The Heart & Soul of Spiritual Relationship

Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.
- Rabindranath Tagore

In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight. 

– Ram Dass

 

Why do we enter into relationships?  What are we looking for?  Too often we are seeking someone else to convince us to love ourselves.  We wander around at a masquerade party of soul’s hoping to find someone who feels safe enough for us to let down our facade.  At the same time we are completely invested in that mask and are afraid to look behind it.  We feel separate and estranged and can only accept the “safety” of someone who can be a comfortable masquerade partner.  Thus ego-centric “love” can never be anything other than a counterfeit. 

We are all wounded and vulnerable.  We all suffer.  We feel unworthy of love and thus cut ourselves off from our essence.  Then we look for it in someone else: Mom, Dad, husband, wife, child, lover, whoever.  And do we get righteously pissed-off when they can’t or won’t give it to us!  This seems to be the nature of our human existence.  We feel our individuality so strongly that we live in fear, no absolute terror of crossing our imaginary ego-boundaries.  Then we blame it on someone else.  True love cannot be limited to a particular relationship, is not based in need and desire and is non-attached.  As Marianne Williamson writes,

The love in one of us is the love in all of us.

‘There’s actually no place where God stops and you start,’

and no place where you stop and I start.

Love is energy and infinite continuum.

Your mind extends into mine and everyone else’s.

It doesn’t stay enclosed within your body.

(A Return to Love)

This, of course, is not just “mysticism” it is verified by modern physics. 

As a relationship therapist I get to see over and over again how we project our shadows, our wounds and fears, onto another and then call it “love.”  And it is in this sense that our relationships can possibly lead to the healing of our souls; however it can do so only when we are able to look at ourselves in the mirror of self-reflection.  Open, honest and non-judgmental self-reflection is the awakening of true love within us.  It opens the pathway to conscious consciousness evolution, or enlightenment. 

Buddha referred to this kind of self-reflection as “maitri,” or “loving-awareness.”  It is a common cliché that we need to love ourselves first before we can love another.  The problem is that like with most clichés we pay no attention.  Your loving acceptance of yourself, paradoxically opens the door for growth and change.  When we are able accept and allow ourselves to be who we are, we discover that we are beings of evolving conscious, unfolding love.  There is no actual effort involved.  All effort is simply resistance.  “Resistance to the disturbance,” writes Vernon Howard, “is the disturbance.” 

Relationships are an interesting kind of mirroring process.  We see ourselves reflected in each other and the things that we seek to change in the other are aspects of ourselves.  When we seek to change the world, it is often like cleaning the mirror to get rid of a blemish on our own faces.  To truly love another one has to be at peace within oneself.  One has to be free and non-attached.  It is the recognition of both of us as sacred and autonomous beings, individual expressions of Divine Unity.  We are beings of love.  Any need to change ourselves or the other is really an impulse of violence.  “The ultimate state of Love is freedom,” writes Osho, “absolute freedom and any relationship that destroys freedom is not worthwhile. Love is a sacred art. To be in Love is to be in a holy relationship.” 

Often times we turn our relationships into functions.  We put out ads where we want someone who is such and such height, weight, etc.  Or maybe we want a sense of humor, intelligence; someone to share our interests.  In this sense relationships seem to be about fitting a job description rather than opening up unconditionally to another being who essentially, deep down, one’s Self.  We forget sometimes that the tradition of marriage is really based in ownership.  It is a barely disguised form of mutual slavery.  As we awaken however we might be able to create a new kind of relationship based in mutual respect as sacred spirit beings; relationship based in freedom rather than control, love rather than need.