Speaker Series

August 13, 2004

“Becoming the Love We Seek”: With: Don Drake

We unconsciously spend much of our time looking for love and approval from others, looking to get our unmet emotional needs and desires fulfilled from the outside.

At some level we know that this is a fruitless search, because when we think that we have found someone or something that makes us happy, we know that this fulfillment doesn't last very long and so the search continues.

There is a very simple truth that we all know and yet have somehow forgotten and that is that before we can truly love and accept others we have to love and accept ourselves. Remembering how to love and accept ourselves, moment to moment, is the focus of this evening's presentation.

Through intimate conversation in small groups and one on one, we'll learn how to open our hearts and feel the joy of real connection. Together we can remember how to expand our capacity for love and acceptance and to become that love that we seek.

About our presenter:
After years of seeking spiritual enlightenment, digging through endless psychological issues, and becoming very adept at resisting and avoiding the unacceptable and unloveable parts of myself, I became very ill about 5 years ago and had a classic "dark night of the soul" that lasted a few months. Since then I have been learning to focus my time and energy on continuously expanding my capacity to " love and accept what is" and the result is that the issues that I struggled with for so many years are simply clearing up in the process of living.

I have been facilitating Exploring Spiritual Partnerships groups for the last 2 years and am continuing to learn and share new ways of awakening the intelligence of the Heart.

If you want further information about my work here is my contact info:
Phone: 415.724.7667
Email: dpdrake1@pacbell.net
Website: http://www.healingwords.org

Review of this program:

I want to express my appreciation for all those who attended my presentation at RCI on August 13th, "Becoming the Love We Seek." I was touched by your willingness to take risks and open your hearts with one another.

For those of you who weren't able to attend here is a brief summary of what happened:

I gave a brief talk about my Exploring Spiritual Partnerships groups and how over the past 2 years we have been shifting from a "looking for love" mindset to a "being the love" experience and how this shift makes us very attractive to others.

I spoke about some practices that create the shift.

Some of the practices I mentioned were:

The power of noticing what is, in the moment.
Remembering and focusing feelings of gratitude, appreciation and love in the area around the heart.
Listening with Compassion

We had a short heart centering meditation with a special heart opening CD I brought playing quietly in the background.

We then got into some fun and heart warming, 1 to 1 and small group conversations, where we could practice some of the skills by answering some thought and feeling provoking questions.

After these exercises we were ready for some more intimate Heart connecting activities, including silent eye contact while listening to beautiful inspirational music.

We spend some time in between the different exercises sharing our thoughts and feelings with one another.

We concluded with "gratitude circle" ceremony, where those who wished to share their gratitude and/or appreciation about the people in their lives could speak into a powerful field of compassionate listening.

Warm Regards to All,
Don Drake