Relationships are the greatest source of suffering in the human realm. We love each other deeply. It is our nature. But we also hurt each other. We become attached. This can be complex. Our drive for safety, belonging, acceptance, and ultimately, love, often overshadows our ability to see reality. Many humans suffer from complex trauma and chaotic attachment styles causing them to use strategies to meet their fundamental drive for connection in unhealthy ways. It’s poor strategy that causes them to hurt others and to perpetuate their sense of separation. The result? They feel terribly alone inside. This causes a certain kind of madness within a human being. They would do better if they knew how. Beneath their strategies is the basic and innocent drive for connection, love, and a feeling of deeply rested satisfaction.
Because relationships are the place where we get hurt, they are also the place where we have the most potential for healing. It is often said that our relationships are where the rubber meets the road on the spiritual path. It is easy to delude ourselves into thinking we are someone or something different than we are, until we are triggered in an intimate or family relationship. Fortunately, for the one who is initiated onto the path of spiritual surrender, these triggers are seen as opportunities to unfold, to open, to expand, and to liberate love. They are seen as moments of potential greatness that simply require a bit of fierce tenderness, conscious touch, and yielding will. The key to relational transformation is humility. Humility is the end of argument. It is the end of need, manipulation, and desire. It is the doorway to closeness, love, and intimacy. It is seeing and being seen. It is the knowledge of self and other as one. This is not a thinking or conceptual knowledge. This is a deeply embodied and visceral knowing. It is gnosis.
While it is very important to unlearn ineffective strategies and to replace them with effective strategies, nothing will take you as far as gaining the knowledge of oneness. That is a knowledge that changes you, from the inside out. Putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t make it not a pig. Putting new siding on a house that has a crumbling foundation doesn’t fix the foundation. Rearranging the image of life in your mind doesn’t address the energetic source of life from which all harmony, joy, power, and order flows. If you own a piece of property with a creek on it that has always flowed clean and free and you suddenly discover it is blocked up and stagnant, what are you going to do? Are you going to play in the stagnant waters, trying to remove the algae, sticks, and bugs? Or are you going to go upstream, find the blockage, and release it so that the water can flow again, cleanly, and naturally? It is foolish and vain to address the outer appearance and external manifestation without getting to the root cause. If you are struggling in any domain (relational, business, spiritual, health), first go within, to the source, and then work your way out. Eventually you will see that this is the only way to live life, and its actually how life works best.
Love is the most powerful force in the universe. Let it in! Connect with it, directly. Let it change you. Let it work its magic on your heart. Let it heal you, lighten you, and bring a smile through your soul.
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