Romantic Fiction, Reality Shaping and The Work

[Mari]

I´m reading Jennifer Ashley´s "Mackenzies & McBrides" series.

I don´t know why, but I was really reluctant to even start with it. I don´t know why, but I thought it will be some cheesy, filled with erotica type of novels and I was really resisting to start with it.

Well - I was WROOOONG, of course!

The series is really good; I´m on book 6 and I feel some change in gear with this one. Even more darkness in this one.

The first 5 books were a mixture of laugh and sorrow, I´ve got to love this family, wishing I have a family that big.
I was grinning almost all the time because of really witty writing and even laughing out loud, only to be put down on the next page.
The destinies of those brothers are really horrible; each of them traumatized and hurt. And now, Elliot´s story is a tragedy on its own.

I liked that the stories had a detective touch, the mysteries and plots were quite good, all wrapped up in an evolving story of the characters.


The strangest thing happened to me when I was reading book 4; in the part where El explains her background and her grandmother´s history.
But first some background story.

When I was a teenager, I had the period when I would quite often dream some moments that would then happen to me sometimes already next week, and sometimes it took years to come true. My brother also told me that he dreams about some future events/moments, so I suppose we inherited some weird gene. I never heard my mother or my father saying the same.
After my teenage years and my way of life, these dreams become very rare.
But sometimes I would catch myself when working or doing something, that I was like "frozen" in time and then had some like "visions" that I couldn´t recall at that moment, until sometime later when those "visions" would actually happen and I would then remember me being "frozen" at that particular place.
I´ve also met one person on my work that said that she has this strange "thing" when she like freezes and starts writing od scratching things automatically. She was a lot of fun and a dear friend and we spend a lot of time together, even going together on vacations.

Why am I saying thins?
Well, when I was reading the part where El tells her grandmother´s story, I´ve got some flashback or whatever it was.
Like I´ve already read this. And it was mixed with memories of my friend I told you above.
At that moment when reading this part, I saw me and my friend talking and laughing back in cca 2008, and at the same time, I´ve got this mixture of memory and flashbacks of the book - all mixed up.
I´ve never seen this book until a few days back. And I don´t have any contacts with this friend of mine in years because she moved to the other side of the world almost 8 years ago and I´ve lost contact with her.
I cannot explain it; it wasn´t a deja vu because I know how a deja vu feels like. The feeling was more like when you remember something you´ve dreamed about.
And this feeling was there for the whole page when El was telling the story and me reading it.

So, there it is, I don´t know what to think of it, but I decided anyway to share it with you...

 

[KTC]

I've just finished The Arrangement (Survivors Club series) by Balogh. This has been my favourite book to date. Without spoiling it, the story expresses how love can be built on the desire to help one another through turmoil and how precious giving from the heart for nothing in return can be. I have enjoyed reading all of the books thus far but this one in particular has featured in my dreams and I've had 2 deja vu experiences of my dream then becoming the story as it unfolded. It's hard to explain but I had definitely been there before or something.

I have also noticed since reading these books, and maybe it is associated or maybe not that my intuition has gotten stronger. For example, in my dreams that seem to be featured in the book I will be with a client at work and I will be working with something on their body that is not what they normally come to me for. I wake up and although my dreams are hard to remember with clarity, I remember this part and I head off to work. When I ask my client how their body is today they tell me exactly what I had dreamt about and I already know what we need to do for them. In fact a couple of times I haven't asked the client and have set up some new movement and then they say something like 'how did you know that's what I needed?". I've been good at reading bodies for a long time but something is different and my ideas are more spot on, with a definite feeling of remembering before the event. Is it possible that reading these books is actually helping us create a new World?

 

[KTC]

I´m reading Jennifer Ashley´s "Mackenzies & McBrides" series.

I don´t know why, but I was really reluctant to even start with it. I don´t know why, but I thought it will be some cheesy, filled with erotica type of novels and I was really resisting to start with it.

Well - I was WROOOONG, of course!

The series is really good; I´m on book 6 and I feel some change in gear with this one. Even more darkness in this one.

The first 5 books were a mixture of laugh and sorrow, I´ve got to love this family, wishing I have a family that big.
I was grinning almost all the time because of really witty writing and even laughing out loud, only to be put down on the next page.
The destinies of those brothers are really horrible; each of them traumatized and hurt. And now, Elliot´s story is a tragedy on its own.

I liked that the stories had a detective touch, the mysteries and plots were quite good, all wrapped up in an evolving story of the characters.


The strangest thing happened to me when I was reading book 4; in the part where El explains her background and her grandmother´s history.
But first some background story.

When I was a teenager, I had the period when I would quite often dream some moments that would then happen to me sometimes already next week, and sometimes it took years to come true. My brother also told me that he dreams about some future events/moments, so I suppose we inherited some weird gene. I never heard my mother or my father saying the same.
After my teenage years and my way of life, these dreams become very rare.
But sometimes I would catch myself when working or doing something, that I was like "frozen" in time and then had some like "visions" that I couldn´t recall at that moment, until sometime later when those "visions" would actually happen and I would then remember me being "frozen" at that particular place.
I´ve also met one person on my work that said that she has this strange "thing" when she like freezes and starts writing od scratching things automatically. She was a lot of fun and a dear friend and we spend a lot of time together, even going together on vacations.

Why am I saying thins?
Well, when I was reading the part where El tells her grandmother´s story, I´ve got some flashback or whatever it was.
Like I´ve already read this. And it was mixed with memories of my friend I told you above.
At that moment when reading this part, I saw me and my friend talking and laughing back in cca 2008, and at the same time, I´ve got this mixture of memory and flashbacks of the book - all mixed up.
I´ve never seen this book until a few days back. And I don´t have any contacts with this friend of mine in years because she moved to the other side of the world almost 8 years ago and I´ve lost contact with her.
I cannot explain it; it wasn´t a deja vu because I know how a deja vu feels like. The feeling was more like when you remember something you´ve dreamed about.
And this feeling was there for the whole page when El was telling the story and me reading it.

So, there it is, I don´t know what to think of it, but I decided anyway to share it with you...

Oh my word @Mari my experience is similar. I just read your post after I had written mine. I find it difficult to explain but my experience is similar to yours in the flashback feel. I also had these moments a lot when I was younger and in particular when I was travelling. I always came across people and places at just the right time for work and living opportunities and they were often familiar or I had been there before.

 

[seeker2seer]

This may be the most difficult and challenging post for me so far. Finally, I finished reading this thread and “Seven Night’s in a Rouge’s Bed”, which I began last August. It has taken me so long to accomplish this due to selling my house, packing, moving, and unpacking, plus I am a slower reader. However, what made this so challenging for me is the fact that I never would have dreamed of reading such a “woman’s” novel due to me not just being a man, but also being a gay man. But after reading the reactions/comments of Laura and other readers, I decided to take the risk of exploring unknown territory and began listening to the audio version of “Seven Nights”.

During the same time, I was also reading other books: “Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve”, “The Narcissistic Family”, and Gabor Mate’s “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”. I then started reading a book referenced by Mate, “Healing the Shame that Binds You” by John Bradshaw. All these books are helping me, intellectually, to realize how my personality was wounded and how the resulting self-defense mechanism of the false self was created.

After hearing Laura’s recommendation in the FOTCM Winter Solstice meeting to really participate in the romance novel project, I felt I had to finish reading “Seven Nights”. So, on Christmas day, I started reading and began relating more to Jonas as being a wounded child hiding behind a non-emotional personality which Sidone could see:

“Even more as she knew that the boy’s generous, affectionate spirit still lived inside him, much as he struggled against acknowledging its existence.”

I certainly identified with Jonas here:

“Shame lay at the basis of so many of Jonas’s actions. Shame made him stand alone against the world. Shame made him reject any hand of friendship. He’d interpret kindness or goodwill as a sign of condescension. However logical it was, she understood why he considered his scars relics of humiliating defeat at his cousin’s hands. Jonas’s pride had helped him survive in a hostile world but it hadn’t made life easier for him. “Even your father abandoned you.”

I also felt anger at Jonas for how he turned Sidone away from his jail cell then forced her to marry him in her weakened state.

After finishing, I too, could see and relate to the process of both characters hiding, discovering, and living from their true selves.

But this raises a question which I hesitate to ask to due my programs of shame and fear of rejection. Since the purpose of the sex scenes is to stir up the energies of the sexual center and bring them upward to help release forgotten or buried emotions, it seems to be an important part of this process.

My sexuality has always been a sensitive issue for me due to events in my early childhood imprinting period and expectations from family, society, religion, and even my career. While other readers felt a “stirring” or arousal during the sex scenes, I at first felt an aversion, but then I decided to just read through them with a kind of distancing while focusing more on the character development and psychological dynamics in the novel.

So with that background context, my question is: “In order to stir up the energies of my sexual center, would it be helpful for me to read gay romance novels?” I did some researching and there are several historical, even regency, themed gay romance novels. But like some of the traditional romance novels, I am sure some are verbal porn and not in alignment with the process we are discovering here.

However, I can also imagine that this process of uncovering the wounded false self and living from a true self would have been even more challenging in historical times such as the regency. There must have been some honest homosexual relationships but certainly not in public. Which leads to my concern about falling into false imagination/dreams that these gay novels are just re-written to please today’s post-modern standards, whereas the romance novels in our list are more reality-based.

I hope I am not tainting what is the natural and traditional idea of romance, especially historical. The idea of love is universal and higher than physicality which is the ideal we all strive for and are learning about through this project. If, as it seems, sexual energies play a part in this discovery and process, I feel like my physical machine because of its wiring due to imprinting is an extra challenge in this area. I know my sexual orientation does not make me special and I do not consider it my primary identity but like all of us, a part of our humanity in this lifetime.

Humbly and courageously requesting feedback from the network mirror.

 

[Laura]

I've just finished The Arrangement (Survivors Club series) by Balogh. This has been my favourite book to date. Without spoiling it, the story expresses how love can be built on the desire to help one another through turmoil and how precious giving from the heart for nothing in return can be. I have enjoyed reading all of the books thus far but this one in particular has featured in my dreams and I've had 2 deja vu experiences of my dream then becoming the story as it unfolded. It's hard to explain but I had definitely been there before or something.

I have also noticed since reading these books, and maybe it is associated or maybe not that my intuition has gotten stronger. For example, in my dreams that seem to be featured in the book I will be with a client at work and I will be working with something on their body that is not what they normally come to me for. I wake up and although my dreams are hard to remember with clarity, I remember this part and I head off to work. When I ask my client how their body is today they tell me exactly what I had dreamt about and I already know what we need to do for them. In fact a couple of times I haven't asked the client and have set up some new movement and then they say something like 'how did you know that's what I needed?". I've been good at reading bodies for a long time but something is different and my ideas are more spot on, with a definite feeling of remembering before the event. Is it possible that reading these books is actually helping us create a new World?

I would say that it is not only possible, but likely. If reading the novels helps a person to access present or past life issues, even if only in "imagination", then that means that a pathway is being opened to the greater/higher self. That opening of a pathway can have all sorts of manifestations.

 

[Laura]

This may be the most difficult and challenging post for me so far. Finally, I finished reading this thread and “Seven Night’s in a Rouge’s Bed”, which I began last August. It has taken me so long to accomplish this due to selling my house, packing, moving, and unpacking, plus I am a slower reader. However, what made this so challenging for me is the fact that I never would have dreamed of reading such a “woman’s” novel due to me not just being a man, but also being a gay man. But after reading the reactions/comments of Laura and other readers, I decided to take the risk of exploring unknown territory and began listening to the audio version of “Seven Nights”.
<snip>

But this raises a question which I hesitate to ask to due my programs of shame and fear of rejection. Since the purpose of the sex scenes is to stir up the energies of the sexual center and bring them upward to help release forgotten or buried emotions, it seems to be an important part of this process.

My sexuality has always been a sensitive issue for me due to events in my early childhood imprinting period and expectations from family, society, religion, and even my career. While other readers felt a “stirring” or arousal during the sex scenes, I at first felt an aversion, but then I decided to just read through them with a kind of distancing while focusing more on the character development and psychological dynamics in the novel.

So with that background context, my question is: “In order to stir up the energies of my sexual center, would it be helpful for me to read gay romance novels?” I did some researching and there are several historical, even regency, themed gay romance novels. But like some of the traditional romance novels, I am sure some are verbal porn and not in alignment with the process we are discovering here.

However, I can also imagine that this process of uncovering the wounded false self and living from a true self would have been even more challenging in historical times such as the regency. There must have been some honest homosexual relationships but certainly not in public. Which leads to my concern about falling into false imagination/dreams that these gay novels are just re-written to please today’s post-modern standards, whereas the romance novels in our list are more reality-based.

I hope I am not tainting what is the natural and traditional idea of romance, especially historical. The idea of love is universal and higher than physicality which is the ideal we all strive for and are learning about through this project. If, as it seems, sexual energies play a part in this discovery and process, I feel like my physical machine because of its wiring due to imprinting is an extra challenge in this area. I know my sexual orientation does not make me special and I do not consider it my primary identity but like all of us, a part of our humanity in this lifetime.

Humbly and courageously requesting feedback from the network mirror.

Mirror not needed. Just read the recommended books and ONLY those, please.

See my previous response to batty76. You may be gay, but that doesn't mean you are such in every life you may have ever lived.

There is one novel I read that includes a gay situation... "Tremaine's True Love" by Grace Burrowes. The gay guy is a secondary character. There was another one that I only partly read because it turned porn very fast. It seems that the authors of such novels which focus on gay sex tend to be focused on SEX and not serious internal work and true love. That's sad, but what I have observed in my vetting of these books.

Anyway, don't worry so much about any sexual energies for the present. Just read. I rather suspect that some past life stuff may come up for you rather quickly. You may identify with the woman in a story, who knows?

 

[seeker2seer]

Mirror not needed. Just read the recommended books and ONLY those, please.

See my previous response to batty76. You may be gay, but that doesn't mean you are such in every life you may have ever lived.

There is one novel I read that includes a gay situation... "Tremaine's True Love" by Grace Burrowes. The gay guy is a secondary character. There was another one that I only partly read because it turned porn very fast. It seems that the authors of such novels which focus on gay sex tend to be focused on SEX and not serious internal work and true love. That's sad, but what I have observed in my vetting of these books.

Anyway, don't worry so much about any sexual energies for the present. Just read. I rather suspect that some past life stuff may come up for you rather quickly. You may identify with the woman in a story, who knows?

Thank you Laura. It is sad those authors only focus on sex, which adds to a distorted stereotypical view of gays only being concerned about and centered on the physical.

I will press on to "A Rake's Midnight Kiss" and the rest of the SOS series and report back on what comes to the surface.

 

[Chu]

After 10 or so books by Balogh, I just finished the Devil Riders series by Anne Gracie. And even though she is still my favorite in terms of style, character development and being easier to identify with the characters, this series was completely different than Marriage of Convenience. No wonder Laura suggested to read so many books. Each series and each author can bring different things up, for sure.

The Devil Riders series was more difficult from an emotional point of view, and in particular the first, third and fifth volumes. Not just because the characters' pasts seemed a lot heavier (and they are more intense in terms of adventures), but somehow I related differently. I still feel a bit "raw" from some of the passages.

Spoiler

"For example, on book three, when Ahysha leaves Egypt, and the pain she feels for leaving the woman and child who had become her "family", tears just kept falling. I felt as if I was feeling the same kind of pain from experiencing the same thing over and over again: the loss of loved ones who had become a "soul family". And I can't say it comes from this life, although it helped me explain the unjustified anxiety I used to feel when much younger for leaving friends and loved ones behind due to a move, change of schools, etc. Afterwards I felt better, especially being grateful for the true family we have formed thanks to this network."

Perhaps it was the books, or maybe it's the accumulation of book after book, and what they generate all combined. It's hard to explain, but there was something about the human condition in general, and perhaps past life stuff being stirred. But thanks to the happy endings, I feel better after having read them all. And I particularly appreciated some of the lady and gentleman-like traits in some of the characters: lots of will power and determination to do what was right for each other, and lots of love even when most of them were quite neurotic.

 

[Laura]

Thank you Laura. It is sad those authors only focus on sex, which adds to a distorted stereotypical view of gays only being concerned about and centered on the physical.

I will press on to "A Rake's Midnight Kiss" and the rest of the SOS series and report back on what comes to the surface.

Maybe the SOS series is not the best for you to start with. Maybe you need some hard core Balogh? Try the Web series to start with. Or Survivor's Club.

 

[thorbiorn]

I too, could see and relate to the process of both characters hiding, discovering, and living from their true selves.

Each story has a different theme, even if in some cases they may be similar. Going through several books has helped me to sense different kinds of issues and follow how these are resolved. Some stories and some situations affect me more than others. Saying goodbye, letting go, acceptance, forgiveness can be delicate issues for me depending on the story and how I relate with the characters and the plot. I am also moved by situations where there is resolution, healing and giving of self.

Since the purpose of the sex scenes is to stir up the energies of the sexual center and bring them upward to help release forgotten or buried emotions, it seems to be an important part of this process.

Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed was also my first book, and it no doubt stirred my sexual center, but in the 20 books since that one, it has been much more the psychological dramas that have taken my main interest. Even in Seven Nights, I came to deeply value the way the characters bring healing to each other, as if they were each other's therapist. Observing the details of the process from the distance of a reader can be moving, just as the solutions to some of the personal and interpersonal issues, suggests different perspectives from where to experience and understand similar issues whether felt within or observed without.

If you have by now read one book, consider reading the books in the same series, as also recommended by Laura in earlier posts. In the series you have begun, I would include the two shorter books, making it six in all. Anna Campbell has a gift for writing about sexual interactions, but the relations in the context of the story also serve communication, consolation, helping, sharing and joy.

And what about the gay regency, as you mention? I would postpone it part from not being in the list. One consideration is that our bodies would not be here at the current level of genetic manipulation, if there had been no sexual relations between men and women. I do not know if the impressions of this love is stored in the memory of the body, but there has been a lot for sure. We have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, and after ten generations, we reach more than a thousand people or 500 couples or 500 successful acts of sexual fertilization, which when considering the low fertility of humans may have required some 10,000 instances of close intimacy. And don't get me started on the math of going 20, 30 or 40 generations back, even if there was some inbreeding, as we otherwise would reach a number higher than the number of people on the planet. Heterosexual relations are a part of the history of our ancestors, no matter what sexual orientation is favoured by us in our present life.

Whether man or woman, we can possibly also learn in the descriptions of these books about other men and women. Even if a good number of body types in these books may appear stereotypical, (often well endowed in several respects), the descriptions are also not further from the truth than they can give an idea of how men and women experience themselves differently, including the 50 % equipped with sexual features different from our own. This is helpful, because to be able to show external consideration it helps to know both ourselves and others.

 

[seeker2seer]

Maybe the SOS series is not the best for you to start with. Maybe you need some hard core Balogh? Try the Web series to start with. Or Survivor's Club.

Thanks again Laura. I will switch over to the recommended Balogh series now.

 

[hlat]

I finished The Perfect Waltz (Anne Gracie's Merridew Sisters book 2). That's some ugly baby! There were those funny moments, but also very dark moments with child trafficking. There were heavy themes of family responsibility and failure, and self forgiveness. I don't have to imagine someone else's life or a past life, because that's this life. It felt familiar that Sebastian could deal well with gratuitous cruelty, but not gratuitous kindness. This book moved me a lot, and I don't know if it's the cumulative effect or this particular book. I wonder if it will take a lifetime to deal with the unresolved issues.

 

[Lys]

I finished the Survivor's club series of Balogh and started the Courting Julia trilogy as I still wanted to stay with Balogh (but in English this time).
Actually it's been around two weeks that I finished my first series, but I didn't really know how to explain how I felt about it.
It is still hard to know if my mood since the beginning of December was a lot related to the reading but, I'd felt very, very sad for almost three weeks.
I really enjoy reading them but, those books seem to have stirred quite a lot of emotions out of me. First it brought back this feeling of gratitude because of the chance I have to feel good with my partner. Which was great !
Then I've been thinking a lot about the child that I would never bring to the world, a world where I couldn't raise a child according to my values without being on the wrong side of the law.
I won't repeat myself too much as I have already posted about it in this thread : what-are-your-thoughts-on-having-children

And I don't have much to say about the stories and the characters besides the fact that I really sometimes wish that I would be born much earlier if life was really as it is narrated by the author.
Women are strong and don't feel the need to put men down in order to take control of them. They are neither naive nor rude.
Men have the sense of duty and responsibility, they don't seem to be lost as most of the men of our generation.
Rules, common sense and good manners are kind of solid bases which men and women could rely on.
Something that we lost on the way...

Also, whatever the way they take, they fight against the darkness inside themselves.
First they often try to hide it, to bury it as deep as they can, then love comes and makes all the odd balance they reached with difficulty, a big mess.
That's quite how I've felt so far. Love helped me a lot to review my way of thinking, but those novels have something indeed !

However, I still enjoy the reading, I like Balogh's style and I feel like I need to read more of those romance novels, so I'll keep going and maybe something a bit more clear will pop up from the emotional state I'm in.

I feel like my post looks like a soup of thoughts, hope it is understandable...

Good reading to you!

 

[Redrock12]

Finished A Promise of Spring. A good read. Balogh has all the the heightened emotional elements of a real page turner. Grace's history, the age difference between her and Perry, social norms, psychopathy, death, birth, shame, personal forgiveness, reconciliation, and ultimately the power of love, commitment, trust, and integrity.

 

[Voyageur]

Balogh has quite a repertoire. Each set/series has a theme and an atmosphere of its own. One book of hers that was just shocking and horribly grim in the events described was "The Secret Pearl." I don't think it's part of a series, but it sure laid out the tragic aspects of life in a bald way and I was a bit surprised by that.

Yes, just finished this particular book and was struck by the suffering of some of the characters involved at the hands of other characters - the antagonist (one of them) is a real piece of work.