longer but with the insight that he has to leave his
state of mummy's-boy because the woman needs a partner not
a son. This is a culture-historical duty of a man. And for
the women it means to go against their infidelity which
consists in having forgotten their power and female knowledge,
they make themselves small in front of a man by holding
him responsible for their opening.
I want to end
with a very simple thought which keeps animating me: We
only bother with this so much because we are born into it.
But in the future it will look quite different. I imagine
that a culture of new love connections will develop. In
a culture where love will be accompanied by knowledge from
childhood on it would be very normal not to leave your beloved
anymore.
I reconnect again
to the thought of the beginning that love is in itself eternal.
I believe that we can leave love only in a prenatal st ate,
which means on the level of projection and human reduction.
After this birth love and sexuality are communication of
the souls and eternal in their deepest way.
ZEGG
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