Did you know that relationships are eternal? They reflect the energetic ties and karma to be played out incarnation after incarnation, as we carry them along on our soul journey. In truth, we’ve been meeting pretty much the same souls over and over, trying to heal our wounds and learning to relate with love and compassion for one another, or at least enough detachment to break any toxic or painful bonds.
Sometimes we meet them for just a moment and sometimes we maintain relationships that last years, depending on what we’ve chosen to work on. This is why you may feel an instant connection or attraction to some people, as well as an aversion toward certain individuals, and these may include family members that you are supposed to love. Indeed, close family members are the ones we usually share the most negative karma with! Yet we need to experience those painful relationships to resolve old emotional patterns and tendencies, to grow and evolve.
Relationships are complex and multi-layered. On one level, they connect us to the world, stimulate the physical senses, and bring contrast to our experience of reality. On another level, they trigger the ego-mind and activate the unconscious emotional fabric that is the foundation of our life. So even though we may think we know who we are entering a relationship with, we may not necessarily see the underlying vibrational patterns that connect us to that person-since they come from the past.
Some of those patterns create positive points of connection (shared interests, dreams, beliefs, aspirations, principles, etc.) while others manifest as conflict, because they touch the wounds that we try so hard to avoid and disconnect from. The ego believes that relationships are mainly self-gratifying: they provide affection, sex, companionship, support, and so on. Conflicts arise when our ego-based needs aren’t met.
From a spiritual perspective, however, close relationships are meant to be learning platforms for self-knowledge and self-growth. They serve as mirrors that reflect our belief system-especially what we believe about ourselves-and reactivate past emotional wounds that need to be dealt with and resolved.
Find the Purpose of Your Relationships
We choose relationships to put all our stuff in our face, so to AI Hentai speak, because it’s easier that way for us to take care of what needs attention. Of course, it’s not the only way to resolve our issues, but since we get very attached to the person we are in relationship with, we feel like we have to deal with them in order to stop the pain and move forward-either because we want to continue or end the relationship.
Of course, we can also choose not to deal with any of it and jump from one relationship to the next, simply repeating and re-encountering the same type of problems with different people, while our ego tries to disguise them as something completely new. No wonder why it takes lifetimes to resolve our issues and be at peace with some people! That is, until we understand the purpose of being in relationship and shift our perspective and approach.
You may think that you need a partner for companionship or to experience love (yes, life is tough and it can get lonely), but at a soul level every relationship is an opportunity to learn about yourself and heal the emotional wounds, wrong perceptions, unspoken agreements, and negative tendencies that you’ve been carrying for a long time. In other words, they are meant to make you aware of how much or how little you truly love yourself. So what are YOUR relationships reflecting back at you about yourself?
If you think that a close relationship should fulfill all your needs, well, I’ve got news for you: no single relationship can ever do that. But you can use each opportunity to work toward personal growth and emotional freedom, instead of letting your life revolve around others. It may sound counterintuitive, but if you really want to create loving relationships, you first need to learn to be alone and develop a deep, loving, and meaningful relationship with the most important person in your life: YOU. This one becomes the pattern for all other relationships in your life.
Learn To Be In Love With Love
Love is not a sentimental, self-gratifying game. Love is your true nature. And if you want to really experience love in relationship, you need to nurture your self-love and choose a partner that does the same-someone who’s not growing cannot allow you to grow. In other words, you both have to establish more loving relationships with yourselves first and also be open and willing to let the other person be who they are. Otherwise, the tendency will be to connect from an unconscious wounded place, simply trying to heal your wounds through the other, while your partner tries to do the same through you.
If I asked you, “Can you lend me $500?” you’d probably look in your wallet or your pocket to check how much money you have. If you don’t have any, you’d say, “Sorry, I don’t have any money.” If you have exactly $500, you wouldn’t want to give me all your money, right? But if you were carrying $10,000 in your pocket, you could reach for the $500 and hand them to me without hesitation.
Similarly, how can you love openly without feeling that something is being taken away from you, or without expecting something in return, if you don’t cultivate and replenish your self-love on a regular basis? Without that anchor to keep you centered and strong, it’s very easy to get lost in relationship. It’s not because you love too much, it’s because of a lack of center-of a strong inner connection to yourself. Lust, passion or shared interests are not enough to hold a relationship for long; they eventually fade away and change. Love and growth are much stronger pillars for long lasting relationships.