Honoring of a need for endings
I see the honoring of a need for endings as an essential part of ethical practice and ethical life. How can we have a full excited Yes to other human souls and relationships, if that results in entanglements, entitlements and assumptions that mean people cannot honour and thank us for our No?
Many people describe intimate relationships as having “failed” because they end. But how can we truly love one another, if we only accept and offer love in one form forever without end?
Paradoxically, if we honor and thank each other’s Nos, undertake conscious uncouplings, and mark our endings with rites of passage, we can potentially bring more stability and permanence into our dance of loving connection with one another.
We can let our loving relationships evolve and change as they need to, and accept the lonely loss, grief and relief in letting go.
As a teacher of sex and sacred intimacy, it is my job and vocation to fall in love with each student who comes to work with me. I see their unique soul; I know their magnificence; I allow the wonder of who and how they are to impact me.
To offer a safe-enough holding environment for them to learn and grow, I meet them with both my unconditional love and my clear boundaries. They idealize me and I fail them, and in failing them I provide challenges that help them feel their differentiation and polish their own unique shining.
And with almost every beloved student, there is a time for our relationship to end. We move apart in the net of jewels, and go into a new alignment that situates us in each other’s past. Where there once was passionate connection, regular engagement and fruitful co-learning, there is silence, distance and done.
So it is for all who teach to actually empower students, and not to create disciples and dependencies. And so it is for how we show up in less formally delineated intimacies as each other’s teachers. There is grief in each goodbye, and an opening that welcomes.
Caffyn Jesse
Translated by Jordi Oller
Caffyn Jesse website: https://www.erospirit.ca/
