“Who” is in a Relationship?

who-is-in-a-relationship

I have come to ponder upon some interesting insights about the world and relationships with anything “other”, while we still believe ourselves to be separated individuals on a journey in pursue of happiness.
I’ve realized that we don’t really see things, events, situations and people as they are. We simply project on them our self created or imposed ideas and we act and react towards these, not towards true phenomena. I started to see it very clearly in my “personal life” and tried to play with it to see the authenticity of this realization. As an example I will share with you my own experience, which was repeating over and over throughout most of my relationships. I had a specific view about my partner which I was building up accordingly to his behaviour. I unconsciously have created his identity by projecting on him my expectations, my judgements about how he should and shouldn’t behave as a partner, my own needs I felt righteous about, likes and dislikes. Because of that automatic mechanism which was still in me at the moment I met him I couldn’t really “see” him, and if I couldn’t really see him, who did I fell in love with? All my interactions with him were caring that false notion about him which often was causing a conflict and feeling of dissatisfaction, bringing up irritability, anger and discomfort in me. I believe the same thing happened on his side; therefore we have experienced clashes of our “personalities” which were dominating in our relationship. There was strong pull within us towards each other, something pure and innocent, but the projections were too strong to be ignored and we have separated blaming incompatibility. It left a bitter taste of some kind of failure and an uncomfortable painful gap, as the love magnet is still there inviting us to unite, but that cannot be fulfilled because of strongly believed different identities. There were some partners with who our personalities and beliefs felt compatible, but the circumstances and flow of life couldn’t keeps us together, that happened too.
After these experiences I started to deeply wonder about what really happens in our relationships and “who” really is in a relationship, and if relationship on a deeper level in fact truly exists?
Accordingly to the above insights I have come to know that not only we project on our partners but first of all we project ourselves into the world. We unconsciously create our own identity as somebody XZ with all the attributes and flaws, all the belief system, and simply things which make us see and feel ourselves as different and unique individuals. We walk through life with these ideas working for us; we are even going trough development process which makes us more and more experienced “person”. So our definitions of ourselves simply change and expand in a process of experiencing. It all seem like (if we are interested in personal growth) we collect all the things we would like about ourselves and reject all the things which does not serve us in this self-improvement process. In the extreme we may feel we already have fixed our identity and we expect the world to adapt to our ways, and in self-defence we become selfish and narcissistic. But no matter how “perfect” person we would try to become there always going to be somebody who will wrong us, because of the projections of his own falsely created personality. We will find somebody in a conflict with our projections and other will find us in a conflict with theirs; life will constantly bombard us with challenges in order to brake us free from that falsehood, therefore we will experience deep insecurity and suffering which may instinctively bring us in search of a shelter in something bigger than that, which never change, our true self, the absolute truth or so called God. Until we wake up we subconsciously or not look for approval, acceptance and appreciation of others in order to feel good about ourselves and we suffer any signs of rejection. In order to avoid discomfort, we look for people and partners who match with us, and if they don’t we often wrong them, trying to dominate the situation, as of course we must feel right most of the time and we think we know what is good for us, missing the opportunity to grow beyond that. A lot of our energy goes to dysfunctional behaviours which come to play in order to feel accepted or even worshipped or to protect ourselves from being wronged and rejected. It seems like all our lives we live in invisible cages of our own subconscious beliefs about ourselves and the world around us, looking for fulfilment in our relationships, restlessly waiting to be fed by some invisible hand – If that doesn’t come, we starve suffering from anxiety, depression and other mental problems, without seeing that the door of the cage was never locked and that the “food” we truly need has always been within us, not to say that it is all we truly are and there’s no one there who needs to be fulfilled by anything, it simply is full (whole) by its own nature.
We often see that the abuse we have experienced in childhood, where our personality was unknowingly forming, became a burden we carry all our lives, feeling that we have no choice to escape that story. It becomes strong part of that false identity stored up in memory, and one and only purpose of its existence is to drain our energy and look for situations and relationships which it could feed on, perpetuating viscous circle of hurt and blame. But if you will stop for a moment and ask yourself a question: Is it happening now? Is the ache of the tooth you pulled out a year ago still here? If not, why would you still hold your chick and cry? Why that event from the past controls the present moment? Who gives the power to it? Is it more powerful than you? If not, then ask yourself a question: If I am not all this things I believed I am, who am I? And trough that question you can transcendent it all, as you are already an answer.
Coming back to relationship topic, I started to wonder who is really having a relationship in this world. It seems like it can only exist superficially based on the holograms, until we believe we are separated individuals and that notion dominates in our lives. The pure and innocent pull towards each other is love for oneself in another, it is the inner knowing of being not different from another, and trough that knowing how there can be any negativity arising, any conflict? True love is effortless, it is to see your presence in everything and everyone which gives birth to qualities like compassion, respect, understanding and kindness, although sometimes it may appear as cruel in its destroying power, but only for those who are still asleep. Love based only on attraction to personalities is limited and superficial; it brings out lust, fear of losing, insecurity, possessiveness, need of approval and effort to keep or not to be rejected. That realization brought out important and I think very basic question in me: can we truly love if we don’t know who we are, if we are only dreaming ourselves and others in a world with our projections? Isn’t it that Love is a perfume of our being, always there but only recognized when we are not blinded by our beliefs and ideas about Love? It seems like we are not separated from each other by anything which is consistent, only by a fog of our own transient thoughts. So why do we attract specific people into our life? It seems like up to some point it is part of our conditioning, we attract what we need at the specific moment of our life and then when it is fulfilled it simply falls off like autumn leafs. But after all my experiences I may say that my urge for the truth of who I am and true love was bringing people onto my path who benefited that desire even if at that time I couldn’t recognize that. I have no doubts, until we wake up we are all each others gurus, and how long we will stay in each others company-nobody knows that, therefore we should find the shelter in our hearts not in arms of others, and serve each other as long as it is meant to be.
If we could only come out of the hypnosis of conditioning how free and unlimited we would be, how true and natural. The conflicts would have no base to arise in serious manners, maybe only as a temporary play; the differences would not be noticed on the most inner level so there would be no thing that superficial conflicts could hold on to. Subconscious patterns would not control the way we see the world and other people, we would stop projecting our illusions outward and we could see things as they really are. Our relationships would flow naturally and playfully. How wonderful it would be to simply be in truth, without concern of what others think of us, if we fit, if we are approved. How free we would feel if we would not be pressured to do choices in our lives, instead we would follow our intuition and our inner knowing. How joyful it would be if we would not mind if we lose or gain, and would be simply content with anything, completely out of a feeling of dissatisfaction or neediness. If we would trust and surrender to the knowing that all is well, that the world exists and operates without our personal control, we would see that the things are happening not to us but through us in a miraculous and magical way, greater than anything we could ever imagine with our limited hypnotized minds. And we could simply embrace, cherish and enjoy unique and individual expressions of one another through that one presence we all are. How wonderful it would be? Who dares to take a challenge to find out?

Malwina Stach