For just a few moments a day, stop the rush and contemplate the following questions? Is my mindset supporting a loving relationship? How do I really feel? Am I coming from anger or frustration, and therefore so determined to “make it” the way I want it, that I can’t appreciate it the way that it is? Am I looking at my love from the smallness of a victim, waiting for it to come to me, feeling rejected, and therefore always trying to prove my independence? Is being right today more important than being kind today? Has my drive for work overpowered the most important words in my life, I love you? If the answer is yes, please stop for a moment and consider the long term impact of such depreciative behaviour. Remind yourself, that the pain of regret always outweighs the discomfort of humility.
As a lover, it is wise to know where you are coming from in your relationship. If you don’t know this, you might just be projecting onto people, and won’t know anything about your reality, your truth or love. You might forget that what you think causes what you get. You might forget that there is another layer to life where your thoughts and feelings actually transfer to those around you, even if you wear a mask. You might forget that praying to a God or Goddess is a cruel joke if you cannot give love and respect to those whose lives you touch everyday. True religion begins in the reality of your home, and that reality begins with what is deeply immersed in your heart.
This awareness also affects your work. It doesn’t matter whether it is your relationships, your friendships, your finances or your work; you come from the same place in all of them. This is a vital awareness. Some people come from kindness, others from authority, mothering, or fathering. Where we come from in our relationships is the real mirror of where we come from in life. It is the real barometer.
I used to run outdoor experiential learning programs for corporate groups looking for higher productivity and better self-responsibility. I was always stunned to see people who were in fear and denial in their relationships, jump off the highest rope bridge to prove how fearless they were. This ego we have can masquerade around doing amazing tricks, but that is all they are, tricks, unsustainable moments where we “fake it”. The beauty of a relationship is that you can’t fake it for long. Your partner eventually gets to see the real you, and where you are coming from. You just can’t fake it at home for long.
Alone, we can be an angel. We don’t feel embarrassed because nobody saw us eat the whole block of chocolate, or watch that R rated movie. Being single is the same as being busy, we hardly have time to stop and experience the affect of our own thinking and feeling. We don’t even have to know ourselves. We just blame the world and get on with it.
It’s like being two people. When we want something from someone we can be really nice, and when we get it, we can be really careless. Most people are like that in business. They suck up to you when you have what they want, but when they have what you want, like the money for your job, they can turn into the devil.
Sometimes this happens in relationships. At first, when we are in an infatuated relationship with someone who we really want to be liked by, either at work or in a love relationship, we can be very deceptive because we are trying to get approval. So we put on an act in order to get this person to do something. We can’t trust just being our real self; we bundle up our secrets, hide ourselves, even from our children, so these relationships accentuate our shame.
When we live these two lives, we are coming from shame. Manipulating our presentation of ourselves in order to win approval or respect. Then we get into a relationship and we can’t hide it. They see our two faces and even if they totally love us for who we are, we don’t. And nobody can love you more than you. So, we start getting defensive and love is blocked again.
To understand something is to see beauty in it. Emotionally we look at people and see acceptable or unacceptable. Emotionally, we will divide life into these two groups, attracted to one, and avoiding (or trying to change) the other. That is the emotional life, trying to be more acceptable, less unacceptable. Emotionally, this is a powerful way to think because it breeds uppers. Uppers are more acceptable feelings and less unacceptable. But what if this acceptable and unacceptable is a lie? What if there is really a balance between them? You spend your whole life seeking approval, and getting equal rejection and approval. That is called depression, the ultimate fight with the laws of nature.
Long term, deep spiritual happiness comes from the contentment that grows out of the perspective of love. Love in turn, can only pass from us when our mind is still or balanced. This is the opposite of the emotional perspective. Here we have the real dilemma. Emotionally we are on cloud nine if we have uppers without downers (like without dislike) but they are unsustainable, and our true humanity is not made happy by infinite uppers. Just try it, Eat some ice cream. It made you happy. After 20 minutes you are not happy. Now eat some more ice cream. You are happy again, but after 20 minutes you are not happy again. So this time eat twice as much ice cream, in fact three times as much. Are you happier?
For every emotional upper there is a downside. For every dollar of wealth there is a worry. For every new piece of knowledge, there is the conflict of the old knowledge. So the emotional life is filled with emotional achievements (being liked) in which a person thinks, disillusioned, that once they get something, then they will be more happy than before. It is an obsession with the idea that material happiness, life and things and pleasure, are going to make them “happy”
But every something they ‘get’ has duality, two sides, pleasure and pain. From a distance, a new relationship looks like paradise. But inside that new relationship there is also challenge. Our delusional mind - the ego - thinks once we get something sorted out, we will be ok, but we are not. We are ok and we are not ok. Same as before, just in a new place. This is the world of the emotional person. Running after dreams that are really the source of some hidden pleasure, then, even if they achieve what they aimed for, there is depression and sadness. Nothing really changed. They are still lacking love.
About the Author:
Chris Walker is a world leading change agent, an environmentalist and author of more than 20 books. Born and bred in Australia, he consults to people and organisations throughout the world on improved relationships, health and lifestyle through the application of the Universal laws of Nature. The result he offers is that we stay balanced, share loving relationships, work with passion, enjoy success, and live our personal truth. To learn more about Chris’s work and journeys to Nepal, visit http://www.chriswalker.com.au
Article Submitted On: October 25, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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