Welcome to Ask Eve Relationship Advice!

It is my sincere hope that this blog assists you in creating healthier relationships—with your loved ones, family, friends, coworkers, with Spirit, and with yourself through enhanced self-esteem.
My web site www.EveHogan.com has a lot of additional information and www.SacredGardenStore.com has wonderful products for sale including my books: How to Love Your Marriage, Intellectual Foreplay, Virtual Foreplay, Way of the Winding Path and Rings of Truth. Enjoy!

With aloha, Eve

What is Under the Mask?

As Halloween is approaching, people are trying to figure out which costumes to wear and which personalities to adopt in answer to the question, “What are you going to be for Halloween?”

Essentially, we are trying to figure out who we are going to pretend to be. Wouldn’t it be interesting though, to ask ourselves who we are already pretending to be? Are we pretending to be happy when we aren’t really? Are we pretending to be scared, or that we know it all, or that money isn’t an issue, or that it is? Are we pretending to be in love? Are we faking our satisfaction? Are we faking our dissatisfaction for the attention it brings? Maybe a better question than who are you going to pretend to be is ‘who are you when you stop pretending?’

Our authentic soul essence gets so covered up with masks and facades (the ego’s defense mechanisms) that we often totally lose sight of who we really are and what we really want. We adapt to what we think others want, we mold ourselves to try to get love, we play so many manipulative games with people to get our needs met that we completely lose touch with our true divine essence.

When you consider the qualities of someone with high self-esteem, they are very similar to small children: confident, risk-taking, adventurous, authentic, eager to learn, happy, loving, lovable…. Children are closely aligned with their esteemed self because they haven’t yet had life experiences that have separated their egos from their spirits. Small children know their divine essence. All they do is an authentic expression of who they are.

The good news is that these qualities never go away; they just get covered up. Our access to them just gets blocked.

Let me give you a graphic analogy. Imagine that “who you really are” is a glass full of sparkling, clear, pure, bubbly water—refreshing and delightful. Then, your life experiences and the people around you begin pouring dirty, grimy motor oil into your glass. Since oil floats on water, a mucky layer of oil forms on top of your beautiful, pure effervescence. Now when you look at yourself you see the oily muck instead of the clear, refreshing water, and you begin to believe that this mucky layer is who you are. Who you really are is still there, but your access to it is blocked.

Then, because you don’t like the way this oily muck looks or feels, you begin sprinkling glitter on top. You want other people to see the glitter instead of the muck because, hopefully, they won’t hurt you more by pointing out the muck. The glitter is the world of pretention and protection—smiling when you don’t mean it, perfection, superficiality, materialism, faking, anger, control, withdrawal, even substance abuse—there are a myriad masks that we wear.

The pure, bubbly water is covered up by the oil, which is covered up by the glitter. Who you really are (your soul essence) is covered up by who you think you are (your mucky thoughts and thought-generated feelings), which is covered up by who you want everyone else to think you are (the façade you present to the world for self-protection).

The irony here is that we think our glittery ego layer will protect us or make people like us more, and maybe even make us like ourselves more. So we all go around bumping into each other, glitter to glitter or muck to muck (that is, ego to ego). And while the glittery ego layer may sometimes protect us from feeling more pain, it also “protects” us from feeling more love. Our inauthentic connections with others leave us feeling isolated and lonely. In actuality, ego, in both its damaged, mucky form and its bandaged, glittery form, is what blocks our access to self-esteem—to heart, to truth, to connection, to intimacy, to love—every time.

So this Halloween, rather than contemplating new layers that you can add, see if you can peel some layers away. Perhaps you might have a “come as you really are party”…and meet your friends for the first time, as they reveal themselves.

Intellectual Foreplay Question of the Week: The question is not, “is the cup half empty or half full” the question is, “Do you know how to fill it back up?”

Love Tip of the Week: The secret to accessing your divine essence is awareness.

Purifying our Actions…

Our egos have an interesting way of camouflaging our intentions. What may appear on the outside to be a nice gesture may actually be a self-serving ego at work. This concealment of truth not only affects those outside of us, but our ego’s motives are often equally hidden from ourselves. In other words, we often lack the self-awareness to see through our own ego games and don’t even know we are being manipulative. Then, we can’t understand why the world responds to us negatively.

Our spirit essence is all about being loved and being loving. We are here—on a spirit level— to love, learn, laugh, create and serve. Our egos, however, get the concept of being loving and being loved all confused and think that these are something we NEED to do, missing entirely the reality that we don’t “need to get/do” that which we already have and are.

Instead, the ego sets out on a mission to fulfill a perceived need love and be loved. This ego agenda, ironically, completely blocks our ability to do so with purity. Rather than just being loving and loved, we become manipulative in order to give and receive love. Our need to love others becomes a manipulative effort to control them (so that they will become lovable to us). Our need to be loved by others becomes a manipulative effort to gain approval. When we operate instead from a pure place of authenticity, people can’t help but love us and we are filled with love, understanding, empathy and compassion for them, as well.

The difference between operating from the ego or the spirit can be quite subtle and from the outside may look identical, but it doesn’t feel the same. Let’s look at this with what I call the “Tissue Issue.”

When someone is crying and we offer them a tissue, we can do so from our own ego-need for control, in which case the simple act of offering a tissue can actually (energetically) say, "Stop crying...I'm uncomfortable with your tears...." Our ego wants them to stop so that we can more easily love them.

Or, if we offer it from our need for approval, the tissue can really say, "Aren't I wonderful and caring? Notice how loving I am." In this case, we are not really the caretaker, rather we are hoping that the crying person will then acknowledge us (taking care of our need for approval). This will satisfy the ego’s need for love.

Or, we can offer a tissue from a place of authentic purity in which there is no expectation or need for the person to stop, and no need for acknowledgement. This is the purified state of authentic living, doing what needs to be done without an ego agenda of manipulation.

When I walked the labyrinth at the Chartres Cathedral, I unexpectedly found myself sobbing overwhelmed with the devotion of 800 years of people walking the labyrinth and the amazing effort of those who built the labyrinth (and the cathedral). As I sat in the center sobbing, I saw an anonymous set of shoes move past me and suddenly there was a much needed tissue on my knee. The tissue said neither "stop crying", nor "look at me." It was simply a pure offering of love and a practical solution to a need with no ego attached.

I share this with an invitation to practice the concept of self-observation and inquiry. Begin to notice what you are doing, saying and thinking and begin the process of awareness as to the motive. Ask yourself, Is this about my need for approval or control? is this pure/authentic? Notice that it may not at all be the action that is the problem, but the source of the action that needs to switch.

Often, the action or words used may end up being exactly the same, but when the energy motive from which they come is different, the action is received very differently, as well.

I invite you to become adept at what I call the Five Essential Life Skills* as a means of getting back to center when they are out of alignment.
The five skills, in a nutshell, are
1) Remember who you really are (spirit/love),
2) Self-Observe (what are you doing, saying, thinking, imagining?),
3) Let go of that which you aren't (The ego needs of approval and control)
4) Realign with your authentic self and
5) Choose actions in alignment (with who you really are and what you are trying to create.)

As you practice this level of self-mastery, you will begin to notice the world responding to you differently. Ironically, the ego camouflages our false motives (control/approval), and underneath those is actually the pure motive of love. It is time to purify our actions.

**I have a longer description of these 5 skills on my blog www.AskEveAdvice.com (look on the right hand side and it will show you where) if you are interested. My books, "Way of the Winding Path," and "How to Love Your Marriage" both speak to these as well.

Why a Mother Shrine?

When I tell people that I have a Mother Shrine at The Sacred Garden, sometimes they look at me like, “Why? What? A Mother Shrine?” So indoctrinated are we into the Heavenly Father concept that the concept of a Heavenly Mother image seems foreign or pagan or….weird. But let me tell you my why.

In the little picture, on my personal level,
Prior to my mom’s passing, she lost all ability to speak and write. While I cared for her I had to learn to listen to her beyond words. As she was in the process of dying and I was devastated at losing contact with her, I suddenly realized that there would be no difference. The way she and I had had to learn to communicate was the same way God communicates with us—through images, dreams, intuition, ideas, signs… Mom and I spent a full year prior to her death learning to communicate that way. She had been teaching me the language of God.

When my mom died I had a sense of her merging with God. God became very personal rather than bigger than life and I felt heard and loved in a way that I had not experienced before. I had a knowing of my prayers landing on ears that were listening.

On Mother’s Day, I wanted to honor her so I set up a Mother Shrine and pulled out all the images of God as Mother that I had in my home. Much to my surprise, I discovered I had quite a few. When Mother’s Day passed, I just didn’t want to disassemble the shrine, so I gave it a permanent home. Thus, The Mother Shrine at The Sacred Garden was born.

While that is how it started, I have since discovered the big picture level….
Our modern religions have focused on God in the form of the masculine, even to the point of denying any feminine aspect of God. Prayers are masculine both when referring to the Divine and the devotee. Women are denied priesthood in many religions, etc. So, for the female aspirant, this is problematic. If God is a male, and the predominant means of getting to God is delegated to males and all our prayers are in the masculine, it becomes very difficult for the girl/woman to feel like she is a part of this divine plan.

What I have discovered from praying in a Mother Shrine is a distinct difference that emerges than solely praying in a Father-based shrine and it stems from our cultural gender beliefs. While we think that we were made in the image and likeness of God, I tend to think that we have created our image of God in the likeness of us. In our society, the father is the protector, problem solver, provider and disciplinarian and the mother is the nurturer, caretaker, and healer. When we, as a society pray to a father image we tend to focus our prayers on asking for things (from the provider), asking for God to keep us safe (the protector), get us out of a mess we are in (the problem solver) and believe that God should be feared (the punisher). Somehow when we pray to a Father God, we ask for things to come to us from the outside in, like we might of our actual physical father.

When we pray to the mother image of God, there is a distinct difference, at least for me. I offer my gratitude for the love and nurturing that I am receiving and for the beauty that surrounds me. I do not ask for things, I ask for qualities—compassion, kindness, wisdom, love and strength. I don’t ask for things from the Mother, I ask to be like the Mother. I ask for compassion and gentleness with others and myself. I ask to embody the healing qualities of Tara, the compassion and caring of Quan Yin, the nurturing and amazing perseverance and strength of Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene, I ask for the ability to see abundance all around me from Lakshmi, I ask for the discernment, strength and loyalty of Kali and Durga who protect their loved ones with the fierceness of a mother lion. When I pray to a Mother God, I feel love. When I pray to a Mother God, I ask for things from the inside, out. Maybe this is just a “girl thing” but in any case, it is powerfully different for me.

One does not replace the other, nor is one better than the other. I just like being the child of both the masculine and the feminine and being included, as a female child, in the Holy arrangement.