Love

"Love is granted freely by the universe, but right relationship is earned."
-Marianne Williamson, "Enchanted Love"


A dear friend and I saw a lecture by Marianne Williamson last night. She was talking about the notions of love, judgement/forgiveness, and the purpose of relationships. If you're at all interested in seeing the exact lecture, she has a subscription you can get from her website where you can watch all of her lectures (called the Miracle Matrix: http://www.marianne.com/index.htm)

But rather than repeat (and probably poorly) what she said, I will share rather what it caused in me. Once again I am struck by the fact that we end up where we need to be if we are paying attention and staying in the flow.... There was a lot that was said in that room that I needed to hear.

One of the things I realized about myself last night was that although I really try to see everyone in the light of their highest possible self (because I think that often times this makes people rise to the occasion) that it occasionally backfires. Because I see the amazing potential in people, I get upset sometimes when they don't end up meeting it. I want them to be better than they are. I want them to be stronger, more noble. If I stopped for a second and applied logic to those thoughts, I would see that I am asking them to rise to a level of perfection that I myself have not attained first of all.

And besides that, I am not giving them credit for what they have accomplished and I am not practicing compassion for where they are and what challenges they are facing. Sometimes, people reach their capacity (at that time). They are as strong as they are capable of being. They are bowed under the weight of their burdens and can't lift any more, let alone be able to help you carry any of your own burdens (if that were even possible). They are at capacity.

And if they cannot be what you need, you might rather ask why you have the needs you do rather than be angry at them for not being able to meet them.

Marianne Williamson also said that relationships can be heaven or hell (or more aptly, heaven and hell). She said that we are drawn to people where we can work out the things we need to to grow and so they will see the best and the worst in us.

She also said that the modern psychotherapy tends to belittle the wonderful feelings people have for each other in the beginning of a relationship and say that this time is false and the relationship then crashes back into "reality" and people start behaving badly again. She said that our world is so upside down that things that are really "unnatural" end up feeling "natural" and vice versa. For instance, in the beginning of a relationship, we view the other person through grace, and see the best things in them through the eyes of love.

But then we do not have the emotional capability to be a large or strong enough "vessel" to maintain that. It is like we are taken to the top of the mountaintop of bliss and shown what an enlightened relationship looks like, then brought back down to base camp and told we need to learn how to climb to be able to be a skilled enough climber to return to that state. She said we are trying to strive for the Ph.D in Love when we haven't really even mastered the kindergarten lessons.

I liked the notion that the NRE (new relationship energy) that is so strong when we are first dating is not a delusion, but rather a glimpse of what a relationship might look like if two people were strong enough to maintain that type of vision and love and grace.

Another thing that I took to heart was her mentioning that in our upside down world, we believe that those we are in intimate relationships with us should put up with our bad behavior or with our less than best effort because they accept and love us for who we are. While that may and should be true, she suggests that it is ludicrous that we take pains to be wonderful for people we hardly even know while not even taking the smallest pains for those we are supposed to love above everything else.

This hits home with me. I made one of my boyfriends crazy because I insisted on not wearing pretty things and taking pains with my appearance because in my mind he should love me for who I was. He tried to explain that he did, but that he really enjoyed me being pretty. I was adamant, because of some very deep wounding from my relationship before him. And he had been withholding deeper commitment from me, so apparently subconsciously it made sense to play tit-for-tat. I'll give if you give...

So the notion of taking the best care of yourself to give your own self the gift of love is incredible, but also that you should want to give your best always to those you love. You wouldn't think of giving your beloved dog rotted meat while giving the neighbors dog the choicest cuts. But somewhere, we go upside down and think it's ok to wear sweatpants every day for our SO, but we should get "dolled up" to go out for drinks with people we really can't stand.

I like the notion that we are living in an upside down world. It makes sense to me as a way of explaining how things go so very wrong. We think we are moving in the right direction, but we haven't considered that we've been trained in very dangerous and negative forms of thought and action. I also agree that the ego can be really sneaky and horrible in trying to make it where we will always be miserable so that it can justify its existence.

Where does this leave us on Valentine's day? Well, I'm reminding myself that I have plenty of people in my life who love me and I love them. There may not be flowers in the mix, or chocolates, or hot sex. I'll probably take myself to a movie. But I'm excited about the fact that a lot of my old wounds concerning love are coming to be healed. I'm not saying that I'm baggage free, but at least rather than "her royal highness' matched luggage," I only have one or two medium sized LVs. I could be wrong about this, but it definitely feels lighter.