Relationships in the Mirror: Trust, Vulnerability and Healing While Navigating Broken Bonds
Today, I feel compelled to talk about relationships. Any kind of relationship has fundamental properties. There is trust and vulnerability included based on the type of relationship. Obviously, a business relationship does not contain huge amounts of built-in trust and vulnerability, whereas a personal relationship requires increased or huge amounts of trust and vulnerability to sustain itself.
We typically trust our employer to hopefully treat us fairly and to compensate us for our work based on our earlier agreement. The rest is a matter of discovery and further agreement, but typically our own interests supersede this relationship. This is true for both employer and employee. We know that we cannot trust our employers beyond what we agreed to and there is rarely enough compassion coming from employers regarding our personal struggles that might affect our relationship with them.
On the other hand, a personal relationship goes beyond agreements or rather those agreements are much more flexible and less selfish, due to the presence of love. We know that there are implied agreements within love. At least this is typically the case.
If trust is broken for any reason, the ego is typically hurt, and the relationship is suffering. That relationship will require healing. All parties in the relationship must agree to heal it and no matter how much one party wants to heal the relationship, if the other party doesn't agree, then this relationship is doomed to expire.
During that time, it is typically too late if one party exhibits increased trust and vulnerability. If the other party has made up their minds already, then they will either resort to secrecy and gaslighting, avoiding a conversation and pretending that there are more neutral reasons behind their decision. Even if there are indeed other, more neutral reasons, they typically become the perfect tool for the ego to promote the idea of rejection without confrontation, while at the same time attempting to break the relationship in a way that will not be traceable to the ego of the rejecting party. The vulnerable party is then left dumb struck, potentially repeatedly gaslit and craving for answers, unable to understand. The general expectation is for the vulnerable party to take a hint and agree to the dissolution of the relationship from their part. This is how relationships end sometimes and none is the wiser, but the rejecting party itself. Secrecy and illusion are the tools of the ego to promote and sustain separation after suffering a wound from a relationship. In such cases the vulnerable party would be advised not to demand the truth from the rejecting party as this would lead either to more gaslighting or more conflict. Existing wounds should not be exacerbated or multiplied, and grievances should not be aired in a way that would lead to further conflict. All happens in divine timing. Unless issues are discussed amicably in a state of unconditional love, our society will not change for the better. Change begins within. I know this from experience, as I unfortunately have done it in the past.
If we don't strive to become more open, trusting and vulnerable, the separation from the past will be perpetuated and healing will be postponed indefinitely.
Regardless of what we may believe, our limited selves are not perfect. Only our true Selves are perfect. We are imperfect projections of our own perfect true Self, living in an imperfect environment, while interacting with other imperfect projections of their true Selves, living in an imperfect environment. Compassion is necessary, both toward our limited own selves and toward other human beings. Today's relationships can be challenging, and healing can be raw and challenging as well. Through this suffering we realize that we can't change others and their belief systems. We can only change our own self and our own belief systems, hoping for others to follow. No relationship can bring us out of balance, if we adopt this lifestyle.
This is why frequent love meditations are necessary for our internal balance and spiritual evolution. For the sake of our own internal balance, we need to disregard others and how they affect us and immerse our limited selves in unconditional love. We must allow feelings of guilt, grief and remorse to dissolve in universal bliss and the inherent innocence of loving consciousness. Innocence is key here. The acceptance or not of innocence is crucial, as it will either perpetuate guilt, grief and despair or restore an enlightened perspective and foundation to everything that's seemingly disconnected from us, allowing forgiveness to be born. This perspective was lost millennia ago and constitutes the basis for forgiveness in a practical way.
Getting closer to becoming our true Selves little by little is not for the faint-hearted, as it requires harsh self-observation without the ego's illusions. Going through multiple dark nights of the Soul is not a pretty sight. It is usually a raw and gut-wrenching ordeal that brings deep internal truths to the foreground of our consciousness. Our true Self is then transmuting the contents of these truths, so that our limited self can become a clearer reflection of our true Self.
Relationships are teaching us about our limited selves. It all boils down to a fundamental existential concept. How much do we cherish personal relationships? Do we take them for granted and leave them on autopilot or do we frequently nurture them, relate to them, probe and question them to see if we need to adapt our behaviour and change? Do we care enough to change if a relationship requires us to change? Are we allowing our ego to take liberties with our partners, friends, siblings or parents that violate their rights or boundaries? Most importantly, what is our stance on relationships on a higher level? How do we perceive them? Are they something nice to have or are they a mere requirement for living together on this planet? Are they something we honestly accept as a shared space between human beings acting as an extension of our limited selves through which we can experience unity consciousness or are we treating relationships as separate concepts or entities? How we treat each other reflects on how we treat our selves. For any broken relationship the blame lies rarely with only one party. A relationship is a shared space, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually between two or more parties. Blame is shared if the relationship fails, perhaps not equally, but it is nevertheless shared. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because relationships are preparing us, the droplets of the universal sea of consciousness for interaction with the whole sea of universal consciousness. Failure and loss are equally shared by all parties, regardless of blame. In the grand scheme of things all parties get an F in this regard. Spirit acknowledges either an A or an F. Anything in between provides only clues to the degree of failure.
We should allow our fellow human beings the benefit of the doubt. While we may or may not know the true reasons of rejection, we should bear in mind that other human beings are as imperfect as we are. Their perspectives are unique, and, in our self-examination, we may have misunderstood or completely missed their perspectives to understand them completely. We must accept that all viewpoints from all human beings are incomplete, since we are droplets of consciousness. That’s because they are polarized in multiple ways. It is impossible to have a complete perception of reality if we are polarized. Other droplets of consciousness may have other perspectives that complement our reality perception.
The path to fourth density from our limited third density perception requires constant adherence to the requests of our inner voice that comes from the Heart. These requests are unifying in nature. Any other requests that are not unifying come from the mind and more specifically from the ego. To outgrow this childhood phase from an evolutionary viewpoint, we should consider applying unconditional love in our lives. Anything else lacks the durability and sustainability that unconditional love provides.
Furthermore, this path is often thorn-covered and tear-streaked; a dark, slippery and unpaved road full of potholes that doesn’t care about our limited selves, only about our true Selves.
Let's suppose that we understand and accept that we are behaving from a position of secrecy and that we feel it affects our relationships. What can we do to change that?
There are four factors that we should consider, to align our behaviour in relationships. Firstly, we must resolve to have frequent love meditations. This will prepare us for living in a setting of unconditional love, openness and vulnerability with anybody who is in any kind of a relationship with us. It will help put us into a state of compassion and forgiveness.
Secondly, we should strive for inner balance and beware of our ego. We should not allow our egos to disrupt this inner balance and persuade us of leaving this pristine state, which allows us to live in integrity and completeness. The ego is a crafty fellow, that finds ways to circumvent our intentions because it knows our own limited self, better than we know it ourselves. We should ask our true Self for help in any way it can and surrender to following its suggestions. To recognize our true Self, it helps to pinpoint the origin of the suggestions. Are those suggestions coming from a place of love and unification or are they coming from the ego’s place of hurt and separation?
Thirdly, we should always communicate our truth in a state of unconditional love. At this point I will digress to illustrate my point. In the Star Trek universe there is a Romulan group called the Qowat Milat. They are an organization of warrior nuns, like the Shaolin warrior monks on our planet. Their primary teaching is the Way of Absolute Candor. It describes the total absence of a filter between word and thought during communication. However, in our society it would perhaps be illegal or even dangerous for someone to speak their truth in this way, depending on where you live on the planet. Let's endeavour to communicate our truth under the cloak and ambience of unconditional love, that will not allow the ego to overstep and violate any more boundaries during communication. If it is illegal or dangerous to behave like this, perhaps we should look for alternatives without compromising our integrity. On a sidenote, the opposite applies as well. We must be able to look inside of us with Absolute Candor as well. It is implied.
Lastly, we must acknowledge that the other being or beings in our troubled or broken relationship have their own path and if they need to move on, we should allow them to move on without bearing negative feelings toward them or toward our selves. We are all responsible and accountable for our own behaviour and our own consciousness evolution. Pointing fingers at others is not conducive to that. If we view any relationship through the prism of consciousness evolution and are in a state of unconditional love, we will understand the meaning of these relationships and what they need to teach us. If we come to a positive conclusion and a positive lesson or lessons that we are eager to apply in our lives with unconditional love, then we can move on with grace. The alternative would be to move on without grace, and this is something we should avoid at all costs. We all know from experience how it is when we learn without grace. It usually ends with a “shut up and put up” statement from life itself to misquote an English saying. It requires us to accept the lesson without further resistance or be crushed internally by the weight of the lesson itself.
We are all on this planet to learn. Let's learn happily and joyfully in a state of unconditional love, looking at all beings as assistants on our own spiritual path, just as we are their assistants on their own spiritual path. We all learn with each other and through each other. Let’s be grateful and love each other unconditionally for that.