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When will I learn
enough about relationships to be able to have them go smoothly? Is there a
way to be happy in relationships? Must they be constantly challenging?
You
have nothing to learn about relationships. You have only to demonstrate
what you already know. There
is a way to be happy in relationships, and that is to use
relationships for their intended purpose, not the purpose you have
designed. Relationships
are constantly challenging; constantly calling you to create, express, and
experience higher and higher aspects of yourself, grander and grander
visions of yourself, ever more magnificent versions of yourself.
Nowhere can you do this more immediately, impactfully, and immaculately
than in relationships. In fact, without relationships, you cannot do it
at all. It
is only through your relationship with other people, places, and
events that you can even exist (as a knowable quantity, as an identifiable
something) in the universe. Remember, absent everything
else, you are not. You only are what you are relative to
another thing that is not. That is how it is in the world of the relative,
as opposed to the world of the absolute- where I reside.
Once
you clearly understand this, once you deeply grasp it, then you
intuitively bless each and every experience, all human encounter, and
especially personal human relationships, for you see them as constructive,
in the highest sense. You see that they can be used, must be used,
are being used (whether you want them to be or not) to construct
Who You Really Are. That
construction can be a magnificent creation of your own conscious design,
or a strictly happenstance configuration. You can choose to be a person
who has resulted simply from what has happened, or from what you've chosen
to be and do about what has happened. It is in the latter
form that creation of Self becomes conscious. It is in the second
experience that Self becomes realized. Bless,
therefore, every relationship, and hold each as special and formative of
Who You Are- and now choose to be. Now
your inquiry has to do with individual human relationships of the romantic
sort, and I understand that. So let Me address Myself specifically, and at
length, to human love relationships- these things which continue to give
you such trouble! When
human love relationships fail (relationships never truly fail, except in
the strictly human sense that they did not produce what you want), they
fail because they were entered into for the wrong reason.
("Wrong,"
of course, is a relative term, meaning something measured against that
which is "right"- whatever that is! It would be more accurate in
your language to say "relationships fail- change- most often when they are
entered into for reasons not wholly beneficial or conducive to their
survival.") Most
people enter into relationships with an eye toward what they can get out
of them, rather than what they can put into them. The
purpose of a relationship is to decide what part of yourself you'd like to
see "show up"' not what part of another you can capture and hold.
There
can be only one purpose for relationships-and for all of life: to
be and to decide Who You Really Are. It
is very romantic to say that you were "nothing" until that special other
came along, but it is not true. Worse, it puts an incredible pressure on
the other to be all sorts of things he or she is not.
Not
wanting to "let you down," they try very hard to be and do these things
until they cannot anymore. They can no longer complete your picture of
them. They can no longer fill the roles to which they have been assigned.
Resentment builds. Anger follows. Finally,
in order to save themselves (and the relationship), these special
others begin to reclaim their real selves, acting more in accordance with
Who They Really Are. It is about this time that you say they've "really
changed." It
is very romantic to say that now that your special other has entered your
life, you feel complete. Yet the purpose of relationship is not
to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you
might share your completeness. Here
is the paradox of all human relationships: You have no need for a
particular other in order for you to experience, fully, Who You Are,
and . . . without an- other, you are nothing.
This
is both the mystery and the wonder, the frustration and the joy of the
human experience. lt requires deep understanding and total willingness to
live within this paradox in a way which makes sense. I observe that very
few people do. Most
of you enter your relationship-forming years ripe with anticipation, full
of sexual energy, a wide-open heart, and a joyful, if eager, soul.
Somewhere
between 40 and 60 (and for most it is sooner rather than later) you've
given up on your grandest dream, set aside your highest hope, and settled
for your lowest expectation- or nothing at all. The
problem is so basic, so simple, and yet so tragically misunderstood: your
grandest dream, your highest idea, and your fondest hope has had to do
with your beloved other rather than your beloved Self. The
test of your relationships has had to do with how well the other lived up
to your ideas, and how well you saw yourself living up to his or
hers. Yet the only true test has to do with how well you live up to
yours. Relationships
are sacred because they provide life's grandest opportunity- indeed, its
only opportunity- to create and produce the experience of your
highest conceptualization of Self. Relationships fail when you see them as
life's grandest opportunity to create and produce the experience of your
highest conceptualization of another. Let
each person in relationship worry about Self- what Self is
being, doing, and having; what Self is wanting, asking, giving;
what Self is seeking, creating, experiencing, and all relationships
would magnificently serve their purpose- and their participants!
Let
each person in relationship worry not about the other, but only, only,
only about Self. This
seems a strange teaching, for you have been told that in the highest form
of relationship, one worries only about the other. Yet I tell you
this: your focus upon the other-your obsession with the other- is
what causes relationships to fail. What
is the other being? What is the other doing? What is the other having?
What is the other saying? Wanting? Demanding? What is the other thinking?
Expecting? Planning? The
Master understands that it doesn't matter what the other is being,
doing, having, saying, wanting, demanding. It doesn't matter what
the other is thinking, expecting, planning. It only matters what you
are being in relationship to that. The
most loving person is the person who is Self- centered.
That is a
radical teaching. Not
if you look at it carefully. If you cannot love your Self, you cannot love
another. Many people make the mistake of seeking love of Self through
love for another. Of course, they don't realize they are doing this.
It is not a conscious effort. It's what's going on in the mind. Deep in
the mind. In what you call the subconscious. They think: "If I can just
love others, they will love me. Then I will be lovable, and I can
love me." The
reverse of this is that so many people hate themselves because they feel
there is not another who loves them. This is a sickness- it's when people
are truly "lovesick" because the truth is, other people do love
them, but it doesn't matter. No matter how many people profess their love
for them, it is not enough. First,
they don't believe you. They think you are trying to manipulate them-
trying to get something. (How could you love them for who they truly are?
No. There must be some mistake. You must want some-thing! Now what do you
want?) They
sit around trying to figure out how anyone could actually love them. So
they don't believe you, and embark on a campaign to make you prove
it. You have to prove that you love them. To do this, they may ask you to
start altering your behavior. Second,
if they finally come to a place where they can believe you love
them, they begin at once to worry about how long they can keep your
love. So, in order to hold onto your love, they start altering
their behavior. Thus,
two people literally lose themselves in a relationship. They get into the
relationship hoping to find themselves, and they lose themselves instead.
This
losing of the Self in a relationship is what causes most of the bitterness
in such couplings. Two
people join together in a partnership hoping that the whole will be
greater than the sum of the parts, only to find that it's less. They feel
less than when they were single. Less capable, less able, less
exciting, less attractive, less joyful, less content.
This
is because they are less. They've given up most of who they are in
order to be- and to stay- in their relationship. Relationships
were never meant to be this way. Yet this is how they are experienced by
more people than you could ever know. Why? Why?
It
is because people have lost touch with (if they ever were in touch
with) the purpose of relationships. When
you lose sight of each other as sacred souls on a sacred journey, then you
cannot see the purpose, the reason, behind all
relationships. The
soul has come to the body, and the body to life, for the purpose of
evolution. You are evolving, you are becoming. And you are
using your relationship with everything to decide what you
are becoming. This
is the job you came here to do. This is the joy of creating Self. Of
knowing Self. Of becoming, consciously, what you wish to be. It is what is
meant by being Self conscious. You
have brought your Self to the relative world so that you might have the
tools with which to know and experience Who You Really Are. Who You Are is
who you create yourself to be in relationship to all the rest of it.
Your
personal relationships are the most important elements in this process.
Your personal relationships are therefore holy ground. They have virtually
nothing to do with the other, yet, because they involve another, they have
everything to do with the other. This
is the divine dichotomy. This is the closed circle. So it is not such a
radical teaching to say, "Blessed are the Self-centered, for they shall
know God." It might not be a bad goal in your life to know the highest
part of your Self, and to stay centered in that.
Your
first relationship, therefore, must be with your Self. You must first
learn to honor and cherish and love your Self. You
must first see your Self as worthy before you can see another as worthy.
You must first see your Self as blessed before you can see another as
blessed. You must first know your Self to be holy before you can
acknowledge holiness in another. If
you put the cart before the horse- as most religions ask you to do- and
acknowledge another as holy before
you acknowledge yourself, you will one day resent it. If there is one
thing none of you can tolerate, it is someone being holier than thou.
Yet your religions force you to call others holier than thou. And so
you do it- for a while. Then you crucify them. You
have crucified (in one way or another) all of My teachers, not just One.
And you did so not because they were holier than thou, but because you
made them out to be. My
teachers have all come with the same message. Not "I am holier than thou,"
but "You are as holy as am I." This
is the message you have not been able to hear; this is the truth you have
not been able to accept. And that is why you can never truly, purely, fall
in love with another. You have never truly, purely fallen in love with
your Self. And
so I tell you this: be now and forever centered upon your Self. Look to
see what you are being, doing, and having in any given moment, not what's
going on with another. It
is not in the action of another, but in your re-action, that your
salvation will be found. I know better, but
somehow this makes it sound as though we should not mind what others do to
us in relationships. They can do anything, and so long as we hold our
equilibrium, keep our Self centered, and all that good stuff, nothing can
touch us. But others do touch us. Their actions do sometimes
hurt us. It is when the hurt comes into relationships that I don't know
what to do. It's all very well to say "stand aside from it; cause it to
mean nothing," but that's easier said than done. I do get hurt by
the words and actions of others in relationships. The
day will come when you will not. That will be the day on which you
realize- and actualize- the true meaning of relationships; the true reason
for them. It
is because you have forgotten this that you react the
way you do. But that is alright. That is part of the growth process. It is
part of evolution. It is Soul Work you are up to in relationship, yet that
is a grand understanding, a grand remembering. Until you remember this-
and remember then also how to use relationship as a tool in the
creation of Self- you must work at the level at which you are. The level
of understanding, the level of willingness, the level of remembrance.
And
so there are things you can do when you react with pain and hurt to what
another is being, saying, or doing. The first is to admit honestly to
yourself and to another exactly how you are feeling. This many of you are
afraid to do, because you think it will make you "look bad." Somewhere,
deep inside of you, you realize that it probably is ridiculous for you to
"feel that way." It probably is small of you. You are "bigger than that."
But you can't help it. You still feel that way.
There
is only one thing you can do. You must honor your feelings. For honoring
your feelings means honoring your Self. And you must love your neighbor as
you love yourself. How can you ever expect to understand and honor the
feelings of another if you cannot honor the feelings within your Self?
The
first question in any interactive process with another is: now Who Am I,
and Who Do I Want to Be, in relationship to that? Often
you do not remember Who You Are, and do not know Who You Want to Be until
you try out a few ways of being. That is why honoring your truest
feelings is so important. If
your first feeling is a negative feeling, simply having the feeling
is frequently all that is needed to step away from it. It is when you
have the anger, have the upset, have the disgust,
have the rage, own the feeling of wanting to "hurt back,"
that you can disown these first feelings as "not Who You Want to
Be." The
Master is one who has lived through enough such experiences to know in
advance what her final choices are. She does not need to "try out"
anything. She's worn these clothes before and knows they do not
fit; they are not "her." And since a Master's life is devoted to the
constant realization of Self as one knows oneself to be, such
ill-fitting feelings would never be entertained. That
is why Masters are imperturbable in the face of what others might call
calamity. A Master blesses calamity, for the Master knows that from the
seeds of disaster (and all experience) comes the growth of Self. And the
Master's second life purpose is always growth. For once one has
fully Self realized, there is nothing left to do except be more
of that. It
is at this stage that one moves from soul work to God work, for this is
what I am up to! I
will assume for the purposes of this discussion that you are still up to
soul work. You are still seeking to realize (make "real") Who You
Truly Are. Life (I) will give you bountiful opportunities to create that
(remember, life is not a process of discovery, life is a process of
creation). You
can create Who You Are over and over again. Indeed, you do- every day. As
things now stand, you do not always come up with the same answer, however.
Given an identical outer experience, on day one you may choose to be
patient, loving, and kind in relationship to it. On day two you may choose
to be angry, ugly, and sad. The
Master is one who always comes up with the same answer- and that
answer is always the highest choice. In
this the Master is imminently predictable. Conversely, the student is
completely unpredictable. One can tell how one is doing on the road to
mastery by simply noticing how predictably one makes the highest choice in
responding or reacting to any situation. Of
course, this throws open the question, what choice is
highest? That
is a question around which have revolved the philosophies and theologies
of man since the beginning of time. If the question truly engages you,
you are already on your way to mastery. For it is still true
that most
people continue to be engaged by another question altogether. Not, what is
the highest choice, but, what is the most profitable? Or, how can I lose
the least? When
life is lived from a standpoint of damage control or optimum advantage,
the true benefit of life is forfeited. The opportunity is lost. The
chance is missed. For a life lived thusly is a life lived from fear- and
that life speaks a lie about you. For
you are not fear, you are love. Love that needs no protection, love that
cannot be lost. Yet you will never know this in your experience if
you continually answer the second question and not the first. For only a
person who thinks there is something to gain or to lose asks the
second question. And only a person who sees life in a different way; who
sees Self as a higher being; who understands that winning or losing is
not the test, but only loving or failing to love- only that person
asks the first. He
who asks the second question says, "I am my body." She who asks the first
says, "I am my soul." Yea,
let all those who have ears to hear, listen. For I tell you this: at the
critical juncture in all human relationships, there is only one question:
What would love do
now? No
other question is relevant, no other question is meaningful, no other
question has any importance to your soul. Now
we come upon a very delicate point of interpretation, for this principle
of love-sponsored action has been widely misunderstood- and it is this
misunderstanding which has led to the resentments and angers of life-
which, in turn, have caused so many to stray from the path.
For
centuries you have been taught that love-sponsored action arises out of
the choice to be, do, and have whatever produces the highest good for
another. Yet
I tell you this: the highest choice is that which produces the highest
good for you.
As
with all profound spiritual truth, this statement opens itself to
immediate misinterpretation. The mystery clears a bit the moment one
decides what is the highest "good" one could do for oneself. And when the
absolute highest choice is made, the mystery dissolves, the circle
completes itself, and the highest good for you becomes the highest
good for another. It
may take lifetimes to understand this- and even more lifetimes to
implement- for this truth revolves around an even greater one: What you do
for your Self, you do for another. What you do for another, you do for the
Self. This
is because you and the other are one. And
this is because... There
is naught but You. All
the Masters who have walked your planet have taught this. ("Verily,
verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least
of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.") Yet this has remained for
most people merely a grand esoteric truth, with little practical
application. In fact, it is the most practically applicable "esoteric"
truth of all time. It
is important in relationships to remember this truth, for without it
relationships will be very difficult. Let's
go back to the practical applications of this wisdom and step away from
the purely spiritual, esoteric aspect of it for now.
So
often, under the old understandings, people- well-meaning and
well-intentioned and many very religious- did what they thought would be
best for the other person in their relationships. Sadly, all this produced
in many cases (in most cases) was continued abuse by the other.
Continued mistreatment. Continued dysfunction in the relationship.
Ultimately,
the person trying to "do what is right" by the other- to be quick to
forgive, to show compassion, to continually look past certain problems and
behaviors- becomes resentful, angry, and mistrusting, even of God. For how
can a just God demand such unending suffering, joylessness, and sacrifice,
even in the name of love? The
answer is, God does not. God asks only that you include yourself
among those you love. God
goes further. God suggests- recommends- that you put yourself
first. I
do this knowing full well that some of you will call this blasphemy, and
therefore not My word, and that others of you will do what might be even
worse: accept it as My word and misinterpret or distort it to suit
your own purposes; to justify ungodly acts. I
tell you this- putting yourself first in the highest sense never
leads to an ungodly act. If,
therefore, you have caught yourself in an ungodly act as a result of doing
what is best for you, the confusion is not in having put yourself first,
but rather in misunderstanding what is best for you.
Of
course, determining what is best for you will require you to also
determine what it is you are trying to do. This is an important step that
many people ignore. What are you "up to"? What is your purpose in life?
Without answers to these questions, the matter of what is "best" in any
given circumstances will remain a mystery. As
a practical matter- again leaving esoterics aside if you look to what is
best for you in these situations where you are being abused, at the very
least what you will do is stop the abuse. And that will be good for both
you and your abuser. For even an abuser is abused when his abuse is
allowed to continue. This
is not healing to the abuser, but damaging. For if the abuser finds that
his abuse is acceptable, what has he learned? Yet if the abuser finds that
his abuse will be accepted no more, what has he been allowed to discover?
Therefore,
treating others with love does not necessarily mean allowing others to do
as they wish. Parents
learn this early with children. Adults are not so quick to learn it with
other adults, nor nation with nation. Yet
despots cannot be allowed to flourish, but must be stopped in their
despotism. Love of Self, and love of the despot, demands it.
This
is the answer to your question, "If love is all there is, how can man ever
justify war?" Sometimes
man must go to war to make the grandest statement about who man truly is:
he who abhors war. There
are times when you may have to give up Who You Are in order to
be Who You Are. There
are Masters who have taught: you cannot have it all until you are
willing to give it all up. Thus,
in order to "have" yourself as a man of peace, you may have to give up the
idea of yourself as a man who never goes to war. History has called upon
men for such decisions. The
same is true in the most individual and the most personal relationships.
Life may more than once call upon you to prove Who You Are by
demonstrating an aspect of Who You Are Not. This
is not so difficult to understand if you have lived a few years, though
for the idealistically young it may seem the ultimate contradiction. In
more mature retrospection it seems more divine dichotomy.
This
does not mean in human relationships that if you are being hurt, you have
to "hurt back." (Nor does it mean so in relationships between nations.) It
simply means that to allow another to continually inflict damage
may not be the most loving thing to do- for your Self or the other.
This
should put to rest some pacifist theories that highest love requires no
forceful response to what you consider evil. The
discussion here turns esoteric once more, because no serious exploration
of this statement can ignore the word "evil," and the value judgments it
invites. In truth, there is nothing evil, only objective phenomena and
experience. Yet your very purpose in life requires you to select from the
growing collection of endless phenomena a scattered few which you call
evil- for unless you do, you cannot call yourself, nor anything, else,
good- and thus cannot know, or create, your Self. By
that which you call evil do you define yourself- and by that which you
call good. The
biggest evil would therefore be
to declare nothing evil at all. You
exist in this life in the world of the relative, where one thing can exist
only insofar as it relates to another. This is at one and the same time
both the function and the purpose of relationship: to provide a field of
experience within which you find yourself, define yourself, and- if you
choose- constantly recreate Who You Are. Choosing
to be God-like does not mean you choose to be a martyr. And it certainly
does not mean you choose to be a victim. On
your way to mastery- when all possibility of hurt, damage, and loss is
eliminated- it would be well to recognize hurt, damage, and loss as part
of your experience, and decide Who You Are in relationship to it.
Yes,
the things that others think, say, or do will sometimes hurt you-
until they do not anymore. What will get you from here to there most
quickly is total honesty- being willing to assert, acknowledge, and
declare exactly how you feel about a thing. Say your truth- kindly, but
fully and completely. Live your truth, gently, but totally and
consistently. Change your truth easily and quickly when your experience
brings you new clarity. No
one in right mind, least of all God, would tell you, when you are hurt in
a relationship, to "stand aside from it, cause it to mean nothing." If you
are now hurting, it is too late to cause it to mean nothing. Your
task now is to decide what it does mean- and to demonstrate that.
For in so doing, you choose and become Who You Seek to
Be. |
Contact: info@kulshreshtha.org |