Intimate Relationship as a Spiritual Crucible

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Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile. ~ Albert Schweitzer

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[Michael]

I just wanted to share what I consider to be a great article, and very timely for yours truly.  It gets better and better the more you read...

Intimate Relationship as a Spiritual Crucible

Relationship as Koan

Relating to the full spectrum of our experience in the relational charnel ground leads to a self-acceptance that expands our capacity to embrace and accept others as well. Usually our view of our partners is colored by what they do for us—how they make us look or feel good, or not—and shaped by our internal movie about what we want them to be. This of course makes it hard to see them for who they are in their own right.

Beyond our movie of the other is a much larger field of personal and spiritual possibilities, what Walt Whitman referred to when he said, “I contain multitudes.” These “multitudes” are what keep a relationship fresh and interesting, but they can only do that if we can accept the ways that those we love are different from us—in their background, values, perspectives, qualities, sensitivities, preferences, ways of doing things, and, finally, their destiny. In the words of Swami Prajnanpad, standing advaita-speak on its head: “To see fully that the other is not you is the way to realizing oneness … Nothing is separate, everything is different … Love is the appreciation of difference."

Two partners not holding themselves separate, while remaining totally distinct—“not two, not one”—may seem like an impossible challenge in a relationship. Bernard Phillips, an early student of East/West psychology, likens this impossibility of relationship to a Zen koan, a riddle that cannot be solved with the conceptual mind. After continually trying and failing to figure out the answer, Zen students arrive at a genuine solution only in the moment of finally giving up and giving in. In Phillips’ words:

Every human being with whom we seek relatedness is a koan, that is to say, an impossibility. There is no formula for getting along with a human being. No technique will achieve relatedness. I am impossible to get along with; so is each one of you; all our friends are impossible; the members of our families are impossible. How then shall we get along with them? … If you are seeking a real encounter, then you must confront the koan represented by the other person. The koan is an invitation to enter into reality.

In the end, to love another requires dropping all our narcissistic agendas, movies, hopes, and fears, so that we may look freshly and see “the raw other, the sacred other,” just as he or she is. This involves a surrender, or perhaps defeat, as in George Orwell’s words about being “defeated and broken up by life.” What is defeated here, of course, is the ego and its strategies, clearing the way for the genuine person to emerge, the person who is capable of real, full-spectrum contact. The nobility of this kind of defeat is portrayed by Rilke in four powerful lines describing Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel:

Winning does not tempt that man
For this is how he grows:
By being defeated, decisively,
By constantly greater beings.

In relationship, it is two partners’ greater beings, gradually freeing themselves from the prison of conditioned patterns, that bring about this decisive defeat. And as this starts reverberating through their relationship, old expectations finally give way, old movies stop running, and a much larger acceptance than they believed possible can start opening up between them. As they become willing to face and embrace whatever stands between them—old relational wounds from the past, personal pathologies, difficulties hearing and understanding each other, different values and sensitivities—all in the name of loving and letting be, they are invited to “enter into reality.” Then it becomes possible to start encountering each other nakedly, in the open field of nowness, fresh and unfabricated, the field of love forever vibrating with unimagined possibilities.

[Michael]

A related quote (not from the referenced article)

To find out our partners’ desires, we must sustain a conversation with them that helps to bring those wants and desires to light. Sometimes we have to do this even when they are afraid of discovering them themselves. The deep, abiding fear is that we will stumble across the desire in them that wants a life different from the one we are capable of giving them. Essentially, we are afraid that they may find that their desire is to love something or even someone else… The crux then, the most difficult ground in the relationship, the portion of a relationship that elevates it to the level of a religious discipline or practice, is that I must “love,” must see the very part of my partner that could take this person away from me. I must keep contact with the part of the person that is pulling him or her into the future, though I risk not participating in that horizon. -David Whyte

[Jana]

Just listening to Emerald City on 95BFM online awesome!

If we are prepersonal it might be easier for us to be in touch with the desires of another than with our own desires.

I desire someone able to relate on the deeper levels, I can't stand myself in relationship to most people I encounter, so I send them away—but I know in my heart of hearts this unlived life can be shared.

Knowing that we contain those aspects of the lower meme that we are repulsed by and react against helps us to reach the equanimity and impersonality necessary to include rather than exclude others. We can only offer others the happiness that we are, thus we have to get right with our selves first, rather than wanting the world to right itself or trying to set it straight.

[henry]

from Sam Keen and Howard Thurman: "A man must ask himself two questions: First-where am I going? Second- Who will go with me? If you ever get the questions in the wrong order you are in big trouble". ( henry's notes to himself ).... Happy Thanksgiving Pilgrims 

[henry]

a beautiful woman just brought me a home cooked thanksgiving dinner ! I'm not as insightful as i was a couple hours ago . happy to be confused

[Jana]

from Sam Keen and Howard Thurman: "A man must ask himself two questions: First-where am I going? Second- Who will go with me? If you ever get the questions in the wrong order you are in big trouble". ( henry's notes to himself ).... Happy Thanksgiving Pilgrims 

I am going where no one else is going! 

[Michael]

Nice to see the replies here.  Thanks.

Here's a video for you:




I'm sort of warming up for my visit to see RAM next month...

[jimtzu]

nice article, Michael, i've been thinking along those same lines as i observe deeply from outside the box. my language is much more simplistic, but i would change this:
"The deep, abiding fear is that we will stumble across the desire in them that wants a life different from the one we are capable of giving them."
to: The deep, abiding fear is that we will stumble across the desire in them that wants a life different from the one we are capable of sharing with them.
i might be misreading what he's saying, but that makes more sense to me.

[marianthi]

I will be making time this weekend to read up this thread.  Don´t go away!
M.

[Jana]

"The deep, abiding fear is that we will stumble across the desire in them that wants a life different from the one we are capable of giving them."

Geez EVERYBODY desires a life different than the one we are capable of giving them, including ourselves. But the whole idea of joining up is for a "synergistic partner on journey," who is not working against themselves or us. Joint creativity of people on the same level with decent communication skills, who are proactive and going in a similar direction, should be able to craft a life together. But we are not here to GIVE another person a life they want. We are only here to give ourselves the life we WANT and to share that with others. So what is it we actually want?

If we are trying to garner love by GIVING another person the life we think they want...this is entropic. We will exhaust ourselves over the hopelessness of the circumstance in short order and gladly get rid of them to avoid the loss of our own Self-system. If our partner is not close to being soveregn they WILL play on our fears, for it is human nature to do so (Western human nature that is). All presovereign individuals consciously or unconsciously play with the fears of others as a means to gain power and energy. This is because presovereign Westerners are pyramid creatures and are always trying to get on top, as they have not learnt to create their own love/light and center themselves in the Unified Field. As far as they are aware of, beating up, seducing, tormenting, bribing or colonizing their fellow primates is the only way to achieve the power and energy needed to survive. Thus the presovereign individual is a "default" human, running on automatic programs millions of years old.

[Nickeson]

I watched this RAM and Ms RAM video and I got right off the two of them had to be shrinks because the first thing they mentioned was narcissism which we all know is pathological so--just like shrinks--they are coming from sickness...the first stage of relationship for them is sickness. It is not THE first stage of relationship. It is one of many kinds of relationships that people have when they are--relationshipwise--fucked- up.  Shrinks hardly see anyone other than fucked-up folks or other shrinks who are fucked-up themselves and who never talk to anyone else but...and so the river runs, the river runs.

M and I are sitting here as the sun goes down, hard by a toaster oven in which I am broiling, one at a time, links of Chorizo de Montserrat (Vla). We've knocked back the dregs of a gifted bottle of some red wine called Valpolicella out of Cadiz and we're leveling out on gin and tonic and talking about relationships and other stuff like how the chorizo reminds M of the community butchery in her great aunt's village in Northern Greece and the taste of the winter sausage the great aunt made and how that compared to the taste of the headcheese from my grandmother's recipe from a land as bleak, grand and tough on the western verge of the Great Plains in Wyoming, USA. M and I are old hands at mysticism and kundalini and both of us know it has nothing to do with diet except for those who are convinced it has something to do with diet--to each their own.

We are talking about relationships and the nature of fear.

What is there to fear? Being Alone? Piece of Cake.

We come in alone. We go out alone.

Alone is the grandeur 0f  being, the absolute fullness of one's soul.

Hey!  M and I know this stuff, we've been around the block, we've taken kundalini to as far as she can go and so it comes down to the ground...M and I and the incidentals, the chorizo and gin and tonic, and then there are the essentials..!

The essential---M and I holding hands...

[Lawrence]

http://www.iep.utm.edu/epicur/

"Epicurus is one of the major philosophers in the Hellenistic period, the three centuries following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE (and of Aristotle in 322 BCE). Epicurus developed an unsparingly materialistic metaphysics, empiricist epistemology, and hedonistic ethics. Epicurus taught that the basic constituents of the world are atoms, uncuttable bits of matter, flying through empty space, and he tried to explain all natural phenomena in atomic terms. Epicurus rejected the existence of Platonic forms and an immaterial soul, and he said that the gods have no influence on our lives. Epicurus also thought skepticism was untenable, and that we could gain knowledge of the world relying upon the senses. He taught that the point of all one’s actions was to attain pleasure (conceived of as tranquility) for oneself, and that this could be done by limiting one’s desires and by banishing the fear of the gods and of death. Epicurus’ gospel of freedom from fear proved to be quite popular, and communities of Epicureans flourished for centuries after his death."

[Jana]

Not that I would ever find anyone to do the work with, BUT this emphasis on WORK in relationship seems a little overburdened...whatever happened to PLAY.
I doubt the love could ever be strong enough to bother doing the WORK.
Especially when the hormones drop off, then its forget it how fricking boring.

[Michael]

Sometimes the work is worth it.

[Lawrence]

Holy cow, batman –Is that your ‘new partner in time?’ 

I never knew you two hooked up! Congratulations –to both of you!