Dear Friend,

During my life there have been amazing women who offered to be with me if I gave them power over just one part of myself.

This piece, of course, was a monopoly over my sexuality. If they could ‘own’ they would feel ‘safe’, they said. Protected. They called it ‘commitment’. They called it ‘love’. They called it ‘integrity’.

There is really only one word for what this is. Control.

Control, born of fear.

They say, in effect, “If I can’t own this energy of yours, then I want NOTHING!”

But I don’t believe you can own people. Or their energy. Or their behavior.

So, rather than enjoy the beautiful energies, interactions, and experiences that are available with me, they have nothing.

And then we hear people talk about there being ‘no good men’.

I believe we often live in self-constructed deserts of isolation and fear, parched with thirst when the life-giving oasis is on the other side of the fence we built.

I am very sad and sometimes angry that our egos and need for control destroys so much beauty in our lives…But I can also understand because we all do this at times.

• This is the same need for control that causes a man to chop down an entire forest or take all the fish from the sea to put more numbers on his bank account.
• This is the kind of control that causes otherwise peaceful people to go to other countries to kill others they have never met.
• This is the control that makes love scarce and makes us all lonely in a world with more beautiful and amazing people than ever.

I went on a walk yesterday. During that walk, I was told something by the Wind…

The Wind said to me, “Until all energies flow freely, there can be no peace.” No peace. No freedom. No happiness.

Not until sex flows freely. Not until love flows freely. Not until money (if we choose to make it an energy) flows freely.

Yet, some of the most ‘spiritual’ people I know feel that we must to own others, and put limits on their behavior to be ‘safe’.

I can only shake my head.

I invite YOU to be different. I invite you to be an intrepid explorer of a new way of being. A way not limited by the ‘traditions’ you have been taught. By the ‘concepts’ society chooses to sell you. It is a difficult and fearful path. At times you feel like the first person up your own personal Everest, in deep fog and without a map!

But, that ‘pearl of great price’–your freedom and your truth–though it costs every other friendship, external validation, praise and trapping of a ‘committed relationship’ you could have, is the highest, most beautiful thing that there is.

The price of living according to what is alive inside you, though it might seem high at times, is always worth it.

At the end of that path, you will find, as a wise man once said, “Hundreds of mothers and brothers and sisters and children and [lovers].” In fact, all of existence will be your lover. If you choose to let love flow, all people can be be your family and every place will be your home.

This is what I wish you in this New Year. A place to stand for your truth.

This New Year is going to be a year to fight the battle of our love even more intensely than ever. To take even fewer shortcuts. To compromise ourselves even less. To not sell ourselves for promises of sex, security, belonging, or acceptance. “There is NOTHING that you can give me that is worth compromising my complete, perfect, beautiful self.”

And people can call you what they want:

• “Selfish”
• “Unreliable”
• “Unsafe”
• “Dangerous”

That is just fine. All the labels and all the criticism and all the anger will not and cannot stop us from being the beautiful people who were put here on the planet to love all things. To love all people. To follow where love leads, no matter where it takes us. Because I know that love does not take. It only gives. Love does not harm. It only repairs. And love does not hurt. It only heals. To put barriers and rules and limits around it will just kill the beautiful thing that it is.

This is a perilous path. It is not simple for the strongest among us. It feels almost impossible to go alone. Which is why, I invite you this year, not to go the path alone. Let others support you. Through the dark jungles of fear and swamps of doubt.

We need each other’s support. We cannot do this alone.

Let’s support ourselves by supporting each other in this New Year. Let’s make this the most abundant loving peaceful happy year this planet has ever seen by banishing everything from our lives and hearts and souls that is small and limited and fear-based. Let us move confidently forward on the side of the love and truth and freedom that is inside us. And we will inspire many to join us–which will be the most powerful thing that can be done to save the planet and its people from the destruction that is currently being visited on it and us.

Happy New Year!

In Love,
Ryan Orrock
Founder, Perfect Relating