GETTING THE LOVE YOU NEED
(Continued from Getting The Love You Want)
Relationships are a path for personal growth. In my opinion, they can be a fast track way for spiritual growth. Perhaps some of you have had the experience of feeling great when you are on your own, but when you get into a relationship, all of a sudden you find out all sorts of areas for personal growth as your shadow gets provoked. None of that seemed to exist when you were on your own. So where did it come from? The ego assumes it must be your partner, so you conclude you're with the wrong partner. Truth is, these vasanas (or negative tendencies) were within you all along and have been simply triggered by the relationship.
Of course, it is healthy to be in a relationship where you find the support and safety you need to explore and ultimately release these vasanas. This is why a healthy relationship is more like a co-creative workshop for spiritual growth than a walk in the park. They amplify our shadow and our potential. They bring out hidden tendencies and show us who we truly are. When we are willing to accept the fuel for growth and let our ego guard down, the workshop begins to feel more like a walk in the park, as we become more spiritually fit.
I have had my fair share of a range of relationship experiences, some painfully scary and others tender and divine. In hindsight, I can see in that all the while, I was being taught exactly what I needed to learn in exactly the way I needed to learn it. Sometimes when we resist lessons, life heats up the teachings and we find ourselves in painful situations. The intensity of the lesson may be a measure of our resistance to learning and the hardness of our ego. If we meet a relationship with humility, these tough lessons soften and our learning and evolution increases.
I have found when I am willing to let go of the grip of my ego and live in service to the creative flow, this moment as it is right now, I touch a level of love and joy that is not conditional upon circumstance. This is something I can choose. I can tap into that flow at any time.
Our partners may push our buttons, but the buttons are ours. Our old patterns exist within ourselves. They are not found inside the other person.
I believe it is humbling and healthy to know that we will be triggered at some point or another until we reach enlightenment. The triggers persist because they are part of our attachments to “mine”, the part of the human psyche that divides and individuates. Similarly our partner has the same tendencies. When we understand this, we can soften to what may seem intense, unfair, or "against me" in the moment and open to a bigger picture. We can laugh more at our tendency to grasp and push. We can let go and flow with greater joy.
No one person, no matter how perfect, could fill up a hole in our psyche. In some sense, it is not even really fair to ask that of anyone. No one person could make our distorted perceptions right. Maybe by their not giving us what we feel we want in the moment, we go inside and find it from our capacity for self-love and from our relationship with the Divine. Maybe by not being given the exact right response that we feel we want in this moment to make life seem perfectly shiny, maybe we are being given the greatest gift we could get. In that moment, we see our attachments to how we want life to be, rather than how life is. In that moment, our “me-ness” cracks a little, and a fissure of light slips in. We can see, in perfect reflection, our wanting, how our ego wants things to be a certain way to feel temporarily loved.
In truth, we are always loved. Our perception of such gets eclipsed, and we forget. That is ok. When we don’t get what we want, we have a chance to see what we really need. We have an opportunity to turn our awareness to the reality that we are already whole, loved, connected and interconnected to an intelligent whole that is far greater than our limited ego or will. We just temporarily got caught up, in the smallness of “me” and forgot the expanse of “I Am”. Our partner too is part of that intelligent whole. And whether our partner knows it or not, he/she just gave us a gift back home, to the One undivided state of continual bliss. Not bad for a relationship, huh?
Today is the last day to submit your question to be answered for next week's blog. Please send yours to ask@parvatidevi.com.
I will post a new blog topic in answer to one of your questions throughout next week starting this Sunday.
Thanks for reading!
Be well till then,
Parvati
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