Happy first day of February. Are you ready for Valentines’s Day in two weeks?

I am.

My mom just called to tell me that she put her Valentine’s Day package for me in the mail yesterday. Let the season of true valentines begin!

It takes a lot of preparation and devotion to foster a true love story, and I’ve had a lot of support from some truly generous people like my parents, my sisters, my friends, students, and colleagues. In honor of all the love I’ve received over the years that made it possible for me to negotiate a number of powerful heartbreaks successfully, I’d like to reflect a bit upon the portal that Dawes’ song “Take Me out of the City” creates for me.

Anybody who is truly alive has gone through at least one major heartbreak. It doesn’t have to be with a “significant other,” but for me, each love partnership that I’ve been in and the subsequent break-ups have forged the path of my personal evolution by forcing me into troughs so deep in my psyche and soul, that I have been forced to transcend or die spiritually.

With the passing of each love relationship, my old unconscious beliefs rise up to the surface of my awareness, and I have an opportunity to question whether they are really true. What makes my beliefs true?

My adherence to them.

I make my belief true.

Nobody else.

Not god, not science, not any outside authority. Although one could perhaps argue for an objective Truth, and win if one was so inclined, there is no objective authority or reality. 75 degrees Fahrenheit is 75 degrees Fahrenheit. This “objective” fact has no value unless I apply some subjective meaning to it.

75 degrees Fahrenheit doesn’t mean anything, unless I give a context to it such as a situation, a math equation, the way it feels in my body when the environment is 75 degrees as opposed to how I would likely be close to death if my body temperature was 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Thoughts, like facts, have no inherent value until we give them meaning. We gain access to a world of power and choice when we question the meaning that we assign to our most practiced thoughts.

Belief is practiced thought.

By the time I have fallen in love with an individual, I have practiced thinking so positively on that one particular person so much that my thoughts upon their value and their love for me have become beliefs. In the past, to realize that this person is not actually the person I believed him to be is tantamount to losing my religion, and in the Temple of Love & Beauty, I am the most persistent believer.

I cannot live without my religion of Love & Beauty. It is not possible, because I have no interest in living a life that is not centered on Love & Beauty. To put it bluntly and succinctly, I’d rather die.

What do I do when I am faced with losing the idol I have created for myself with my most cherished projections?

I crash, and I burn on the charnel fields of rage and self-doubt. Who is responsible for this?

I am.

Depending on the Other in question, I may have a lot of “facts” about what an absolute douche the other person was to me, but honey child, who made that douche out to be the sun and the stars?

In my world, the only world I can ever know, I’m the only one creating meaning out of the void. When I am in psychic and emotional pain, I am the only one who can shoulder the blame for it, so I have to learn to dismantle the blame. Sure, other people affect my world. Their feelings and choices influence me deeply, but only I can give them power to shake my innermost sanctum. When this happens, I need to examine the unspoken beliefs that rise close to the surface when I am in deep distress.

In the aftermath of my last serious break-up, I became very aware of an unconscious belief that I need someone else to be in love. I can’t say that this is the first time that I’ve encountered this nefarious belief, but this is the first time I’ve been seriously ready to take a bat to it.

If Love & Beauty are so central to my existence, why would I ever put all that power and focus on another person?

Indeed. Why?

Because I unconsciously believed that the only way to be “in love” was to make another human being with whom I could partner and mate the object of my most devout attention. It’s kind of a funny belief when I consciously pause to consider it. I mean really- I attract some random guy who for various reasons feels familiar to me, focus all my positive attention on him, and make him the next idol of my personal belief? It’s a miracle I made it this far!

But what about my desire to be in partnership? After all, I do want to partner and mate. Where’s the harm in that?

To put it simply, there’s no harm in being “in love” with another human being, unless I put my lover on the altar of my personal religion. That’s inherently problematic. I live to be “in love”, but what happens when I find myself in a tug of war for power with the idol that I have made central to my faith?

GRANDES PROBLEMAS – that’s what!

When I realized the central quandary between my belief that I need another human being to be “in love” and my desire to live my life as a person in love, I experienced a schism within my mind which is of course the definition of turmoil.

This is where the song, “Take Me Out of the City,” comes in.

When I was in this terrible place of disillusionment and pain, this song wailed to me in a way that I could clearly understand where I needed to go to find my heart again. I entered the heart of Nature, and as a result, I was reminded of my own eternal Wholeness which is never divided and is always “in love.” “In love” is my true identity. When I plan a hike for myself, I feel very much like I am on my way to a lover’s abode. When I reflect on the time I’ve spent exploring sacred wild spaces, I feel tingly and free as if I’m remembering a particularly juicy love-making session.

Wandering in nature is pure intimacy to me. There are no conditions on the love story that I have with the God and Goddess that I find in nature. The Wild in nature is the same Wild in my body. As long as I honor and respect this relationship, I never have to break up.

For some sacred moments, it’s possible to see myself in the eyes of another, but I have learned from much hard-earned experience, that I lose my Self when I seek my Truth in the pursuit of sharing my life with another.

I do intend to love a partner again. The next time, I will adore and be devoted to him even deeper than ever before, as is my wont, because I love to do that. I do it well, and it feeds me to do that. But I am determined to not create another idol out of my partner. I want to hold him as a cherished human being- a fallible, changeable, unpredictable, loveable person who has the potential to inspire great joy and sorrow within my heart.

I want to stay in touch with the fact that he may leave me one day to die or to start a new path with another person. We may grow in different ways that make living with each other undesirable. I may not always like him, but my intention is to love from a place of freedom and commitment.

Now when I come to the Temple of Love & Beauty, I no longer place human idols on my altar. I lay down my heart and my song. I come as a supplicant, as a lover, as one ready to receive the benediction of the Most Holy upon the heart of a warrior who has laid down her arms.

I come,

YES

I come,

as someone in love for all times.

Let the song of the mountain
be the one that I’ve earned
I feel my reflection slide
along the eyes that march me past
I found my direction high up, close to sun
that I’ve kept to my back,
take me out of the city
where my shadow can roam
let me breathe in the morning
let my way be my home.

-Taylor Goldsmith