I was asked today about relationships. 'You've said that relationships are all about giving,' is what my friend said. In a sense, yes, I have said that. What I have said, actually, is that if we go into a relationship looking for what we can get from it, it's not going to work out for us. I have always to remind myself that I must be about the business of giving, rather than worrying about what I'm getting or not getting. I must orient myself around this as an approach, as a point of view to take into my time with my partner, into my thoughts about myself and my partner, especially given the fact that for my entire life, society has told me that the right relationship with the right partner will be a major source of my happiness. After 50-odd years of conditioning, if I think of nothing other than giving for the next 25 years, I probably still would be a bit imbalanced in the direction of wanting to be given to, rather than the direction of giving.
And what about receiving in relationship? Am I not to be concerned about that at all? Well, put that way, then no, I am not 'to be concerned.' We wish to shy away from concert, i.e. worry, in all our affairs. Then does it matter whether or not I am being given to in a relationship. Of course it matters. However, this part of things generally will more or less take care of itself. If I'm in an appropriate relationship, my partner is doing the same thing from their side of the equation that I am doing from mine. They, too, are looking for how they can give to me, what they can bring to our relationship. If they're not doing this, they can learn. If they're not willing to learn, then I have the choice of accepting them as they are--not giving to me--or moving on, no harm no foul.
We rarely look at things in this cut and dried a fashion, or this clearly, because so much of the time we are trying to get our partner to be who we need them to be in order that we might find happiness. To step out of this faulty equation for happiness is to be able to see all these things clearly. When we can see things clearly and cease ignoring the parts of the equation we don't want to know about, our task becomes self-evident.
What is our task? To love, of course. We let go of our attachment to the way our partner is 'supposed to be,' we cease to look to them for our fulfillment and then we see them for what they are in our life, which is simply the person with whom we get to practice most the idea of loving.
Always, when we love, we are loving the Self within that other person. We are looking past their personal foibles and shortcomings, their personality, their annoying character traits, and from the Self within us we are loving the Self within them. Self loving Self. I spend more time with my romantic partner than with anyone else, hence I have the most opportunity with him or her. Whenever I can remind myself of it, it is important for me to look at them with the eyes of love. And the more I have let them off the hook for all that they've done or not done to bring me happiness, the easier it will be for me to recognize Self when I look.
And as we practice this we begin to make a rather startling discovery: Love really only is experienced in me when it's moving through me. Love doesn't move through me by coming from someone else. Love moves through me when I connect with the source of love deep within--Self--and then connect it to another expression of Self 'out there,' thereby completing a circuit that allows the flow of love through me. This flow, and only this flow, is big enough finally to fill the extraordinary emptiness I've always had inside, the place of needing love. The solution to it is in me, in my own hands, in my own choices, always.
Today I will look into the eyes of another and see the truth there. I will recognize Self.
14th Street Station, New York, NY
All material copyright JeffKoberMeditation
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