NOTE: This is Part 2 of a 2-part series. Read Part 1 – Why are relationships so hard here.
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.
Joseph Campbell
Being *alive* is actually being *in love* simply because *love* is our natural state.
There is no other time or instance or state when we feel more alive than when we are *in love*. Sadly, the experience of being *in love* is so rare. Here is the KEY reason why:
We are afraid to fall *in love*.
Oh, I know, we all yearn to fall in love. We desire it so desperately because it really is the only way we can feel truly alive.
But even when we do allow ourselves to fall headlong into love, our learned fears, insecurities, neediness and dependencies clash with our heart, hastily hauling us back into *reality*.
So, what do we do?
We settle for something less. Something that is less likely to take us teetering on the heady, intoxicating edge of being rapturously and lustfully *alive*!
Something that might give us a little bit of a thrill but not so much that we *lose our senses*, *lose our head*, our *rationale*, our *reasoning*.
We allow ourselves to *fall in love* once our peripheral reconnaissance (commandeered by the conditioned mind) has established that it is *safe* for us to fall in love.
The conditioned mind, working predominantly in the subconscious world, wastes no time collecting sufficient information about the *object* under scrutiny i.e. the person that we are subconsciously measuring up:
Is s/he *my type*? Will s/he remain faithful? Can I trust her/him? Is s/he financially independent or is she really after my money? Is what I see really what I will get? What secrets is s/he keeping? What skeletons are in her/his closet? Will her/his friends/family like me? How many partners has she previously had? Does she have any children? What baggage is she coming with? What is she expecting of me? Will I be able to fulfill her expectations? Do I really want to? Will s/he fulfill my expectations? Is she really right for me…?
This reconnaissance happens so quickly and automatically, we are hardly aware that it’s happening. But we are most surely impacted and influenced by it.
Meanwhile, what is essentially true and good is ignored or dismissed, relegated to the back room of *irrelevant* and *unrealistic* and even *threatening*… rather like Cinderella.
Dare I say, this IS what the story of Cinderella is about beneath the façade of its personified theatre.
The *wicked sisters* and their mother are, of course, the dis-empowering mental and emotional states that we have been habituated into.
The fact that they are *step* sisters and *step* mother is a reflection of their *not natural* but acquired status which is exactly what our conditioned mind is.
The absence of Cinderella’s natural mother reflects the absence of our innate, naturally good, free, powerful and unconditioned state of mind which is obscured by the unnatural, disempowering, conditioned state of mind.
The main, public areas of the house where guests are entertained and discussions held is the realm of the Conditioned Mind, while the room to which Cinderella is confined is the unconditioned, natural mind.
But even though this natural mind is mostly obscured, it is never forgotten and never absent and this is held in the personhood of Cinderella.
This is the story of that aspect of ourselves, that obscured memory of who we truly are, that is ever-present and ever yearning to be fully realized. And this is what happens when Cinderella meets her Prince Charming and is united with him – the realization of her/our true wholeness and completeness.
Cinderella’s yearnings and her imagination manifest the Fairy Godmother and the subsequent meeting with her Prince.
However, there is a brief *detour* in this inevitable reunion. Cinderella loses her shoe before she is temporarily returned to her physical and spiritual *back-room*.
How does this relate to the ongoing story of our un-conditioning? To our return to our un-conditioned true nature? To our falling in love?
This is, in fact, typical for most of us who have been on the path of Awakening, of Self-realization, of Enlightenment.
It is also what we typically experience when we fall in love.
We experience the all-too-brief, heady, intoxicating encounter with our true, whole and complete nature – the experience of falling *in love* both physically (with another person) and metaphysically (with our true nature).
But, we are afraid to believe in it.
“It’s too good to be true”, according to our fear-conditioned mind.
“It’s too good to last.”
We have warned ourselves of this many, many times… JUST AS THE FAIRY GOD-MOTHER HAS WARNED CINDERELLA.
So, we fulfill our own self-proclaimed prophecy. And we refuse to take the plunge. We refuse to fall in love completely. We hold back.
We have our safety net in place– We return to our conditioned mind because that’s where we’ve learned to feel safe. That’s what is familiar. That’s what feels *normal*.
And as long as the conditioned mind is in charge, we’d rather the trance of *normal* than the freedom of *natural*.
But when you are finally ready, when you are finally willing to take that plunge, to put your conditioning in its rightful place – the rational mind and all its fears and inhibitions and conditions – then you will be reunited forever with your WHOLENESS, your true nature.
The greatness and magnificence of your true nature, embodied in the person of the Prince, will find you.
And this time, you will NOT BE DRESSED UP AND PROPPED UP BY THE THINGS YOU PUT ON as was Cinderella when she went to the ball, but STRIPPED DOWN TO YOUR BARE, ESSENTIAL SELF – the Cinderella who was not outwardly recognized but recognized on the strength of her*perfect fit*.
And what is this ‘perfect fit’?
Why, nothing other than the unconditioned, essential self which is unlike its ill-fitting, conditioned “sisters”!
It is the true self coming face to face with itself, recognizing itself! Anything else would clearly not *fit*, would clearly not be recognized!
*Falling in love* is really about returning to and reuniting with your true, essential, unconditioned nature.
If you have ever fallen in love, you will have noticed that the initial moments are unlike anything you have ever experienced, so full, so utterly thrilling, so madly intoxicating!
Or it may have been an experience of great stillness, of coming home, of not just a union but a RE-union.
Either way, this is the experience of your true, unconditioned nature, at last free to enjoy itself in every sublime moment, through every intense or intensely still experience.
But it almost always doesn’t last for as I explained at the start of this post, you have been habituated into fear, into learned ‘rationalism’, ‘reason’ and ‘reality’, into trusting your physical senses and not your INNER SENSE or INNOCENCE.
LOVE is our natural state. Falling in love or being in love is nothing more than and nothing less than experiencing the fullness of our natural state.
Love asks us to enjoy our life
For nothing good can come of death.
Who is alive? I ask.
Those who are born of love.
Seek us in love itself,
Seek love in us ourselves.
Sometimes I venerate love,
Sometimes it venerates me.”
Rumi
This is why mystics of various religious traditions have been able to experience and write or talk about the rapture of being in love, often describing it in terms of god which is after all, that which is whole, complete and all-encompassing.
Secret Places
Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.
Reason says, Nonsense.
I have walked and measured the walls here.
There are no places like that.
Love says, There are.Reason sets up a market
and begins doing business.
Love has more hidden work.Hallaj steps away from the pulpit
And climbs the stairs of the gallows.
Lovers feel a truth inside themselves
That rational people keep denying.It is reasonable to say, Surrender
Is just an idea that keeps people
From leading their lives.
Love responds, No. This thinking
Is what is dangerous.Using language obscures
What Shams came to give.Every day the sun rises
Out of low word-clouds
Into burning silence.
Rumi
Oh night thou was my guide
Oh night more loving than the rising sun
Oh night that joined the lover to the beloved one
transforming each of them into the other.
St John of the Cross
If you’re looking for a *relationship* – a *special relationship* as A Course in Miracles refers to it, or if you are already in one, understand that what you are truly seeking is the experience of *being alive* as Joseph Campbell puts it .
Understand also that you’re fully alive when you feel whole and complete.
And finally, and most importantly, understand that your wholeness and completeness is YOUR NATURAL STATE. It is NOT something that someone can give you or make you, no more than they can take it away from you or un-make you!
Within that wholeness and completeness are all the other qualities and attributes that we are desirous of – togetherness, connectedness, bliss, passion and yes, ALIVENESS!
This is what we are most seeking in a relationship – the experience of being ALIVE!
To expect someone else to make us feel alive and whole is not only an injustice to the other, it dishonours our true nature.
It reflects a state of deficiency that we bring into a relationship rather than a state of wholeness.
On the other hand, if we understand that the union with another is a metaphorical union hinting at the union with our true nature/god which is the experience of being truly alive, then we may be able to relax and enjoy the other not as the ‘cause’ of our alive-ness or joy but as a participant or playmate of such aliveness and joy 🙂
In Love
Lucy
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