Good day, everyone!
Here’s another snippet from the ongoing Conscious Relationships Class. Enjoy, and have a good day!
In peace,
David
You got past the resistance!!! Yay!!! That’s a very good thing. And of course you know as well as I that when there’s conditioned resistance then something good is about to happen…
Leaving him before he leaves you…. A conditioned survival pattern, as you say. A good way to stay safe and avoid sudden pain. There is another, quieter, longer-lasting pain inside this, though, isn’t there? The pain of not really giving things a chance, of ending things that perhaps don’t need to be ended, of shutting out in a tangible way what your heart longs for… That’s the price we pay for safety. Here’s a challenge for
you if you’re willing: forget being safe. Live! Love! Want good things for yourself! If you want something with all of your heart and it doesn’t happen, then that will be very painful, but you are adequate to that pain. I promise. We all are. It’s just not worth it to choose safety over deep living. And pain is a part of deep living. It’s okay to experience pain. Free yourself from whatever fear of pain you have, and let yourself live and love as deeply as you can. You may or may not get what you feel you want, but you will be living in the meantime.
It’s always good, as you say, to look inward to see if we can meet the need ourselves that we are trying to get others to meet for us. That’s the heart of practice within relationship, I would say. I’m glad you have the willingness to give yourself the attention that you need. And this is not to say that you don’t need it also from the outside. You do! Perhaps “need” is too strong a word there, but not by much. You deserve a romantic partner and friends who want to know you, who want to give you attention because they love you and they receive from giving you attention!!!! That’s what relationship IS in some ways. If your romantic partner or friends don’t have time for you, then I’d suggest you find someone, temporarily or permanently, who does. If they’re actually not interested in giving your relationship time and attention, you need a different partner! You need different friends! I say all of this only to counter the pseudo-spiritual notion we can get trapped in that says everything is an inside job: that we are responsible for all of our experience as if there is no outside world. That’s silly. We do need to approach life as if we are responsible for all of our experience, because otherwise we will continually be victim to our circumstances, but we also have to acknowledge that we are affected by what happens to us, and that we HAVE EXTERNAL NEEDS. There is a middle way here, in other words. Might be interesting to practice with…