Dear friend,

I want to talk to you about your flirt, romance and inner lovers.

Most of us expect love, romance, flirtation to happen to us, to come from outside, another person, but consider for a moment that it actually comes from within – you. Many of us carry very strong notions and images of what needs to be present for romance to be just so. But let’s be honest for a moment: Is that true?

How great a flirt are you? Do you know how to romance yourself? Will you treat yourself like you’d treat a lover, or better, how you (in your secret dreams) imagine a lover treating you?

Uhm… That got you thinking, didn’t it?

The erotic was never meant just for drawn curtains and secret interludes with a lover in the dark. Oh no, the erotic IS life in all its nuances, and you get to live an erotic life …simply in the way you engage with it.

Truth out: I love romance and I’m a natural flirt.

Flirting for me is a joyful, surprising, sometimes mind-bending way of engaging with others – men, women, children, dogs. I love play and double entendres with words that catch me off guard, tickle me, plant an image in my head or get me thinking. A moment of cleverness like that goes a long way and can easily make my day.

And really, it’s nothing more, nothing else.

When I experience a stinginess in American flirting — it’s mostly focused upon figuring out if you’re gonna go “somewhere” with it or not – it makes me a tad dejected. What happened to the joy of simply connecting playfully with no agenda? But oh, I digress and dream of Europe.

That I’m attuned to clever word play, romance and sensory living doesn’t automatically mean I am my own best romantic partner. For years I tended to flood all my love and lust onto men, often unavailable or unable to take in my outpours, and left was I with very little love and romance for me. Deflated. Debunked. Know that feeling?

No Man. No Plan. In Paris.

I’ve had to work hard to become my own best lover. So when I recently took myself to allegedly - the most romantic city in the world - Paris, it was because I wanted to experience myself in a setting of romance, beauty, sensuality and sacredness. I wanted to travel and discover who I am now and see how comfortable I’d be as a free, single woman, amidst all things sensuous. No man. No plan. Not even attending all the sights and doing the typical Paris things. But simply practice what I preach – moment to moment, follow my heart, nose, gut and feet as they took me places of curiosity.

Prior times in Paris, men have filled most of the not-so-romantic picture. As if to prove me wrong, Paris has been nudging me for a long time. Lolo’s Boudoir certainly has a Parisian flair. My ex gifted me a French antique car. Friends give me Paris gifts, a bling-y Eiffel-tower keyring, a hat box with classic Parisian images on it, and so forth. A sign? Well, I decided so and added a week in Paris to my latest trip to Denmark.

Getting Lost to Be Found

I’m happy to report that I adored being alone in Paris. Staying in the Marais and Bastille area, I was in walking distance to central Paris just like I wanted it. Because, this is what I do first. I walk, letting the grit of the city under my skin, getting lost in the narrow alleys and discovering different neighborhoods. Sometimes we have to get lost to be found.

Tickle my Ears with What I don’t Understand

In no hurry, I bathed in the balmy breeze of early summer. Scents. Sounds. Tastes. Surrounded by both ancient and futuristic architecture, clever grafitti seen in the most surprising places, there were people of all colors and flavors, more artful looking than any of the art in the museums. I willingly allowed the musicality of the language I hardly understand to tickle my erect ears. Of course, ever so often, a champagne break. Or an Angeline’s chocolate break.

Followed by dinner alone at a classic curbside bistro, biting into a Beuf Cognac and getting tipsy on wine, not minding than everyone around me huddled together in pairs and chain-smoked. Blisters and moments of wishful thinking side, I felt so utterly free and full of delight.

Saying Yes. Saying No. Can it be so Easy?

When a man approached me at the foot of Cathedrale Nostre-Dame and singlehandedly decided I was going to be his romance for the day, I had a bit of deja vu to other such invitations in Paris. But I walked with him. When we arrived at the Pompidou Centre, I said, “Thank you very much, it’s been pleasant, and now I wish to experience this exhibit ALONE.” Kindly, he left. Can it be so easy? To say yes. To say no. To simply express what’s true each moment. I rejoiced within …. and felt full of self-honor.

Oh my Sacred Heart.

One morning, really too skimpily dressed for an overcast day, I went to the Sacre-Ceur Bastille at the top of Montmartre. I didn’t know why I was going, only a vague hunch, but as I sat inside the church with eyes closed, I experienced the strangest thing. Fuzzy warmth spread in my chest left side. My heart beat throughout my body, the pounding so unusually pronounced I got a little scared. Fascinated too, I breathed into it, only to discover my heart was ‘merely’ exalted. Home-coming comes to mind. I’d come to warm my sacred heart at the church, quite possibly healing the last snippets of past heart wounds.

Perfection tends to unfold when we let ourselves be guided, by our instinctual feet.

And so… of course…. some might say:

That night I met a man … oh la la!

It’s a bit uncanny, this: the ONLY thing I DID plan ahead was to go to a dinner held by an American man who has been holding large Sunday gatherings for the past 50 years. There I met this man. Gallantly, he picked me up on his white electric motorcycle the next night and took me for dinner. We shared lots of connection and tenderness. Not exactly the classic Parisian rendezvous (what happens in Paris …), but very heartfelt and fitting to who I am now: a woman with a sacred heart.

I’m tempted to say that Paris always delivers – not what you want, but what you need – at the risk of adding to the many already tested and tried myths about this lovely city.

She knows a Secret About Death

The last day in Paris I appropriately went to the Pere du Lachaise. It’s a famous cemetery with elaborately decorated graves and beautiful gardens and statues. What tribute we so willingly pay to the lives of the dead. What if we paid, I wonder, as much tribute to our lives, as we are living them?

While wandering about I kept coming back to this lady – she looks like she knows a secret about death, doesn’t she? What might we find in death? Freedom, I think. As we let our ideas, our self-images, our old wounds, our desires and attachments, even our myths about Paris, die to us. If we let moments and loves pass through us. If we loosen our grip on life. We will discover an inner freedom.

This, I believe, is the freedom your inner lover has to offer you, my dear friend.

This summer, I suggest you invite your inner lover out to play.

How do you want to romance your life?

Dream it lusty and wondrous and heart-full, no matter what and who’s in it (or not)?

It is, after all, your life.

(Photos from Pompidou Exhibit and around Paris)

- Lone

Want your own Paris Adventure ?

MEET ME IN PARIS  – Romance your life and discover your inner lover.

AN UPDATE:

Hello fellow adventurers

"Romance Your Life Retreat" Dates have been pushed to next June 2012, however, yours truly is off to Paris to photograph a client and research these retreats this September.

As part of the retreat we will indulge in French countryside luxury and photograph at this beautiful estate. I will be checking it out on my upcoming trip and hope to share photos and a blog about it soon. http://www.moulinbregeon.com/Home.html

Just sayin' - it will be juicy, it will be fun, it will be creative and life changing. I hope some of you will join us.

Much love,

Lone

Learn more here >>> MEET ME IN PARIS RETREAT

Posted in http://divinelyfurious.com/romancing-life/

Retreat details: http://www.lolosboudoir.com/node/511

email   lone@lonemorch.com
web     www.lonemorch.com
book    www.seeingredthebook.com
course  www.freeyoursacredjourney.com
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