COMPERSION & POLYAMORY
by Anastas Harris, Ph.D. & Steven Vouge, D.C.

Compersion is an act of the God man and woman to each other. To have
true compersion ? to find happiness when your lovers are experiencing
joy with others which means, hopefully great love and an experience
of oneness ? you have to on some level know, understand, accept the
following:

We're all one energy. Close your eyes, meditate and experience the
void which you are, which is all, which your and your lovers all are
part of. The better lover you are the more you will experience this
with your partners and the more you and your partners will experience
this with others. From this perspective this risk seems greater.
This highest of high experiences will not be yours exclusively.
Would it not be better to cling to each other and reserve that which
sanctifies your union for yourselves?

Only if you're gods and none others share this status with you. If
you come from that place in yourself and others which is your god-
selves the very willingness to allow yourselves to merge with you
throws you out of your attachment and propels you into union with
spirit; it up-levels you. You become more and therefore more
desirable and through your trusted connection with your source, more
filled with the mystery of existence. You know and trust the power
of your own connection with your partner and are not afraid to lose
it. The more you do it the more convinced you are of your safety and
the love of your partners, which does not diminish. If the love you
share does seem to diminish, see if they come from truth and if they
honor the union you share, or are they caught up in lust and in the
excitement of sex and the new affirmation of who they are as seen
through the eyes of other lovers. If so, they may not have the depth
of love that can sustain a poly reality.

Poly relationships are secured by a firm foundation of deep love;
without this foundation there isn't an adequate basis for polyamory.
When your realize that you're safe, if you truly love your partners
you get pleasure from their happiness and enrichment and when they
make love with someone other than with you, you rejoice. Their win
is your win. This is COMPERSION.

Unless you love your partners enough to be happy when their lives are
enhanced through love with another you cannot have polyamory and will
want them to like but not love others. Unless you fully embrace
compersion, you want your partners' sexual experiences to be at the
best pleasant but not wonderful and you want their sexualloving with
others to be not all that great. If you suffer from lack of
compersion, you will distrust your partners to limit their pleasure
so that your experience with them is the greatest. The result of
lack of compersion is conflict and each of you have to hide your
degree of pleasure and connection with others or to inhibit
yourselves from following the natural flow of your hearts, senses and
energy. Lack of compersion makes you stuck and leads you to see each
other as the source of your stuckness. Perhaps you choose to hide
your pleasure with some of your lovers because you were afraid and
you'd rather that you and they didn't enjoy sex and love with
others.

When poly really flowers it comes from great freedom and great love ?
a love that has its roots in self love and spiritual source and that
embraces the god man/god woman of your partner and trusts them and
yourself and the love that you share also. This level of love, allows
for compersion. It is usually something that is developed over time
and with experience and only if you have chosen a spiritually mature
partners who know how to love and cherish. If you have not you have
not met one of the pre-requisites for living and playing poly.

HOW TO BUILD COMPERSION

STRETCH.
Take the road of gentleness? employ easy stretches. Each person
knows what they want. Each person knows how much they can stretch to
give it. Beyond that stretch and they begin to hurt. A stretch is
going beyond the comfort zone, enough to generate an experience of
excitement and keep you on your toes but not enough to move into fear
and trepidation. The aim is to have a successful experience that
enables partners to take a step into more poly freedom while the
other partners feel loved and honored and can trust their partners
love for them.

OVERCOME FAMILIARITY
Familiarity takes the edge off both love and sex. This can put the
primary partnerships at a disadvantage when an attractive newcomer
enters the picture. This challenge can be seen as either a reason to
limit or cancel the poly experiences of the primaries or as a
challenge to uplevel their relationship and find ways to eradicate
the familiarity in the extant relationships. Negative familiarity
includes such things as projecting your unfinished psychological
stuff on each other and not owning it or owning it and doing nothing
about it. It includes speaking to each other curtly,
disrespectfully, parentally, childishly, blaming, dishonoring,
shaming, nagging, badgering, yelling, insulting, demanding, etc.

The decision to over come familiarity is a decision to move into
conscious relationship on an accelerated level. To achieve it, you
and your partner has to AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING:

Whenever you experience your partners treating you with familiarity,
refuse to accept it but to point out that how you're being treated
has familiarity in it and that it therefore does not belong to your
relationship. Your partners should own that it is so, if it is so,
and reframe their remarks or actions to replace this familiarity with
respect and honoring

Work on your childhood conditioning so that you stop projecting your
unfinished psychological shit on your partners. This may involve
reading books and doing exercises in the books together. Attend
workshops, watch videos, do counseling.

See whatever in your partner is of truth and love, even when that is
being significantly hidden by negative programming, and to focus on
that. To remember the god-man./god ?woman and speak to and connect
with that part of your partner. Compassionate communication is
helpful in that. Put your attention on what is right with your
partners instead of what is wrong with them.

Do things that will break old expectations and habits. These could
include taking life's opportunities to spend time apart. Build up
valued and honoring relationships outside of the primary
relationships that are not necessarily sensual or sexual or shared
with your partners. Sleep separately at times to build your sense of
your own separateness. If familiarity seems unbreakable it may help
to sleep separately, except on date nights, until familiarity becomes
significantly reduced. Take adventure vacations together ? or apart.
Have date nights and deliberately building up anticipation of date
nights.

Make your partners sacred and special by focusing your attention on
them from a place of powerful presence and appreciation. Keep eye
contact, being responsive and expressive. Send energy and love.
Stay out of the past and the future and into the present. It is just
a matter of choice and follow through. Find meaningful ways to
follow through with your partners.

Create three lists: a NURTURING BEHAVIORS list, a FUN list and a
SURPRISE list.

Express APPRECIATIONS. Let your partners know what you love about
them and what they have done right that you appreciate. Make more of
the stuff that you like than of the stuff that you don't like.

Recognize and honor your partners' role as a wrathful teachers.

Share the deep truth of your life with them on a regular basis.
Become more honest and open about what is really going on in you
without blame. Say things you have trouble admitting to yourself.

Live according to your true and highest nature and following a path
that gives you meaning and joy, so that your radiance lights up your
partners' life and they cannot but honor you and feel blessed by you.
***

Dr. Steven Vogue & Dr. Anistas Harris are featured facilitators at
the Harbin POLYAMORY & TANTRA CONFERENCE, September 12-14 at Harbin
Hot Springs CA. The experiences they provide will entertain, involve
and climax the program Friday night, September 12. Join us.

SHARE--ON THIS SITE--YOUR EXPERIENCE DEVELOPING COMPERSION.

www.worldpolyamoryassociation.com, worldpolyamory@aol.com 808 244-4103