Liberating Evolutionary Love by Andrew Harvey & Chris Saade

Evolutionary love creates a space for the lifelong upholding of the authentic spirit of each individual. It requires the liberation of the self’s reliance on its uniqueness; conversely, this liberation of authenticity releases a great passion for the Divine, for those we care about and for Earth. Love emerges from freedom.

In this session, we’ll look at the concept of divinely incarnating into our uniqueness, for in fulfilling the authentic pattern of who we each are — planned and conceived in the heart of God — we glorify the God of love. We support each other in embodying that incarnation of self (heart, mind and body) in passion, pleasure and commitment to serve.

We’ll also move beyond mere acceptance into the profound realization that our particularities are, in fact, the great gift of our spirits. This is a new paradigm for relationships — not desiring to change others, but supporting them to maximize who they already are. It is the coming together of two freedoms and generating pure love.

In this module, you’ll discover how to practice:

• Seeing the other through “the Eyes of Authenticity” to reframe the idea of beauty and power as the deeply authentic, including how to love and support your partner as they maximize their unique authenticity and full freedom
• Openly appreciating the power of your partner’s vulnerability as well as their authentic particularities, idiosyncrasies, lacks and limitations
• Blessing the authentic, particular specificity of your relationship (when based on authenticity, every relationship will have its own different uniqueness)
• Using the powerful tool of reflecting to the one with whom you are in relationship the power and beauty of their idiosyncratic authenticity — including the beauty of their necessary and inevitable lacks
• Engaging in a Sufi gazing practice that will enable you to experience and adore the holy uniqueness of your partner and receive their blessing in return

In this session, we’ll unEarth the mystical and psychological appreciation of paradox, particularly within relationships (and the distinction between paradoxes and contradictions). Celebrated as far back as ancient cultures, understanding the deep meaning of paradox is key to welcoming life in its rich buoyancy and in relating to the fullness of our beloved, the Divine Beloved and the world.

Evolutionary love holds, with respect and pride, the collective wound within each of us and the profound love between us. The evolutionary understanding and practice of paradox allows us to bestow dignity on the fullness of ourselves and the fullness of our partner, with our joy and grief, successes and defeats. It also allows, during these times of peril, for our democracy to remain grounded in a solid sense of peace and nonviolence while feeling our outrage about injustice and autocracy. The sacred paradox allows us to hold the humanity of our relationships with awe. The sacred paradox unites us with the paradox of joy and grief in the heart of divine love.

Andrew will bring his vision of God as Divine Dancer to ignite the rapture that comes from not only accepting but embracing paradox as God’s signature.

In this module, you’ll discover how to practice:

• Holding paradox as the basic unifying and catalyzing energy of life, and distinguishing between paradox and contradiction
• Upholding and affirming the paradoxes of life as sacred and generative (anger/peace, anxiety/excitement, grief/joy, attraction/withdrawal, etc.)
• Honor defeats in your relationship and in your life as a sacred part of breakthroughs, thus reframing failure in the light of paradoxical insight
• Using the powerful tool of the “two hands,” which dismantles resistances and unleashes creativity and intimacy
• Engaging in a sacred practice of tonglen tailored for couples willing to work on their own and their partner’s fears and vulnerabilities in sacred compassion

In evolutionary relationships, the deep feelings and the core desires of the heart are held sacred by both partners. It is the heart which enables us to see life, the journey, the struggle and the epic adventure through the eyes of the lover. The call to the heart and its core desires are sacred. We are to allow ourselves to profoundly feel the divine source of love, the authentic spirit of our partner and friends, and the world in its evolutionary struggle.

In this session, we’ll explore a liberated unleashing of our own heart, the intimacy that binds our deepest desires with the Heart of hearts, and the heart of the world. Furthermore, we will see the power and joy of being a guardian and a protector of the authenticity and hearts of the ones we love.

In this module, you’ll discover how to practice:

• Focusing on, naming, honoring and acting on the heart’s intense core desires, with a crucial distinction between wishes and desires
• Recognizing that feelings are the necessary deeper aspect of emotionality, and how crucial it is to reach to the deepest feelings of the heart and to listen to their desires
• Bringing your desires to your partners and asking for their hearts’ desires; engaging in the beautiful intimate dance of sharing desires
• Using the tool of honoring both your heart’s desire and those of your partner, without pathologizing these desires and without asking yourself or your partner to compromise — rather, trusting in a higher interplay that leads to a creative eruption

Andrew will bring his understanding of the Sufi vision of the lover to offer a mystical infusion of divine wisdom and divine love for both partners.

Loving someone passionately means deconstructing the dream of how things or people “should” be, and the birth of a new horizon drawn by two sacred freedoms and very particular authenticities. The unique and authentic idiosyncratic spirit of each individual (in their personality as well as in their heart desires) is the ineffable ground from which sprouts love, romance and a sacred contribution to the world. Love grows by leaps and bounds when advocating and honoring the idiosyncratic characteristics of partner and friends, and furthermore, honoring them deeply. Evolutionary love is about supporting the other to become more of who they are, never less.

Evolutionary love is also recognizing and encouraging the divine in the other with celebration and reverence.

In this module, you’ll discover how to practice:

• Reflecting to your partner and friends how their idiosyncratic uniqueness is the source of their great creative power (especially when they doubt their own idiosyncratic powers)
• Celebrating differences in personality and desires even if and when these differences deprive you of important personal needs
• Connecting the advocacy of differences within relationships to the global advocacy of (non-abusive) differences
• Using the great tool of honoring: blessing, reflecting and romancing

Andrew will offer a sacred marriage ceremony from the Hindu tradition for couples who want to risk authentic evolutionary love.

Evolutionary love guides us to the energizing power of co-creation — especially the co-creation of a shared vision of social solidarity. Love suffocates when it’s privatized. The broader the scope of our love — ecological, social, global and so on — the more passion we generate to give to our partner and our friends.

When a couple co-creates a joint higher vision that serves freedom, peace, inclusion and justice, they find themselves partaking and resourcing in the great love that sustains the world’s evolution. Evolutionary love cannot be separated from its roots in the global struggle for freedom, peace and justice. Privatizing a relationship chokes it. We develop our relationship by taking communion, individually and together, in the dream of Divine love for our world.

In this module, you’ll discover how to practice:

• Acknowledging that our relationships intrinsically partake and resource in the evolutionary great struggle of the world
• Holding co-creation up as the coming together of two powerful freedoms to discover the sacred “third” that inspires both
• Co-creating a powerful social vision of action that empowers the world and deeply bonds and enriches the relationship
• Using the tool of intentionally impassioning your common higher purpose vision (the great love affair in the space between self, relationship and the dream)
• Engaging in a sacred Christian practice invoking the descending flame of the creative spirit

In the midst of these hard and very dangerous times, we will benefit a great deal from passionately celebrating our epic journey. We can dance the beauty of our existence and our friendship with the God of love even in the midst of destruction, pain and sorrow. What we ultimately celebrate is the sacred presence of the authentic and the nobility of the epic evolutionary struggle of love. The Divine shines through our authenticity and our loving sense of solidarity.

Through the ongoing waves of defeats and breakthroughs, what is amazing for us is to be privy to the numinosity of the authentic and the heroic journey of love. Relationships feed on celebration: celebrating each partner in their authenticity, their body and their longings, as well as celebrating the relationship itself. Also, and this is key for every celebration, celebrating defeats as well as creative manifestations, losses as well as gains. The evolutionary leap is to learn to celebrate the authentic as the presence of the Divine through our genuine humanity.

In this module, you’ll discover how to practice:

• Celebrating authenticity wherever you see it, and the particular “song of the heart” that each of us uniquely carries
• Celebrating the noble struggle (not only the peaceful and harmonious moments)
• Celebrating the defeats (which are intrinsically part of any great creation); the audacity of love and its inescapable defeats are an intimate dance of splendor
• Celebrating the beauty of the holy Beloved in adoration of the heart
• Using the incredible tool of symbolic gifting

In evolutionary relationships, lovemaking becomes a ritual to celebrate the ineffable forces in the Universe — foundational forces of love and sensuality that are coming together to further the creation of the world. Evolutionary sexuality moves us beyond privatizing the act of sex. The union of two lovers becomes a mode of profound worship, a release of energy dedicated to the goddess of love and to the pursuit of peace and justice. Individuals able to raise lovemaking to this level reclaim their bodies in their authentic varieties and luminous imperfections. They find the ecstasy of their unbounded connection to the Divine and the Earth through their surrendered union with their partner. Evolutionary sexuality becomes a most generous celebration of the sublime, unhindered by psychological bargaining and repetitive frustrations.

Andrew will bring his vision of embodied sacred passion as the essential fuel for sacred activism.

In this module, you’ll discover how to practice:

• “Authenticizing” the beautiful idiosyncrasy of each person’s unique body and sexuality
• Approaching sexuality at its highest as the great ritual of the great union (beyond psychological frustrations and bargaining)
• Intentionally dedicating the energy born of sexual love for service and creativity
• Using the tool of raising the body in its sexual union to its highest symbolic significance as a divine agent of freedom, peace and justice
• Engaging in the tantric practice of the golden body in communion with your partner