Journal
Relationships
photo Relationships1.23.15
Relationships! I keep finding really insightful information about death and grief and I wondered why I am not finding great insights about relationships, and then I see this post by Ram Dass. Its a really good post athttps://www.ramdass.org/when-i-look-at-relationships/. I'll share my favorite parts the next fews days and will start a blog post at The Insight Center blog,http://theinsightcenter.net/blog/ about relationships, where I will gather insights about relationships!
“The image I always have when I am performing a wedding is the image of a triangle in which there are two partners and then there is this third force, this third being that emerges out of the interaction of these two. The third one is the one that is the shared awareness that lies behind the two of them. And the two people in the yoga of relationship come together in order to find that shared awareness that exists behind them in order to then dance as two. So that the twoness brings them into one and the oneness dances as two, and that’s a kind of a vibrating relationship between the one and the two. So that people are both separate, and yet they are not separate. And they are experiencing that the relationship is feeding both their uniqueness as individuals and their unit of consciousness.” Ram Dass, When I Look at Relationships ,https://www.ramdass.org/when-i-look-at-relationships/
“Now, that is extremely delicate because it is so easy to get entrenched in your own “I need this,”
“I want this - you are not fulfilling this for me” and seeing the other as object. But the delight, which all of you have experienced, is of being with somebody where you are sharing an awareness of the predicament you are both in. And you are sharing an awareness of the predicament even when you are having an argument with each other – there is an awareness that you are both almost delighting in the horrible beauty of it. We’re hating it and enjoying it both – because there are these levels we are playing at all the time. We come into relationship often very much identified with our needs. I need this, I need security, I need refuge, I need friendship, I need this. And all of relationships are symbiotic in that sense. We come together because we fulfill each others’ needs at some level or other.” Ram Dass, When I Look at Relationships,https://www.ramdass.org/when-i-look-at-relationships/
"So somebody comes along and gets to me. They get me angry or uptight or they awaken some desire in me, wow am I delighted. They got me. And that’s my work on myself. If I am angry with you because your behavior doesn’t fill my model of how you should be, that’s my problem for having models. No expectations, no upset. If you are a liar and a cheat, that’s your Karma. If I’m cheated, that’s my work on myself.My attempting to change you, that’s a whole other ballgame. What I am saying is if I will only be happy if you are different than you are, you are asking for it. You are really asking for it. Think of how many relationships you say, “I really don’t like that person’s this or that.[ If they would only be this. If I could manipulate them to be this, I can be happy.” Isn’t that weird? Why can’t I be happy with them the way they are? You are a liar, a cheat and a scoundrel and I love you. I won’t play any games with you, but I love you. It’s interesting to move to the level where you can appreciate, love, and allow in the same way you would in the woods. Instead of constantly bringing in that judging component which is really rooted out of your own feelings of lack of power. Judging comes out of your own fear. Now I fall trap to it all the time. But every time I do, I catch myself.” Ram Dass, When I Look at Relationships, https://www.ramdass.org/when-i-look-at-relationships/
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"Redemptive Love does not shy away from suffering, whether one’s own suffering or others’. Redemptive Love embraces suffering in utter acceptance and Love. The challenge to us all is to continually open and stretch ourselves to become large enough to embrace the full measure of life in all its inexhaustible proportion. Life always asks us to become bigger than whatever we encounter, and to stretch our loving embrace to include more than we thought we could. For we are in truth more immense than we imagine, and when we surrender the confines of our mind to the magnitude of our heart, we grow day by day in transformative compassion that has the resilience to withstand the turns of fate that life presents us with." ~Adyashanti Redemptive Love Course
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"Compassion simply stated is leaving other people alone. You don’t lay trips. You exist as a statement of your own level of evolution."
"Some of the beings around you every day are very ancient beings, and some are very new. But is it better or worse? It’s just different. Is it better to be twenty years old than fifty? It’s just different. So why do you judge someone because he’s not as conscious as you are? Do you judge a pre-pubescent because he or she is not sexually aware? You understand. You have compassion. Compassion simply stated is leaving other people alone. You don’t lay trips. You exist as a statement of your own level of evolution. You are available to any human being, to provide what they need, to the extent that they ask. But you begin to see that it is a fallacy to think that you can impose a trip on another person."Ram Dass, Love Serve Remember
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This is a good article with insights on how to make relationships work: http://www.elephantjournal.com/…/a-new-love-changing-our-o…/ What do you think?
"Let there be spaces in your togetherness.
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow."
Kahlil Gibran,
The Prophet, via brainpickings.org
"Complement this particular portion of the wholly enchanting
with Virginia Woolf on
, philosopher Alain Badiou on
, Anna Dostoyevsky on
the secret to a happy marriage
, Mary Oliver on
how differences bring couples closer together
, and Joseph Campbell on
the single most important factor in sustaining romantic relationships
, then revisit Gibran on
the seeming self vs. the authentic self
and
the absurdity of our self-righteousness
." brainpickings.org, January 2019.“…love invariably does change us, deconditioning our painful pathologies and elevating us toward our highest human potential. It allows us, as Barack Obama so eloquently wrote in his reflections on
what his mother taught him about love
, “to break across our solitude, and then, if we’re lucky, [be] finally transformed into something firmer.”
“Why is love rich beyond all other possible human experiences and a sweet burden to those seized in its grasp? Because we become what we love and yet remain ourselves.”
Martin Heidegger, via
“Let there be spaces in your togetherness,And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.Love one another but make not a bond of love:Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.And stand together, yet not too near together:For the pillars of the temple stand apart,And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow." Kahlil Gibran,
The Prophet, via
“When we partner with others out of a scarcity mentality nothing lasting can come out of it. Not in love or business. Build with others only when doing so feels mutually abundant, satiating in its challenge, and on purpose for all involved.” Chani Nicholas, Instagram
“4 things make your relationship easier:
space to be your own person
less control, more trust
calm communication
selfless listening.” Yung pueblo