In Relationship Magic: Waking Up Together, renowned spiritual teacher Guy Finley shares key insights and lessons for building a beautiful, enduring relationship with the one you love…and better relationships with everyone you know. Learn how to use your differences to become more loving and kind with one another. Discover how to bring arguments to a dead stop, while deepening the bond between you and your partner at the same time. Break old patterns that are keeping you stuck, and learn to love your partner fully―without the fear of loss―in spite of painful relationships in the past.
Here is an excerpt (published with permission)
The reality is that each and all of our relationships stir in us a host of strong feelings that, prior to their being awakened in us, we had no idea lay sleeping in our consciousness. These emotions range from deep delight to darkly disturbing, but to strengthen the point: whatever someone awakens in us is… our feeling. Which brings us to the next three important points. The more you’re able to see how they are secretly connected, the stronger will become your connection to a new order of love that can’t be shattered by any storm.
- Everyone in our life has a definite role to play in how we experience ourselves each moment; that’s their part, as much as it is ours to play a similar role in their life. However, they are not responsible for our negative reaction to what we see in ourselves when we’re in their company.
- On the other hand (and this isn’t to say that we’re to excuse others for their misguided treatment of us) but it’s not our job to make anyone else see where he or she is “wrong.” Which leads us to the last of the three points.
- If our wish is to discover a new and higher kind of love – the only one that can empower us to transcend our differences with our partner –then we must begin to see our old excuses for finding fault with him or her as…faulty!
When we look at someone, anyone, including those we love, through the eyes of some negative reaction, what is it that we’re really looking at in that moment…other than what we don’t want to see standing there before us? The following explanation will help shed much needed light on these last two all-important ideas:
- Negative reactions don’t like anything! Whatever gives them cause to be against someone or something, opposing life is what they like to “do.”
- While negative reactions are quick to look around for someone or something to blame in order to justify their painful presence within us, they are incapable of seeing that – much like a skunk might look around and wonder, “What on earth is that horrible smell– the suffering they hold others accountable for is really the result of being in their own dark company!
So, when our mind is filled with reasons for not liking someone – and our heart feels the same aversion, wishing to have nothing to do with whomever is considered in this way – the results are almost unavoidable: what else can we expect to see in our partner’s eyes other than the same resentment or rejection they see flashing in our own? In other words, what they see in our eyes is our one-sided conclusion that they are to blame for our pain.
This insight should make it clear why, in the “heat” of a struggle with someone we care about, we see no love or understanding in their eyes. Because they can’t see any love or kindness in our own.
We want, actually secretly demand, whether family, friend, or loved one that our partner not only understand what we’re feeling, but why…and all without our having to tell them! We expect them to walk by our side, to see life through our eyes, and to support our mood swings with no questions asked. While we, for the most part, almost never consider what it’s like to be on the other “side” of that relationship, looking at what our partner sees in our eyes that we can’t, as yet, even see ourselves.
Until we can understand what those we love see and feel when they’re with us, and vice-versa, we are in a one sided relationship headed for a rocky shore!
Photo by Cam Ferland on Unsplash
Guy says, “Until we can understand what those we love see and feel when they’re with us, and vice-versa, we are in a one sided relationship headed for a rocky shore! ” In presence, I can be aware of myself and aware of what another person sees in me.
We must learn to love ourselves ?
It goes without saying that without the inner work needed to understand and see for ourselves the truth of this insight ,we will continue on the path shown to us by our present level of conciousness.