Ah, romance. You may have been waiting for this topic with all this other discussion about love. You’re like “All this self-love and falling in love with the world stuff is great, but I wanna get my guy (or gal).” Yes, yes. Absolutely. The spiritual path while often portrayed by some traditions as being a celibate, singular path is anything but that to me. Celibacy has its uses as a spiritual cleansing tool and as a way to some profound energy work. But let’s be serious: We’re sexual creatures. That’s how the human race continues. Along with that, deep romance, intimacy, and union are available between any two loving partners. So as you develop your spiritual practice, you should consider romantic partnership an important piece to your growth within your heart.
BTW, this is a pretty old post now (I’m commenting in May of 2016). You may want to check this slightly newer post out too:
Developing Conscious Relationships
You Don’t Need a Soulmate
A lot of people are running around looking for the “one” or some perfect, idealized soulmate. Please stop. Especially at the beginning of the spiritual path, you don’t need a perfect partner (and really anything with the term “perfect” in front of it is an illusion anyway). In fact, you’re probably not ready for a connection that recognizes you on the deepest and most profound level. That would probably scare the hell out of you. “Why?” you ask. Because you probably aren’t ready to live up to that level of self-love, transparency, and authenticity. You probably are currently caught up in tons of ego games, illusions, and fantasies, and if a partner shows up to meet you on those deep levels, you’re going to have to see all the things that are wrong in your life. This is really painful and unsustainable for most people. You can tell that something like this has happened when these types of thoughts show up: “I’m not good enough. I’m not ready. She/he is too good to be true.” You get the picture.
Karmic Partnerships and What the Heck Does that Mean?
A karmic partnership is partnership based on mutually healing related issues. Most every relationship out there is based on karmic partnerships. The problem is that most people don’t know that these relationships are about healing issues. For instance, if your issue is to be the one in trouble (damsel in distress or bad boy archetype), then you’re probably in a relationship with a hero archetype (knight in shining armor or codependent fixer). You may even like the sound of the damsel and knight archetype. It’s really common. Pop culture has drilled it in our heads that women need to be saved, and men need to do the saving.
Of course, if the man doesn’t want to save her anymore or if she doesn’t need to be saved, the relationship falls apart. Ideally, this is what should happen, giving space for something new to emerge between them or allowing them to move onto another relationship. A woman who needed rescuing once needs to learn how to stand on her own two feet. A man who is used to rescuing needs to learn how to receive help from others. By being with her, she can teach him that and vice-versa. That’s the beauty in a karmic relationship. If two people learn from the relationship and use it to show them their blindspots and failings, then the karma is healed, and the relationship may even transform into something else.
Creating the New Romance
We’re coming into an age where all these old karmic relationships need to go. Because most people aren’t particularly aware of the type of relationship that they’re in, they mainly recycle pain over and over. Two people set up situations to act out the cycles, i.e. the damsel unconsciously creates problems so that the knight can save her and the relationship continues. The new romance founded in real love and in the spiritual path is about union and equal partnership. It’s about healing old wounds with the combined strength of two loving people. The power of one person’s love moves mountains; what can the power of two people’s love do?
2 Comments
It has been refreshing for me to stop "playing games" – I have reached a point where I am interested in relationships because they bring about new awareness for me. I am open to some people who have been direct and considerate and other people I have turned away from because they seem too much about stringing things along – which isn't very helpful for either party.
Yep. Letting go of people is an important part of your growth. Of course, I encourage you as you just start out to not let go too fast. If you're in relationship with people not honoring you, there's still some connection or corresponding attachment in you that brought you two together. Find that inner attachment and heal it, and then it won't draw in similar types of people again.