All photos: Špela Gornik, author Nando Prieto

The other day on the telephone line Slovenia-UK I was speaking to Špela Gornik, a respectable Relational Sex Therapist who has also finished a Degree in Chinese Studies. Not surprisingly the main topics of our conversation were Coronavirus and love matters. When she briefly mentioned her favourite novelist Gabriel García Márquez whose books taught her of the effects of trauma and how it passes on through generations, we realised how our theme resonates with the title of one of his books Love in The Time of Cholera. Špela seemed like impeccable interlocutor for delving into this topic in more depth. She speaks several languages and used to work as a translator for Chinese Doctors for more than six years. I was intrigued to hear more about the wisdom she gained through her diverse working experiences around the globe. 

Romantic Love would arguably be the first feeling that would be defied as non-essential in a geopolitically unstable world. Surely that state is important for modern society but then again who needs great passions in times of crisis? 

I haven't experienced the current situation in Motherland but I had a chance to enter the Undergrounds of Paris, Barcelona and London these days. I could sense the air was more or less permeated with fear, confusion and helplessness which reflected in two poles; I could notice two extremes; on one hand, people who were making sure they protect themselves in all possible, sometimes even exaggerated ways, and on the other, people who seemed too aloof, who were, for example, coughing without covering their mouths.

Every single one of us could become contaminated with both coronavirus as well as helplessness. I believe that we shouldn't contaminate ourselves with hopelessness; that's why I'm posing a question; Why would we forget about Love? Why wouldn't we instead ask ourselves how deep do we actually practice it? The main obstacle to love is not coronavirus but mental, emotional and perceived obstacles which stem from the aspects of ourselves which many people have suppressed, denied, rejected or disowned in order to be loved and accepted by their primal caretakers. Sometimes they continue these stories with following the norm by forming dysfunctional relationships which are not really nourishing forms of relating but more adopted for being widely accepted practices. 

I've self-quarantined myself today to reread Love in the Time of Cholera again. This state of mind makes me recall the scent of dying embers of hapless love in the bitter almonds. By having the courage to untangle embittered relationships we have a collective opportunity to remember and revive the heart and soul of romantic-erotic love.

People can lose connection with deeper parts of their psyches even at good times.

What are the masks and what is reality is a question which needed to be posed much before the outbreak of Covid-19. Sometimes love is only a mask for desire. And other times, wounded people can, in most cases, unconsciously put various masks on to avoid facing their unprocessed traumas: withdrawer mask, dependency mask, masochist mask, controller mask, or rigidity mask.

What makes people wait to face their pains and traumas in the first place? Bringing awareness to unconscious ways we have been living as well as to our illusions would be beneficial so that masks could fall.

I've mentioned hapless. The word itself makes us think of being a victim of a certain situation. In today's narcissistic society, we haven't been raised in a way that would make us aware of what healthy relating is. If we don't resolve our traumas we dissociate from them - we pass the hurt on and convince ourselves and others that what we're passing is love. When it comes to intimacy, what matters is our nervous system. We can fool our mind that we feel safe. But our nervous system never lies. We are only able to share deep ecstatic bliss with listening to our deepest needs. 

"Until the virus do us part" as a definition for modern romance? Or better said as a synonym of the end of romance and dating altogether? 

I love this analogy, Valerie! 

I don't believe that Covid-19 is the only virus jeopardizing love explorations as well as healthy loving commitments. The biggest virus affecting humankind is Patriarchy and the carriers are both men and women. Most of the people are behaving according to the scripts posted in beliefs like "men are from Mars and women are from Venus". They seem to forget that we all live on the planet Earth. It’s crucial to heal emotionally and spiritually at the deepest levels. Taking care of our planet and communicating our needs and wants is essential. It's time to open up to a fuller awareness of who we are as human beings.

Spirituality is not only transcendental - it is also immanent, we most easily experience these divine states through deep relating to people who we hold dear to us. This kind of modern romance holds potential for realizing our spiritual selves through nurturing authentic relationships. Energy doesn't lie. People will truly know what is their energy when they allow themselves to connect to their sexuality and accept that they cannot attune to all people on the same levels with the same intensity. Life energy (jing) which resides in our Kidneys is limited, so it's essential to use it wisely. That can be done by not exerting our adrenal glands by putting ourselves in addiction states like over-eating, over-working, allowing ourselves and others to be affected and projected by the toxicity of whimsical emotions, using drugs and stimulants, ejaculating too often and other.

Regarding the virulence of Covid-19 it's understood that people might stop shaking hands and sharing friendly hugs for some time. What kind of impact will this have on intimate relationships, especially if we're talking about a prolonged period of this kind of measurements? 

I prefer find yourself instead of fend yourself approach. We have a collective opportunity to step out of so-called "materialist me" paradigm and learn more about deeper aspects of ourselves which start with choosing what our own personal boundaries are. What do I need to feel safe when connecting to the other? Our needs to be able to feel safe differ, it’s essential to learn to find, communicate and respect them. 

I've been working with hundreds of men and almost all of them had one thing in common. When I asked them about their boundaries they told me they have - none. How can people hold responsibility for their actions if they don't know what their boundaries are? How can they be able to respect others boundaries if they have no sense of what a boundary is? 

Without expressing authentic feelings, needs and boundaries all that people do is fuel prejudices, projections, fear, hatred, and to some extent even illusions and fantasies.

And for the shaking hand part; we finally have a choice of whom we want to shake hands with and whom we prefer to share namaste with a deep look in their eyes. Shaking hands is a very westernized habit. There are so many others, which could serve us better in these times. Why should the whole world be imitating western gestures of greeting and connecting? I prefer compassionate gestures that stem from an individual's honesty and connection to the moment and the person we are sharing the moment with.

Could prolonged social distancing also mean the rise of intimate relationships with robots?

For some, surely. But let's face it. Isn't the majority of population operating on an autopilot level already? Why is it that BDSM is so widely practised and 50 Shades of Grey so wildly followed? I believe it has a lot to do with people numbing themselves to the extent that they actually need the pain to be able to feel. They are desensitised. Does that not make them robots themselves? 

What about women who, don’t know differently but to allow themselves to be a depository for male quick releases of tension? Or those who allow themselves or their partners to live a double life? These, too, are epidemics that have gone unrecognised for centuries. They enable pleasing at the expense of nurturing. The act of merely pleasing men contributes more and more narcissistic traits among us all.

Women are endowed not only with anus (gates of death) but also womb and vagina (gates of life) and they should own their sexuality by owning their power of choice of whom they invite in. Co-Creation on the level of womb does not only bring children to this world. It can also bring peace to our souls. A woman is the one initianting a man into sacred love making and not the other way around. The gist of all the tantric and daoist practices is to bring the water (yin) and fire (yang) element to balance. Only passions that endure the challenges posed by a woman connected to axis mundi (the Earth and the Sky) and centred in her heart can put us in a direct connection to the Divine. Integrity attracts grace. 

Traumas on the collective level as one of significant reasons to succumbing to fear and panic of Covid-19 instead of calmly responding to seriousness of the situation? 

I would say that the main reason is hidden in what is also a reason for hiding our traumas - the reason itself as a state of reasoning; trying to separate thinking from feeling - trying to avoid the messages coming from our bodies. The main problem that comes with the coronavirus is not fear - fear is a natural feeling in our body, which is here to teach us about our individual needs. The main problem which is clouding our vision is in the overall panic because we've been used to relay on our rational mind too much. Rational mind represses anything that it can't understand. And there's not much that we can know about Covid-19 at the moment.

We can only combat the corona with a strong immune system, and a state of panic doesn’t make any contribution to this. I see facing our fears as a foundation of our real spiritual growth. Only when we have the courage to face what our individual fears are, we can start the process of grounding our authentic selves. The problem of too many people in the West who deem themselves as "spiritual" is that they perpetuate old paradigms which don't serve neither our humanity, neither our planet. What I learnt from my life in China is what being spiritually grounded means; I've learnt that my spiritual home is in my body. All of the people are my sisters and my brothers. No one is here to save me, my life is my responsibility, and this responsibility is reflected in healthy boundaries which give me opportunity to love me and the other at the same time. We need to learn to draw the line and say stop 止 zhǐ to achieve 正 zhèng; the correct thinking, which is thinking attuned to our heart mind.

Between Love and Fear. How could people balance inner and outer aspect of our reality in the sense of spiritual growth?

Avoiding fear easily results in a state of panic on a collective level and a state of fragmentation on an individual level. What we need to be doing is healing the relationship between disintegrated parts of ourselves which will help us build nurturing relationships.
Allowing ourselves to be true to ourselves by allowing ourselves to feel what we feel in the moment is the real key to the heart. Not choosing between love and fear.

We have an opportunity to feel deeply into ourselves and set our own boundaries. The problem arises when they are not respected or at least negotiated. As a woman, I often experienced my boundaries being overstepped and violated. It's a woman's responsibility to ground sacred love. We are here to help men bridge the mind-body split.
It is hard to do this if men don't make us feel safe in their presence. It is hard to do this if men don't know how to provide us with a safe space to feel whatever it is that we feel in a moment, which is not necessarily what they or us would like us to feel.

We both come from Slovenia and we often critically discuss the status of the Slovenian Woman.

Many slovenian women have created coping mechanisms to prevent themselves from feeling. I call this an Escape Mechanism. When it comes to slovenian women and illusions, we have a lot to talk about. After all, we are a nation that cherishes intoxication with wine and beer to the neglect of cherishing women. Most slovenian men were brought up in a way that feels natural to them to hold a woman in a contempt. How underrated the power of a woman is can be reflected in a popularized expression that we use to indicate when somebody has given a birth. Many say: "Rodil je." which literally states that the one giving birth was the man, not his wife. I call this false empowerment. The power of a woman is incomparable to the power of a man. Why are we not allowed to be aware of it? Why don't we allow ourselves to be aware of it?

Slovenian women have been breadwinners and caretakers for centuries, and we still haven't been given proper respect and admiration! Why are we putting up with this? Are we going to continue being crutches to our partners, bending their spines even more or are we ready to help them strengthen? An erected spine is a sign of overall health as well as healthy sexuality. I needed to move to the UK to learn that I'm worthy of respect. At first it wasn't easy for me to accept compliments because they felt so foreign to me.

In order for both genders to be released from perpetuating their continuous cycles of martyrdom, they both need to learn the difference between being entitled to something and deserving of something. If a person has a belief that he/she doesn't deserve something it's a self-worth issue; an issue of not feeling worthy.
Entitlement stems from the belief that one has a right to claim what one wants from others. It doesn't have much in common with true deserving. Those who feel entitled usually have a deep insecurity about their own ability to get what they want. Mutual healing love is a conjunction of self-love and the love for the other. The ones deserving it are the ones with the ability and perseverance in co-creating it. 

To go back to balancing inner and outer reality. Martial arts with strict self-discipline could be beneficial for us for staying connected with our spirit in these times of altered reality?

Definitely one can benefit from self-discipline but what is equally needed is also a capacity to learn to be easy on ourselves and others which I call the blended soup of self-love and love for others. Sometimes people are unable to have an influence on outer reality, that's the time to focus on their inner balance, and martial arts are one of the tools that can help.

According to Daoism and TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), the emotions are being closely connected to five visceral organs. It is only when we also connect to our individual Fears (Kidneys), Anger (Liver), Worries (Spleen) and Sadness (Lung) that we can provide the Emperor of our Being (the Heart) with a fuel which allows our spirit to expand and connect to other living beings in a loving way which is nourishing to all.

If we don't allow ourselves first to feel and then regulate our emotions they become stagnant on the level of middle dantian (abdomen area), and we do not live in the now. We are being continuously transported to our past, possibly to our primary traumas and instead of taking a step further on our path of self-growth, we tend to project our past experiences onto others. We do not live according to our Heart's wisdom but are following the whims of the messages which were instilled in us in the process of socialization.

If we continue avoiding responsibility for regulation of our emotions, we easily slip from arguably blind passionate loving to equally passionate hating. None of them is healthy for the body and relating. but it's true - they both fuel exceptional stories - both written and unwritten. 

If an individual wants to be able to truly walk the talk, one needs to dedicate one's time to the regulation of one's emotions. This happens on three levels. First one needs to allow oneself to interact with one's surroundings through sensing; breathing and smelling through one’s nose (Lungs), listening and hearing through one’s ears (Kidneys), seeing through one’s eyes (Liver), tasting through one’s mouths (Spleen), attuning to one’s personal life energy which is also known as sexual energy (Kidney). Secondly one needs to be honest about one’s emotions that arise (fears, anger, worries, sadness, desires). And finally one needs to take time to hear the personal messages these emotions are conveying as well as strive to transform them into virtues (de 德);
Fears to Wisdom, Anger to Compassion, Worries to Trust, Sadness to Integrity. This is the way of Dao 道; Desire will transform itself into pure Delight and the soup will be nourishing for all involved. 

Will there be Love worth writing a novel in a sense that Márquez wrote about Cholera even in this challenging time of Coronavirus?

The most essential freedom can be found in moments of grace invoked by passionate longing of the human heart. It does not only write great poetry and remarkable novels. It can also be used to rewrite history. The word cólera in feminine form can also denote passion and rage in the spanish language. For centuries women were not allowed to express their passion, nor their rage.
I consider Love in the Time of Cholera the only study of sexuality written by a man and which main thread is love.
The plot of the story is embedded in times of rigid double standards, where all men were entitled to sexual explorations. Similar explorations done by women stigmatized them as loose. For centuries women were not allowed to be equal co-creators of society with men.

Gender equality has brought many propitious changes into contemporary ways of relating. These changes mostly concern an exploration of the potentialities of what the British Sociologist Anthony Giddens termed “pure relationship”. Pure relationship(s) presume sexual and emotional equality. Do we have the courage to defy our own prejudices?
Do women have the courage to claim not only sexual pleasure, but their sexual power as well?
Are men willing to handle women’s pasts, characters and ideas in spite of them being incompatible with their ideals? Are both genders ready to gradually let go of idealizing each-other and endowing each-other with imaginary sentiments and substitute them with the courage to face real stories with vulnerability?

When History and Herstory merge, magic happens which is reflected in intimate and joyous interactions. We could allow ourselves to be inspired to not only dare to talk and write about love but also to embody it. The love of the main characters of the book started with his unbridled passion and devastating patterns of love where neither could do anything except think about the other and dream about the other, which continued with patterns of love-sickness where only one side committed himself to think and dream about her who remained his unrequited love. It took more than half a century until the proper equilibrium has been established in their bodies as well as in their lives for them to actually allow themselves to embody their love with divine grace. Meanwhile he was loyal to her while he shared love with countless mistresses. He feared his "Crowned Goddess" would learn about his sharings of love with other women as much as she feared of her reputation if people would see her as a widow travelling on a boat with him. A boat trip wasn't a love trip. It was a love which kept up coming and going for 53 years, 7 months, 11 days and nights. On the night when the bodies of the couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion and beyond the phantoms of disillusion finally united he lied to her that he remained a virgen for her. It was a voyage on a river in a boat with the yellow cholera flag on it. It was a voyage of love which finally freed itself of social commitments. It lasted forever. 

We could write about disconnections to our true selves, our planet and to each other on a journey to everlasting love under “the flag of Coronavirus”. I think we had enough Bedtime Stories which put us to sleep. What we need are stories to Awaken us. We don't only need Martial Arts, Bedchamber Arts are essential too. 

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