The Ghosts Within - Relationship
Each one of these articles in The Ghosts Within Series is focused on one element of the kind of information we file in our unconscious. I have created categories for these “files” or “ghosts” to give some pathways of understanding and resolution. Like every system it has limitations. Don’t focus on the system, focus on what your Wisdom Within brings to you when you contemplate what I have written here. What I think is not the most important thing. What you discover from within is what really matters. I write these as a springboard for you to dive into what this means for you. My experience is that certain words and concepts will resonate for you and stimulate important progress. Others may not. That is fine. The categories we will explore in this series will be : Key Life Areas; Negative Emotions; Reactive Behaviours; Sub-personalities; Limiting Beliefs; Positive Emotions; and Lessons. In each category I will use the following format: The Category, Dictionary Definitions, Synonyms, Consider This, My Experience. Again...what I think is not important. What you discover within is what matters.
Relationship
Dictionary Definitions:
a connection, association, or involvement.
Synonyms:
connection, relation, association, link, correlation, correspondence, parallel, tie-in, tie-up, alliance, bond, interrelation, interconnection, family ties, family connections, blood relationship, blood ties, kinship, affinity, consanguinity, common ancestry, common lineage, connection, love affair, affair, affair of the heart, love, amorous entanglement, flirtation, liaison
Consider This:
All of our life is about relationship. This doorway is asking you to contemplate your relationship to some one or some thing. If this is the Key Life Area that comes to mind, ask yourself…”relationship with whom or what”. Then place on the table the usual suspects...my parent(s), my partner, my children, my gender, my role, my work, money, myself etc.
In the Buddhist tradition the concept of being in the right relationship with something is very important. Ask yourself, contemplate… is there a relationship with some one or some thing in my life that perhaps is not “right?”
Is there a relationship in my life that is distorted in any way? Is there a relationship that you know is a critical one in your life that has unresolved issues in it? So often this will be the usual suspects. How many people have unresolved issues with one or the other of their parents or their partners? Choose just one. Choose the one that seems most important and just work on that one today. Save the others for another time.
Remember, what we are trying to do here is release whatever story you have associated with someone or something. The story does not define you. Releasing the story is the goal, not repeating it again and again.
Clearing This:
When you have identified the relationship you want to work on, the one you want to heal within you, then follow these steps:
Sit in a quiet place where you can remain uninterrupted for some time.
Allow yourself to calm down using whatever technique works for you. (you can use my recorded clearing meditation if that helps).
There is a place within you, a quiet place, where there are no problems to solve. Take your time. Go to that place. (For just a few minutes decide that any of the problems and issues you are dealing with in life, can wait).
When you are in that place, bring the issue you are dealing with in this session to mind. Bring the relationship you want to heal within yourself to mind.
Place it on the table (altar) in front of you in your mind’s eye. Without judgement of you or anyone else, notice what emotions arise.
Understanding that these emotions do not define you…notice them, face them. You are not required to “solve them”, “fix them”, “figure them out”, just notice them.
If tears, hot flushes, pain, chills arise…notice that too.
Watch, listen, observe, feel. Take your time.
There is a Wisdom Within you that knows what to do. Trust that part of you and just observe, notice.
When it feels right for you, you can “say” (actual words not important)…”I release you. I no longer need to hold on to this (choose the emotion). I release you from every cell, from the energy that gives life to my cells, and from every time in my life”.
Sit some more and quietly, in your own time, come back to being aware of this present moment.
In the case of relationships, there may well be a need to forgive someone else and yourself. Feel free to use my forgiveness meditation to help with this.
My Experience:
We are created to be in relationship with everything within us and around us. This is obvious on the physical level where we as a physical system depend on our relationship with air, food, temperature and countless other elements of the environment. The quality and quantum of our body’s relationships within and with the environment is fundamental. We ignore the quality of our relationship with food for example, at our peril. Yet we so often struggle with the quality of the relationship with our self, and therein lies the peril in relationship with others.
We cannot live without others.
Let me say that again.
We cannot live without others.
Therefore the quality of the relationship we have with ourselves is central to our survival. This is true on the physical level, the chemical level, the emotional level and the energetic level. Where we experience dis-ease and dissonance within our self, we will experience qualitatively more difficult relationships with others.
I experienced this myself when I was 19 and married, and that relationship broke down by the time I was 23. When I think about the breakdown of the relationship with my first wife, with 45 years of hindsight, it was because I had no real idea about who I was. Because of my own dis-ease within myself, I could not really experience where value resided in me. Consequently I wildly misunderstood the value of the person I loved, and acted accordingly. My ignorance caused her great suffering. If I had been in right relationship with myself, I would have known what right relationship with her could have been.
In my clinical experience I saw again and again the pain that many women who were abused in their childhood experienced. With the level of dissonance and pain filed in their experience of being a girl or woman, they unconsciously could not find a way to be “OK being a woman”. How could that internal relationship with their femininity and sexuality be unaffected by their experience? So often the emotional association with being a woman was shame, pain, resentment and guilt. To release this pain was critical for them. In this world, we need to be OK being who we are, on every level. Fighting the “ghosts” of childhood experience is exhausting and blocks our awakening. Freedom requires us to leave the pain of these stories in the past, or to reintegrate it into our life so that we are not crippled by it.
We exist in an infinite field of complex relationships. We hold a small few human relationships in the palm of our life. It is tragedy to miss how precious they are. It is like letting life itself pass by unnoticed. The joy, the pain, the gifts and the disasters in relationships are best lived and noticed and embraced.