Undefended Love = True Intimacy
Introduction
We all long to love and to be loved unconditionally without reservation.
“This dual yearning within each human heart is the yearning for a sense of connection with another and a personal desire to connect deeply within our self,” according to Undefended Love, an insightful book written by psychologists Dr. Jett Farris and Dr. Marla S. Lyons.
This innermost desire can only be reached and sustained through connecting with something “in here,” deep inside each of us. The great mistake is believing we can find what we need “out there,” in a partner or in the many other places we seek to fulfill an endless stream of desires.
Here are six key points of wisdom I gleaned from this important book (in case you don’t read the entire review).
1.Romantic love alone can easily miss love’s true purpose. Love’s true purpose: to free the essential/True self from the defensive layers we’ve erected to protect our heart.
2. Once these defenses of our “false self” are revealed and dismantled, you never again need to feel emotionally disconnected, incomplete or unloved.
3. True intimacy is heart-based, not sex-based and can only occur when the heart is undefended. Love without limitations can end emotional homelessness.
4. The capacity for intimacy is the same in both men and women once the defenses are recognized and dissolved. This book offers tools to do just that.
5. Psychological/spiritual orientation play a larger role in intimacy than sexual chemistry. Consciousness is the new sexy, inner peace the new success.
6. Behaviors are not the source of our intimate experiences. That’s why the use of the term “intimacy” as a euphemism for being sexual can be so misleading.
The mad search for intimacy today has been distorted by unrealistic images put forth in modern culture, leaving many feeling it’s almost impossible to reveal our True self. Confronting our false self takes work.
“Properly viewed, intimacy is more of a state of being that we reach within our self and within our partner. The key to intimacy is the ability to dive below the surface of the familiar world of our outer self into the less understood deepest nature, or innermost essential being,” says Undefended Love.
And as we deepen our ability to live from the core of our being, our True self, we discover a connection with everything around us, the authors argue. Spiritual practices such as meditation, prayer and yoga can be essential to deepen our capacity to feel the fullness of our connection.
“On those occasions where we meet heart-to-heart with another person, emotionally and psychologically naked, we feel exhilarated and awake. Our defenses are stripped away and we are able to live in the present moment. We feel known, loved and accepted.”
According to the authors, “The seeds of intimate connection are planted at the beginning, but will blossom only after we free our self from the defense structures that inevitably surface.”
It’s not until we recognize that our efforts to change our partner’s behavior are not working that we begin the self exploration necessary for a deep connection with one another. “Finding intimacy begins with discovering our self, not in fixing or controlling our partner.”
“We have to be visible before we can be seen. We have to be available before our hearts can be affected. We have to be present before we can be intimate.”
Loving without guarantees
Unconditional or undefended love takes courage, they write,“Learning how to love without guarantees, we discover that love is in an abiding presence in our emotional center of being. From the moment we reconnect with our True self we will never again feel emotionally disconnected, incomplete or unloved.”
Stated in reverse, if we feel incomplete or disconnected it’s a reflection of our own internal state of being. To develop the capacity to live in love with an undefended heart requires that we challenge and liberate our self from our habitual defensiveness.
Ultimate intimacy is about the freedom to be our self. True emotional freedom means no longer needing confirmation, agreement or validation from another to know your basic goodness.
Einstein said they’re are really only two worldviews; either universe is basically good, loving and in favor of you, or the universe is against you. It turns out that original goodness preceded “original sin.”
The authors describe this essential or True self as, “A place where we feel connected to everyone and everything. The place where we feel awake, vital and alive.”
We’ve all experienced temporary moments where we feel connected to our True self such as: falling in love, time spent in nature, feeling treasured and valued by another, being present at a birth or death or in giving birth.
So how do we maintain these treasured feelings and connection with our essence permanently, rather than momentarily? That’s the big question. Our authentic self can easily be seen in newborn babies and those engaged in regular spiritual practices.
Hearing a still, small voice
The authors say connecting with our essence in our daily life is a subtle experience, but it’s not insubstantial. But our perception is often focused on the surface of things and the essence is heard only as a whisper.
They give an example of a lone soloist singing without a microphone in front of 1,000-piece orchestra. The soloist is our essence, but it is often drowned out by an orchestra of thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
“To hear the soloist above the other sounds is to perceive our essence. We must become skillful in learning to quiet our mind, open our hearts and relax the tension in our bodies to tune and hear the soloist.”
They recommend practicing meditation and/or silent contemplation to practice accomplishing this special atunement. It takes regular practice to learn to slow down, unwind and open our heart.
“The undefended approach is not really about doing something in particular, as much as it is about stopping whatever we usually do — interrupting those usual patterns and becoming increasingly opened up to the present.”
“And as we relate in an open, undefended way, we realize this clear, pristine, unwounded core of our being as our central self which is ever present.”
Reclaiming our True self
The next section of the book discusses how to reclaim this essential self and how we can remove these defense structures that constitute our personality, guard our vulnerability and prevent intimate contact.
The root meaning of the word “persona” is a mask of personality. It’s a self image that hides the part of us that is vulnerable and capable of unmediated connection. Some refer to it as the “shadow” self.
We began life as complete and perfect beings. According to Margaret Moller, a noted psychologist, “In this early undifferentiated state the newborn exists in a state of awareness in which self and other are seen as one.”
But at some point, either in infancy or early childhood a split takes place differentiating our self from others. This consciousness divide ushers in a lifetime of dualistic thinking and actions which splinter our personality. The authors refer to this as a “cracked identity” which was once seamless and whole, but now disconnects us from inner harmony.
As we grow older, we attempt to fill this emotional fracture or void with a variety of things or behaviors. Eventually these behaviors harden into a defense mask of our personality.
This early experience of separation is not necessarily wrong or bad. “The creation of personality is a developmental achievement, but the journey is not meant to stop there. It’s only the beginning.”
In fact, it’s the beginning of a cycle of dualistic separation of self from the other is the beginning of the ego’s lifelong journey which includes at least three additional major personality splits: 1) separating life from death, 2) the body from the mind and 3) the True self from the false self.
The goal is to move from a defended or divided personality toward a unified, transparent personality.
The authors offer an example of how we unknowingly choose to wear a 90-pound coat of armor to defend our self, instead of wearing an undefended, permeable membrane which allows the True self to shine — similar to a spandex bodysuit that reveals our true shape.
If we did not receive the necessary external support as children to develop this flexible and resilient personality, we must now learn how to give it to ourselves. If we don’t, our identity will remain cracked — as though looking at our self through a shattered mirror — seeing a very distorted self- image.
Examples of this cracked or shattered identity include: thinking we’re not good enough, thinking we’re undeserving, thinking we don’t belong, thinking we’re flawed, imperfect, bad or wrong.
To become cognizant of the areas our personality are cracked they advise, “stopping, looking, listening” as we become more conscious of how we’ve compensated for these cracked identities.
Keys to undefended loving
How do we get to from defended to undefended love? First, we must recognize and interrupt the emotional survival strategies we have erected over a lifetime. For example, every time we seek approval, we reinforce the belief that we’re not good enough.
“It’s as if we’re trying to hug someone through 10 layers of overcoats. The more rooted we become in the domain of our essence, the more capable we are being in non-reactive, openhearted and loving in a relationships.”
“If you want trinkets look on the shore, but if you want real treasure, you’ll have to dive into the ocean.” -Sufi saying
To assist their clients in discovering the deeper meaning and significance of their lives leading to intimacy, the authors introduced the practice of “the vertical drop.” The goal is to ask and answer a series of questions engaging in self inquiry until they discover something they didn’t know before they started, which results in an increase of relaxation and wonderment.
To practice this process, they suggest choosing a complaint about your partner, or if you’re currently in a relationship, select a complaint from a prior relationship that’s still a charge for you today. Such common complaints might include: being out of control, critical, stingy, a liar, angry, needy or not being available. After you state the complaint succinctly, then the questions continue…
How do you feel when your partner is this way?
What sensation does it evoke in your body?
What familiar response does this activate?
What are your deepest fears about this present day situation?
What’s the payoff if your partner acted this way?
Would you want your partner if there’s no change?
What do you need to cultivate in yourself to change how you’re responding?
How have you contributed to the situation?
What would you do next time to experience this reaction differently?
By using these questions, what began as a firm belief that there’s something wrong with our partner that needs to change for the relationship to continue, can slowly be transformed by the completion of this vertical drop into a substantially different perspective for everyone.
“Peeling back these layers is like the process of a snake shedding its skin over and over, each layer of our defended personality is peeled away and dissolved. We become more flexible, less reactive to life circumstances.”
“It is at this point that we connect with the full beauty and majesty of our essential self. We now have a greater capacity to be present, to be emotionally available to our partner and to fulfill our yearning to know our self. This becomes the path to loving our partner without limitation or barriers.”
Relaxing our emotional needs
“As infants we are entirely dependent upon our environment to provide for our needs and emotional support. But in the healthy process of maturing we move from compulsion to control our needs to learning to accept what life offers us. As we become more enlightened we demonstrate that we do not need things to be other than they are, we have no preference”.
Cultivating this capacity for no preference, allows us to hold the truth without an opinion for or against it. This quality is available in a mature, intimate partnership. “We cannot be objective and reactive at the same time because reactivity is based in the past. We seek to be in the present moment because this is the key to creating the capacity for undefended love.”
“Butterfly consciousness,” is explained in an example of a cartoon with two caterpillars looking up at a butterfly in a tree. One caterpillar turns to the other and says, “You’ll never catch me up there.”
This illustrates that butterflies and caterpillars live in two different environments and realities. The experience of one stage of relating does not necessarily prepare us for the next. The caterpillar remains unconscious, resistant or frightened of transformation, due to the discomfort of the passage.
“From a caterpillar’s perspective the cocoon is seen as a death chamber, whereas from the butterfly’s perspective, the cocoon is a passageway to rebirth, liberation and resurrection.”
A defended partnership culture flees from dark passages. “To cultivate a butterfly consciousness in the cocoon the caterpillar must let go entirely of its identity and develop the capacity for undefended intimacy which requires an internal metamorphosis.”
This metamorphosis takes time and happens in stages, but each developmental stage of relating prepares us for the next, until we have developed the capacity to surpass it.
“When we come to the edge of one worldview, we must step beyond everything we believe, beyond the impulse to defend, withdraw, or attack to live in love with an undefended heart.”
Dissolving our defenses
In the final chapter the authors offer specific steps to realize our potential to both know our True self as whole and loving and to love the other. We must turn and face all of the places in our life that were stuck, wounded, withholding and contracted.
“It is only in grappling with these demons rather than avoiding them, that we will be able to dissolve the shields that have surrounded us for a lifetime.”
The process of dissolving is illustrated by the authors in the diagram below consisting of two triangles and a black hole in the middle. The upper triangle represents our defended self, but at some point, either by circumstance or choice, we enter the “black hole,” or “dark night of the soul” and experience a flood of feelings, loneliness, emptiness, annihilation and disorientation.
However, this to dark passage is followed by a deep sense of relief and expansive feelings as we enter the lower triangle into a space without limitation, into the field of undefended intimacy and the domain of the essential self.
The authors identify five steps in this process:
-Step one is to move toward emotional discomfort rather than away from it. Facing your fears.
-Step two is to close all the exits. Somehow we use our emotional discomfort as a pathway to deeper intimacy, so do not physically leave emotionally leave, mentally defend or indulge an addiction.
-Step three, let the discomfort overwhelm your defenses. Do not let your fear, anger or depression stop your descent or to hang on to your cracked identity. Cling to nothing. Surrender to your experience and allow it to burn in you, to disquiet, disturb, torment and even disintegrate the false you.
-Step four, enter the black hole. This is the transition point, the threshold of the essential domain. Clients describe this experience as non-connection to anything, the valley of death, the black, empty, nothing and hell.
The black hole tears down the wall between our outer domain of personality and the inner domain of essence. “Then an amazing shift occurs: the terror releases, the heat cools into a deeply uncomfortable experience as the darkness becomes a luminous blackness.”
Learning to pass through this black hole is like learning to successfully mine for gold. The gold is revealed only after digging around in a deep, dark mine shaft that caved in many years ago.
-Step five includes articulating our experience to each other in the absence of a defended personality. Moving to the other side of the black hole is a critical step to create a level of undefended intimacy that can be sustained.
When these five steps of the dissolving process are taken, either on your own or in a spiritual therapeutic environment, they wear down, loosen and even melt the armor of the defended personality. “The pay off is that we feel at-one with everything and everyone, completely free!”
Conclusion
Once we experience undefended intimacy enough times, the authors promise we will know it exceeds all expectations. We become willing to suffer whatever distress and emotional pain to permanently abide there.
One of their clients describes what it means to receive and offer unconditional love, “Something happened as a result of grappling with all these issues, a reconciliation with an appreciation of my humanness. We invite our partner to challenge and point out where we have fallen asleep.”
“As we become more exposed become more illuminated by our essential self in the glow of our partners beauty and we become less attached to the outcome and more invested in deepening our experience of the present.”
If we are willing to engage in this process it brings us the satisfaction of fulfilling the dual yearning of the human heart. “We realize that our relationship is not where we lose our self, rather, it’s a place where we meet our self and know the other to be ourselves.”
I resonate with the book’s closing line: “As you travel along the path of undefended intimacy you discover that the relationship journey is not about two people becoming one, it is about realizing that we are one vast, loving universal heart.”
Said another way: “The minute I heard my love, my first love story, I went looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They are in each other all along.”-Rumi
This book is an enjoyable read, confirming things I felt intuitively were true. Bravo! It as an excellent workbook for couples willing to risk engaging in undefended love and understanding their True, essential self.
P.S. For those interested in some thoughts on “soul dating,” I suggest my article on Spiritual Attraction. For couples seeking an excellent workbook on deepening your relationship, I suggest The Couples Workbook.
