Wed 1 Jun 2011
TRANSFORMING RELATIONSHIPS
Whenever we split the world into good and bad, conflict and neurosis are inevitable. Our energy becomes split or divided. Whenever we pride ourselves on saying “no” to a cream cake, working through our lunch break, or pleasing our partner at the expense of our own feelings, we are bowing to the old cosmology. Trying to be good stems from a dualistic way of thinking. It is based upon judgment, or conditional love. It fuels self-righteousness, which means someone is “in the right and someone else is “in the wrong” – some part of the self is right (the judge within), and another part is bad and wrong (our feelings, thoughts, or desires). This inner conflict will be mirrored in conflict with others. Splitting ourselves internally leads to projecting our shadow onto others. This is at the root of wars, terrorism, genocide, racism, sexism, family feuds, religious factions, scapegoating, and most relationship difficulties. As Dr. Carl Jung said, “The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens ourside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains divided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.” This dynamic creates a huge proportion of the misery in the world and blocks our natural ability to love with an open heart and to speak honestly without blame or defensiveness.
Gandhi said we need to be the change we want to see in the world. Because all energy is interconnected, we are all one at the energy level. What we are has far more impact than what we say or do. If we are loving toward ourselves, and at peace with ourselves, that helps to spread love and peace in the world. Our energy radiates far beyond our personal lives, like ripples spreading across a great lake. When we are negative or critical, even in the privacy of our own minds, that energy affects the world. When we are loving, joyful, peaceful, creative, and visionary, that, too, affects the world around us.
However, this isn’t an excuse to beat ourselves up whenever we are having a bad time, feeling negative, angry, despairing, or fearful. If we react in the way, we slip back into the old cosmology. A crucial part of self-love is accepting whoever we are, wrapping our arms around ourselves, and saying “yes” to whatever is. The paradox is that we cannot change while we are pushing against whatever is. When we push, we are in resistance, which blocks the flow of energy. We have to accept what is in front of us in order to open the door to change, whether it is a negative emotion, a situation we find difficult or painful, other people’s behavior, or what is happening in the world. To say “yes” to it, we have to soften our resistance. Our love needs to be unconditional: Tolerance is not love. Approval is not love. Dependency is not love. Love heals and transforms everything, but it has to be wild, or it is not love.
We can truly love only when we know we are good and aim to be happy. We cannot love while we are trying to be good. The world of judgment traps us in ego – we can only tame others or allow ourselves to be tamed. When we try to please others from a sense of unworthiness, we are trying to “earn” love by sacrificing our true selves; if we emit shame and insecurity, our relationships will reflect that back to us. If we try to be good by identifying with the judgmental god within, we become critical and controlling of others, holding them responsible for our feelings and wanting them to live up to our model of who they should be. Either way, love and intimacy are nowhere to be found.
When we aim to be happy, by contrast, we give off vibrations of self-love, self-worth, and appreciation, and our relationships mirror this by becoming deeper, happier, and more authentic. In other words, much of what we have been taught about “what love means” – self-sacrifice, putting others first, being loyal to others at the expense of our own feelings or authenticity, or feeling entitled to have others behave as we wish them to – actually leads us away from loving relationships and into the twilight prison of condependency. It leads us toward tame love, which constantly slips into toxic cycles of control and sacrifice, blame and guilt. Tame love splinters our awareness and strangles our potential. It holds us hostage to the old cosmology.
As part of the great awakening, I believe we are in cultural transition from tame love to wild love, from the limited psychology of the ego to the multidimensional awareness of the Self. As a result, personal relationships are currently in chaos. As I see it, the current pattern of marital breakdown and blended families is not necessarily a bad thing. As family therapy reveals, dysfunctional family patterns tend to be unconsciously passed down through the generations. Children grow into adults who mistake for love whatever they received childhood, since it feels familiar. They then feel “bound by loyalty” to similarly dysfunctional relationships in adulthood – and the chain of pain is passed on. Perhaps the ability to let go of limiting relationships is essential in dissolving our old riverbeds of relating and giving the next generation fresh options and greater freedom. Perhaps it is a crucial part of our spiritual awakening to release our old security blankets to build healthier patterns of relating. If so, we need to stop judging a marriage a failure if it ends in divorce. After all, some of the least successful relationships that I know of have lasted for decades.
Marriane Williamson suggests that marriage often becomes “a prison based on guilt and ownership” – a chilling description of tame love. Tame love traps us in fear, guilt, control, and conformity, making us far smaller than we really are. But we are now outgrowing that old model of love and commitment, with its demands, possessiveness, and feelings of “entitlement,” and forging new riverbeds of wild love. We are reaching for a greater love, which allows us to expand our consciousness and express our creative and loving potential – Love that sets us free to be who we truly are.
During the past few years, my own journey has unexpectedly taken me out of a marriage, which – though friendly and companionable – was limiting and two dimensional. It had rocked me to sleep, without my even noticing. Through an experience of wild love, I reawakened my passion, sensuality, and embodiment and reconnected with my emotions. I reclaimed my lost dreams and desires. My journey was immensely tough and painful, yet it released much that for years I had kept under wraps. It smashed through my old defenses. I felt raw, exposed, and vulnerable, as if an old suit of armor had been ripped off, leaving my flesh tender and pink. It changed me profoundly, in ways that I could never have imagined. It helped me to understand how we control and limit ourselves. And it taught me what love, for self, others, and the world, really means.