A key part of our experience of the world is in relationship. Relationship with lovers, parents, children, co-workers, and friends. And more importantly, relationship with ourselves. Who we conceive ourselves to be and how we relate that to the whole. That is the fundamental basis on which the rest of our experience is based.
Recently, I have observed how people will respond when they meet a very happy person. Often, they will assume the person is in love. One then realizes that the only time some people have ever been truly happy was when they had first “fallen” in love. They had been overwhelmed by the experience and just let go, experiencing freedom, love, and joy overflowing. But oftentimes, we base our understanding on the idea that “other” is responsible for these feelings. That our new mate is the creator of that wonderful sense of being.
The trouble with that view is that soon enough, reality sets in. We experience other aspects of our new mate that are less endearing. Sometimes, we are able to work through these and find root commonality and build a true loving relationship, warts and all. But other times, we blame the other for not holding us there, and the relationship falls apart. All to commonly, you see people in a continual search, in a kind of serial relationship cycle. Looking for that burst of love but then dragging their drama stories into the relationship and pulling it apart. Over and over. All too many egos have a need for drama to justify their various positions about self and other, their expectations about relationship.
All through this drama and contrast of love and love lost is a missed point. When our reality is about our relationship with ourselves, its not hard to discover that everything else is too. Our feelings and thoughts also spring from our relationship with ourselves. So while “other” is responsible for how they behave, they are not responsible for how we are about that, how we respond in that behaviour. And that means they are not responsible for how we feel.
They may be a catalyzt for that falling into or out of love, but the love always flows from within, out. It is we who control that tap with our attention and intention. There is no blame – they are not at fault.
This is not always easy to accept. If we cannot blame “those men” or “that woman” for our troubles, it would mean its our fault. But its not that either. It is no ones fault. Taking responsibility doesn’t mean blame. It means ownership. It means choice. And it means coming a little closer to who we really are.
Ultimately, we become who we already were all along. And we discover that we are love. It is not somewhere else or in someone else. It is within us. All of it. And that is why our self relationship is so important.