By Dr. Elsbeth Meuth
I'm coming to you today with a very personal message. I just felt compelled to share this with you. It's about my own recent journey, and as you may expect, it's all about love and intimacy.
If you prefer to watch the entire message via video click here:
Love and intimacy really has been a theme for me throughout my whole life. It started when I was an infant, deeply in love with my dad, which I of course didn't really acknowledge until my older age. And then through my puberty and my intimate relationships and also friendships. That theme expresses itself now, of course, also in my life's work over the last 20 years.
And to teach about love and intimacy, what's really called for is to keep my own work going, my own personal transformation in the realm of love and intimacy.
I recently made a discovery about loving, love, and being loved … and particularly that part of being loved that still had traces for me around needing to be wanted. And that need for being wanted was connected for me with having to do something to be wanted, to be loved.
That need for being wanted showed up very early in my life. Actually, when I was in the womb, when my parents deliberated of aborting me. I was born in 1949, and the war was over in 1945. Between 45 and 49, I was going to be the fourth child in that time span, and I think my mother was depleted. Germany was resource strapped. Having another child was a huge demand on her. I all can understand this from my conscious, aware mind, from my linear mind.
However, the experience that I had in the womb when I felt not being wanted felt like my life was at stake. Like surviving. You can see, this really has been with me all my life … at certain moments more strongly, and then at times it was totally in the background, it didn't preoccupy me.
For sure, I have loved greatly in my life, and still love greatly to this day.
Yet, in this recent discovery of ‘being loved’ and me being open to ‘being loved’ without that ‘need for being wanted’ and desired … that doesn't mean that I don't want to be desired but as long as it is a need I'm not free… I got to really face it and feel it all. Also you may know, that over the last year since my hysterectomy I really broke open into authenticity, vulnerability and that tender place within me, so I could share that tender place with you. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to do this conversation today.
In that tender place I got in touch with wanting to be loved which still had a lot to do with a ‘need for being wanted.’ And in order to be loved, to be wanted, I noticed that this hook I made up when I was an infant, actually when I was in utero, that that hook of ‘needing to be wanted’ was related to having to do something to be wanted.
For me that meant: I needed to survive, I needed to show up pretty, I needed to look smart, I needed to convince you, I needed to cajole you, I needed to teach you so you would get impacted by my great knowledge, all in service of me being seen and wanted by another.
This ‘need for being wanted’ has been coming crashing down on me over the last little while and getting confronted with it again in my life. Even with having Freddy on my side, who is such a space holder for me in the realm of intimacy and love, for my own exploration and so graciously present to me. I definitely got that there was something more for me to clear. And I'm still in the clearing process. So I don't come to you like the before and after, no, I'm still in the clearing process.
However, I am in a place where I can see it, where I can move with it, where I can consciously leave the ‘need for being wanted’ in the past, like placing it there so that it doesn't invade me any longer and colors my relationship with Freddy and with others.
In this clearing process what has opened up, of course, is also love for myself. And really seeing that I don't need to be someone or someone else. Even today I'm not wearing any makeup. If you can see it … just the lipstick, but that's all. No eye make-up. Just really being myself. I no longer have to make myself pretty, I don't have to show up smart so that I can convince you that you may want me, and I can just be myself, my raw self, my open self, and just the beauty that I am without having to make myself beautiful.
That was a little tender to have this conversation here today. Really coming from the heart. I do feel the tenderness, the vulnerability. And that is where I'm at, and I wanted to share it with you. Perhaps it encourages you, or inspires you to look for yourself where you may want to do the unhooking of something that no longer serves, that actually may be in the very way of you being who you are, and feeling love, being loved, and loving to the fullest the way you may aspire towards.
I want to thank you for being my partner on this journey of exploration into love and intimacy. Lots of love to you from my heart.
To learn more about Elsbeth and her work on ‘Love and Intimacy’ go to:
www.TantraNova.com
773-525-5006
Mary
Thank you so much for sharing! This “unhook” story has me thinking about my early years in life and makes me realize why I do many things that don’t serve me! This may be a game changer for me! Thank you again!
TantraNova Institute
Yes, a game changer. Thanks, Mary, for letting me know. and I if I can be of any support to you, do reach out to me.
Jane
Thank you so much for this, Elspeth. We are the same age! What light you throw on the collective insecurity in utero in the wounded years following the war. My father did not want to have any children, yet in the end there were five. I was the eldest. I am Capricorn, are you? This life has been an amazing journey curve through the vulnerability – and profoundly creative. I love your and Freddy’s work. I feel it is crucial in the core of relationship to the new ways of government, business, growth and intimacy; the great change we all are experiencing at every level starts here with our loved ones and in places of work. It is becoming contagious. Thank you also for the beautiful Rose package with audios. How it deepens my meditations! With love and best wishes from Jane
TantraNova Institute
Thanks so much, Jane, for you beautiful words. I’m a Gemini. So happy to be on the path together.
Barbara
Thank you, Elsbeth. One of my core pieces of work is that I often feel like an imposition, and I appreciate the visual of unhooking myself from that way of thinking. The work doesn’t “end” but there are always new tools and awarenesses to help free myself. Thank you for sharing.
TantraNova Institute
Thanks so much, Barbara, for your touching note. So glad you and I are on the path together. …and I can so feel with you about the sense of being an ‘imposition.’