The Vision

Living Love believes that all of humanity can live in our full potential as embodiments of Divine love and pure awareness, interconnected and balanced with all life. Living Love offers pathways to returning to this by balancing the masculine and feminine principles within each of us. It offers transformational maps regarding the interplay between these principles and methods for bringing them into more harmony for the collective evolution of human consciousness and environmental alignment. Living Love offers practical and powerful tools for creating optimum interpersonal relating between the masculine and feminine resulting in a heart centred, nature aligned and socially just reality. Living Love offers methods and practices that seek to interconnect wild nature with human nature. You are warmly invited to join this movement of inner transformation to outer manifestation through love, awareness, nature and spirit. 

"We are not human beings on a spiritual journey, we are spiritual beings on a human journey"
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

The current state of affairs

If we are at all open to life we might be noticing that the current state of things on the planet and with humanity is somewhat out of balance. Some go so far as to say that we are on a one way path to annihilation. Whatever the truth might there is an invitation being presented to us at this time of change, to enquire deeper within ourselves as to what the change is and how might we be a part of it ?

The Love revolution

We are transitioning into a new paradigm - the paradigm of Love. For thousands of years humanity has primarily lived in a paradigm of power -
(A hierarchical power being expressed as the distorted masculine and a repressed feminine) The 'world' that we have built (that both men and women have) based on this, seems to be collapsing ? If true this might looks like bad news on the surface but if we are willing to go deeper within we might see that there is a gateway being offered to step through into this new paradigm because the old has to die for the new to emerge. This process can seem frightening, especially if try to navigate it alone. The transition in the new paradigm of Love needs to be made collectively. This requires us to live more in our own hearts on a daily basis and to listen to the wisdom of the collective heart and it's guidance as we traverse this new unfamilair landscape together.

The journey home to Love

This love is not an external limited currency that we must give or try to to get. "We ARE the love we are seeking" This is the truth of ever human being on the planet. Our mission is to re-awaken and live AS embodiments of Divine Love. To do this we need to be willing to go on an inward journey to the very centre of our being so we can re-member ourselves to this as a Living embodied expreience. To meet ourselves in the deepest, most honest, naked and uncompromising way. This journey home to love is not some kind of fluffy everything is OK, romantic kind of love but a wild and fierce love that requires us to face our deepest fears, burns away illusions, our limiting beliefs and our conditioning. This love requires us to be in absolute awareness and to live in the present moment. This love embraces every aspect of our being, our darkness and our light, our power and our vulnerability, our spirit and our physicality, our fear and our freedom. When we come home to this, our lives become one continual expression of love and presence lived in limitless ways, interconnectedness and balanced with all life. 

 " . . It is vital that we transform our relationships with people but as well our relationships with nature, as they are intimately interwoven, and to focus ourselves on only one means we cannot come into wholeness or balance with life. . . "

Human nature - wild nature 

"We ARE the nature we live in and depend on"
One of the deepest root causes of our suffering and resulting unconscious distructive actions towards nature comes from our disconnection from it. Most of us hold a belief that we are somehow separate from nature, that it is a commodity for us to use (see video clip) This disconnection creates a profound feeling of emptiness in us. We then spend our lives trying to avoid these feelings of disconnection and emptiness by numbing ourselves and by accumulating material wealth, living mainly out of the body and in the mind, developing addictions, inflicting violence on ourselves and others, raping and pillaging the planet and so on. 
Nature is Divine Love manifested in a miriad of ways and is our teacher. It can return us to Love and the realisation that ALL life is Sacred. To receive the teachings she offers we need to marry our own inner wild nature with the wild nature outside. This requires us to listen deeply and feel her within us, this can done more easily by spending time in more natural environments and consciously connecting.

Love is the way . . . 

In the same way a deep root cause of human suffering is the belief that we are separate from love and that it's a limited external 'something' we need to get or give. The journey is to realise that we ARE the love we are seeking outside of ourselves. This is the foundation stone of the teachings and applies to both men and women equally. It is fundamental if we want to be able to truly receive and give love from a place of connection to the source of life and limitless abundance in ourselves rather than coming to others as beggars with an empty bowl. It is through reconnecting to this Divine Love that we awaken to the larger field of Divine love that is omnipresent, the very fabric of the universe. The work benefits from us participating with it on a collective level because all life is interconnected, in this way we need each other to re-member ourselves to the web. This is why working in a group context is such a powerful catalyst for accelerating the process of individual and collective transformation.
It begins with bringing awareness to ourselves, learning to love ourselves and from there expand out to love others from this abundent connected place in us. We can also then align ourselves with our higher purpose, live from our centre and clarify our place in the web of life. This is a very down to earth embodied path. It is not one that requires us to transcend this world but to be very much in the world.

"Divine Love is awareness and energy recognising each other"

Masculine and Feminine

All life is created out of the union of two principles - Masculine and feminine or energy and consciousness. These two principles exist within the larger field of Divine love which is the very fabric of the entire universe. When using the terms 'masculine' and 'feminine' principles it's not talking about men and women but rather different 'qualities' - that of energy and consciousness - energy is the feminine principle and consciousness the masculine principle. These qualities are needed in balance in each of us for our full potential to be realised individually and collectively for the evolution of all humanity. The current 'environmental crisis' is a result of this profound imbalance of these masculine and feminine principles. A radical suppression of the feminine principle and a dominating expression of the masculine principle - we have over aspired to the masculine and disconnected from the feminine (both men and women have been doing this). We are now being called to re-balance these principles within us so that we can come into balance with these principles in the larger field of existence. 

"The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any other human beings" Erich Fromm

Men and Women

The work honours both men and women equally and the masculine and feminine principles within us all. To be able to come into our full potential on a personal level and evolve the collective consciousness we need to deepen our connection within our own gender as well as with the other gender. Being with our own gender and strengthening this connection is relevent to all men and women beyond sexual attraction preferences.

FOR MEN
Being with other men can support the journey to reclaiming the true Divine Masculine with dignity, depth of consciousness, power and vulneribility. Each man need to discover his own inner sense of the right balance of the maculine and feminine principles within him so he can offer integral leadership which is in the service of life and become a true warrior of the heart. It supports men in finding their purpose by going on a quest into the territory of their inner landscape so they can make empowered action from inner freedom and awareness. It offers men a doorway into what it is to be a true man in his full potential embracing all that he is.

FOR WOMEN
Being with other women can support the journey to reclaiming the true Divine Feminine as a deep flowing intuative power connected and responding to all life moment to moment. Each woman need to discover her own sense of the right balance of the feminine and masculine principles within her so she can bring her gifts into the world. It offers women gateways into this by returning her home to living by her cyclical nature, to the rhythms of water and the moon, her deep intuition, to all that is wild and free and to empowered sexuality for spiritual transformation, her capacity to love with absolute fierceness and tenderness and the innate connection she has with her body as a conductor of universal wisdom while moving through all her life stages.

Relationship - we need each other

We need each other on the deepest most radical level for our personal awakening and collective evolution. Not a fear based co-dependant need  "you are the centre of my world and I must abandon myself to you" (most love movies and love songs sell us this story) but from a place of absolutely living from our own centre and from there being relational with all life. From this experience of living from our own centre, we can experience deep relationship with other human beings based on the experience of Love manifest. They hold up a mirror to us (just by being who they are) that shows us where we have lost our way, forgotten the love we are or where we have abandonded ourselves, in this way they are a gift. The mirror might not always be a comfortable one but it is constant and always true if we can receive it and go inside and look. This mirroring is being presented to us in every moment that we are having any kind of contact with another person. If we spent our whole life in isolation we would limit the possibility of fully awakening as awakening is the experience of being 'One' with all life. Even if we where to have this personal awakening as soon as we come into connection with others we will soon discover if we are able to stay in this centre place in ourselves of unconditional love and pure awareness. 

"A monk who spends 10 years in a monastery evolving his conciousness might think he is enlightened but put him in front a woman fully in her power for 5 minute and he will soon see how fragile the foundation of his awakening is"
David Deida 

At this time on Earth we are being called to carve out new pathways of authentic empowered relating between men and women that goes beyond patriarchy and feminism and beyond (but includes) our sexual attraction preference. A call to create communities of men, women and children together who are willing to support each other on this journey.

Body Temple

Our bodies are nature, Sacred ground and our home. They are a direct doorway to experiencing ourselves as the nature we are and for this reason working directly with the body is a powerful way to reconnect ourselves. The body is made of the 4 elements, earth, air, fire, water, as is all nature - but in our culture we have been taught that the body is not a wild free beautiful expression of nature but a machine to be used and abused, hence this is how we treat nature - what is happening in the environment is simply an external expression of the relationship with our own bodies, with our own sense of self love. When we become intimate with our own bodies and feel the aliveness of these elements in us and Love as an embodied experience of the divine that we are we naturally connect to it's beauty and Sacredness from a deep inner experience of it. We awaken also to the 5th element, that of spirit and so can allow fully the creative life force to move through it. When we do this we experience no separation of us and outer nature. It's then a natural outcome to want to protect and connect to all life for to harm ourselves is to harm all life.

Freedom - The present moment

The present moment lives beyond linear time of future and past and is where true freedom exists, where we arrive into our essence. The breath and body are always naturally in the present moment and so by connecting more deeply to the body and breath we have direct access into the present moment as an embodied experience. Our minds live in the future and the past (the story of us) and this keep us away from experiencing ourselves this way.

Sacred Sexuality

The union of Energy and consciousness
When energy and consciousness meet as creative polarised forces we become Love and return to unity/oneness. Sacred sexuality is a term that describes this experience. Energy is the essential principle of the feminine and consciousness is the essential principle of the masculine and they each live within the field of Divine Love. Making love consciously with another with these two principles is one way we can experience this. Sacred Sexual Union does not happen from any particular technique, it's the context that it's happening in that creates the Sacred Union. 

"Its time we saw sex as the truly sacred art that it is. A deep meditation, a holy communion and a dance with the force of creation."
    
Our sexuality is an important and fundamental aspect to the whole of who we are, not just for the act of sexual union. Sex is intrinsically intertwined with birth and death because through sexual union the creation of life is possible. Therefore by working consciously with sexuality we can also work consciously with birth and death. These are the three deepest human experience we can have. They take us back to the knowing of ourelves beyond the 'human' experience. Our sexuality is fundamental in the journey of returning to our wholeness. If we where a tree our sexuality is like the roots. For the tree to truly flourish into it's full potential the roots need to be strong and healthy and go deep into the earth to able to receive life force through them and so give life to the rest of the tree. In this way it is important that our sexuality is healthy and flowing at it's optimum, that we welcome and embrace it and release it from energetic blocks such as shame and guilt that result in repression or distructive expression.

" . . If you remain aware you will come to know that sex is not just sex. Sex is the outermost layer, deep inside is love, and even deeper is prayer, and deepest is God. Sex can become a union with the divine in all existence. . ."

Tantra

It feels important to explain a little about Tantra
as we sometimes use Tantric methods and the word Tantra seems to put some people off coming to a workshop because they have heard things about it that would not be an experience they would want to have. Some common speculations are that it is about hedonistic erotica, licentiousness, orgies and sexual thrill seeking. This could not be further from the truth although it is also true that there is a lot of this being offered under the name of Tantra in the West. 
Tantra is a path to total awakening - this means the realisation and direct experience that we are a living embodiment of Divine Love experienced as duality through the physical. It offers pathways to return us to unity by weaving together two opposing principles inherent in all of existence, that of the masculine and feminine. It plays with the creative tension between these two principles so that we return to the oneness. Tantra is a map to living the whole of life that includes every aspect of our being. Tantra goes beyond western therapy models as it recognises us as whole beings existing on all levels, mind, body, heart and spirit and it honours both men and women equally.Tantra has become popular in the West in recent years and the focus is generally on the sexual aspect. This is because it teaches that sexual union is a portal to Spiritual awekening. Due to the hundreds of years of sexual repression and distortion in western culture it becoming interesting to people in the west because we are looking for healing our sexuality and longing to experience it as a sacred act and a gateway home to oneness. 

There are different branches of Tantra offering different principles and methods. We offer 'Neo Tantra' which is rooted in the body, influenced by the teachings of the Baul mystics, Vijnanabhairava Tantra as well as direct intuitive knowing. Traditionally Tantra is taught by women because women have a natural intuative knowing about sexuality and all things relational and embodied. It is a path of embodied spirituality and it honours both men and women equally and the need for each other to come into our full potential. 

Shamanism

Shamanism and Tantra are two different paths that lead to the same place, they have much crossover and connection (contrary to popular belief) Shamanism is perhaps the oldest path through which humanity has connected with spirit. It does this through the connecitng to the natural world as in all things lives spirit manifested in a miriad of ways. Shamanism is not a belief system but a way of  knowledge - that which is known from inside for many thousands of years, at least 50,000. All of us have evolved from shamanic cultures. Shamanism is not imported, it is our roots that every culture has embedded within it. In the British Isles this would of been Paganism and Celtic traditions, still very much alive if we look for it. 
Shamanism offers a pathway to understanding and bringing into balance the physical and non physical - energy (physical) and consciousness (none physical) or feminien and masculine. It is an earth based spiritual map. It describes the practices of indigenous people in any culture or community who are the healers, witches, energy transformers, earth lovers etc. It fundamentally honours the feminine as it's teacher (I.E. the Earth and the natural world which are all the feminine principle) Shamans are deeply connected and in tune with the Earth and know how to connect to the Spirit in every life, human, animal, plant or mineral and receive the teachings and gifts they offer.
The world from the shaman's perspective is the inner world and the outer world a reflection of this played out in a miriad of ways. The shamanic teachings are - that we are the centre of our life so to change the world we need to change our self  "Change your perception and you  change your world"
Although our lives now in the West seem very far removed from the experience of indigenous people more than ever we need to reconnect to our own indigenous tribes on our own home land. Shaminism is an Earth based spiritual path, that honours and all life forms on Earth and awakens the spirit within.

How we weave it all together

What we offer at Living Love is an alchemy of many traditions and teachings from around the world interwoven. There are many cultures, spiritual pathways (not the same as religion) and indigenous tribes on Earth. They all point to the same truth in the end - The universe is Love, so are we and the point of life is to return ourselves to BEING a living embodiment of this Divine Love. 

We are the ones we have been waiting for, the time is now.

Click here to find out about the different workshops on offer for this.