The Solitude of Self-Relationship

Fellow Beings,

Isn’t it thrilling to experience Us in relationship as we write, “blind-dating” each other, seeking to fulfill an inner calling for communion, valiantly extending ourselves outside of our carefully guarded individual worlds for contact, encountering, encountering, encountering…

Relationship (relating) = Communication (communing) = Dao-ing (returning).

The Great Big Everything seeks to talk to itself through Us. Sometimes we are listening, sometimes we’re not. Sometimes we hear what we want to hear, sometimes we hear what we don’t want to hear. Beyond all the opinions and reactions we have, there is love. And, according to my heart, and to Jeffrey Yuen, what becomes immortal is the love you create (What is immortal is the love you allow). Whether it’s within your own self, friendships or loverships, the prime indgredient, the alchemical catalyst, and the pearl at the end is the love.

Love is what is drawing Heaven closer to Earth. Love is what is healing our shen of their disagreements. The unconditional love of the yuan chi we let in in meditation is what resolves the tensions for us. Therefore, acknowledging love seems to be the highest spiritual practice. All our experiences pit us against whatever is inside us that wishes to deny the love that exists. We aim to neutralize the fear and resistance we hold making harmony, peace and MORE LOVE the result.

This is why Heaven and Earth created Us. This is why We are here.

Surrenderingly,
Alexander

…although I do get your point.

Correction Max, maybe PooHead sounds like me but I give you one very personal example. I had my dreams about how a spiritual sexual relationship had to be, I strived for it for years to make it work in my relationship, I tried to find it outside my relationship and guess I realized that my dream was a dream. The day I accepted my partner like he was, without trying to make him my spritual sexual dream prince I became happy. I was able to see him and us as it was, not what I wanted it to be. My perfect dream was an illusion and my hunger was an illusion, and I see many living that illusion and throwing away what is.

The day I saw him as a man, having his own particular energy and needs I realized as well I was doing him wrong trying to change him the way I felt. I digged holes in his confidence because I tried to convince him he couldn’t understand me, that he couldn’t give me the type of love I desired. The day I erased my ‘high standard’ we had a change to make our relationship work.

I have a partner who is my very best friend, a companion, a mirror and a nice lover and I embrace it like it is.

So no, I am not into taking away ‘your plans’.
And honestly did I ever said to you your practice is no good?

ntnt

‘Nope, on a contrary, I told you you should meditate more… 🙂 ‘

Indeed,
trying to convince me that it was the right path, right!! I tossed and turned it many many times but figured it is your truth, not mine. As you remember, I remember well, so you will always ring in my ears…

Btw what about your dream to fly? Is your dream more right than my dream?

I’m sorry for your experience, Max.

As a woman, I can see your point about how it would be that you could feel that women may ask you to stop being who you are. But, possibly, that wasn’t really (or always) their intention? I know in the past I have asked questions of lovers who have misinterpreted my questions to be requests to change when all I was asking was for a little clarity or simply having a curiosity fulfilled.

The danger of words…sometimes it is better to just not speak at all 🙂

Relationships are tricky things but all I would urge to everyone is not to close themselves off from the possibility of meeting a lovely lady (or man!) who can contribute in her/his own way to your life. Even if the eventuality of having a relationship doesn’t occur, wouldn’t it be better for the door to be ajar just a little bit to the possibility rather than locking the door and throwing away the key? If you throw away the key, you might never find it again when a special person comes your way!

Emelgee

Fajin,

I’ve read through all the responses to your posting. Thanks for stimulating such an important discussion.
The fact that its a real life issue for you, and not an abstract theory question, attracts a deeper response.

Relationship with the “Other” is the most difficult path in life for most people. I think this outer reality is just a mirror of the inner yin-yang relationship problem we have between the two halves of our souls, both male-female on the horizontla axis and form-formless tension on the vertical axis of our being.

That said, my experience is that while alchemical work can greatly accelerate and deepen the process of resolving and integrating the yin-yang tension, it is not generally meant to replace it. Most of us are not born to sit in a cave apart from society, which means relationships.

I believe most people- including cultivators – need the stimulus of other people’s soul force to awaken the hidden essences and their potential within them. We’re born incomplete, but we cannot realize it except by experiencing atttraction to and completion with others.

That stimulus doesn’t ahave to be sexual, you can have a soul relationship with anyone. The sexual relationship is just more intense and hence transformative, especially of deep jing issues. It brings up the hidden issues more quickly. You find out how you are replaying your issues with your mommy-daddy (if you can be self-aware enough to notice it). Which is another way of saying that relationships are attempts to resolve ancestral issues.

Most people are struggling with ego issues in relationships, which can be adjusted by energetic cultivation to be more harmonious or balanced. But that level of ego adjustment doesn’t penetrate completely on the soul level.

So on the ego level, I think its more choice whether you choose solo or dual sexual cultuvation. You can have a reasonably happy life either way, depending on your sexual nature (astrology) and situation.

On the soul level, the ego has no choice, it is secondary to those deeper forces, which can overrun the ego like a freight train. I would paraphrase bagua’s advice to you – just continue cultivating your (ego) life, and if a deeper (soul) relationship happens, then great. The ego cannot control the soul, only merge with it and integrate it with other soul forces.

As a martial artist, there is a tendency to train to establish control of the situation or of the self. So I think Freeform was giving some good if challenging advice. Relationships are inherently “out of our control” and require continuous surrender to the greater process. This is essential part of experiencing the Self and Other
as One Process.

What is a love relationship? Words can confuse and blur our inentions, as Pietro points out, and become mere cultural impulses we are acting out.

The common element I see in almost all definitions of love is the process of merging some part of ourself with Other. Another way to phrase it: is the nature of the Many experiencing its wholeness as One that we can call Love.

Alexander’s comments highlight this important point. I think he is just putting into western language of Divine Love what is cultivated in alchemical as Yuan/ Original Self. Can you cultivate original self without a partner? Surely. Does your original self include all other human beings within its emanation? Surely. The result: you dig into any relationship, and you find some aspect of yourself. If you dig deep enough, you get past the ego patterns and touch the soul level.

That is behind the wisdom of conventional arranged marriages: you can learn to love anyone, because they are by definition already a part of your greater human self. I self-arranged a green card marriage when I was 23 years old, with a young Ethiopian girl who was about to be deported. We fell in love, but only many months after we had been married and even decided to live together, that it was more than a legal arrangement.

A very few cultivators dig past the soul to get to the oversoul (collective soul) level. While I agree with Max the deep spiritual work is mostly done alone, internally thorugh meditation, without the outer mirror of life the process is sterile. Empty, in the worst sense of the word :).

There are few things more alien or “other” to a man than a woman. If you can bridge that gap then your chances of bridging the heaven-earth gap are much, much greater and likely to embrace the other half of humanity.

The women posting on this forum, bless their souls, have been noted to be generally more favorable toward relationships. Why is that? They are in stronger relationship to the earth side, implanted in the psyche via their biological/menstrual cycle and their function of pro-creation. And because their shen have more intense feeling relationships because of their sexual energy being more internal.

The tough thing for men is loving a woman who is honest with them. Men tend to be a bit ego- rigid and feeling-avoidant, mental body feels safer to them. Hence relationships challenge that safety. If you are with someone because of a deeper soul attraction, then I think the investment is worth working through the ego crap and unclean energy. Otherwise, better to cultivate solo and wait for the right soul to be attracted to who you are.

The danger in solo work is in building up armor against openness, which is vulnerability without the fear factor.

Hope something in these ramblings serves you.

michael