After a beautiful sensuous evening the other night, I said to Drew, "You know how to play my body like an instrument.
" And he responded, "Yes, I just pluck the strings.
" "What strings?" I asked, "The emotional strings that bind us," he replied.
I frowned.
As a healer I have been perhaps overly cautious of making sure not to be energetically corded into people.
Cording, if you are not familiar with the terminology happens normally in child/parent relationships where energetically, we hook into our parent's energy centers for survival (the umbilical cord is a physical representation of this but we have energetic cords that can hook into others' energy centers or chakras).
By the time we get to be adults, if we are relatively healthy, we know how to provide for our own safety and validation needs and we uncord from our parents.
However, if we have not learned how to be self-sufficient with our own basic needs for validation and safety, we tend to seek out relationships to fulfill those needs.
Of course, life's lessons will bring us relationships so that we can develop our own sense of safety and validation.
It's just when we mistakenly believe that we can only survive by cording through another person, tapping into their energetic centers, that we are being unhealthy.
(By the way, no one can cord into you unless some aspect of you allows it).
An indication that we are cording heavily is when we feel depleted when we are separated from one another, or when we dream the same dreams, or when we can't stop thinking about the other person when we're not near them (sound familiar?) It certainly was common for me.
As one of my issues growing up was not having a sense of emotional boundaries, I had many relationships to learn about setting proper boundaries.
There were so many relationships where I would cling emotionally to the person demanding more and more attention, never feeling loved enough.
I didn't know then that what I was seeking for in them, I needed to first have with myself.
(To the point where the universe had to throw me some long distance relationships as training wheels).
In fact when I broke up with my ex-fiance, I felt like I had an energetic hole the size of a small tree trunk in the middle of my back.
So when Drew mentioned "emotional strings" I had to inquire further.
"Not like energetically cording into one another right?", I asked.
"No," he said, as he wrapped his long arms and legs around me tighter smiling.
And then he said tenderly, "they are strings of faithfulness, devotion, admiration, respect and the desire to take care of you.
" At that moment, I felt a silencing that I often get when Spirit wants me to take note of some Truth.
Though sleepy, I realized that the "strings" that he mentioned were actually the attributes that allow for the kind of intimacy that is the foundation of a Beloved relationship.
In fact, these are the exact qualities that one has to have towards the self before it can be manifested as a relationship.
They were the qualities that I had finally cultivated before Drew appeared in my life.
When we are faithful to our dreams, devoted to the development of our own growth, when we admire ourselves for our conduct in the world, respecting ourselves for the choices we make, and can take care of our most basic needs, we understand that we are, first and foremost, our own Beloveds.
And then the Universe can deliver to us a relationship whose melody is pleasant to the ear as well as the entire body,(physical, emotional and spiritual) rather than a cacophony of fragmented notes, shrill and unsatisfying.
We fell asleep that night entwined but not entangled and I woke up in the morning feeling whole and complete even without his presence in our bed, (his work gets him out of the house early).
I could still hear his soft strumming in my ears.