Our Partners Are Our
Teachers |
Honoring the Divine in Each Other: When we fall in love the world shifts. Our perceptions become crystal clear. Sounds are more distinct. Colors and visual acuity become sharper. We feel strong, beautiful, and our hearts are filled with love for everyone. Sexual union with the beloved, especially when both partners mutually experience ecstasy, can bring us deep within the realm of joy and the sacred. Once experienced, we yearn to recapture these feelings of joy, ecstasy and connection with [what some call] God. We might even marry the person believing we’ll have continual access to the ecstatic joy. And then, lo and behold, the experience starts to elude us. The harder we try to capture it, the further away it goes. We start to blame each other, curse at each other, and say things like.... "You changed." "You tricked me." "Why did we have to get married?" "Why can’t you be like you were then?" "You’re just like all the other men [women]." Sound familiar? When joy and ecstasy are missing in relationship we become dissatisfied. We must balance the mundane with the ecstatic. A relationship can not live in continual ecstasy. That is illusionary. Nor can it thrive when earthly labors and problems are its focus. The discipline and rituals of conscious loving, when brought to relationship, can bring balance to the ordinary tasks daily living requires of us. Through the practice of conscious loving rituals, we can balance the mundane by creating ecstatic and sacred moments with our beloved. But first we must recognize and still our "inner critic" or Shadow from casting the dark light of criticism and blame. We can bring our Shadow into the light by recognizing that our partners are our best teachers for seeing those things in ourselves that stand in our own way of spiritual growth. Those characteristics, feelings or behaviors most rejected, disowned, or never developed within ourselves are the very things that we were first attracted us to our partners. What we have disowned or rejected becomes our "Shadow" characteristics. Those parts of ourselves we do not admit to, we are afraid of, ashamed of, or ignorant about. Those very parts are lurking somewhere in our repertoire of humanness awaiting our acceptance. Remember when you felt "whole." When you said, "I finally feel complete–I never met anyone like this before." In all likelihood you felt that way because your partner displayed the parts of you that were missing in yourself–you had rejected, disowned or not developed those characteristics in yourself that you were attracted to in your partner. Those very characteristics are now probably those behaviors that annoy and irritate you the most. What once helped you feel complete and whole has become a source of anger or disappointment. We all have underdeveloped and disowned parts. These are the parts of ourselves we rejected as children because we were told little boys/girls don’t do that, or only bad boys/girls behave that way, or people "like us" don’t do those things. We learn fairly quickly as children that we don’t get approval or love if we exhibit those behaviors. So we hide them, repress them, disown them. We thus participate in becoming incomplete. Later, as adults, we typically are attracted to people who have realized those parts of themselves that we earlier relegated to the garbage heap. Later in the relationship, once the initial ecstasy has worn off, we begin to react negatively to what once attracted us. Think about this for a moment: what once had been attractive to you about your partner possibly becomes one of your chief complaints. For example, where once you valued their independence you now complain that your opinion is never considered or he/she only wants to do things alone. . Consider also the possibility that some of your "Shadow" elements are wonderful and admirable human characteristics. We also disown some of the good stuff. Think about how you may slough off compliments with an… "Ah, it was nothing." Do you know anyone whose partner takes better care of them then they care for themselves? That’s a person who can learn from their partner. When what you react to is a characteristic you have suppressed or never developed your partner can become your teacher by modeling this behavior or these characteristics. For many men, myself included, our wives can help us learn to feel–learn to access and fully express our feelings appropriately–a function often underdeveloped in men. There have been numerable times when my wife has asked me if anything was "wrong" or if anything was "going on." My typical response was no, I’m fine. Only to discover later — be it 10 minutes or ten days–that she was perceiving something in me I was, as yet, unaware of–a feeling that was below my level of recognition. She has, in many ways, taught me the finer points of living with, and becoming more comfortable talking about–what I feel. We all have something to teach each other in relationships. I invite you to listen to the sound of your complaints and transform them into the sound of requests–or at a minimum receptivity to the possibility that your dissatisfaction with the other is more about you than about them and may lead to learning something about yourself I invite you to honor the divine in each other as you learn more about yourself in becoming all of who you truly are. This is a form of spiritual work of the most meaningful kind. |