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It's called Luminous Life Force.
It's sacred. It's sexual. It's healing.
You’re here to be luminous. … To remember your magic.
We have the capacity to rise into our highest consciousness through intense times when we melt into a deeper version of love and acceptance, and follow the rules of nature.
I am the open door that no one can close, and I want to open doors that you never even knew existed. We will connect through meditation, spirituality and use our ancient sexual energy, to heal together.
Join me and let’s cultivate our most luminous life force together. ❤️
River Roaring co-organizes the Sacred Sexuality Austin Empowerment Circle Friday evening events, and facilitates weekend workshops and private muse-and-mentoring programs, all in-person in her temple in the beautiful city of Austin, Texas.
More information can be found here:
riverroaring.com
Hello darling, this is River Roaring celebrating the Luminous Life Force in us all. Hello, darling. Where does that phrase come from? Hello, darling. Who am I imitating?
River Roaring:Here's a little inside scoop. I'm imitating Maeve from Westworld who was the madam in the saloon. Does that bring back any memories for anybody? I really enjoyed her character. Hello, darling.
River Roaring:So hello, darling. Welcome. This episode is about sovereignty and connection in our intimate relationships and finding that balance in our relationships. So I was reading in my spiritual readings this morning about how the sexual power is such a completely unique part of our soul and our spirit, And it is a sacred and holy energy, the sexual energy. And sexual intercourse is as the Eucharist of our root chakra portal that sexual union is a holy communion of the body.
River Roaring:It allows us to find the oneness of earth and sky, the oneness of male and female, the oneness of reaching and waiting, which is really about the sovereignty and connection, polarity. And then further in the spiritual readings it says where I had to laugh, sex is This is one of the great virtues of sexual relationships, that we get to feel the catalyst or challenges and we feel all kinds of befuddlement, anger, and grief. And yet, this is the holiest path we can walk because of that. Because when we enter this kind of relationship we are saying, I'm ready to be befuddled and confused and figure out what life on earth here is all about. I'm an explorer and I have been an explorer.
River Roaring:I have for the past twenty years, well, well, since I was born, of course, exploring intimate relationship by watching. I watched my family the way that intimate relationships work there. Some things were healthy, and a lot of things were very unhealthy in that intimate relationship group of my family that I grew up in, and that is not the fault of anybody. I'm not blaming anybody. I know that my parents were doing every single thing they had with the tools they were given as they grew up.
River Roaring:And growing up, probably like you, I got to witness a lot of unhealthy intimate relating. And then I personally set out at the age of 18. I set out away from the house into a new city by myself. By the time I was 19, I was moving in with my boyfriend for the first time. So that's really, I was really just a kid and having a lot of fun and moved in with my boyfriend at age 19.
River Roaring:And then I had three relationships like that where I lived with a man for a few years and then we would break up and split up and I'd be separate and single for about a year. And then I would move in with another man for years, and then I was separate for a year or so, and then moved in with another man for years. And this takes me until almost when I'm 40 and twenty years ago, that's when I started actually intentionally exploring deep intimate relationship. And for the last twenty years, I've been very focused more than any other thing on how intimate relationships work. And I believe I've gotten into, like, every kind of form of intimate relationship and every kind of dynamic and explored all the ups and all the downs in the last twenty years as I have been polyamorous and I get I've identified in the since the beginning as kinky, polyamorous, pansexual, know, just very open to sexual intimate relationship and not just open but engaging in a lot of them and also with a deep sense of philosophical exploration and learning.
River Roaring:Last twenty years has been very intentionally learning about intimate relationships as I've entered them. And in those twenty years of deep exploration, as I've been in only open relationships with my intimate partners, including now, there's a lot to explore there. I mean, if we open ourselves to more than one intimate relationship, there are lots of extra complexities there of exploration and learning, and I've been on that journey for twenty years, and in that time, I've had several long term partners. My current partner, who's my primary main partner, we've been together almost five years, and as I said, we're open in our sexual and intimate relationship. And so I'm just sharing where I come from here.
River Roaring:I feel like I have explored a lot of the nooks and crannies available out there so I can live to tell. And I today want to speak about a dynamic that I've seen, sovereignty and connection. Sovereignty is one side of it. Connection is the other side of it. And what I've seen is that in intimate relationship, and of course I've also made my career in intimate relationship for the past about fifteen years, so what I've seen in this is two huge generalized groups of people in an intimate relationship.
River Roaring:So this is a bit of an oversimplification as everything really is in our language. And I've seen these dynamics and they play out over and over in relationships of sexual and intimate relationship. And the dynamics are one person is a sovereignty seeker and the other person is more of a connection craver. So one person is on a life journey. The sovereignty seeker is on a life journey to create more sovereignty in their life, And often the sovereignty seeker has grown up, I talked about the growing up years, has grown up in a home where there was a lot of connection.
River Roaring:And there was a lot of emotional connection and possibly even to the enmeshment level of very connected. And that healthy sovereignty is so exciting, so beautiful, and I'm certainly striving for it. And when sovereignty gets unhealthy, well, it's I'm I'm sorry. The the sovereignty seeker grew up in a home that was more connected and possibly even overly so, which I'm just gonna call enmeshment right now. And so that person is on a journey usually seeking their own sovereignty.
River Roaring:And so they're wanting to find a way to create their own individuality and let go of unhealthy connections unhealthy around them that are emotionally enmeshed or needy or overly connected. They wanna get rid of those and establish sovereign space. The Sovereignty Seeker is who I'm calling this person. And the connection craver usually grew up in a home that was full of too much sovereignty because too much sovereignty can start to look like isolation and rudeness to one another and maybe even score keeping. Know, and everyone in the home, let's say, is protecting their sovereign space, then the home can end up being very disconnected and isolated.
River Roaring:Everyone is in the home. You can be in the bed with your partner and isolated. I think we all have felt that at least once, at least I have once in the same bed with someone yet feeling isolated, having dinner with someone across the table every night but feeling isolated. So I'll just disclose that I grew up in a home that was on the isolating sovereignty side, unhealthy sovereignty side, not connected emotionally, not blaming anybody. That's just what happened and what I got to grow up in as an opportunity for me to leave the home and then seek my own connection so I crave the emotional connection.
River Roaring:And as an adult out of the home, I have been on a very long exploration of seeking healthy connection, not the neediness. And I, as a connection craver, would be very natural for me to hook up intimately with a sovereignty sovereignty seeker because we are actually unconsciously seeking out the partner who will help us balance ourselves and that together we can balance. And when we're able to balance and find that beautiful, healthy sovereignty and connection balance between two intimate partners and engage in sexual connection, then it can become holy communion. It can become an opportunity for divine union where each partner is actually on a multidimensional level tapping into a level of balance and coherence that is so healthy that it's actually life giving and healing to both partners. So I am certainly in the camp of striving for this healthy sovereignty and connection in my intimate relationships.
River Roaring:Now some people might call this attachment styles, right, because there's classically the avoidant attachment style and the anxious attachment style. If we wanted to go into that language, the anxious attacher would be more like the connect what I'm calling the connection craver, and the avoidant attacher attachment style would be the one I'm calling sovereignty seeker. So we can use a lot of different terminologies, but in all of my experience I've seen these two types of people generally try to get together and seek that harmony and balance. So in the greatest success of these balance and coherence between sovereignty seeking and connection craving, we can have this divine union, which could be seen as one of the goals of being a human on earth is to achieve this beautiful divine union and healing at a deepest level. And these two types of people could also come together intimately and explode and blow each other up in about two seconds.
River Roaring:Know, as soon as you get to know one another, it could maybe take a week, a month, maybe it could take five years, ten years, maybe these styles can get together and be incongruent and unhealthy and establish those patterns to explore and learn for decades, right, before finding finding the divine union. So I'm speaking today because I want to share what I've learned about this seemingly archetypal polarity between intimate partners and what it's like and maybe some tips to find that divine union. Just starting right now, I'll ask you, how do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as a person who grew up with a lot of emotional connection, maybe even got enmeshed, unhealthy, and a lot of maybe even over giving to each other or neediness of each other, like I need this connection or it's unhealthy. Did you grow up in a home where you felt almost suffocated by others around you and their emotional connection with you?
River Roaring:The easiest word I have is enmeshment, too much neediness and not healthy connection emotionally. If so, you may have a life journey of establishing your own limits and boundaries and sovereignty and saying, hey, you keep your stuff to you, I'll keep my stuff to me. I want my own space. I want my own space. I want my own sovereignty.
River Roaring:I'm seeking my sovereignty. And you may go through a life of exploring what that means. And on the other hand, are you the type of person who more so grew up in a home that lacked emotional connection at all? There wasn't any there or wasn't enough. That's very common.
River Roaring:They're both very common. And then they're and it's no one's fault. Everyone was trying to everyone's assuming I'm assuming every single human is doing their best in every moment. And so did you grow up in the home that was lack of emotional connection and heart connection like I did? And therefore, I'm on a lifelong journey of seeking.
River Roaring:I'm craving connection in a healthy way and I'm trying on my life the reason it's a lifelong journey is because of why I'm making this podcast. It's very difficult to find the balance with yourself and with a partner. And so I'm still refining the edges of that balance definitely. It probably is a lifelong journey. And so I have been in relationships that got too close and needy and connected.
River Roaring:We were both connection craving, and it got enmeshed. And I have certainly been in relationships in the past that were too many sovereignty seekers. Two and together, we had together, we created an environment. This I'm thinking of someone I was with for nine years. And by the end of it, I felt like we were just these two humans in our own little silos because we had been so busy protecting our sovereignty that we had turned into isolation and scorekeeping with one another, and there would be, like, competitive moments.
River Roaring:Like, the most silly example is that one time we were had two different cars at a location, and we were gonna drive to the next location and meet. Maybe we were meeting at a bar and then driving somewhere else afterward. We both got in our cars, and we started racing one another to the second location. And I was like, what are we doing? I've got all caught up in it.
River Roaring:And then I'm like, what am I doing? And it was and I reflected that's a symbol of this entire relationship. We're, like, so protected in our own spaces that we're competing with one another. We're overly imbalanced in seeking our sovereignty and now we've become isolated and we're score keeping. So this is the problem that I see with many, many relationships is maybe in not understanding that there are these two natural directions that people are going in and that if we become aware of the dynamics, Oh, you're a sovereignty seeker, and oh, you're a connection craver, then we can start to shine a light and become at choice.
River Roaring:When we shine a light on something, we're at choice with that thing. So I'm shining a light and asking you which you are, which your partners are, or which you've come across before in partnership. And has this dynamic exploded your partnership? Because if the sovereignty seeker is busy setting a bunch of limits and saying, no. Stay away from me.
River Roaring:This is my space too much, then the connection craver is gonna be like, well, screw you. You know? I don't wanna be in this unhealthy thing I grew up in. I'm out of here. And if the connection craver is like, be with me and be with me.
River Roaring:Be connected. I'm getting very needy, and I just wanna mesh with you, enmesh with you, then the sovereignty seeker is like, what in the heck? Get away from me. Get away from me. And it can easily explode a relationship.
River Roaring:I would almost say that almost every relationship that explodes is and doesn't work out, I'll say. Is I mean, I wonder. I wonder if I could be brought a thousand examples of relationships that didn't work out, and we could find in every one of them this person wanted more limits and boundaries, and they were seeking the healthy sovereignty and this person just wanted more connection and they were seeking the healthy connection but didn't have the tools to come together and balance that sovereignty and that connection. In fact, my partner right now and I have a stated intention of finding the healthy sovereignty connection between us. So I want to invite you here to take a moment and look inside your own heart and ask your own heart.
River Roaring:Hello, beautiful heart. Have you felt like people were invading you too often and trying to get too much of you, that they were maybe needy of your heart and wanted to get too enmeshed with you and not give you enough space for yourself, that may be that you're a sovereignty seeker. And on the other hand, if you look inside your heart and you look at especially how you grew up and what habits you're bringing forward into the world right now, are you a person who grew up in a place that just didn't have the emotional support that you needed as you grew, to be a super healthy emotional individual, so it was just missing. And you were very easily able to be sovereign because you were emotionally isolated through not your own choice, you just were. And so maybe you are now in your life on a life journey of craving more connection, emotionally emotionally healthy healthy connection.
River Roaring:Connection. And how do we do it? You know? The sovereignty seeker is going to be on a journey of setting limits and saying, no. No.
River Roaring:I will not do that with you. No. I need more space than that. No. Thank you.
River Roaring:I love you. And also, I need this space to really nourish who I want to be. And the Connection Craver is going to be on a journey of going, it's scary to open up to you emotionally. It's very scary. I want to go run back and protect my isolated space because of how I grew up, but I crave the connection.
River Roaring:Even though it's scary, I want to say yes more often to you. It's not all that simple as no's and yes's, but there is a deep truth to that. One is wanting to say no more often and create healthy sovereignty. The other one's wanting to say yes, come on, come here, come here more often, open up, even though it's scary on both sides. And one wants to create that connection.
River Roaring:So it's very easy for these turn into these never ending skirmishes. Do you know what I'm talking about, my darling? So what I want to bring today is that when you are in a place of intimate partnership, even if it is someone you just met or saw online and you're just starting to chat with them online, that's like the beginning, or if you just met them in person for the very, very first time and you're just speaking with them. Anywhere from that very initial sighting or meeting of another all the way through to, we've been married thirty years. Anywhere in that span of your intimate relationships from longing for one to having had one for decades or more than one.
River Roaring:I'm asking you right now to reflect in and inviting you. I'm inviting you to reflect in on when I say no and I protect my sovereignty, is it coming from a loving place, and do I also feel lovingly connected as I establish this sovereignty? Sometimes I describe the loving no, like, you know, I love you and I'm really happy we have this and I'm a no to this right now. The word no is complete, of course. This is a well known established fact in sexuality trainings.
River Roaring:You don't have to explain explain a no. On the other hand, what I'm talking about with this seeking of the balance is a loving no can go a long way to maintaining that connection and reassuring the other, I'm connected with you, I'm here with you, I'm a no to what that is so that I can find myself. I feel in my heart the positivity of that for me and you and I feel that this loving no is better for both of us and I'm not going anywhere. I just need this space to find myself and become and express my truth. Or when you say no, I want to protect this boundary and I wanna be sovereign, deep down is the feeling, oh, it's so loving and nourishing, and I'm lovingly communicating it and creating even more connection because or am I feeling shut down, closed down, and I want to shut the door to the other person, in which case maybe I'm in an unhealthy moment where if I do this too often, I'm going to end up isolated over here.
River Roaring:And likewise, when you have a desire to reach out to the other and be like, Hey, let's connect. Hey, I want to open to you. Hey, I want to share with you. I want to hold you. I want to hear you.
River Roaring:I want to express with you, come on, come closer to me. I invite you Connection Craver to get still with yourself, look deep inside your own heart, which of course means quieting your mind, you can hear your heart and ask your heart, is this desire for connection that I have for loving wholeness so that we can both raise the level of our authenticity together and be stronger together? Or do I have inside me this little feeling of neediness and clinging and caretaking, over giving, lack of a boundary because of neediness? And I think for me, my experience has been, it's a moment by moment inquiry, move by move, you know, expression to the other one at a time. Like if I'm on a dating app and I just met someone, we're just starting to talk, every expression to them I can look at and go, is this from open hearted sovereignty and connection in a healthy way that I'm expressing this?
River Roaring:Or am I already in the first Volley over to the person on the dating app, first text, showing neediness or showing a bent toward isolated style of sovereignty and scorekeeping and you versus me competitive. And in every realm, so like if I'm just starting a relationship, where am I sitting and standing? If I'm in the middle of nourishing a new relationship, how are we relating in that realm and balance? If I'm in a thirty year marriage, what has our thirty years been like when we look at it from sovereignty, seeking, and connection craving? And has it risen into an honest and authentic partnership of healthy sovereignty and connection?
River Roaring:So in my journey, personally, I will say that I definitely have appreciated that in my life I started out because I was trained from the household to be isolated, unhealthily sovereign, but I did start out creating my own version of self expression, very sovereign. When I woke up to these dynamics, I was almost 40 years old and I was like, wait a minute, I am so sovereign that I'm completely isolated. I was like, completely. I'm like, oh my god, look at this. I've just lost my long term partner.
River Roaring:We moved out from one another and broke up. I had invested quote unquote everything in that partner, so I had no real friends. I had work friends, but no private life actual friends because I would spend all my private life with that one partner, which was not healthy. And so now that that's gone, I've got no friends, no partner, intimate partner. I really don't have a family connection because haven't nourished that.
River Roaring:I really don't have any I'm living by myself and I have my own law office. I have assistant, but it's my office. And so basically nobody is telling me what to do, which is awesome. And this is what I built on purpose is that no one could tell me what to do. And I'm sitting alone in my little silo all by myself completely isolated.
River Roaring:So I've won on the scorekeeping. I have created my I've sought sovereignty and pretty much established it, and I'm all by myself. I'm glad I can laugh about this now, twenty years later. And so then I've gone on a journey of, oh my gosh, I'm seeking, I'm creating connection. I'm creating connection, and I've entered relationship after relationship, intimate sexual relationship, where I'm exploring that.
River Roaring:Sometimes I'm like, no, get away from me. I'm like, no, wait, come closer, come closer. And I have easily fallen into, in the last twenty years and more, the connection craving, I'll say in the last twenty years, the connection craving that turns into neediness. And now it's not healthy. Now I'm grabbing you.
River Roaring:I'm grasping you. I'm like, no. Don't leave. I remember in one breakup I had a few years back, years ago, I remember thinking in the middle of the break up, I remember thinking, I hate you. Why are you leaving me?
River Roaring:Come back. All in one sentence. And that's when I woke up to myself and went, Woah, River, just look at the sentence, I hate you. Why are you leaving me? Please come back.
River Roaring:That is so unhealthy. That is so imbalanced. You have become out of desire to get out of an unhealthy sovereignty and isolation, you have now become a needy connection craver, and you're grabbing and trying to hold on to their feet even when you say you don't like them. This is crazy. I'm sharing this because I hope that maybe you'll see something in yourself or someone else you know.
River Roaring:I've been on both sides super unhealthy. So I also can share with you that I have also been in a relationship that found that health and that balance and I was so good that I almost could not believe that it existed and that I'm living it and breathing it. I mean, it was so beautiful that I just that's why I'm making this podcast. It's worth finding. So I'm coming back to the quotes, and all the spiritual readings that I'm quoting from today and reading from are words of Kuo, those of Kuo.
River Roaring:Q apostrophe U o, Kuo. Those are quo. So quo says there's a possibility in the balancing of this of touching intelligent energy. And by that, they mean the universal consciousness, the divine union, the one infinite creator, the stuff that makes everything that we see hear. And so there's a possibility of touching the one infinite creator when two human beings come together in the balance of sovereignty and connection.
River Roaring:And in this fusion, the true the two truly are one. And from this rise, the one sovereignty seeker and the other connection craver, blessed, balanced, and healed, that this is a healing, a great healing. And Kuo says, I know it's hard, it's very hard, if you endeavor to get together with an intimate other and explore all of this to find the balance. It will be very hard. Perhaps you're choosing the most difficult path any human could walk, and yet, this is Kuo.
River Roaring:You have each other to help each other, and it is most encouraged that each of you attempt that dynamic to see that dynamic that sexuality offers with a merciful and ruthful gaze, to be quick to forgive, and to be willing and again attempt to trust. To be quick to forgive, and to be willing again and again to attempt to trust. For after all, the other person who is with you attempting to find this divine union is also on their own journey. And through a lot of forgiveness and a lot of coming back to attempt to trust that this can happen. If both of you are doing the work of this, if you find a partner who wants to find the divine union and balance, I do wanna share that it is like it's like falling into into a blissful cloud of pleasure and union and it's like it is like a unity and a knowing that not only are the two of us a one, we are one beautiful, fully expressed, each of us are fully expressed in our own area, in our own aura, and we're also a beautiful divine union field.
River Roaring:And in fact, in that space, when I have found that space with a partner, it does feel like we are one with all that is. And it's a feeling that I can't even put into words. It's the holy communion of partnership. And I also want to finish by saying that it doesn't stay in place by itself. We're not here on earth to become stagnant and find a comfortable place and stay there.
River Roaring:That's not what this human incarnation journey is about. It's about learning. And so when when I have found that beautiful, incredible, chill, goosebump causing, incredible feeling of divine union in my life with a partner. It is something that we continue to cultivate or it falls away and it's time to do what? To forgive and be willing again and again to attempt to trust.
River Roaring:It's not a one time journey, it's a lifetime lifetime journey of sovereignty and connection. So my darling, I hope that something here has been important for you and helpful for you. I make this podcast as a sincere desire to serve with the things I've learned in my life. I have fallen on my face so many times. I have completely fallen on my face so many times in this area and so I hope that I've garnered a little bit of wisdom that could help you.
River Roaring:Ask yourself in every moment, am I creating my own space from the other person because it's healthy? Am I lovingly doing that with an open heart? An open hearted no. And every time you reach out to connect, am I reaching out and asking for more connection from a healthy, open heart that's full and sovereign on its own and wants to share that beautiful gift of who I am or am feeling needy? And be honest.
River Roaring:And if it's on the unhealthy side, work on that a little bit in myself. Oh, honey, you're reaching out today because you feel needy. I will work on that myself before I reach out to my partner, and I will make sure that I feel whole in my heart and open hearted and loving. And when I reach out for that connection, it's to share. Even if I need that connection to in a point of weakness, and, like, I just need you will you hear me because I feel sad and hurt right now.
River Roaring:Will you listen to me? Even that reach out doesn't mean it's needy. I can reach out for a gift that's not needy. So there's a great art to this and this is definitely what I work on in my private relationships with my clients, certainly. And it's a lifetime endeavor, So I hope that this short visit on the topic can be helpful to you.
River Roaring:And last week I did a podcast on family law and how to get out of the family court trap. And this week is really a lot about how to get out of that, is to create more healthy connection and maybe this dynamic is causing tension. And if it were named and intentionally worked with, it could be harmonious, coherent, and balanced and bring you into the holy communion of divine union. Even if that just looks like, hey, you live over there, I'll live over here, I do feel lovingly connected connected with you. I have that in an ex partnership as well.
River Roaring:We are no longer partners, but I just love I feel like we're in a very beautiful balance of loving connection even though we don't see each other anymore very often. So my darling, I pray this is helpful for thee because I'm on earth to support those who are called to bring maximum love and light into their lives. Those who want to find liberated self expression in all the realms, including sexual, where all is sacred, connecting with you here on this podcast to cosmic web of love and light throughout the realms. And so jumping timelines, I wanna take one moment right now to send love and light from my heart directly out to every single one of you who is listening no matter what time you are listening to this broadcast. See if you can feel my heart energy pour out to you.
River Roaring:Let's take a moment of silence, and see if you can feel my heart energy flowing out to you whenever you listen to this and wherever you are. Could you feel my love? Could you feel anything change? And now I wanna create a moment for you to send me any love and appreciation you might have for this podcast in this moment into my current time. Beautiful.
River Roaring:And even though I'm in your past, I felt that, my darling. So leave a comment or shoot me an email anytime by visiting my site at riverroaring.com and click on let's connect, let's talk river. There you can share any question, any reflection, any insight. I would love to hear if this has touched you in any way, if you wanna relate your own story about sovereignty and connection. I pray that you find that balanced holy communion of sovereignty and connection with your partner and, of course, inside yourself.
River Roaring:And I deeply believe that once each of us find the balance in our self of sovereignty and connection and that we can relate to one another in an open hearted, balanced, and coherent frequency of sovereignty and connection in full expression and loving heart connection with the other at the same time. I believe when each one of us has solved that for ourselves inside, our entire world will have solved that, and the new earth will be revealed, and it will be a divine union of masculine and feminine, divine sexual and other energies beautifully blended into love and light. Because my darling, together we can step into a more harmonious vibration than we are in right now. We can fly higher. We can shift human consciousness forever for the highest good of all beings, darling.
River Roaring:So let's do it. Are you in? May the love be with you, and may the love be with us all.