Gaia Community

Transpersonal Love within Committed Relationships

Whitewave said Aug 28, 2006, 10:02 PM:

How do we manifest that?

If loving everyone can't be represented in the physical relationship realm, how do we represent it outwardly?

I confess that I've run into some snags with a lover because I wanted to hold him with an open hand, and that made him really nervous. He would rather we both be totally closed off to the idea of having other lovers. However, he does look at alot of porn… [rolls eyes] I've wanted to integrate more of his reality into our relationship, but he has insisted that he be able to keep secrets. This would be fine if I was free to have other lovers, but if he wants me to be his alone, then that doesn't work for me. Splitting like that creates too many problems. How do you make the leap to hyper-space here?

Incidentally, when I was married - and even before I was married - I can see how I was constantly trying to move towards the trans-personal within the relationship. I would work to include more truth, more reality, more consciousness, and he would be resisting. That always felt like rejection to me. And he would feel threatened when I forced my consciousness into his dark places. I think he was assuming that I wanted to put rejection there, or to use his darkness as weapons against him. Fear. In turn, I rejected his sexual advances into my physical space because I felt so fundamentally rejected that sex without feeling loved was exploitation. I didn't understand why we couldn't resolve this conflict.

I used my words like I was taught to resolve conflict, and the harder I tried to find solutions, the worse it got. His struggle was a pre-verbal struggle. I see that now. But his refusal to work at putting words there was a refusal to put consciousness there and so there was no way to really solve things.

Looking back, I see that my struggle was also pre-verbal, but I know I would have been able to figure out how to go there if I had been given just a little encouragement. All counselling to this effect went in the exact wrong direction. It all asked me to care less, ask fewer questions, forget about truth, and prefer peace and non-conflict instead. This was really destructive. I have finally realized that there really is no model for this out there, and certainly no marriage counselling that can reliably take people there. This is one of those places where drugs like X and mushrooms would be therapeutic if used intelligently. But there is just a rip-roaring resistance to consciousness in relationship science out there. I wanna see that change.

~Ww

Show Replies

Re: Transpersonal Love within Committed Relationships

Whitewave said Feb 12, 2007, 12:43 PM:

Last week, I became aware of myself “falling” in love. I was descending into a Personal level because it was shaping itself into an ideal security zone for me. As I became aware of this sensation of falling, I also realized that I was falling into an equally powerful threat zone. That this place was totally conditioned. And that eventually, sooner or later, the winds would change and I would feel threatened. I marvelled at this - sensing the temporariness of it all. And I felt compassion for myself. And my lover.

So, last night, that crash came and I felt the anticipated threat. But I didn't feel completely threatened like I have previously during such Personal events. I could almost sense an orgiastic pleasure - not perverse pleasure, but rather a sharp spike of compassion energized by the sense of tragedy - and this compassion felt extremely good.

As I ponder this, I am reminded of a question that my current lover asked of me the other night, mid-session: “What does it feel like? Does it tickle?” I couldn't find words. I could only shake my head and continue to gasp. Then when I asked him the same question, he could only manage: “Good!” LOL

Could I have really grokked the compassionate impulse of True Non-duality before I had experienced it if someone had merely described it to me? I don't think so. Not in the way I've heard it described so many times, at any rate. It's usually couched in very archaic and moralistic terms that shame me for “attatchment” and belief in “illusion”. I experience those terms to be very anti-female.

Last night, as I watched the Grammies, I marvelled at Shakira's wonderful art. Not just her music, or just her dancing - but her frenzied, physical drive to simply give something beautiful to the eye - to the awareness. All of awareness. Unlike some other hip-hop work, she doesn't seem to be too distracted by the impulse to entrap. Just to enjoy.

Can't it all be like that? Can't we just enjoy this? Must we constantly be made to feel ashamed for “falling for the lie” or becoming a “slave” or some other such polemic?

How does this strike anyone?

~Ww

Re: Transpersonal Love within Committed Relationships

Pantergnosis said Feb 16, 2007, 12:05 PM:

Hello!
A very common psychological theory is that to fall in love is to be attracted to our shadow and projections, and that it can help us be more conscious about those aspects of ourself. This means that we are basically fooling ourselves when we are loving an other person, and that we will stop to love them when the spell is removed or the illusions are resolved. Or that some “truer” love might appear, as the first “superficial” love has evaporated.

There is probably a lot of truth in that, but there is an other theory that I like even more, that I heard from Sandra Maitri, my teacher within the Diamond Approach/ Ridhwan School.

They say that we in the first experience of love actually are seeing and responding to the soul, and then feel immense love in seeing them more or less as they are. Then we are becoming less and less in love as our defences gradually will build themself up again. So that after a while we will iin fact often be more of the illusion of our personality than in the beginning, when it was a more “pure” perception.

Somehow a more or less oposite theory! In the eyes of the Diamond Approach the struggle is to keep our first perception open, and not let all our fear and stuff overtake us. Or, since it is more or less impossible for this not to happen, at least we should do our best to work with all of these sheets of our personality as they are becoming present.

The first theory of more normal psychology somehow thinks we are seeing things more clear when the magic of the other disappears, and we are all becoming dull again, while DA thinks that this magic is always within reach, but must be worked for.

Love from Øyvind in Norway!

Re: Transpersonal Love within Committed Relationships

savanni [no longer around] said Feb 17, 2007, 11:28 PM:

My opinion is closer to the normal psychological approach than anything else.

“Falling in Love” is something that most of my community views as a drug. We call it “New Relationship Energy” and it is that period of infatuation that begins a relationship. This is the euphoric phase of first meeting this bright, shiny new person, who fits every wish we could ever want filled!

Many of us have seen people make horrible, disasterous decisions during this phase.

The thing is, this phase really is just us projecting ourselves onto the other person. As we get to know the other person better, we get to know that person's quirks and failings. We learn how the person truly lives eir life, and all of the layers of joy and hurt that makes em.

Somewhere in there, we either form an emotional attachment to the other person, or we do not. Either way, somewhere in there, as we learn about the person and learn how to truly open up, that is when we find out who e really is. Should all goes well, and should we not hurt each other too much in the process, an actual loving relationship begins somewhere in during the NRE, and then survives or even thrives when the euphoria wears off.

Re: Transpersonal Love within Committed Relationships

Whitewave said Feb 18, 2007, 12:48 PM:

Greetings, Pantergnosis.

I'm very familiar with Shadow Hugging and I love to talk about it now with the other person while it's happening. It's thrilling. I love understanding why I'm feeling what I'm feeling. I don't necessarily feel any impulse or motivation to stop the process simply because we've taken the masks off and now we understand that it's an “illusion”. The process automatically becomes less charged when we both take the masks off, and that's wonderful! But I enjoy putting them on and taking them off and on and off. It's like a game of “peekaboo”, and it makes me laugh. It also creates a space, much like Voice Dialog does, where fear falls away and all form and contraction is just as precious and holy as emptiness. This, to me, is a space I want to share with an other. Preferably all others, but just one would be a huge improvment over alone. I cannot describe the joy of being in the presence of another without fear or shame. “They were both naked and felt no shame…”

The sexual act creates this field for a few moments, but if the partners can't consciously expand into it, then it can't be held and it collapses again.

I find the other theory compelling as well, and ironically, equally true. It seems familiar to me, prolly because it resonates with something I remember from one of C. S. Lewis' writings. “The Weight of Glory”. It would take too long to find the quote, but it is essentially that each of us has the capacity to expand into what would seem to be like an angel, or contract into what would seem to be a demon. That we are always walking around teetering on the edge of these, all the time, and we each have the power to push one another further towards one side or the other.

I have to go for a while. Extreme exhaustion…

~Ww

Re: Transpersonal Love within Committed Relationships

jackii said Jun 13, 2007, 11:07 AM:

transpersonal love sounds to me like what the ritual of marriage is designed to accomplish, and yet so rarely actually does accomplish. i used to hate the institution of marriage, because it seems so un-christian, un-transpersonal. it seemed like marriage was
'lock the doors, you're mine and i'm yours'.

but the actual ceremony of marriage states just the opposite. the synergy of the bonding love is to be shared as deeply and completely as possible, and the institution was made (imo, based on the words in the ceremony) to exercise that intimate sharing potential. and therefore the effect would seem to be a continually (infinitely) expanding family that embraces the universe in a way that is a devotional surrender to All Things (gross, subtle, causal and every way).

so how can we manifest that?

there are probably infinite different ways, and the first step is intention. and then maybe a mission statement that clearly defines the intention. and then a continual open communication with myself that is shared with my partners when i feel certain that a connection to this intention is mutual.

If loving everyone can't be represented in the physical relationship realm, how do we represent it outwardly?

this is why i like polyamory. i can be totally committed to another and all are welcome to find every appropriate gesture of loving that continues to build on the base of powerful effective loving.

Re: Transpersonal Love within Committed Relationships

Symbolist Artist [no longer around] said Jul 9, 2007, 9:42 AM:

Nice to see someone else from Scandinavia here! Well, I feel that I can resonate with all of the ideas presented above. I have always had a bad attitude regarding the act of falling in love, it must be something I was born with because it's so strong. I've never fallen in love in my entire life either. “What a silly illusion”, is what it always seemed to me to be. And when recently someone who seemed to be of a deep spiritual nature fell in love with me over the internet, I was pretty intrigued. Is it possible to do that (to love without any information about a person through the other senses)? Was he only playing out a fantasy and deep longing for symbiosis? Did he see anything at all in me that was actually true? When it came to arranging for an encounter, the point in time when he had to make his final deciscion about it, he backed away. He blamed me for not having shown my real self and was sorry for himself for having seen things in me that were not there. You know, extreme goodness and all that, which was pretty nice to hear while it lasted but hurt rather bad when it was thrown back into my face. I was however not so naive that I would actually have believed wholeheartedly in the whole affair. I don't think that what I experienced was a self-fulfilling prophesy because all along I really did have an instinct that something wasn't right.

What hit me when I was reading this thread that there's a polarisation into an either-or constellation. To me it seems that both theories presented here are true. I tend to go for the paradoxes :-). Anyway, I think people very often do see real things in each other when they fall in love, but whether those things are real or not are beside the point because surely there is some potential goodness in all of us? I do think that people mostly fall in love with an image of themselves. For instance in my case, the guy that I just mentioned fell in love with aspects of me that he clearly was lacking within himself. Then when confronted with the necessity of having to activate these elements within himself he chickened out. I'm very sure he did not realize this, since he probably did not even think that he should own such characteristics in the first place. I am talking of very fundamental characteristics such as being more attuned to the spiritual spheres as opposed to the physical, and I don't think we can choose to represent either or while still evolutating as spiritual beings. This guy was not able to make an encounter between us happen in the physical reality, and therefore I'm inclined to think that my interest in the physical realm was first interesting to him and then became a threat. I do think he saw a lot of true things in my all the same. But… as is often the case with spiritually minded people, he became somewhat presumptuous and thought he can see everything. While he believed in the good he saw, he then “corrected” his vision into the negative things that he thought he saw later. Some of which were maybe true, as well, but not exactly as he saw them.

I can relate to your childhood experiences, Ww, and I know it's not easy to succumb to many of the pitfalls that exist on the level of personal love. Although I have never fallen in love myself, I have loved. I know I'm capable of it. But attachment and all sorts of other problems hit me in that process. Now I wonder if I'll ever dare to go there again or whether there is another solution. Maybe just dropping the game altogether and embracing life the way it is with or without personal love (thus transcending it)..? But I'm not convinced about that option either. Seems to me somewhat dangerous to try and deny the desire for some pleasure and joy in life, unless it happens without a process of denial, that seems pretty unlikely here in the human sphere…. Anybody got any ideas…?

Re: Transpersonal Love within Committed Relationships

Symbolist Artist [no longer around] said Aug 4, 2007, 2:36 PM:

That's a good point Gabriel and well worth keeping in mind, maybe also when going into a new relationship to check whether the compatiblity and mutual desire to grow is really there? Seems like a good criteria actually?