I Love You, but...
I love you, but when you don't lend a helping hand when it is clear that I could use the help, all I want to do is give you the "silent treatment."
I love you, but when you continually complain about your job and the people you work with, I tune out and stop listening.
I love you, but when you don't do something that you agreed to do, I become extremely frustrated.
I'm sure each of you could list many "personal" "I love you, buts" when it comes to your spouse or partner, or any of the relationships in our life for that matter.
What are three key words in the above three examples?
"BUT WHEN YOU...."
Why are those three words key? Because they imply that YOU have the power to make me happy or unhappy. They imply that YOU are the one responsible for the negative states that arise in me. They imply that YOU are the one to blame when MY expectations aren't met.
If we believe others have the power to make us happy or unhappy, then how can we ever have a peaceful and content life? If we believe others are responsible for the negative states that arise in us, than how will we ever know anything of unconditional love? If we believe others are the ones to blame when our expectations aren't met, how will we ever come to know anything of true spiritual responsibility?
What if we came into this world with wrong beliefs? What then? Wouldn't consciously doubting and questioning beliefs that we didn't give ourselves be a good thing to do? Most people just blindly flow along with the status quo never once questioning the possibility that something might be awry, because doesn't it feel like we've been blaming and pointing the finger since forever?
Why is that? Because blaming, complaining and reacting negatively is easier than looking deeper into possibilities other than what we have been given to believe as true.
How many divorces are there in the world today? How many friends and family members are there out in the world that don't speak to one another? Why? Underneath it all there is an underlying belief that "You failed to meet MY expectations and I blame you for the pain I am in."
Self-centeredness is at the core of everything if you are willing to see it. MY expectations. MY feelings. MY demands. It's MY WAY or the highway, right? Well, it takes a certain "brutal honesty" to admit that we are self-centered human beings.
Let's tweek that phrase a bit that I just used - "It's my way or the highway" - to show a truthful principle that has been hidden from us from generation to generation. The truth is that in any given moment, we always have a choice between MY WAY or THE HIGHER WAY. People often say they would love to take the HIGHER WAY, but when they find out that it is a bit more difficult and takes good conscious effort to do so, they default back to MY WAY because it is easier and effortless.
In any spousal relationship, the initial stages are always "dream like and our spouse can do no wrong." After that period wears off a bit, then starts the finger pointing and the blaming of the spouse for not fulfilling our expectations. If we can understand that that stage is a necessary stage that is intended to be taken to the next level in a relationship, many couples would survive their marriages.
The HIGHER WAY is the next level. It is a level wherein couples agree to put LOVE before themselves - the LOVE that brought them together in the first place.
They agree because they see that their minds are the enemy to knowing anything of real LOVE because it is the mind that expects, that blames, that demands. They see that instead of speaking from that demanding part of themselves that only wants ITS WAY, they can wait and suffer themselves in that moment for the sake of LOVE. That is taking the HIGHER WAY because when we agree to let go of OUR WAY, we see that it really wasn't OUR WAY at all. It was just something that was mindlessly picked up along the way and never questioned. When that part of us is sacrificed, the HIGHER WAY is there - it's always been there but can't be seen when OUR WAY dominates the moment.
It is pain that picks the fight - Guy Finley
In Guy Finley's book "Relationship Magic - Waking Up Together", he shares with the world that it isn't MY PAIN, it isn't YOUR PAIN. It is OUR PAIN, a collective pain that can't heal until we agree to step up and do something for the sake of all instead of just for ourselves.
We need to stop calling everyone else self-centered and see that we ALL are self-centered and nothing good can ever come from a consciousness that only considers itself. You don't have to look very far in this world to see just how great the pitch of that self-centeredness has reached.
That's what happens when we don't question things.
Image courtesy of: Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash
"In relationship, the primary cause of friction is oneself: the self that is the center of unified craving. If we can realize that it is not how another acts that is of primary importance, but how each one of us acts and reacts, and that if that reaction and action can be fundamentally, deeply understood—then relationship will undergo a deep and radical change. In this relationship with another, there is not only the physical problem but also that of thought and feeling on all levels, and one can be harmonious with another only when one is harmonious integrally in oneself. In relationship the important thing to bear in mind is not the other but oneself, which does not mean that one must isolate oneself, but understand deeply in oneself the cause of conflict and sorrow. So long as we depend on another for our psychological wellbeing—intellectually or emotionally—that dependence must inevitably create fear from which arises sorrow." -- J. Krishnamurti