INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS AS A VEHICLE FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH

 

"If life is a school, the relationship is your university." - Judith Saly

From the point of view of the soul, each of us is here on earth to fulfill our interior design. In the process, it does not really matter if you stay in an intimate relationship for a lifetime, has many close relationships, or even have any. We will, of course, always be in relationships; the very essence of human life is interdependent and relational. However, whatever our specific relational circumstances may be, our real work is the work of becoming more fully ourselves how to win someone .

However, most of us have a very strong drive to intimate relationships - or at least in the direction of adjustment of the couple, a process that we hope will provide us with the feelings of safety and security that often confuse with intimacy. In fact, true intimacy rarely creates the personality self human experience as "security" and the type of security that seems desirable parts of the personality, in fact, leads to stagnation in other parts of us and our soul. This is one reason why so many of us experience romantic relationships as a source of great confusion and suffering.

True intimacy is a deep contact experience where awareness is another appreciatively. Since each contains many levels and aspects of consciousness, we experience the intimacy (or lack thereof) within ourselves, or any other living being. While intimacy can be present with the people we know very well, a sudden flash of intimacy can also occur in a brief exchange between strangers.

Intimacy takes place at the level of consciousness, the level where the soul resides. So it requires and facilitates authenticity, fall-away social masks. This is one reason why many people find it easier to experience intimacy with animals, who do not use social masks, or respond to those masks on us. It is also why so many of us find it surprisingly difficult to be really intimate with our lovers or parceiros.Muitas times, people in the designated "intimate relationships" fall into patterns that are destructive to intimacy - for example, when we tried to call certain feelings or behaviors each other or ourselves, or when fear leads us to hide aspects of ourselves.Ironically, intimacy most "intimate relations" has a very short life, he is always present at all.

Many of us keep private or ideal visions for romantic relationships.We believe that our partners should or should have physical and emotional characteristics particular, live their lives in certain ways, and be with us in ways our human selves find pleasure or comforting.While there is nothing "wrong" with any of these beliefs or desires, they have absolutely nothing to do with love or intimacy. They are based on a transactional model relationship, a model that is appropriate in a market context ( "I'll give you a dollar, will you give me an avocado"), but is irrelevant, even antithetical, the authentic connection.

"But having a partner who is X or not X would bring me joy," part of us may protest. In fact, this is not exactly true. Our human selves have many preferences, and as we have discussed, is harmonious for us to organize our lives according to these preferences, rather than in opposition to them. However, the sole purpose of creating a life that meets our preferences leads to an endless search - since no matter what we choose, our deepest work always present to be done, often in ways that bring challenge or discomfort. And the joy is an inner soul movement that can and often arise regardless of our preferences were met, or completely subverted. For example, no parent would rather have a child with Down syndrome or severe disabilities, but many parents of children born with such conditions report that their children bring them great joy.

The belief that we have things a certain way in order to be happy emerges from a part of me that has not released life on his own bail, did not say yes to ourselves and our world as it is. We all have these parts, but allowing them to dominate our relationship is a recipe for pain, both for us and anyone who tries to "love." Love does not dictate conditions; Love embraces conditions exactly as they are.

Eckhart Tolle says matter-of-factly, "In case you have not noticed, the relationships are not here to make us happy." However, even when we noticed that, we can continue to blindly expect that is simply because we have not yet found the relationship " right ", the partner who will give us everything we want and we believe we need.

Practicing rewarding and demanding job of intimacy is an important part of interior design of most people. However, this work, when properly understood and engaged, it seems like the "happily ever after " myth we grew up with. In fact, the ability to develop and maintain a true intimacy with self and others depend on the will to know about ourselves and each other, to stretch, explore and question in an atmosphere of open, compassionate curiosity. In his book Soul Mates, Thomas Moore describes it well:

"I'm not referring to the endless analysis and insight, which can dry out a relationship with the car toward understanding.Wonder and open discussion are wetter. They keep people close to their experience, while at the same time offering a degree of imagination, a very necessary element in every intimate relationship. "

Truly intimate relationships require us to be willing to see and know our partners, and to tolerate being seen and known. At the same time, they force us to support the modes and times when it seems that our partners can not or do not see or know us, and those times that we ourselves fall short of what the hard work.

Relationships that are truly intimate also require us to take responsibility both for our own pain, and our own needs. In fact, the relationships of all kinds are ideal places to practice the challenge of self-responsibility. We can start by remembering that other people, including our romantic partners are not the cause of any pain we feel.All other people can do is to light the places collapsed in our own beings - loss of local soul, harmful impressions, shame or self-hatred, victim consciousness or problematic emotional postures. Because of the spotlight shine on those wounded places within us relationships can be major catalysts for growth and healing when we allow them to be - and when we can accept the messages they bring us not blame the messenger.

full self-responsibility requires us to be clear that it is never the work of our partner to meet our emotional needs (or, of course, is that ever our work to meet the needs of our partners). Of course, if none of our emotional needs are already met within a given relationship, we can decide to terminate the relationship, or to change their shape. But in most cases, those who love try to meet some of our needs, a part of the time. Strangely, the fact that some, but not all of our needs are met, often causes us great pain. Faced with this situation, most of us want to try to put pressure on our partners to meet more of our needs, or start punishing our partners or withdraw emotionally from the relationship. Instead of reacting in this way, we would be better served to investigate these things we experience as "needs" and the true source of the pain we feel when they are not met. Usually this process of research can lead us toward processes that have little to do with our current relationships, and much to do with the ways that we separate ourselves, compassion and healing of life.

Of course, this does not mean that we should remain in relationships that do not want to be in. It simply means that if we choose to end a certain relationship or stay in it, we recognize that pain, fear or other difficult emotions that were created in us is our - our to work, heal and disassemble. In fact, the most painful of all relationships are those in which people refuse this self-responsibility and instead persist in endless power struggles and unsatisfactory negotiations with each other, all in an effort to escape from difficult emotions. In contrast, the most rewarding relationships are those in which both partners recognize their own responsibility and work side by side in their own growth and healing - including those areas in need of healing that are continually brought to their attention by the relationship.

Sometimes people try to support each other, taking on the emotional work our partners find more difficult, but this is a risky approach. For example, person A has difficulty allowing yourself to be vulnerable;Person B provides a safe space for her to do so. Person B has difficulty valuing itself; A person continuously reflects its value back to her. Although this type of dynamics can be positive if it leads to person A becoming more able to tolerate their own vulnerability and Person B becoming more able to value yourself, it is often not what happens. emotional, physical as crutches, can be used in order to facilitate cure, or prevent a way that the that healing.

The purpose of a crutch is supporting a wounded leg, allowing us to keep the weight off long enough that it can heal, so that it can then support the weight again. However, if we use the crutch inappropriately, it can become so accustomed to lean on him that our injured member does not recover his strength; instead, it becomes weaker, even atrophies. Sometimes, well-meaning intimate partners provide exactly this kind of unhealthy crutch for the other. They may not realize until too late - when one or both partners are feeling suffocated, stagnant, or desperate to regain their own power - that they have "outsourced" skills they really needed to develop themselves.

Another posture soul crucial for the true experience of intimacy is the ability to accept change. Because human beings are living, growing, changing bodies, the change in our relationships is not only probable but certain. However, although the soul is tuned to follow joy through a constant series of moves and calibrations, our human selves often fall prey to the erroneous belief that our personal happiness will come by achieving and maintaining a fixed and unchanging state.When we experience happiness, some of us reflexively assume that will continue if we can find a way to keep the exact conditions present at the time. Of course, this is impossible; we can not maintain a steady state, unchanging - and not within ourselves, not within our partners, and certainly not between two living, growing people in a relationship should also grow if it is to survive.

The truth - as many people have discovered - is that if we want an easy, predictable and relatively unchanging long-term relationship, it would be better to adopt a dog. The stable company available from "man's best friend" is simply not possible with humans, nor should it be. human intimacy offers us something completely different: a kind of love that is much more challenging, and also gives us much deeper possibilities for transformation. Thomas Moore describes this kind of partnership as a sacred marriage, "a union on a much deeper level or above personalities and lives." The deeper commitment, we can make one for the other is a commitment to support the growth of our own and souls of others, even though this support may require hard labor on the level of human personality.

In fact, since our primary responsibility is for the development project of our own soul, any relationships we form with other human beings are legitimately subject to the needs and signals of our souls. This subordination does not mean that we can not truly love others and receive their love. Rather, it means that we should expand our notion of what it means to love others, and to receive his love. Many people try to make intimate relationships in a way that has nothing to do with genuine love, demanding instead that each member of the partnership attempted to constrict and control yourself or your partner. Such partnerships require commitment and sacrifice at every turn; in this scenario, where people do not allow real contact with themselves and each other, there is no alternative.

Of course, there is no "wrong" with no commitment or sacrifice. The soul actually welcomes these experiences, too, if they take place in a context that brings joy. Something that seems to be a sacrifice when viewed from the outside can have a totally different meaning for the person or people involved. For example, all parents make many sacrifices, but having children is a real part of your interior design, the meaning of what they should "give up" in the process becomes. If a "sacrifice" apparent is a fulfillment of one's interior design it is not really a sacrifice at all; It would, in fact, be more than a sacrifice to give up this achievement. Again, only our own experience of joy - or our lack of joy - can help us to discern what is and what is not in alignment with our interior design.

Like any other aspect of life, we, our partners and our relationships change constantly, turn and turn. If we are able to host this natural process of reconfiguration, it will energize us and deepen our capacity to love and be loved. If not - respond to changes in their partners or ourselves with fear, sadness, judgment or anger, or an attempt to manipulate or suppress ourselves or someone else - then we'll meet working against the movement of love within us and outside of us.

Again, this does not mean that we should remain in partnerships where we are or our partners have been changed in order to make us deeply incompatible. Sometimes true love demands to free ourselves or our partners with the wishes and blessings. When properly understood, this kind of separation can be profoundly intimate and loving. At other times, love can help us to re-shape our relations so that they continue to meet our partners and ourselves as we change.

Few of us have been exposed to the kind of love that is able to embrace growth and change. Instead, we are told that if we "love" someone, we make promises like these:

"I will love you forever."

"I will never hurt you."

"I will never leave you."

"My feelings for you will never change."

This misconception of love puts our "love" for another person against the deep need of our soul for growth. And since the soul of our lover has the same need, this misguided attempt to love let us work against their deepest well-being as well. If some of us still supports the transactional model of relationships, we can feel anger and bitterness when these promises will inevitably get broken. "I kept giving you dollars, but you stopped giving me avocados", or "I gave you good avocados, but I see now that their dollars were fake all the time" would be reasonable claims to make a market, but since love and intimacy are not souls movements instead of transactions, these types of protests only take us further from real love.

In order relationships to serve us at the soul level, we should review our understanding of the nature of compromise. Commitments such as "I'll be with you forever" are inherently limited to full flowering and expression of the soul. Maybe get together "forever" will produce conditions where both people can thrive and fulfill their interior design; maybe it will not. Since there is really no way to know or predict whether it will be so, it is wrong to make such votes. If it is found that the maximum growth of the soul is not being served by these conditions, leave joy, resentment will set in, and the votes will eventually be broken, either emotionally, physically, or both.

However, there is a very different kind of commitment we can and should do with those we love or want to love. In place of the commitments that try to predict or impose a particular outcome, we instead commit to a loving process, conscious. Here are some examples of such commitments:

"I commit to allow my higher self and soul to work through me in all aspects of my life, including this relationship."

"I commit to the effort to love you and I, as much as I can."

"I commit wholeheartedly to my own growth and development, and using this relationship in the service of that commitment."

"I commit to do my best to stay present with you as we learn together about the nature of love."

When done with deep feeling, these commitments are actually much more challenging than the "old" commitments, because they require much more awareness, attention and presence. They are commitments to ways of being, for energy flows as well as stocks. The soul rejoices with those kinds of commitments; they facilitate true intimacy with both I and the other, thus supporting the fulfillment of our interior design.

Author and aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh offers a poetic description of this process:

"Security in a relationship or not is to look back to what it was, nor forward to what could be, but live in the present and accept it as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands. You must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continually visited and abandoned by the tides is necessary to accept the serenity of the winged life, of ebb and flow, intermittency. " .

And poet Rainer Maria Rilke agrees: "Love consists in this ... that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other."

It is the deepest expression of love to support another in relation to its growth path, wherever it may lead. If you cultivate the ability to give and receive this kind of support, your relationships will become truly intimate, durable and nutritious.