If we find ourselves demanding from a relationship what is not available from a relationship, what can we do to change our approach? If I am needy, I can do nothing other than demand to be fulfilled. It just works that way. A black hole does not necessarily want to absorb every stellar body that passes through its event horizon, but its massive gravitational pull makes it so. If I have done nothing to heal whatever my childhood wound is, I will, in spite of any desire to the contrary, continue to behave like a child. Helpless, needy, at the mercy of 'the adult's' desire or lack of desire to fulfill my needs. Ready to throw a tantrum at the drop of a hat. Feeling entitled. Feeling owed.
How does this needed healing take place? First, we have to acknowledge that healing is necessary. Most of us have to try the same thing a number of times before we become willing to admit that perhaps there is a different way. If we fall into this category, we must take it easy on ourselves. We're simply conducting a bit more field research. Maybe if I try it just a bit differently, or with another person, or... Eventually we will say some version of, 'my way doesn't work. Now what?'
We name the problem. The problem generally is that we are trying to get from a person today what we were unable to get from our parents when we were children. We find a cold, narcissistic partner like our mother and we try to get her or him to care more about us than about themselves. We find a rascal like our father and we try to get him or her to be faithful. What we discover eventually is that our attempts are doomed. Even if we succeed, the payoff never is enough to give us what we need. No one can love us enough to fill the hole of lack we feel; for we are seeking from a person what is not available from a human source. We must change. But what?
We go to therapy, we read books on codependency, we find a 12 Step group that seems to relate to us and to our patterns of behavior. We find a name for the way we behave, the way we feel. We learn about ourselves. We come out of isolation. We discover that others have experienced what we're experiencing. We see that though we may indeed have a wound, we are not hopelessly broken.
Learning about ourselves is important. Naming our problem is important. We will begin to see what we are doing that is not working, and what we are doing that is healthy and appropriate; we will begin to be aware of our behaviors as they're happening, rather than only after the fact; but self-knowledge alone will not allow us to change anything. What else is needed?
Healing. From nature, from God, from Totality.
We are meant to live in a state of bliss, in a state of feeling ourselves, 'at one with' nature itself. We are not meant to experience ourselves as giant sucking balls of need, at the mercy of the whims of lovers and companions. What keeps us from this experience of bliss and oneness are the stresses we have accumulated over the course of our life and the way we have had to learn to live and think of ourselves as the result of carrying these stresses.
We meditate. We begin to let go of stress. As we let go of the stresses, we find ourselves more present to the world around us. We find ourselves more able to appreciate the bliss chemistry that is the result of our simple, twice daily practice. We begin to identify less with these swirling thoughts and feelings that push us to try to make things happen the way they're supposed to happen, to try to make our lovers behave the way they're supposed to behave. We relax and take it easy. We begin to feel ourselves connected to this deeper experience of self--our Higher Self, our True Self, our Oneness Self. Like waves upon the ocean that remember they are ocean as well as wave, we begin to have access to this truth of our being. And what we find as we settle into this other identity, this expanded idea of self, is that in our least excited state, we are fulfillment itself. That thing we've been looking to find from others, that happiness we've been insisting our partners give to us in fact has been here all along. It's beyond simply available to us. It is in fact our very make up. In our least excited state, we are fulfillment itself. And fulfillment itself cannot help but give. Fullness only can spill over. It cannot demand. This is what we are. This is who we are. We must begin to behave as fulfillment would behave.
Today I will be sure to meditate, that I may remember that I am fulfillment itself, that happiness comes only from within, that the ones I love probably could use some of the fulfillment that I am and I will do what I can to give some to them.
Ducks, Brentwood, CA
