Good morning! Close your eyes and validate that still, quiet place within you, and allow yourself to have a healing in today’s message!
Happy February, and almost Valentine’s Day! I love teaching classes on creating and healing relationships. I have one next Saturday! I have the participants write down any concerns and issues they have about love and relationships. Funny, no one ever has a thing to write! (LOL!)
What a rich topic! I have watched young teens, with their hormones running wild, navigate their first dates in a world where texting and being friends on Facebook seem to constitute a relationship, even if they have never met in person! I remember one girl in particular excitedly exploring the notion of first kisses and pointing out to me the spot on her neck where she wanted to be kissed. Back home in Ohio, I watched a nephew with his first true love. It was fun taking them out and watching them interact. New young lovers just open to one another, drinking each other in with their eyes and hearts.
My parents, in their 80s, have been married for over 55 years, without the solid foundation of texting, Facebook and the Internet. I really can’t know about the challenges and understandings they have worked through to still be married all these years, and I admire them. Another couple I know has been together over 20 years. They practice being aware in their relationship, through easy times and hard. For them, the relationship games get fewer and fewer as time goes on, as they cultivate a loving acceptance for each other, as is. A relationship such as this is a world within a world.
There are so many relationship options we can choose from each life! One person chooses many loves, another chooses a single life, another a celibate one. There is no right way, we are way too unique in what we each come to learn each lifetime for there to be a uniform way to have relationships! On top of that, explore the difference in how partnerships are created in different cultures and the options increase even more! But regardless of what we choose each life, it’s not really about the relationships anyway. We are really searching for a way home to God through how we relate to others. Such a noble reason to relate to one another! Yet, if this is so, why do they often end so badly? Of course relationships will come and go on all levels as we grow and evolve. But sometimes, why so much pain? Why the games? Why so many breakups that escalate and can get so out of control that even children and hearts are trampled and lawyers are called as we scramble out of the way?
Before we know better, we tend to create relationships based on what we want to avoid dealing with. We want to meet someone and ride the love wave and have the continual high without falling into the ocean. We want the person in our life to always care about the special kissing place on the side of our neck and not know that inside, we have our vulnerability and unloved places that can’t be kissed so readily. Yet those are the parts of us that need the love!
Where we hold a picture of ourselves that says we are somehow deficient or unloveable, is a place where we will not allow the love of ourselves or another in. We forget that we are nothing but love while are busy defending a lie.
We create a relationship that contains invisible barriers protecting against anyone discovering what we are afraid of within ourselves. Even in our friendships. Thus the relationship is based on fear and maintaining a comfortable distance from these wounds. We try and keep the relationship the same; thus change and differences become threatening. And when the issues arise, it is so easy to blame the other person, and project the pain onto them, or just withdraw and give up.
Any relationship that has ended that you are not at peace with reflects your belief in your separation from God. And thus our relationships are wonderful gifts, helping guide us back to Oneness. It doesn’t matter what the other person did, or what they think of you now. It only matters that you can love yourself in this situation and be at peace. That means no blame, no shame, only compassion. It may truly serve you to not see them or communicate with them, but the relationship with them still exists in your mind. What is the quality of that relationship? Is it peaceful? Confusing? Angry? Sad? Thus we see that we never truly “get out” of a relationship. Even if the person dies, they exist in the state that we relate to them in our minds. Are they still controlling you?
So look right now. Look at a bubble in front of you and let it represent someone you cannot be at peace with. It could be an ex, a parent, a past friend, someone from work. You may never physically see them, but you know, by how you feel when you think of them, whether or not you are at peace in relationship to them. What did they do or not do that still has you trapped? The trapped energy is in you. It has nothing to do with them. Only you can let it go. Admire the mirror they provide, and bring more forgiveness and peace with this situation.
What do you need to let go of? What are you defending? How wide can your compassion spread? Are your thoughts about this person or yourself taking you closer to love? Or away from love? There is, in truth, nothing wrong with you. So what is the lie about yourself that you are holding on to? What are you afraid of?
Whatever it is within you that is not of peace has nothing to do with them. They are triggering a lie that you believe is true. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be bothered by it. And there is certainly no hiding it from God. All is transparent and Oneness in Spirit. We think we are clever and can actually hide something because we identify with the body which is finite and only seen by a few people at a time. But there are truly no secrets. The love of source will never be content only kissing that place on your neck.
Allow energy to flow into this bubble in front of you that doesn’t allow you to love yourself more. Forgive what you can in this moment and let it go. You are learning about you in this relationship space you are healing. There is nothing you can change or fix about the other person. This is all about you, and God. Take a deep breath. Pop the bubble.
It’s time to let go and jump into the ocean of love! Splash around and make a commotion. We are so afraid of just being genuinely real and just laying it all out on the table. You will never understand the true essence of the lies you are holding on to because they were created from your mind, that temporarily believed in separation from love, judgment and fear. When you forget to be love, it is because you have momentarily valued something else.
You are evolving. Your relationship with Source changes as you evolve, beginning with being okay with the first kiss of God that feels all fun, to the endless, bottomless, compassionate relationship of acceptance of all that we truly are, the good and the bad.
You are learning to be safe in your vulnerability. Not through dependence on another’s love and understanding of you, but based on your awareness of the truth of who you are. This is what you are getting closer to as you explore relationships.
There is a great mutual embrace playing out in the dichotomy of spirit and physical. God is you. You no longer exist through separation. You are whoever and whatever you are dealing with. Yes, the body can only exist in one point in time, but it’s not the body that is evolving here. It’s just our temporary vehicle. It’s the evolution of you, the eternal soul. Your evolution home, dissolving the walls in the mind, returning to Source.
In your fighting with another, you are fighting yourself. In your blaming of another you are blaming yourself. When you have compassion for another, you have it for you. There has never been an “other.”
Every relationship we cultivate brings us closer to this realization. When we choose more readily to identify with the desire to know God, to feel God’s love, it becomes a guiding compass to our actions, whether we are in a new experience with creator and discovering where we love to be kissed, or in the comfortable place with creator where we know that even though we had an unBuddha-like moment, we are loved and cherished.
When we have the love of creator with us at all times, when we can align ourselves back with the truth of who we truly are, we always have a soft place to fall. Take a deep breath.
I’d like to read a poem by Hafiz called:
“If it is Not Too Dark.”
Go for a walk, if it is not too dark.
Got some fresh air, try to smile.
Say something kind
To a safe-looking stranger, if one happens by.
Always exercise your heart’s knowing.
You might as well attempt something real
Along this path:
Take your spouse or lover in your arms
The way you did when you first met.
Let tenderness pour from your eyes
The way the Sun gazes warmly on the earth.
Play a game with some children.
Extend yourself to a friend.
Sing a few ribald songs to your pets and plants-
Why not let them get drunk and wild?
Let’s toast
Every rung we’ve climbed on Evolution’s ladder.
Whisper “I love you! I love you!”
To the whole mad world.
Let’s stop reading about God-
We will never understand Him.
Jump to your feet, wave your fists,
Threaten and warn the whole Universe
That your heart can no longer live
Without real love!
Hafiz was a master. He figured it out. And part of the figuring out part involved the awareness that we will never understand God because understanding God is not an intellectual process. It’s a feeling, an experience. He’s jumping around, inviting us to jump into Love. Jump into spontaneity. Stop worrying so much about what others think. Sing ribald songs and see your plants and pets drunk on the passion of it all.
Look at all the ways you can share the love of you. You are a treasure to be shared. Jump to your feet and wave your fists and be the one who chooses to shine love even though the world fears it. Can I hear an AMEN!
Your relationships are a metaphor for your relationship with God. Every second in this body is a chance to reflect this relationship. Through thick and through thin, for better and for worse, you are knowing yourself and knowing yourself and knowing yourself.
So show up. And bring your desire to evolve to the table, in every situation. Invite God into every experience. This just means to invite love to every experience! Whether with a friend, a boss a lover, a cookie or your relationship with the earth!
“The greatest romance is with the infinite. You have no idea how beautiful life can be. When you suddenly find God everywhere, when He comes and talks to you and guides you, the romance of divine love has begun.” Paramahansa Yogananda Amen.
