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How are we to understand the soul? What is the purpose of Spirituality? What do we need to live Spiritually? What does Spirituality Involve? What kind of work should I be doing? |
Getting Real 11 Will I ever meet someone? This question is frequently asked in a spirit of desperation, as if a personal relationship is the very least for which we can ask, the basic minimum for a tolerable life, a safe haven in life’s flux. This unwillingness to see our relationships as part of the developmental process and subject to its workings, is the cause of a lot of suffering at this time.
The
idea and experience of relationship are central to the development of
consciousness in humanity. Through our relationships with each other and
the other kingdoms in nature, we come to understand ourselves, and our
place and function in the larger scheme. This learning takes place very
slowly and through infinite pain as each relationship, like a polished
surface, reveals to us the truth of ourselves. We spend a long long time
in denial of what these mirrors are disclosing. Through
our relationships we come to understand, first, the relationship of the
personality to the soul, and then to realise that there are not two but
only one, the soul of humanity which is a reflection of the divine soul. This
idea of the two merging into one exists in consciousness and expectation
and its lower expressions are continually emphasised by social
conditioning. The social mores emphasises the practicality and propriety
of imposing a structure and a degree of longevity upon the biological and
psychological urge to mate; a focus on sex and love in the arts and the
media stimulates the desire to merge physically and emotionally with
another; the language of romance stimulates the yearning to merge
emotionally and spiritually with another; and, more recently,
New Age literature has encouraged us to expect to qualify for that
mark of spiritual distinction and God’s favour our soul mate, a concept
loaded with sentimentality and yearning. When
the question ‘Will I ever meet someone?’ is asked what is meant by
‘someone’ is, almost always, a partner who will be committed for life,
supportive, loving and sexually attractive and who will supply the happy
ending. The most selfish and ungiving people always expect the most from a
relationship And few people who ask this question have any idea or,
indeed, interest in what they are going to do with their lives after this
show-stopping encounter, for such is the power invested by expectation in
this ideal that the relationship becomes an end in itself. This is central
to the problem that this ideal is causing us What
has not yet entered consciousness to any meaningful degree is the basic
fact about relationships: that they are learning experiences and that
learning experiences change people. No kind of social or cultural
conditioning can change that basic feature of relationship. They are a
means to an end, not an end in themselves. The
ideas, which are dominant in our societies at any one time, can either
disclose the essential nature of relationship or conceal it. They can
encourage people to accept it or, for a range of sociological reasons,
encourage them to deny it. When
it is played down, for whatever reason, people in relationships of all
kinds have to cope the best they can with the effects of those changes
which appear aberrant because they are a threat to the continuity of the
relationship; when it is highlighted, as is the case at the moment,
acceptance of the facts usually vies with the pain and rage of
disappointed expectation. The head and the heart are in conflict and it is
our emotional impulses, rather than our common sense, that makes us strive
to protect the romantic ideal from assault by the facts of the matter. The
people yearning for this ‘someone’ are usually tormenting themselves
with the assumption that this kind of relationship is what most other
people seem to have. We
can assume that the facts are reflected in the divorce statistics. Do they
bear out this assumption? To anyone not wanting a reason to feel sorry for
himself, they will suggest that increasing numbers are counting the cost
of commitment and finding it too high. And when it comes to the state of
play amongst spiritually aware people, the facts are unavoidable:
self-growth does not promote stability in personal relationships and no
amount of talking about love and soul mates seems to be able to alter this
state of affairs. The
whole issue of personal relationships is wrapped up in illusion, and
distorted by yearning and self-pity and we are setting up ourselves and
our children to suffer from the consequences of this lack of realism. We
are caught up in trying to make relationships, the agents of change, serve
the purposes of consolidation at a time when the forces of change are very
active in our Western societies, and at a time when by embracing the idea
of spiritual development, increasing numbers of people are inviting in
change. It is an uncomfortable and ultimately unsustainable position to be
in and the result is pain. In
the language of romance, true love lasts forever. Significantly, after
consummation, a shutter is slammed down quickly to end the fairy story
and, thereby, to keep out change, so that the blessed couple can live
happily ever after and so we need not trouble our imaginations of how
precisely they will fill their time. It
is a testimony to the continuing attractiveness of that ideal to us that
despite the scale of the social changes which have been in evidence in the
post War era, we have essentially the same expectations of intimate and
familial relationships as our parents, even though there is little else
about their world and their values that we strive to preserve. Longevity
and stability are still considered the criteria for true love. They confer
validity. The more spiritually minded talk about growing together but this
does not embrace in any meaningful way the concept of growing apart.
Longevity is still the criterion and the expectation; and the break down
of a relationship is still seen as failure of love. Few Old Testaments
prophets can match the spiritually-minded for severity when it comes to
heaping judgment on transgressing partners. The
traditional expectations of relationship are not suitable for the present
time with its emphasis upon quality of life, individuality,
self-determinism and growth because it reduces our willingness and
capacity to compromise. These
criteria do not provide the foundations for enduring relationships and to
persist with the expectations of an earlier age when the focus was upon
material security, is quite simply irresponsibility, as would be the case
if a building were to be constructed upon unstable foundations. Personal
relationships have ever been the most effective ways of learning
responsibility and compassion and this will not change for as long as
humanity is evolving consciousness. What is required is a greater wisdom
in understanding what, in the circumstances and conditions of the present
time, are responsible and compassionate attitudes. We have to become more
intelligent in our understanding of where responsibility lies in
relationships - now, in the circumstances of today when n the West, at
least, we have moved on from the point where the family underwrites
survival and when our desires and emotional states are so potent and our
willingness to compromise so seriously reduced by our awareness of our
individuality and potential. Indeed,
our Western societies have come to accommodate and are organised to deal
with serial monogamy. It is we ourselves, at the personal level, who
indulge ourselves with the romantic ideal and traditional expectations of
enduring relationships, holding out for a triumph of hope over experience,
and producing children who stand to be more traumatised by their parents
emotional reactions to the failure of their frequently unrealistic
expectations than by the fact of their separation. At
the very least, we need to be more aware of the emotional consequences of
living together in disharmony, for ourselves and for our children. It is a
form of laziness and helplessness -
and, yes, irresponsibility - which makes us cling onto old ideals, which
are inadequate to requirement. No adult and no child can benefit from
living in an atmosphere, which is poisoned, whether it is with hatred and
disrespect or grief and disappointment. We
have a responsibility to kill off the romantic ideal including its more
recent offshoot, soul mates, and replace it with something more suitable
for the age in which we live, a model which can accommodate the desire to
merge and mate but which can also accommodate individuality and which is
responsible enough to acknowledges that the purpose of relationship is
change. We have to cut our losses. The romantic ideal is attractive.
It has done much in the past to put a greater respect and regard
into male/female relationships. In its hay day, as part of the Chivalrous
Code, it was a reflection of spiritual developments, specifically the
growth of mysticism, in medieval Europe. But now, owing to the arrival of
the concepts of individuality, personal development and sexual equality,
it is getting us into trouble. Relationships,
the agents of growth, have a host of functions to fulfill, functions which
reflect the needs of the time and which are built into the design of the
personalities coming into incarnation at any one time. The role of
relationships, familial and intimate and those of friendship, are
described by the horoscope. The relationships do not exist outside the
design for the life and many, many people, for a range of reasons, will
not share their lives either materially or physically with another. It is
conditioning and expectation, which turns this perfectly legitimate
developmental situation into aberration and misfortune and increases
suffering and despair, for adults and for the children they produce. By
and large, populist New Age thinking has lost its nerve when it comes to
relationships, seeming unable to come to terms with the fact that the very
development which they are supporting may be inimical to stability in
relationships, or that intimate and familial relationships themselves are
conditions beyond which we move in the course of our development. So often
a lasting relationship is offered out as the reward for successfully
following whatever route to self-development is being recommended. Indeed
a lasting relationship secured by a positive and loving attitude and
existing in some way outside time is frequently presented as the raison
d’etre of self-development. Positivity
and lovingness do not, of themselves, confer stability. They are more
likely, in fact, to enable the relationship to achieve what it is designed
to achieve by encouraging each party to be true to self; and this may or
may not support longevity and stability. Love exists outside time;
relationships do not and cannot because our personalities do not exist
outside time. All
past life connections are revived in new personalities with different
characteristics and different developmental requirements: what has been is
the point of departure for the relationship, not its destination. Karmic
relationships exist and Soul mates do exist and their function is to help
the other grow with all the change and challenge that involves, not to
settle into some kind of emotional freeze frame. A soul mate is not
granted as a reward for spiritual attainment. Soul mates meet because
their individual development can benefit from such an association and
their karma permits it. Their relationship provides the conditions and
circumstances with which they have to work and through which they have to
steer their individual lives. It is not an invitation to end the story,
nor is it an easy assignment at a time when we are so aware of individual
potential. There
are others of us - millions of us at this time - who have a developmental
need to become more self-sufficient, more aware of our individuality and
more independent of others. For those of us with this requirement,
relationships and the ending of relationships are frequently the way by
which they come to this greater personal autonomy, self-definition and
emotional control. People
can hold down conditions, which are contrary to their true natures
precisely because they are unaware. This state of affairs has protected
the enduring marriage throughout history, but the concepts of
individuality and growth are moving us on from this An intelligent person
will find out what is the function of relationships in his life before he
buys into the romantic ideal or even the more practical traditional
expectations of relationships involving commitment. And
let us all get real. Our fantasies, and the disappointment and bitterness
arising from them, are crippling lives. It is not enduring relationships,
which protect and increase love; it is the understanding of the value of
experience and showing responsibility and respect for each other on
whatever terms we meet. |
The DK
Foundation
