This week’s theme happens to be taking the romance out of fertility. Don’t get me wrong - I love the ability to wrap myself up in my fantasies and see if life can participate in making them manifest. Many of my dreams have come true; some have not. The outcome is not my business; only showing up for the opportunities as life presents them. Harsh realities: Children are born in famine stricken and war torn countries. Pregnancies come from rape. Babies are born to those who seem more undeserving than you, who are homeless, addicted to drugs, and to those who cannot provide for them. Far more babies are born to those who are not trying to conceive than to those who are.
Romantic ideas: Because my spouse and I are so compatibly in love, a baby will be given to us. Since I’ve always been able to achieve whatever goal I’ve set my mind to, I will be able to create life through my desires and actions. If I think positive thoughts, and send out baby intentions, I will be more fertile. If I do the right things, I can make myself pregnant.
Kinder realities: The body is a physical copy machine of your mind. That which you emotionally perceive (especially subconsciously) translates into hormonal messages to reproduce yourself (internally directed) or produce what you want (externally directed.) Desire will not raise the chances of life’s ability to come through you. Removing mental and emotional obstructions will.
I love meeting people for the first time on retreat. I can see the romantic ideas they have of me in their eyes, and how they want to trust me to help them. I often begin the retreat process by breaking this romance. I have never made a baby. I will not be able to make one for you. Nobody else will. I will not feed your romantic dreams to keep you on the treadmill of unfulfilled desires. I will not cheerlead anyone into “You can make this happen if only you believe.” As hard as it is, I can feel them let go of how they have even tried to control their thoughts and emotions. We encounter something crushingly real when we let go of control. An utter relief happens when we meet life as it is.
This process is hard. It hurts. It can be the greatest anguish in life to find that we may not be able to bring about our most deeply cherished longing. I know that wound, deeply. I had to let go of my ideas of how life was supposed to look for me, release my grasp, and surrender to all possibilities, not just the ones that I had locked into my right brain and tried to force with my left. Something else opened up when I stopped believing that I could control life through my positive affirmations, and dropped into the reality that I couldn’t control life. I stopped trying to create life and began living it. It was already here, waiting for me to stop my externally directed efforts so it could get back to the business of reproducing itself.
Just for this moment, see if you can let go of trying to force your wishes through your thinking process. It doesn’t lessen the ability of life to show up; in fact it emphasizes life’s ability to move in ways far greater than you ever could have envisioned when you were trying to orchestrate life to suit your desires.