Recently, I saw the following quotation in an article by Tommy Rosen, founder of Recovery 2.0, a tool that uses mindfulness (yoga) for recovery from addictions. Given that we are all dealing with aversion and grasping, longing and dreading, clinging and avoiding, the quotation can serve as the basis for all our recovery.
We turn and face our lives and we begin to look within. We are now on the right train. We become attuned to a deeper truth within us and we realize that all the things we feared which had become so big in our minds would be brought down to size when we sat still long enough.
We can all learn to sit still and this is the point of this missive. Stop running. Stop chasing. Stop complaining. Be still. Find your way to meditation and watch your life change for the better.
As Sadhvi told us, “No one ever died from sitting still.”
Sitting still is not just about our physical bodies, however. In fact, our minds can be winning the race of madness even while we sit on our duff. My sister shared an experience she had several years ago while floating in her swimming pool. There she was—totally supported by the water and two pool floaties—listlessly being held up. Awareness snapped in and she noticed her mind jumping from subject to subject, like a searchlight looking for things to worry about, circumstances to fix, people to correct. Although all of her outer environment was providing her with the perfect opportunity to relax and enjoy, her internal habit patterns were stuck on high alert, robbing her of the very bliss she was in the midst of.
This same habit pattern can seep in to and destroy relationships. Relationships are the fertile soil in which your personality is growing up. It has some catching up to do with the soul. Previous editions of the Beyond Mastery Newsletter have addressed Gary Zukav’s idea of Spiritual Partnerships. Like all relationships, these relationships are not free of challenges. The distinction is how challenges can be navigated skillfully allowing both people to come into true harmony. The result is connection that is in tune, relaxed, and just plain fun.
If you currently find yourself robbed of the genuine bliss of your relationship/s, rather than just being in relationship, you might be experiencing an entanglement.
You might be in an entanglement if:
1. You keep having the same issues.
2. You don’t feel safe or understood.
3. Someone always needs to be right.
4. It’s just so hard.
So what if you have the terrible feeling that you’re in an entanglement right now, or that you’ve been in entanglements before? Entanglements can be transformed to enlightenment!
According to relationship experts, Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks, you can relax and realize what you are experiencing is completely normal. Most people have been in an entanglement, and a lot of us have been in many. Humans frequently inadvertently drag past pain into the present destroying peace. Within that pain is a growth opportunity! Check out the tips in “Are You in a Fake Relationship?” to discover what you can do:
Identify that you’re in an entanglement.
Knowing whether you’re in a pattern of entanglement is key to resolving it once and for all. Otherwise, there’s a “blind spot” that keeps you from moving forward, and you’re doomed to keep repeating the pain and struggle.
End the entanglement or transform it into a real relationship.
Once you know you’re dealing with an entanglement, you can harness all that energy you’ve been spending on conflict, and instead use it to come up with creative solutions. You can transform the entanglement into a real relationship, or you can end the entanglement with peace of mind, armed with the insight you need to create love and harmony in the future.
This past winter, I had the opportunity to join a poetry group. At each meeting the group leader, Gail Berreitter, shares a different poetry form. One of our assignments was “Found Poems” where you take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. A sort of literary equivalent of a collage, “found” poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.
As a sort of poetic prayer for my loved ones, I took a quotation from Presence, Kindness, and Freedom and wrote a found poem. Published in my recent blog post titled Life’s Squalls, the foundation for “No Problems” comes from Barbara Brodsky, my meditation teacher:
No Problems
Certainly
there are issues
that need to be resolved
you can relate to them in loving ways.
First, know that
there aren’t problems
just situations
asking us for our loving attention.
If you are
willing to risk,
be undefended
in a place of pain and with open hearts
to these
difficulties
there is no “problem”
nothing negative, just a call for love.
by Debra Basham 2/24/2017
I appreciated the view of Kathlyn and Gay that every relationship is ripe with unresolved issues from our past. It is as though we are looking now to our partners to make us feel good about ourselves related to our own past hurts. Essentially, because we have found love, we can also experience pain and frustration.
Pain and frustration do not prove that we’ve chosen the wrong partner. We are each attending what Gary Zukav calls earth school. We are all learning to nurture our own soul. As written in my found poem, now we see it is just a call for love!
Relationships have certainly been written about for aeons. When relationships are challenging, disenchantment can occur. Perhaps the root cause of disenchantment had been that humans are also learning to sit still. Thankfully, as Sadhvi said, “No one ever died from sitting still.”