Into The Mystery Podcast Ep. 8: Relationship On The Path

You're listening to Into the Mystery.

In this episode,

We discuss the nature of relationship on the spiritual path.

We'll talk about some of the inevitable challenges that many of us will face with our partners,

The opportunities for growth that they present,

As well as the paradoxical loneliness that often arises in our journey toward wholeness.

We hope you enjoy.

I think the first thing we have to acknowledge is that the question of relationship is extraordinarily complex and there are so many facets of relationship that relate to our path that it's virtually impossible to speak to all of them.

And then of course there's different kinds of relationship,

Right?

There's intimate relationship,

Casual relationship,

Friendship,

Right?

Just between parent and child,

Child and child.

But to me when we speak about relationships and the dynamics of relationship and as they pertain to us in our path,

One of the most significant questions I think is,

What is relationship for?

And maybe I'll just throw that to you as the question is,

What is relationship for?

What is relationship for?

That is.

.

.

You really did throw a curve ball.

A lot of movement on that curve ball.

Well,

I have an understanding of what a relationship,

What we think relationship is for,

Especially before we embark on a spiritual path.

I think relationships are for many things,

But largely it becomes or it begins in childhood as a way of defining who we are,

Who we think of as me.

Because we're always receiving feedback from the people around us.

We come into this life just as consciousness and a body,

Right?

You start with this sort of a blank slate and then that gradually gets filled in with details about this concept of what is me.

They come from your parents,

They come from your siblings,

They come from your friends and your school and your church if you have one and your overall community.

And so we start applying these ideas to ourselves.

And then along the way,

People will either reinforce those with some kind of reward or some kind of visibility or understanding,

Or perhaps not reward them.

Maybe we're punished for expressing a certain sort of aspect of ourselves or certain kinds of behaviors.

And so the ego is taking form all this time.

The me shape is taking form.

And then as a spiritual path progresses,

We go through,

Of course,

As we've spoken before of this whole process of questioning all of these labels that we've applied and all of these ideas and judgments that we've applied to ourselves.

And there comes a point,

I believe,

Or at least in my experience,

Where you understand that there is no me.

There is no me at all.

And everything that I thought of as myself came as the result of some relationship with some other person or an idea or something externally that formed this costume,

This character I've been playing as me.

Daishi I think that's a great point.

To understand relationship is to understand that,

I mean,

One of the core points I hear you speaking of is that our me always exists in relation to something else.

And that is the very essence of relationship.

And so,

Especially as we apply that to our closest relationships and especially early on in life,

Our parents,

Our siblings,

Our teachers,

And those who condition us to be what we end up thinking that we are,

That whole framework of me is based on relationship.

It's based on an internalized version of mom and dad and sister and brother and aunt and uncle.

And what we think of as our world is largely just that body of relationships.

Yeah,

That kind of feedback loop that we're constantly experiencing and perpetuating.

And then I should continue with what are relationships for before awakening.

Because as we reach adulthood,

Adolescence and adulthood,

Then suddenly we become much more interested in a relationship with a significant other.

And then rather than us defining the me so much,

We're kind of looking to refine the me in a way by adding to it with something that we think we're going to find in another person.

And that can take all sorts of forms depending,

I think,

Upon your psychological makeup and traumas that you may have experienced in orientation.

Some people are looking for aspects of themselves that may be missing.

Some people are maybe looking for reassurance that they're actually visible and really do exist,

Especially if you weren't validated as a small child.

You might be looking for that reinforcement you didn't get from your parents.

And so our goals will change based on our developmental process.

And we can see where it becomes more of a psychological adjustment phase,

Perhaps,

In determining what that me actually is and what that me actually needs.

And at least speaking for myself,

I know I made a ton of mistakes in trying to fill in those blanks.

Because that's really what's happening is you've got these blanks.

You don't understand what goes there.

And so you sort of try on other people,

See if that fits,

If that feels like it makes machinery work properly,

And if it doesn't,

Well,

We move on to the next.

Yeah,

We use relationships to plug our holes,

Don't we?

Often.

I mean,

That's often the utilization is whatever parts of ourself we've lost,

Whatever parts have gone missing,

We look for in the world around us to give us that sense of having that.

Yeah.

And,

You know,

I have a gripe I want to voice here about the world.

I have a grievance about fairy tales.

I think fairy tales are the most destructive force,

Maybe not the most,

But they're a seriously destructive force,

This idea that there exists one person,

One perfect person out there for you,

Or at least,

You know,

Maybe a potential handful of perfect people.

And,

You know,

As we get older,

Maybe we start to call those people soulmates,

But that there is an ideal other that if you just are,

Maybe this is more of a little girl thing than a little boy thing,

But you know,

We're sort of socialized to think that if we are just the perfect object of desirability,

That our perfect partner will find us,

Pursue us,

You know,

Cut down the thickets,

Climb the walls of the castle,

And happily ever after.

And I think that.

.

.

Save us from our misery.

Yeah,

Save us from our misery.

Yeah,

Exactly.

Solve life for us.

I don't think it's the fault of the fairy tales,

Because I do think that our fairy tales are mythological and they often are conveying something that's very real,

But instead our ignorance that leads us to read those fairy tales in such a way.

Right,

Right.

And I was kind of getting there too,

Because fairy tales are not actually about that.

Literally they appear to be about that,

But what we're really talking about is the search for divinity,

The search for the self,

The search for God that's being translated into this template of human romantic relationship.

And my second grievance,

In addition to the fairy tales,

Is the fact that maybe this was the hardest part for me of the awakening process,

Was realizing that that was a lie,

That I would never get my happy ending.

You know,

That that whole romantic fantasy thing is,

It doesn't exist.

It's not that it doesn't exist,

It just doesn't exist between forms.

It's a romance with oneself.

But the narrative,

I don't think I'm alone here.

And just speaking on behalf of my gender,

If I may be so bold,

I think that that is a very common driving motive in one's life that you keep sort of refining yourself and pursuing the career and doing whatever else interests you with the understanding that at some point this magical figure will arrive to again solve life for you in some way.

And so that part of it,

That narrative is the lie.

Of course,

Spiritual work will prove that there's a substitute for that,

That there is a true replacement for that lie in knowing the self.

I think we're a little bit mistaken to say that it's gender or sex specific though,

In that every ego lacks certain essential parts.

And so even though you may be acutely aware of the typical female perspective of that journey,

There's a male perspective of it too.

As the male,

Well,

Like for example,

I mean just drawing one example is most men are disconnected from say a feminine,

And by feminine I don't mean female,

A feminine quality such as compassion.

And so a man will unconsciously seek compassion through a partner when that essential quality has been lacking.

And so to me the quest for completion is exactly the same,

Just marked by different qualities.

Yeah,

Yeah.

I mean,

I myself,

I mean I've known that a great deal in my life,

Especially as an adolescent looking for completion in a partner.

Maybe that's a better way to put it is we're looking for a compliment.

I always think as other people,

Just in general as being a foil for our self understanding or foils for our understanding of what that me is,

At least until we can arrive at that place where we understand that all of it is me and then all of it is,

You know,

There no longer needs to be a relationship where I project these things outward onto another object or another human,

Another narrative,

Another situation,

That it's all contained in the me.

So that search for the complementary partner is indeed the search for the complete self,

Just not the way we think it is.

So if relationships before awakening are mostly about finding those missing parts of ourselves,

Can we agree on that?

Yeah,

I think that's a fairly accurate way to say it.

Whether consciously or not.

Right,

Mostly unconsciously.

Completely unconsciously because if it was conscious we wouldn't do it.

Right.

And we're inevitably going to be disappointed because I'm thinking about the way relationships often start out with this,

I mean specifically romantic ones,

Often start out with this idealization phase,

You know,

An infatuation where you think you've found that thing.

You think you've found those aspects of yourself that you were consciously or unconsciously searching for.

And this is where the projection comes into play because while you're seeing the good stuff,

What you wanted,

And being reflected back at you,

All of the things that you like about yourself as well,

There's this,

Oh my god,

I'm in love not just with that person but with myself because I'm feeling so validated by what I'm receiving.

And at some point the partner or the interest will display behavior or say a certain thing that suddenly starts to reflect,

Either reflects something in me that I don't like about myself or shows me that I was wrong about my initial assessment of that person and that's where things begin to get tricky.

The honeymoon phase ends.

Yeah.

Well,

Our fantasy will be just completely disrupted.

What happens after that for many people is like,

Well,

Obviously the wrong person,

You know,

Let's move on to the next and see what happens there.

I think it's worth mentioning here too that those fantasies take such elaborately different forms that it doesn't always fit the typical princess seeking the prince charming,

Although that's a prominent thing we can observe,

Right?

There's all sorts of ways in which those missing pieces are sought in another and all sorts of ways that we idealize the other.

And I absolutely agree with you,

The projection that goes on of projecting essential parts of ourselves onto the other,

Having this honeymoon phase where we feel like we've been completed in some fashion and then this fallout,

Right,

That happens.

Or maybe the fallout doesn't happen.

I mean,

Maybe we actually convince ourselves successfully that that person has given us that they've become the missing link in our missing piece of our puzzle,

Which is even more scary,

Honestly,

Than becoming disillusioned.

But for most people,

They're going to become disillusioned with the idealization of that relationship and then that's an opportunity for perhaps seeing what has happened here and what we've been seeking in relationship and what we thought it was for and what we thought it would give us.

Yeah,

But that requires a level of skill that I think that we're not commonly equipped with,

At least in the beginning,

When we're in a relationship.

Well,

We don't have the eyes of true nature and we don't have anybody to model that to give us a proper perspective.

There's a Buddhist teacher that I follow on social media and he sort of out of nowhere posted something about his dysfunctional mother,

Who sounds a lot like my dysfunctional mother.

But anyway,

She raged and beat him and things like that and sounded like he was having trouble understanding where her anger and rage came from.

And because his parent and mine are of similar generations,

What I think may have been just sort of an aspect of that generation in general is that they were so invested in keeping up appearances,

It was just a command,

That people tended to simply lie about who they were in order to gain the approval of others and that there's a rage that arises underneath that because the true self can be expressed and that that comes out as dysfunctional and angry and abusive behavior in all kinds of ways.

So kind of going back to this narrative component,

I know that when I was in my late teens and 20s and sort of starting to embark on a search for a lifetime partner,

I was following the narrative.

In the beginning,

All I needed to do in my mind was satisfy that narrative.

And it wasn't until after I was married that I started to look for the visibility parts to kind of fill in the blanks of myself and then I began to understand that,

Oh,

I'm not visible here at all.

Once the wedding was out of the way,

I started to really look at myself and my partner and wonder whether we were even right for each other,

Which is a horrible indictment of me,

I know.

Not really.

It's honest.

Young and stupid.

It's honest and reflecting the experience that I think almost everyone has.

Yeah.

I guess,

And then I think back to my parents' generation where you follow the narrative and a lot of people didn't even go to college.

My mother didn't in those days.

You just kind of got out of high school.

You got married.

The man embarked on a career and the woman started raising the children.

And you didn't.

Divorce.

Divorce was absolutely frowned upon when I was very small.

So you could conceivably be stuck in a lifetime with one person pretending everything was fine and yet having this brewing volcano.

Yeah,

I'd like to go back to something you said here because I think it's very,

Very essential to this conversation,

Which is that we could say in a certain sense that our earliest experience of relationship has to do with a deep wounding that is characterized by a primal self-betrayal where who and what we really are is abandoned in favor of maintaining some relationship to mom,

Dad,

Or the world.

And I think that that abandonment,

Which we feel in us as a whole,

As a wounding,

As an estrangement from our true core,

It appears through especially intimate relationships.

But you touched on it there for a moment,

This essential self-betrayal,

This essential turning away from oneself toward relationships so that we can be what mommy wants us to be,

Or daddy wants us to be,

Or society wants us to be.

And this recognition that you're describing as that evolves into a pattern of self-betrayal that becomes just a way of living.

Yeah.

We see this reflected in TV and movies all the time,

Of course.

You see people who are just so image-oriented.

The movie American Beauty is a wonderful demonstration of this whole concept where the appearance of success and happiness completely overrides anything that might have been authentic or essential or spontaneous because it all had to be kind of scripted in a way.

There's something valuable in what you're saying if we take that external factor of appearances and vanity and presentation into the way our self-image is crafted from the inside.

That self-betrayal that leads us to relate to the mommy and the world in such a way that's not completely real becomes instilled as an image.

And so even our internal experience we know on some level as a fabrication,

And it has its external clothing and ornamentation,

But there's a real core to that self-image,

A real false self at the core of veined,

A narcissistic false self at the core of that.

So I think there's two aspects that we can clarify as being motivators in relationship.

Yep.

Idealization and mirroring.

Yes.

It's like on one hand the quality that we don't have that we want and the other side this need to be seen for who we really are.

Yes.

And the self-betrayal piece was so powerful to me when I finally saw it.

The ways I had abandoned myself in favor of an other.

It's weird.

I don't want to say I derived my self-worth from external sources,

But.

.

.

Caffected.

Caffected.

That's a great word.

I mean it's a strange paradox in that I had to betray myself in order to reassure myself that I was real.

There's this search for this real sense of self that I was investing in an image and in the feedback I got regarding that image as opposed to the essential qualities that I actually contain as an energy that simply inhabits or contains this human body.

And this is maybe where the rage comes.

It is that self-betrayal piece because when I finally saw it I was really pissed.

That's right.

I remember sobbing over that for a long time.

The natural consequence of betraying ourselves is rage,

Anger,

Deep sense of hurt and a desire to protect against that.

And it was actually less directed at the external forces I had been looking to for my self-identification but toward myself.

Like how could I have not seen that?

We all will face this in this path of realization is this essential self-betrayal.

An unconscious choosing that we made to betray ourselves in favor of a self-image,

In favor of some kind of rapport with our environment or our caregivers.

In deep self-realization work we come upon that betrayal and it is shocking.

It is shocking when we realize that it amounts to saying,

God never left me.

I left myself.

Yes.

So then,

So once you've seen that self-betrayal,

The idea of relationship takes on a completely different tone.

Yeah,

Doesn't it?

Yeah.

And it's kind of a frightening one because you realize that you're in fact responsible for yourself.

That there is no prince coming to save you or princess.

By frightening did you mean peaceful?

It's frightening from the pre-awakening perspective.

Well sure.

But peaceful from the post-awakening perspective.

There's a learning curve.

There's a learning to trust it sort of a process.

And the ego of course wants to scramble around and then build a new you.

We talked about this in the episode on spiritual materialism is that,

Okay,

Well I'm not who I thought I was.

So now instead of getting the approval from all the people outside,

I'm going to build myself into this spiritual figure who now will bestow this recognition on other people.

That's a trap right there.

Create a spiritual self-image,

One that's far better than that old rusty self-image that we once had.

Now we can be very pious and enlightened and awake and aware and we can be the non-dual consciousness that's here and doesn't have any problems and if there's a relationship problem then it's just a manifestation of non-dual consciousness we say.

That too is a self-portrayal though.

That too is a … Yeah,

Right.

That's why I'm teasing about it.

It's a little bit kinder and happier perhaps.

Actually,

It's usually more violent.

I was going to say when it falls apart,

The ramifications are pretty much.

So we have to come to terms then with that loneliness component of realizing that I'm the only one who can betray myself.

So then what do we need a relationship for actually?

Well if it's not to fulfill this loneliness that we have,

If indeed we are full and total and we're not busy using a relationship to plug our holes or attain some kind of dreamlike saving,

Then maybe we actually have something to give.

Maybe we're not here for this purpose of coming toward each other to be entwined but to partner in our task to expand and grow and become what we really are and utilize the strength of our relationship to share that with the world.

Do you think that kind of sucks all the romance out of it?

No I would say it refines the romance to something that is sweet and real and true.

You're no longer infatuated with the body and personality factors,

You're infatuated with the divinity within the other and that's your romance.

That's lovely,

I like that.

But it's not a romance.

Though we may share our bedroom and our house and our such with a particular individual,

That romance isn't confined to that relationship.

In fact if the relationship is true and real,

It's supporting that romance with all the rest of the world.

Let's talk about whether spiritual or self-realization obviates,

Makes unnecessary the need for relationship and what that means.

For example,

Somebody like Ramana Maharshi who had no wife that we know of or significant quote unquote romantic relationship.

Is there a point in our development where we're so complete,

Where we're so whole as all of it,

As the divine essence that we no longer need another?

Yes,

But let's spend some time qualifying that yes.

Because that doesn't mean what we might think it means.

We might think that means that when I achieve wholeness,

When I achieve enlightenment,

When I have recognized the universal nature of love,

I will no longer need anybody.

It's not that kind of attitude,

It's different in that what we're speaking here specifically is that the need is gone.

But to me,

Relationship in general is necessary because enlightenment doesn't happen to the individual.

Enlightenment is of the one which is in all and so to confirm that realization,

To deepen our realization,

To mature it,

Mature it is the best word,

We have to be able to relate to others.

Now it doesn't have to be a significant other,

A partner or wife or husband,

But there needs to be relationship for our realization to mature.

You know I read,

Shall I share the story about Osho?

I don't remember in what book it was,

If his Rajneesh writes about Ramana Maharshi and I'm a deep lover of Ramana Maharshi and his teachings and he's part of my sort of the grandfather of the lineage I claim as my own,

But he said,

Ramana was a man who had achieved the highest realization,

But he wasn't the most developed master.

When I read that,

It took me some time to contemplate that and understand what that meant.

What he's describing is that we can attain realization and we can move into some kind of solitary life such as monkhood or living in a cave and we're perfectly welcome to do so.

You know there's absolutely nothing wrong with that and it comes with its own challenges,

But there's a way that bringing our realization into the world,

Into contact with relationship,

Into the difficulty of having a wife or husband,

Into the difficulty of being a parent,

Those difficulties,

Well like in Hafiz's poem that I'll read,

They ferment and they season us and there's a way in which we are matured through our contact with the world and that becomes its own development in the path and process of realization,

One that I think is more potent than those who remove themselves from the world.

Yeah,

There's a certain skillfulness that must arise from that.

Yes.

It's harder to maintain your realization in the world than it is in isolation.

Yeah,

All those triggers.

Yes,

The triggers,

Right?

The temptation to fall back into egoic patterning when you come into relationship with another,

The feelings of loneliness.

Because it's so easy to forget who you truly are when the world begins to sort of flood back in in that way.

Yeah.

That's the legacy of our relationship to the world is I give up who and what I truly am to become my fixation,

My persona,

My personality,

The person who will be liked and loved and recognized and when we're interested in being real,

These strategies just won't do anymore.

Right.

So then there's I guess the skillfulness component comes in where we have to find a way to balance those things,

To be in the world and yet be true to our divine essence successfully because some people are not going to take well to that.

In the world but not of it.

Right,

Because many people on the path I'm sure can relate to the idea that a lot of relationships fail when you start doing this work or need to be seriously adjusted and that's not the responsibility of our partner entirely.

Exactly and if we're being truthful every,

I don't mean for this to sound so daunting as it sounds but every relationship will need to be adjusted in the sense that every relationship is for the mutual alignment together in being,

In love,

In truth and so that's a constantly,

It's a constant task of adjusting not by adapting ourselves but by coming into alignment with each other and giving the other room to not choose that alignment if they should choose it.

Right and so that loneliness certainly comes in here because as we're,

I mean there's a lot of levels of loneliness on this path in general but you know one is of course realizing that me,

The me that I thought was a thing is not and so I've got to understand what that means.

I'm no longer perhaps finding that me reflected from my partner or I can't rely on that anymore.

This path will push us toward our loneliness because our loneliness is a key ingredient.

It's the key ingredient that leads us from the loneliness of the ego to the aloneness of our true being and so if we don't utilize our loneliness well,

If we don't work with it,

If we don't engage with it,

We don't ever have this capacity to recognize the aloneness of being which is so profoundly connected to everything.

Yeah,

We talked a little bit about that in episode 7 about Christ consciousness and Christ in nature.

Well,

And Christ is the embodiment of that.

He's the embodiment of,

You could say from the worldly perspective,

He achieved total loneliness but his way,

His realization was a total oneness with God and that made him one with everything.

Yes.

And I also,

As you started to speak there,

I was just starting to untangle something in my mind about why we perceive loneliness to be an undesirable thing.

The experience of loneliness is simply you can be alone as everything and so what is it we're missing if we say we're feeling lonely?

There's a misunderstanding that must be occurring there.

We feel inadequate.

The false self is always seeking some form of validation for its reality and part of that includes security,

Feeling secure,

Feeling safe,

Feeling recognized but the false self can never achieve those things and so it's finally brought to its deep loneliness that the false self is lonely because it is estranged from God.

Yes.

Okay.

So we're getting back to the separation.

As long as we perceive,

I mean you have to imagine a separation in order to feel lonely.

So until we resolve that mistake in our understanding and our emotional experience then that aloneness,

Well loneliness may continue to be a factor.

You nailed it.

Yes.

The experience of being a false self disconnected from others based on our belief that we are our body and mind and the stories we tell produces the experience of loneliness.

Right.

And that's why when you actively see another,

When you use your vision to see the fact that we are the same,

That there is no difference between me and you and that sense of separation no longer makes any sense then loneliness by definition cannot exist.

That's right and what we do as egos is we try to join our false selves together,

False selves together.

We try to unite them in some way.

Yeah.

We try to merge them,

Marry them,

Couple them,

Intertwine,

Engage,

Codepend but it never alleviates the loneliness because the loneliness is based in the sense of separation from God,

From self,

From other,

All the same.

Self,

God and other are the same.

And we could even do a little thought experiment here because even if you could ultimately merge two egos into one,

You know.

I know,

Right?

That's a scary thought.

That's what we think we're trying to do but if you imagine that actually being possible then you'd still be a separate individual.

I mean there would still be something else outside that union.

It's a double stuffed Oreo of loneliness.

We have twice as much loneliness and misery then.

Forget I even brought it up.

But that's what we try to do,

Isn't it?

And that's where we seek the other as a solution and we fail and we fail beautifully.

We fail beautifully,

Hopefully.

So speaking of course in miracle terms for a moment,

Miracles,

The special relationship is a quest to seek in the other what we can only find in ourselves.

And when that work has been done in the context of relationship,

It becomes holy.

And that holiness is since we no longer seek to recognize that divinity through another,

We're free to share it with all.

And so our romantic relationship becomes one where we're not busy continuing to reinforce and seek it in the other but because it is being cultivated,

There's an encouragement to go out and share it,

Not as sex,

Not as marry everybody and polyamory or whatever,

But as that way of celebrating that love cannot be bound.

That's what I was going to say.

It becomes a celebration and a worshipful recognition as opposed to something needy or something entwined,

Codependent even.

The horrifying part of that,

I think was indicated by your word frightening,

Is that we don't get to avoid the neediness and the enmeshment and the codependency.

We actually have to go through that to get to the other side.

We can understand the transmutation of our loneliness which would seek to fill ourselves or fill some hole in us with the other.

In order to do that,

Many of us what we seek to do is we seek to become what the other wants us to be in order to gain that benefit.

But in aloneness,

We can just be who we are.

There's no need for us to change or manipulate ourselves in any way.

Our poem at the end of this conversation will fit well with this where most of us in one form or another attempt some escape from our loneliness,

Whether it's through the mundane activities of watching TV,

Calling a friend,

Reading the newspaper.

Gosh,

I say reading the newspaper as if anybody even reads the newspaper these days.

But you get it,

Right?

We seek out forms to avoid our loneliness and we seek out subtler forms to avoid our loneliness too,

Such as when we adopt or adapt ourselves in such a way to another's ego so that we don't feel lonely.

We were speaking about that with our early relationships.

We betray ourselves so that we can have connection in some form and that allows us to feel less lonely.

That mirroring piece where we create connection,

Whether it's authentic or not,

By adapting ourselves to what we see in another person.

Right.

So you're an Eagles fan?

Oh,

I'm an Eagles fan.

We have a connection.

But it's not a real connection.

It's not the connection of heart to heart,

Being to being.

There's all sorts of gross and subtle forms in which we are in avoidance of loneliness.

But to travel through this development of oneself in a realized way,

In a truthful way,

There's a need for us to traverse through the loneliness we experience,

To arrive on the other side of it.

Because we are lonely and even people who are in relationships,

Even connected relationships can report the experience of loneliness.

I myself,

I can feel,

I mean,

I'm in a relationship.

It's a good relationship.

I have a son and I have lots of community and still I can experience loneliness.

How can that be?

How can that be?

How can that be?

It must be that relationship is not the answer to loneliness.

Yeah.

This may be a big part of our disillusionment in relationship if we think that loneliness is solved forever and then suddenly it turns out that,

Oh,

That's not the case at all.

I remember feeling that when I was married as just a sense of being invisible.

When I realized the person I had married,

That I had really idealized him in my mind in ways that were not at all real,

Then suddenly that mirroring aspect or that validation that I thought I was getting was gone.

And I realized that not only was he not who he thought he was,

But who I thought I saw reflected as myself through him was not there either.

So there was this sort of sense of disappearing and not being validated any longer.

Yes.

And I would imagine that that probably changed your view or the nature of the relationship in some way,

Huh?

Well,

The bond was just disrupted.

The bond was disrupted and I know he felt it too and he went and sought it elsewhere and things sort of unraveled from there.

Yes.

And I think one of the difficult parts of our journey through loneliness is that when our ego bonds are disrupted,

Whether it's with a partner,

A friend,

A parent,

There's a chaos that ensues because the false foundation of that relationship has then been revealed.

And if we navigate that well,

It's an opportunity to move into real relationship,

True holy relationship where it may change the nature of our relationship to our partner and it may not,

But it certainly changes where we root ourselves,

Where we come from in relationship.

We don't seek those false bonds anymore.

Right.

So I guess maybe we can extrapolate from that the fact that if,

I mean,

It's essential to know oneself so completely in order to be able to have.

.

.

Yes.

Otherwise,

Again,

We're back to that me piece,

Like who do I think I am and is that even real?

And if we haven't already done that work,

Then it would be all too easy to blame the partner for that instead of going,

Oh hey,

Obviously I didn't understand myself.

I had better look at these things.

Right.

You're the reason I'm unhappy when that unhappiness begins to show itself.

There's an alarming thing I noticed about five years into doing spiritual work with people that there's a remarkably high percentage of people who enter spiritual work,

Seem to be sincere about it and leave it when a relationship develops.

And I started to examine that.

I was very curious about that and I think it has to do with this underlying quest to quench our loneliness with spirituality,

With involvement in spiritual community or spiritual work.

And when that loneliness seems temporarily quenched by the arising of a new relationship,

What the spirituality was plugging in them now becomes irrelevant.

And I know from my observations that after five or maybe six months or five years or however long,

Whatever it is that the person found in that relationship is going to reveal itself as lacking somewhat.

And again,

Some sort of loneliness will set in and we have different ways of experiencing loneliness,

We should say that.

But that loneliness will always find us.

Right.

Yes,

Exactly.

And I was just going to add that I think there's another piece to it too is that those of us who are super focused on relationship,

If that's what drives us and if that's how we're working at our stuff just anyway and you're in a gap between relationships,

That feels like a really good time to go in and do some spiritual work.

I'm going to just go and improve myself and sort of work on these issues so that I'll be the right person when that next partner shows up.

And then now I'm done.

Still attached to that narrative,

That idea that the solution to my life is still in the future but in the meantime I'm just going to do some self-improvement stuff here.

And of course if stuff is getting,

If we're getting into some really deep work and things are getting really uncomfortable and suddenly a partner shows up to distract us,

Yeah,

Why wouldn't you just kind of go do that for a while?

And of course there's nothing wrong with entering into relationship.

In fact I think it's absolutely useful to our spiritual work but there's a way in which spiritual work is abused in that sense by using it as a replacement or using it,

Like you said,

To improve oneself,

To make oneself more attractive to a mate or what have you.

And that's not what realization is for.

And it's not actually,

It's not what relationship is for either.

We are in a sense here to mirror each other but not to,

I am here to be with you.

I am here to be what I really am with you and with my son and with the world.

And if I can't be that in the way that you said,

To know oneself,

To know thyself,

There's not a very good chance that my relationships are going to be all that truthful,

Real,

And they won't manifest the greatest potential in each of us.

Right.

In a sense we're,

I was making this point on social media earlier this morning as a matter of fact,

That if we're not,

If we don't know ourselves,

Then we're basically lying about who we are all the time.

And if we're constantly adjusting ourselves to other people and they're doing the same with us,

What is this relationship?

There's no substance to it.

Right.

Why would you want to do that?

But we think that that's our job is to kind of be who the other person wants us to be and then they're trying to be who we want them to be or they think we want them to be and try to find some connection that way.

Ultimately you're just creating this pantomime of relationship that isn't a true connection.

But then between two people who know themselves and know what their motivations are and are constantly in the process of discovering and alchemizing or transmuting any difficulties or issues that are arising,

Then it becomes,

I don't recall if we said this earlier or not,

But it becomes more of a celebration of each other's divinity as opposed to this enmeshed,

Possibly dysfunctional or codependent process.

Yeah.

Right.

I've cringed many times in the past because I've encountered individuals and even certain,

I would say psychological type work that says the nature of relationship is compromise.

I become nauseous when I hear that because I understand what the point is.

I understand what a person is saying and I think a lot of people,

If I disagree with that they think,

Oh,

So it's about doing what you want and not about compromise.

That's not what I'm saying either.

But there's a difference between being in a relationship to adapt or compromise or change and alter oneself for the partner or seek something overtly from the partner versus being there to celebrate divinity together,

As you said.

Yeah.

That's if we really understand,

I mean really understand what that means,

We realize that's what relationship is for.

Yeah.

Whenever I hear the word compromise,

I think of taking one for the team and I think that there's a seed of resentment that gets planted every time you do that.

We've been compromising our whole lives.

I know.

I mean,

Compromise is an essential skill,

Of course,

If it's acceptable to your authentic sense of who you are and what's important to you,

I think.

So yeah,

Compromise is something like,

All right,

We'll go see this band that you like that I don't really like all that much.

That's one thing.

Harmless,

Yeah.

Right.

But if it's something where you're having to betray yourself over and over again,

Then that is absolutely not going to be conducive.

I think what someone listening to this needs to understand is that there are many,

Many,

Many ways of compromising and betraying yourself,

So don't be so sure you're not doing it.

Because if you are not living with this fragrance of knowledge,

Of oneness,

And all that comes with it,

Courage and power and love and beauty and peace,

Then you haven't arrived yet at real relationship.

And that's not a criticism,

It's a call to evolve.

It's a call to involve yourself with something real and true and beautiful within the context of relationship.

Yeah.

We were talking in Course in Miracles about being able to use our sight,

Our discerning sight to be able to see through the mistakes of the other,

Through their disguises and perhaps their faults and so forth,

Seeing through to that divinity.

And that struck a chord in me about,

And we talk about being visible in relationships,

So let's flip that around,

About allowing your partner to be visible to you and using your sight actively to connect by seeing them as what they really are as opposed to this fantasy of who they should be or whatever they think they are,

Etc.

And the second half of that was the way that when you connect that way through your active seeing of their divinity,

It resonates.

It acts as a catalyst in the other person to generate that same understanding and witnessing in them.

Yes,

Yes,

So much yes.

You know,

This is the transformation that happens.

This is one simple way of describing the transformation from say pre-awakening to post-awakening use of relationship is in the first half of life you could say we seek that mirroring from another.

In the second half,

If we've done our work right,

We're seeking to provide it.

And when you become the provider,

When you become the providence of vision and seeing and love,

Then what we realize is that what we were so busy seeking from the other we already had and the only answer that was needed was to begin to give it,

To begin to share it.

Yes,

And I think that's why around people who are spiritually awakened and have done that work,

I'm just speaking from my memories of having been very new to this path and encountering people who had done the work and that visibility was there and I couldn't tell what it was.

I could feel that something in me was being validated and I didn't know how,

But it was this sense of being recognized finally and it was this huge relief and it was exciting and I didn't know what was waking up in me,

But I absolutely,

It was palpable.

It was like,

Oh my God,

All my life I have been invisible,

But now I'm no longer invisible.

And it's divinity seeing divinity.

It's God seeing God.

Buddha sitting with Buddha.

Yeah,

And it's a spectacular feeling and it's the feeling I had been seeking my entire life and relationship and never found.

Yes,

When I first met my medicine man teacher David,

He was my first teacher,

We met and he asked me a number of startling questions to which I was probably like a fragile young 20 year old as I answered.

He took me outside of the building as we were walking away after our meeting and he gave me this enormous hug and he said,

I love you.

And it was as if I couldn't understand that at the moment.

Like I understood what he meant,

But this guy loves me.

How?

He doesn't even know me.

He doesn't even know what I've done or who I've been or even if we have likable traits or if we have similarities such that he could love me.

But when he said that and he gave me this enormous hug to which I returned this somewhat half-assed gesture of putting my arms around him,

Which he commented on by the way,

It became clear to me that I was being seen because he loved me,

But he loved me for no specific reason.

It wasn't because I was cute or funny or smart or well accomplished or because I kissed his ass,

Nothing.

It was just pure love and that is what we're seeking from each other and it's what instead of seeking it from each other,

We have an opportunity to begin offering to each other.

So that validation in another of who they really are,

It's like you said it so well,

It's like all of our images and masks are being cut through.

It doesn't matter what you know.

It doesn't matter what you've accomplished.

It doesn't matter how cute you are or funny you are.

You're being seen for the authentic core of what you are and we all long for that and we all long to give that.

Yeah.

And we all know when we're not getting it too because if you're in a relationship where the other person is relating to you as a projection of their fantasies or what they need you to provide to them in terms of validation or visibility or something,

Even if we can't articulate that,

We feel it.

We know that we're not.

Yes.

Not seen and that goes back to childhood.

If your parents wanted you to be a certain kind of little kid and you weren't behaving or … Yeah.

I mean that memory.

The self-betrayal.

Yeah.

The self-betrayal.

When I was with David,

I tried many different techniques to be his special one.

I tried to be his son.

I tried to be his friend,

His buddy.

I tried to be his loyal disciple.

I tried to be all these things and he wouldn't go for any of it.

He wouldn't buy into any of it.

What he was showing me through that was that it was unnecessary.

It was unnecessary for me to seduce his love.

It was already there.

It was already there.

I love that.

That's really beautiful.

It was already there.

How different would life be if we could just offer that to each other every day?

Yes.

That's the call.

Let's say this to those who are listening.

When you're looking for love,

When you're looking for that mirror,

When you're looking for the validation,

Recognize it as an opportunity to give it.

Yeah.

You want to read your poem?

Yeah.

Let's see if I can do so without crying more than I already am.

This is by Hafiz again.

It's a short one,

But it's short and sweet and straight to the bone.

Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly.

Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you as few human or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft,

My voice so tender,

My need of God absolutely clear.

I think I've heard you read that one before.

I really love that one.

It's beautiful.

It's precious.

It's precious.

It tells us why our loneliness is essential.