Relationship is an opportunity to become increasingly open, consciously aware and loving. For some, it is a path to enlightenment. At the same time relationship can be a trap that reinforces the ego and its neuroses and causes suffering.
The difference is the degree of mindfulness and wisdom that the participants bring to the game. Without the conscious awareness that mindfulness and wisdom bring, relationship is people relating to one another through their projections and needs. When this happens, there is disappointment. When the other turns out to be whom they are instead of whom you want them to be. Disappointment leads to arguments and, depending on the health and needs of the partners, to accommodations that grow out of a need for security and unhealthy attachment, or to separation.
With conscious awareness, there is still accommodation to the needs of the other, but in a different way. Instead of the accommodation coming from a desire to keep the love of the other or to manipulate, it becomes a gift or service. It becomes an expression of love as opposed to a means to be loved, protected or gratified in some material way.
Mindfulness and wisdom bring the clarity that enables the partners to see when accommodating becomes too much. For example, when one of the partners demands that the other accepts abusive behavior or changes in a way that causes them to deny their own needs.
When there is conflict, there can be a dynamic and natural negotiation of roles, values and principles, not in a legalistic or contractual sense, but as two dance partners who find the right rhythm. The partners can commit to lifelong union or at some point, they might decide that the relationship is not working and dissolve it. Either way, love and caring remain.
Relationship Yoga
Nevertheless, while this is healthy and enjoyable, it still implies and reinforces separation. There are two parties relating to one another, accommodating one another.
Is it possible to go beyond that and see the intimate relationship dance as a Yoga, a means for achieving union? Union here is not just about becoming one with the other, but about becoming one with everything by cutting through the illusion of separateness to recognize the absolute unity of all things. The relationship becomes a means to that end.
A true lover doesn't follow any one religion, be sure of that.
Since in the religion of love, there is no irreverence or faith.
When in love, body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist.
Become this, fall in love, and you will not be separated again.
~ Rumi
If the perspective is devotional, the other is the beloved god or goddess in human form. Union is achieved by dropping all of the ego-generated needs that create separation.
If the perspective is a non-theistic, non-dual philosophy, it is ultimately the same thing. Any anger, neediness, fear, jealousy or any of the other things that cloud the mind and diminish the uninhibited flow of compassion and loving kindness is a signal that triggers a return to mindful awareness and to a commitment to loving kindness and compassion.
"The goal of our life is to bring more love and truth into the world.
We marry to assist each other in this process."
~ Leo Tolstoy
If the perspective is psychological, the relationship is a means for seeing and transcending the things that keep us from trust, openness and intimacy. In relationships, we confront the need to become aware of and break through barriers to be authentic with the other and our self. The barriers are attachment, anger, and ignorance leading to fear, selfishness, jealousy, and irrational expectations.
"Nothing ever goes away
Until it has taught us
What we need to know."
~ Pema Chodron
Relationship as Process
Relationship yoga is a process, a dance, in which two or more people move in and out of their individual identities and their identification with the couple, family or team. Yoga means union. Its goal is recognition of one's relationship with oneself and the rest of the universe. The ideal yogic process uncovers that you are not your body, your intellect, or your personality. You are something beyond that, where there is a merging with all beings in the place we all share. The Hindu greeting Namaste expresses this idea. It says I greet that within each of us that is in all of us. It goes beyond you and me and beyond us. There is realization of the absolute nature of all things.
Relationship yoga is not for the fainthearted. This fierce practice requires that the practitioner recognizes his or her essential nature and overcomes attachment to a solid, unchanging self. At the same time, there is no denial that there is you, there is me, and that we have to work on our relationships.
For those who deny that there is anything beyond the practical reality of what is seen, heard and felt by the body and interpreted by the intellect, there is still good reason to practice relationship yoga.
Material benefits are achieved by recognizing one's own responsibility to oneself, the other and the relationship. These benefits sum up to a more fulfilling relationship in which all parties can thrive and be happy. One can accommodate the other from a place of love and caring rather than from a place of fear and attachment.
Going beyond that to the absolute is optional.
