The Two Aspects of the Divine

I want to share something with you that changed how I understand not just intimacy, but everything. It’s esoteric as hell, but stay with me because it has everything to do with why you close down in the middle of a fight, why love sometimes feels distant even when you’re lying next to your partner, and why certain moments feel so alive you could cry.

There are two aspects of The Divine. Two forces that make up everything, including you.

The first is consciousness. The part of you right now that knows you’re reading this. The awareness that’s aware. The stillness that witnesses. The space in which everything happens.

The second is energy. Life force. Shakti. The pulse of aliveness moving through your body right now. Your heartbeat. Your breath. The hum of sensation in your chest, the way your muscles contract and release, the electricity in your fingertips.

Everything in the universe is made of these two things. Consciousness and energy. Awareness and life.

When you have your awareness fully on the flow of life moving through you, you’re in what’s called the perfect practice. The masculine aspect of The Divine (consciousness) meeting the feminine aspect of The Divine (energy). Dancing together.

Anything else is story.

Not bad. Not wrong. Just story.

The thoughts about why your partner always does that thing. The belief that you’re not enough. The pattern that gets triggered when they text you or speak to you in a certain tone. The rage that erupts when they don’t see you. The shutdown that happens when they reach for you.

All of it is story.

And most of what happens in relationships is that we relate to each other through our stories. We perceive reality through the compounded history of our lives. Your partner sends you a text, and you don’t just receive the text. You receive it through every wound, every disappointment, every moment you weren’t seen or held the way you needed.

So how do we love better?

We learn to stay tethered to both the flow of life and the wide expanse of consciousness. We learn to feel the pulse of aliveness moving through us and be aware that we’re feeling it. We practice having our awareness on life rather than on the stories that keep us separate.

The truth is…whatever you put your awareness on gets amplified.

When you have your awareness on the energy of love, love gets amplified. When you bring your consciousness to the sensation of your partner’s hand on your skin, to the vulnerability in their eyes, to the life force pulsing between you, intimacy deepens.

But when you have your awareness on the story that your partner’s a fucking asshole who always does that thing, guess what gets amplified?

The story.

Love is this the flow of life, directed through the heart, met with full awareness.

That’s it. Life happening. Your awareness tracking it. Moving it through your chest, through your gaze, through your touch, through your breath.

When you’re closed down, contracted, lost in pattern, in projection, you’re cut off from the flow. You’re still technically alive, still breathing. But you’re not connected to it. You’re in story.

So the practice is simple (not easy, but simple): Can you feel the way life is moving through your body right now? The pulse up your spine or through your center column? The sensation in your heart? The aliveness in your hands? You can imagine how a tree, or the ocean, or a river naturally allows the pulse of life to move it and move through it…it doesn’t question it, it feels it and responds to it. We are no different.

Can you bring your awareness more and more to that flow of life, instead of to the thoughts, the patterns, the ways your partner is wrong?

You’re never going to stay there forever. None of us are. We come back and forth. But over time, you get better. 10%, then 11%, then 12%. Tiny incremental shifts until you’re someone who has their awareness on life more than on story.

And in relationship, that changes everything.

Because when you’re both practicing this, when you’re both learning to feel the energy moving through you and meet each other from that place instead of from your wounds, sacred intimacy becomes possible.

A practice for this week:

Multiple times a day, pause. Feel the pulse of life moving through your body. Maybe it’s a sensation in your chest. Maybe it’s a hum in your fingertips. Maybe it’s the breath moving in and out.

Don’t try to change it. Just feel it. Bring your awareness to it.

And if you’re with your partner, see if you can feel the life force moving through them too. Not the story of who they are or what they did. The actual aliveness making them happen.

Start there.