I have just spent a week helping to staff the Path of Love at Croydon Hall in the UK. What a beautiful process! It has left me feeling soft and warm and fluid inside, as if I have become a warm blooded invertebrate. So, I feel to share some of my feelings and insights from the week with you.
The Path of Love is a structured, intensive, one week process involving exposure and catharsis whilst tapping into our deepest yearnings. I took part, as a participant, in 2006 and I can still remember the feeling of being completely cleansed by the end of the week. And with that came a great self-respect and respect for others, together with a clarity and honesty of communication to a degree which I had never known before.
This time I was helping on the staff, yet it feels as if I have participated again. The first thing I noticed was that tears were coming easily. Usually I am a typical man in this regard: months can pass without a single tear issuing from me. This week was the opposite; the tears started to flow on the first day and continued till the last. There were tears of sadness, tears of joy, tears of compassion, tears of admiration and tears that were an overflowing of something beyond words. It was wonderful. I love tears. To me, they are the ultimate expression of what it is to be human, an overflowing of feeling.
In the middle of the week, I suddenly felt oppressed by the structure, by having to perform particular tasks at particular times. For years I have led a very free life, doing what I feel to do when I feel to do it, so being part of an organized operation was a challenge. My inner crisis of rebellion only lasted a few hours though: the energy and purpose of the other staff was so inspirational that I was soon fully engaged in the process again. I saw, though, how important is to me that I am in my totality when I am doing something. The feeling of being partial, not fully engaged, was unpleasant.
Another gift came towards the end of the week, when I felt a particular person closing to me, withdrawing from me. I felt the “pangs of disprized love”. For me, it is one of the most painful of feelings, worse than being unloved, to have one’s love for another rejected. Yet I can say it was a gift, for to feel such things in the space of the Path of Love, where one is immersed in a sea of love, with support all around, is a true opportunity to grow and deepen.
Today I feel very fortunate to have been there at Croydon Hall, watching some of my fellow human beings facing their demons with astonishing courage. And seeing their appearance, their energy, flower as they uncovered their nobility, their divinity, their love.
