Dangers of Devotion

Devotional love comes with a heavy side of risk.

I know all too well. I left quite a bit of blood on the field to be playing at the level I am playing.

I wonder often if it has to be that way, or if it's only usually that way.

So many of these practices are like walking a tightrope across a chasm of self-bypass. Except that you notice when you fall off a tightrope, and you could be in bypass for a long time before it comes to your attention.

It is no fucking joke.

A person ready for this practice is a narcissist-magnet. The recipe for surrender into devotional love is sometimes, at first, indistinguishable from the recipe for surrender into the control of a tyrant.

If you are ready for devotional love, you are ready to be vulnerable. You are ready to soften and to open and to trust for the first time in a long time. You are ready to see things differently and have a new experience. You are ready to believe in things you have not experienced. You are ready to enact massive faith in other human beings. You are ready to take responsibility for the entirety of your experience.

This is an incredibly beautiful state, and it is also incredibly delicate. It is a state that is supremely vulnerable to manipulation, and yet there is no other way in. The way in makes you vulnerable to manipulation and you will overcome that the way you do.

Readiness for devotional love is a setup for bliss and equally a setup for immense harm and pain. And these are not mutually exclusive outcomes.

You will walk your path, and it will bring you where you are supposed to be.

Along the way, you deserve to have support. You deserve to move through this surrender in union with yourself, with all parts. You deserve to feel empowered the whole time, even in the squeeze.

As you choose that support, and as you open your heart to new partners…

Beware of anyone who prompts you to alienate or pathologize parts of yourself—the triggered parts, the wounded parts, the parts under protection, the parts that are not-embodied-enough.

Beware of anyone who tells you that your boundaries are stopping you from being vulnerable enough.

Beware of anyone who tells you that you shouldn't be avoiding something that doesn't feel good or escaping something that feels unsafe or playing in your comfort zone.

At best, people who tell you these things don't know the easy, holistic way. At worst, they want to exploit your self-doubt for their own gain—they want to relate on their own terms without considering the fullness of your agency and sovereignty.

Choose your companions wisely if you find yourself here, and rest assured your discernment will only be sharpened by any pain you incur.

This is not the same game you've been playing, because if you're ready for this, it's because you already transcended that. This is a new game with new rules, and your full possession of your own self-interest is the highest law.