Have you noticed that human beings seem to learn more in one minute of happiness than they learn in weeks of misery? The moment the suffering lightens, an actual access to a creative insight opens up. At a certain point in my journey I began to suspect that the social mind had trained us to accept oppression. We have adjusted to statements like, “life is hard”, “ you have to compromise”, or “you need to negotiate for what you want”. This language becomes “normal” and this is the same language we impose on relationships. The common belief seems to be that relationships are hard and require compromise and negotiation.
I also noticed that when we attached to popular beliefs about the necessity of rules on board the RS to protect us from relationship suffering, it eliminated the possibility of actually investigating the origins of this suffering.
As I kept probing into the inner workings of my own beliefs about relationships, and asked others to share their experiences, I noticed the stirrings of strong discomfort. My thinking appeared to be heading down the road toward some kind of conclusion about punishment and loss for questioning the social mind’s love story. Significant anxiety raised its head along the way, as I began to dig into the deeper layers of our whole relationship conditioning. I took a deep breath and dove in.
I had to begin with some radical honesty about the beliefs that were the foundation for my relational life. I noticed my tendency to adapt to disappointments and limitations over time. I became aware of the habit of pretending not to see the many layers of self-imposed revisions, for “the sake of the relationship”. I noticed an interesting sequence of behavior that shut down the intimacy I so longed for. As I kept coming back to real honesty about my relational life, I became aware of a natural order to the experience of intimacy with myself and another human being.
Standing still long enough to observe my heart breaking, without adding any opinion, self-judgment, blame, solution, or rationalization, I stopped sliding around on the deck of the RS. I stopped attending to its needs, stopped obsessing about how to meet its overwhelming number of rules, according to the social mind relationship patrol. I took my attention off the RS and back onto me. I wanted freedom.
What became apparent was that freedom from the RR rule was the ground of real honesty, and honesty was necessary for integrity with myself first and then my partner. And this integrity gave birth to an inner personal power, which became creative connecting, and real intimacy. From this viewpoint, I concluded that real connection and intimacy would arise from choices made out of clear vision, not obstructed by the rules. Intimacy would arise out of a person’s pure desire and commitment to their own joy, their own integrity, and the freedom to be who they really are. Perhaps in this landscape, I could finally stand authentic and free.
What could happen to our relational experiences, if we looked in our partner’s eyes naked, with no reference to the rules of how to sail the seas on the RS? Would we be free from the usual chaos onboard the RS? Could we finally touch genuine connection?
I became very curious about how the rules actually produce the chaos? The question took me back to the social mind’s viewpoint about suffering and the root belief that chaos is our nature and needs to be “monitored” by a set of rules. This root belief expands into a whole underground system that holds our life in the grip of assuming that pain, anxiety, fear, worry in our life is inevitable and we need to be protected from it.
On close examination we might notice that chaos is actually the result of living a lie. We could question whether or not this lie is perhaps another innocent misunderstanding, which erodes our essential friendship with each other and ourselves. Or, we may begin to suspect a deeper agenda and question the social mind’s intention for convincing us about the validity of a required behavioral code on the RS.
Please stay tuned.
