How easy is it to give relationship advice? Pretty easy right? From the outside other friends always have the right answers and best perspectives, right? So why is it so hard for us to take our own advice?
In my current read (A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson) I've never seen or heard relationship advice broken down as what I'm about to show you. Instead of calling this Relationships 101, this is Relationships 102. This will take you to the next step of self analysis, understanding and awareness, and you'll probably never look at relationships the same again. ;)
It is not our job to seek for love, but to seek for all the barriers we hold against its coming.
Relationships are assignments. They are part of a vast plan for our enlightenment, the Universe's blueprint by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. Relationships are the Universe's laboratories that brings people together who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth. No meetings are accidental.
When we're not in a relationship, the ego makes it seem as though all the pain would go away if we were. The ego argues that the love we need must come from someone else, and that there's one special person out there who can fill up that hole, that this special person out there will make all the pain go away. We don't really believe that, of course, but then on the other hand we really do. This "special relationship" makes other people - their behavior, their choices, their opinions of us - too important. It makes us think we need another person, when in fact we are complete and whole as we are. If the relationship lasts, however, it will actually bring much of our existential pain to the surface. That's part of its purpose. It will demand all of our skills at compassion, acceptance, release, forgiveness, and selflessness. We might tend to forget the challenges involved in a relationship when we're not in one, but we remember then clearly enough once we are.
Certain voices go on endlessly these days about whether or not "our needs are being met" in a relationship. When we try to use a relationship to serve our own purposes we falter because we are reinforcing our illusion of need. The ego always emphasizes what someone has done wrong, it guides our thinking and we meet in fear, mask to mask. In the "holy relationship" the universe or Holy Spirit has changed our minds about the purpose of love and we meet heart to heart. Darkness is merely the absence of light, and fear is merely the absence of love. If we want to be rid of darkness, we must turn on a light. Similarly, if we want to be rid of fear, we cannot fight it but but replace it with love. The choice to love is not easy. The ego puts up terrible resistance to giving up fear-laden responses.
Our neuroses in relationships usually stem from our having an agenda (ego) for another person or for the relationship itself. God's or the Universe's idea of a "good relationship" and the Ego's idea of one are completely different. To the ego, a good relationship is one in which another person basically behaves the way we want them to and never presses our buttons, never violates our comfort zones. But if a relationship exists to support our growth, then in many ways it exists to do just those things; force us out of our limited tolerance and inability to love unconditionally.
Our ego is merely our fear. Our egos are not where we are "bad" but where we are wounded. We must reveal ourselves at the deepest level in order to find out how lovable we really are. When we dig deeply enough into our real nature, we do not find darkness. We find endless light. That is what the ego doesn't want us to see; that our safety actually lies in letting down our mask. But we cannot do this when we're constantly afraid of being judged.
As temples of healing, relationships are like a trip to the divine physician's office. How can a doctor help us unless we show him our wounds? Our fearful places have to be revealed before they can be healed. If a relationship allows us to merely avoid our unhealed places, then we're hiding there, not growing. The universe will not support that.
Someone with whom we have a lifetime's worth of lessons to learn is someone whose presence in our lives forces us to grow. Sometimes it represents someone with whom we participate lovingly all our lives, and sometimes it represents someone who we experience as a thorn in our side for years, or even forever. Just because someone has a lot to teach us doesn't mean we like them. People who have the most to teach us are often the ones who reflect back to us the limits to our own capacity to love, those who consciously or unconsciously challenge our fearful positions. They show us our walls. Our walls are our wounds - the places where we feel we cant love any more, cant connect any more deeply, cant forgive past a certain point. We are in each other's lives in order to help us see where we most need healing, and in order to help us heal.
Thinking that there is some special person out there who is going to save us is a barrier to pure love. It is a way the ego tries to keep us away from love, although it doesn't want us to see that. We seek desperately for love, but it is that same desperation that leads us to destroy it once it gets here. Thinking that one special person is going to save us tempts us to load an awful lot of emotional pressure on whoever comes along that we think might fit the bill. A relationship is not meant to be the joining at the hip of two emotional invalids. The purpose of a relationship is not for two incomplete people to become one, but rather for two complete people to join together for the greater glory of the universe. Under the universe's guidance we come together to share joy.
Peace isn't determined by circumstances outside us. Peace stems from forgiveness. Pain doesn't stem from the love we're denied by others, but rather from the love that we deny them. What really has occurred is that someone else's closed heart has tempted us to close our own, and it is our own denial of love that hurts us.
The problem in relationships is rarely that we haven't had wonderful opportunities or met wonderful people. The problem is, we haven't known how to take the greatest advantage of the opportunities we've had. Sometimes we didn't recognize at the time how wonderful those people were. Love is all around us. The ego is the block to our awareness of love's presence.
Growth is never about focusing on someone else's lessons, but only on our own.
In my current read (A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson) I've never seen or heard relationship advice broken down as what I'm about to show you. Instead of calling this Relationships 101, this is Relationships 102. This will take you to the next step of self analysis, understanding and awareness, and you'll probably never look at relationships the same again. ;)
It is not our job to seek for love, but to seek for all the barriers we hold against its coming.
Relationships are assignments. They are part of a vast plan for our enlightenment, the Universe's blueprint by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. Relationships are the Universe's laboratories that brings people together who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth. No meetings are accidental.
When we're not in a relationship, the ego makes it seem as though all the pain would go away if we were. The ego argues that the love we need must come from someone else, and that there's one special person out there who can fill up that hole, that this special person out there will make all the pain go away. We don't really believe that, of course, but then on the other hand we really do. This "special relationship" makes other people - their behavior, their choices, their opinions of us - too important. It makes us think we need another person, when in fact we are complete and whole as we are. If the relationship lasts, however, it will actually bring much of our existential pain to the surface. That's part of its purpose. It will demand all of our skills at compassion, acceptance, release, forgiveness, and selflessness. We might tend to forget the challenges involved in a relationship when we're not in one, but we remember then clearly enough once we are.
Certain voices go on endlessly these days about whether or not "our needs are being met" in a relationship. When we try to use a relationship to serve our own purposes we falter because we are reinforcing our illusion of need. The ego always emphasizes what someone has done wrong, it guides our thinking and we meet in fear, mask to mask. In the "holy relationship" the universe or Holy Spirit has changed our minds about the purpose of love and we meet heart to heart. Darkness is merely the absence of light, and fear is merely the absence of love. If we want to be rid of darkness, we must turn on a light. Similarly, if we want to be rid of fear, we cannot fight it but but replace it with love. The choice to love is not easy. The ego puts up terrible resistance to giving up fear-laden responses.
Our neuroses in relationships usually stem from our having an agenda (ego) for another person or for the relationship itself. God's or the Universe's idea of a "good relationship" and the Ego's idea of one are completely different. To the ego, a good relationship is one in which another person basically behaves the way we want them to and never presses our buttons, never violates our comfort zones. But if a relationship exists to support our growth, then in many ways it exists to do just those things; force us out of our limited tolerance and inability to love unconditionally.
Our ego is merely our fear. Our egos are not where we are "bad" but where we are wounded. We must reveal ourselves at the deepest level in order to find out how lovable we really are. When we dig deeply enough into our real nature, we do not find darkness. We find endless light. That is what the ego doesn't want us to see; that our safety actually lies in letting down our mask. But we cannot do this when we're constantly afraid of being judged.
As temples of healing, relationships are like a trip to the divine physician's office. How can a doctor help us unless we show him our wounds? Our fearful places have to be revealed before they can be healed. If a relationship allows us to merely avoid our unhealed places, then we're hiding there, not growing. The universe will not support that.
Someone with whom we have a lifetime's worth of lessons to learn is someone whose presence in our lives forces us to grow. Sometimes it represents someone with whom we participate lovingly all our lives, and sometimes it represents someone who we experience as a thorn in our side for years, or even forever. Just because someone has a lot to teach us doesn't mean we like them. People who have the most to teach us are often the ones who reflect back to us the limits to our own capacity to love, those who consciously or unconsciously challenge our fearful positions. They show us our walls. Our walls are our wounds - the places where we feel we cant love any more, cant connect any more deeply, cant forgive past a certain point. We are in each other's lives in order to help us see where we most need healing, and in order to help us heal.
Thinking that there is some special person out there who is going to save us is a barrier to pure love. It is a way the ego tries to keep us away from love, although it doesn't want us to see that. We seek desperately for love, but it is that same desperation that leads us to destroy it once it gets here. Thinking that one special person is going to save us tempts us to load an awful lot of emotional pressure on whoever comes along that we think might fit the bill. A relationship is not meant to be the joining at the hip of two emotional invalids. The purpose of a relationship is not for two incomplete people to become one, but rather for two complete people to join together for the greater glory of the universe. Under the universe's guidance we come together to share joy.
Peace isn't determined by circumstances outside us. Peace stems from forgiveness. Pain doesn't stem from the love we're denied by others, but rather from the love that we deny them. What really has occurred is that someone else's closed heart has tempted us to close our own, and it is our own denial of love that hurts us.
The problem in relationships is rarely that we haven't had wonderful opportunities or met wonderful people. The problem is, we haven't known how to take the greatest advantage of the opportunities we've had. Sometimes we didn't recognize at the time how wonderful those people were. Love is all around us. The ego is the block to our awareness of love's presence.
Growth is never about focusing on someone else's lessons, but only on our own.
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