Relationships. Nov 2007 An Autumn Morning
WHEN WILL I LEARN ENOUGH ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS TO BE ABLE TO HAVE THEM RUN SMOOTHLY? IS THERE A WAY TO BE HAPPY IN RELATIONSHIPS? MUST THEY BE CONSTANTLY CHALLENGING?
We will cover relationships many times on this Sofa, seeing as they fascinate me and pretty much make the world go round!
I am glad you have come to sit with me!!
I had the sudden urge to share my morning with you, my beautiful morning I might add. When looking out my window at the glorious sun that was shining through, it was heightened by the reflected orange, brown and yellow autumn leaves, the air was fresh with that cold crisp feeling. I opened the windows front and back to allow the air to flow freely throughout the flat, very peaceful. Outside hadn’t completely woken up and I could hear the noise of rustling leaves and just a few cars passing by.
Have you ever noticed in the City how many birds are close to the ground before the world wakes?
Today didn’t go the way I had completely expected, I wanted to write something completely different to what you are about to read, in fact I copied these words from a book quite some time ago when I was going through a break up in a relationship. They helped me at the time to understand relationships and how each relationship teaches you something new about yourself and however long they last whether weeks, months or years each should be seen as a gift.
These words are originally from “Conversations with God” book one. If you haven’t read it I recommend it to you. It is a great read; it tests the mind patterns of manipulated belief that we have all become accustomed too, (well most). but then you could argue that this book is manipulated belief (oh I love Paradox)
If this paragraph or two interests you then buy the book and come to your own conclusion of whether it rings true for you or not – nothing ventured nothing gained and all hat jazz…….
I felt it apt for this day seeing as one of my friends was going through a divorce and another called today to tell me she had split with her boyfriend, when I asked why? She said “it was just not feeling right”. (I think we all know that feeling)
Feelings are our true language but most of the time we stop feeling with our heart and gut and start feeling with our thinking heads. feelings are the language of the soul and I have been trying to tune into them as much as possible but with all the noise in everyday life it can be difficult.
The gut has a mind and feelings too, that’s where the saying “gut feeling” comes from.
Read on, I hope you enjoy.
You have nothing to learn about relationships. You have only to demonstrate what you already know. There is a way to be happy in relationships, and that is to use relationships for their intended purpose, not the purpose you have designed.
Relationships are constantly challenging; constantly calling you to create, express and experience higher and higher aspects of yourself, grander and grander visions of yourself, ever more magnificent versions of yourself. Nowhere can you do this more immediately, impact fully, and immaculately than in relationships. In fact, without relationships, you cannot do it at all.
It is only through you’re relationship with other people, places and events that you can even exist (as the knowable quantity, as an identifiable something) in the universe.
Remember, absent everything else you are not. You are only what you are relative to another thing that is not, that’s how it is in the world or relative as apposed to world of the absolute.
Once you can clearly understand and grasp this (if at all) then you intuitively bless each and every experience, all human encounter, and especially personal human relationships, for you will see them as constructive, in the highest sense, you see that they can be used, are being used (whether you want them to or not) to construct who you really are.
Bless therefore every relationship, and hold each as special and formative of who you are – and now choose to be and remember we are changing constantly, we are creating our reality constantly from our experiences and thoughts.
When human love relationships fail (relationships never truly fail, except in the strictly human sense that they did not produce what you want or wanted) they fail because they were entered into for the wrong reasons.
(“wrong” of course, is a relative term, meaning something measured against that which is” right” – WHATEVER THAT IS!!! It would be more accurate in our language to say that relationships fail – change – most often when they are entered into for reasons not wholly beneficial or conducive to their survival”)
Most people enter a relationship with an eye to what they can get out of it rather than what they can put into it, the purpose of a relationship should be to decide what part of yourself you would like to see “show up” not what part of another can you capture and keep hold of or control.
Its very romantic to say you were nothing until said person came along but it is not true, worse thing is that it puts incredible pressure on the other to be all sorts of things he or she is not, not wanting to let people down we try hard to be and do these things until we cant any more and then resentment builds, anger follows!!
Again its very romantic to say your other half completes you, yet the purpose of relationship is not to have another who may complete you but to have another with whom you may share your completeness – (Here is another great paradox of all human relationships – you have no need for a particular other in order to experience fully who you really ARE and with out another you are nothing)
This is the mystery and wonder, the frustration and the joy of human experience. It requires deep understanding and total willingness to live within this paradox in a way that makes sense. (so few people do)
Some of us enter our relationships forming years ripe with anticipation, full of sexual energy and joyful and eager souls. Somewhere between this time we’ve given up on our grandest dream set aside our highest hopes and settled for the lowest expectation or nothing at all.
The problem is so basic, so simple and yet so tragically misunderstood: your grandest dream , your highest idea and your fondest hope has had to do with your beloved other rather than your beloved Self. The test of your relationship has had to do with how well the other lived up to your ideas and how well you see yours living up to his or hers. Yet the only true test is how well you live up to yours.
Let each person in the relationship worry about SELF, what self is being, doing and having, what self is wanting, asking , giving, what self is seeking, creating, experiencing and then all relationships would magnificently serve their purpose and their participants! Let each person in the relationship worry not about the other but only, only about SELF.
This seems strange for you have been taught that in the highest form of relationships one worries only about the other. Yet ill tell you this, your focus upon the other – your obsession with the other is what causes relationships to fail (what is the other being? Doing? Having? Saying? Wanting? Demanding? Doesn’t matter what the other is thinking, expecting or planning it only matters what you are being in relationship to that.
Two people join together in a partnership hoping that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts only to find it is less, they feel less than when they were single, less capable, less able, less exciting, less attractive, less joyful, less content. This is because they are less; they have given up who they are in order to BE – and to STAY in their relationship
“Ok I know it’s a lot to digest but is it touching a chord, do you want a few last paragraphs?? Yes of course you do”!!…
But words do hurt and cause pain in relationships which make us react with negative emotion, and so there are things you can do when you react with pain and hurt to what another is being, saying or doing.
The first is to admit honestly to yourself and to another exactly how you are feeling, deep communication, this many of you are afraid to do, because you think it will make you look bad somewhere deep inside you, you realise that it is ridiculous for you to feel that way, it probably is small for you. You are BIGGER than that but you can’t help it, you still feel that way.
There is only one thing you can do, you must honour your feelings, for honouring your feelings means honouring your self. How can you ever expect to honour and understand the feelings of another if you cannot honour the feelings within your self ?
At the critical juncture in all human relationships, there is only one question –
WHAT WOULD SELF LOVE DO??
As Rodrigo a Brazilian Buggy driver would say – Peace love no stress!
