Waking Up Together
Question: Is it possible to use my marriage to further my studies in self-development? If so, how?
Answer: The whole of our lives is relationship. The whole of our inner discovery takes place within relationship. What this means is that regardless of the place of relationship (i.e., marriage, family, work), here is where we need to work. Nothing can speed up our inner work better than working with someone who makes us see the need for change. The closer the relationship, the more likely this dynamic exists. On the other hand, your spiritual work does not depend upon the compliance of anyone else. Your wish to work inwardly cannot be impeded by any other human being. The beauty in this is that as you grow, you automatically provide space for those around you to realize that a higher possibility exists. If these people are at all sensitive, they will be drawn to you and want to know what you are about. If not, Truth will take the matter into its own hands and resolve the issues.
Excerpted from Seeker's Guide to Self-Freedom
Question: Is it possible to avoid the ups and downs of a relationship? There are days when I'm sure that my partner is the love of my life, and the next we are at each other's throats. Where does the love go? Is it possible to realize a higher, more constant kind of love?
Answer: It is a powerful fact that the whole universe is based on cycles that run through every aspect of life from the smallest to the largest. There is a passage in Ecclesiastes that says, "To everything there is a time and a purpose… turn, turn, turn." And if we look at our lives, we can see that indeed we do run through these cycles. As husbands, wives, family, there are cycles inside of our relationships. Whether or not you're aware of the fact that you respond to these cycles through your moods, your feelings, your thoughts, these cycles not only determine your relationships at home and with your loved ones, but they actually determine how you treat everyone around you. And as long as these cycles determine how you treat each other, you will never have any kind of real command over any relationship, because it's not you that's driving how you respond to others.
So the first question that we have to ask ourselves if we're working at having better relationships: Is there such a condition that contains these cycles as opposed to living from the cycles we do now and having our lives and relationships determined by them? Rather than being a creature moved by every possible influence, is it possible to live from something that is not moved in the same fashion as everything else around it, and therefore is capable of seeing the fact of a situation instead of being part of the movement?
This new order of relationship does exist, right inside of you, yet above your current understanding. And once you recognize its purpose of waiting to reveal the unseen truth, you can begin to take a new kind of action. You can begin to see that maybe what you're experiencing with another person is not just because that person is the way they are, but because you haven't understood a truth about yourself yet. Relationship is how Love expresses itself in this universe. Relationship serves to express both the conditions under which we learn as well as those conditions which deliver us to the lessons we have to learn.
For the person to whom and in whom the Truth begins to become a living force, there can be no such thing as a bad day or a bad relationship. It's impossible, because everything that happens to us as self-working men or women is used for the purpose it was created… which is help us discover our actual condition, and at the same time, to be moved to want that which rests above us. This Truth, this Love, this Goodness that is above us is a harbor, a place of constancy where the whole of the world and all of its whirling and confusing relationships provides us an opportunity to change the whole of our lives.
The big problem is that you can know the Truth is above you, but right now you may be upset and you don't feel any love at all. You can remember that there exists some relationship between where you are and where you long to be, and wish for that, intend that. You can intend to be a loving, wise human being. You put the Truth first by daring to intend this Love and being willing to stay in that spot where you can't find who you are and you can't say who the other person is. Then Truth tells you everything because you've put it first.
Nothing in the universe can prevent a man or a woman who wants to know Love, who wants to reach the next level of relationship, from reaching it, because the entire universe is set up for the purpose of you realizing your intention. The whole thing is designed for you to succeed at rising. Don't try to succeed. Don't blame yourself if you don't. See all of the relationships inherent in any given moment, and let that begin to be your guide. And it will, and you will change. And you'll know that the change that you go through was given to you by something above you, and you will continue to long for that until your life will be one beautiful upward movement. Truth promises it.
