Well, my column on the True Nature of Love has now become a 6 part series.  The final column in the series will come next month with an article on "Twin Souls, Souls Mates, and Kindred Spirits."  (This is one I actually promised quite awhile ago, but realized needed to be set up with foundation information.)

This column will be the one in which I talk about "how to differentiate between looking outside for the source and combining our energy with some outside influence to help us access the Source within."  It will really be about all of our relationships with people, places, and things outside of us but will be specifically focused on Romantic Relationships - because that is the arena where the greatest growth is possible in my opinion. 

"Romantic Relationships may be the most powerful, meaningful, traumatic, painful, explosive, heart wrenching single topic for most people."

"Almost any "problem" encountered in a Romantic Relationship is a symptom/effect of some deeper "problem" within our relationship with our self!  And we live in a culture where we are taught that the "right"/successful Romantic Relationship can make all those other problems go away!  Like, duh, no wonder we have problems with Romantic Relationships."

It would be good to read the previous articles in this series if you have not already.  I am trying not to repeat myself as much as possible - but the core issues of the wounding and the healing will be repeated somewhat.   Here are a few quotes from the last column just to lay a foundation for this one.

"We have to clear up our relationship with our self in order to see our self clearly before we can start to see our relationship to other humans clearly.  And I want to make a point right at the beginning of this article that this is a gradual process of finding a sense of balance - not an absolute destination." 

This is The big paradigm shift.  Shifting our intellectual paradigm - our attitudes, definitions, and beliefs - is necessary in order to raise our consciousness and open up to consciously accessing the Transcendent vibrational energy of Love, Light, Joy, and Truth.  I had to stop looking outside for the answers and start accessing the Truth within.  Only when I started to open up to the idea that perhaps, maybe, I was Lovable and worthy in a way that was not dependent on outside or external conditions, could I start to let go of defining myself in reaction to other people and other peoples belief systems.

In order to get clear on how to connect to others in a healthy way we must first realize and define how we are separate from others.  On the level of our physical being, our ego-self, we are separate and need to own that before we can open up to consciously experiencing how we are connected to everyone and everything.  We need to see our relationship with ourselves clearly in order to see our relationships to others clearly.

First of all this, this is not a black and white process.  Healing and getting healthier is a process of increasing the percentage of the time we are able to be present and emotionally clear in the moment. 

And even when we are able to be present and emotionally clear with ourselves in the moment there are still multiple levels of interrelationship involved in any interaction.  There are always multiple levels involved in any interaction we participate in.  That means, every moment of the day - in our interactions / relationships both internally and externally - there are multiple levels coming into play.

Different parts of our being are reacting in different ways to every type of stimuli we come into contact with.  The goal is to be conscious of as many levels as possible - and to be able to choose to give the most power to the mature adult within us who is on a conscious Spiritual Path.

The more we align the intellectual paradigm that is governing our emotional, experiential responses to life with Spiritual Truth (which we cannot do without being in the process of healing the emotional wounds) the higher percentage of our power we are giving to accessing the Source within rather than looking outside for the source.

There will still be some aspect of any interaction that reacts to old programming and wounding - some level of looking without - but the more we heal, the smaller percentage of our reality is being influenced by those old tapes.  As our healing process unfolds and we take our power back (access the power that is inherent in who we really are as Spiritual Beings,) we will start responding out of our new relationship with life intuitively so that we do not even have to be conscious of the old.

No matter how far along we are in our healing however, there will still be issues / levels that are more healed than others.  There will always be a new layer of denial to peal off in relationship to our relationship with some issue.  And the way we will uncover and discover those new levels is to have them triggered by some outside stimuli. 

Romantic relationship is the arena of interaction that produces the most stimuli in connection with the vast majority (if not all) of our issues.

To explain this in another way here is a quote from the most recent chapter of the History of the Universe that is part of Book 1 of The Dance of the Wounded Souls Trilogy which is being published in my online Journal.  (Underlining added for purpose of this article.)

"It would not be possible to measure the level of consciousness of a person on a vertical graph.  In other words, we could not make a graph and number it 1 to 100, and then figure out where a person scored as far as how high they had raised their consciousness.  The reason this is not possible is because you have a level of consciousness in relationship to every relationship, and type of relationship, in your life. 

The reason for saying "every" and "every type" is that there is an energy field of consciousness for both individual interactions (relationships) and various types of interaction categories.  For example: you may have a level of consciousness in relationship to: your ex-wife, all women, all blonde women, all women named Shirley, etc.  It depends upon what mental attitudes you are holding and what issues you have repressed emotional energy in relationship to.  Thus if you were scoring your level of consciousness on a chart - you would need thousands of charts.

As has been stated, this dance is all about relationships, and Spirituality is your relationship to self/Self, everyone and everything in your environment, and the God Force.  The point is that there are a lot of relationships that need healing - consciousness raising in relationship to - and they all have to do with your relationship with you.  All of the relationships outside are reflections of what is within, everything is symbolic on some level.  There is no single level of consciousness.  Levels of consciousness are relative in relationship to relationships.  Any individual may be high in some areas and low in others.  You may have a high level of consciousness in relationship to understanding Spiritual Truth or emotional healing, and a low level in relationship to your relationships with the opposite sex, or you own body, or whatever.

So, when you consider all of the relationships in your life - to people, to other life forms, to things, to ideas, to language, to the past, to nature, etc., etc. - there is a lot of room for growth in your levels of consciousness.  The goal is to become balanced and integrated in the moment most of the time.  A Spiritual being who is celebrating the human experience as much of the time as possible by being able to let go of attachment to the illusion and Tune into the Love that is our True Essence.  By doing enough healing to have the freedom to be in the moment with whatever we are feeling - which gives us the capacity to tune into the music of Love, Joy, and Truth more often."

 The process of healing our wounds and Awakening to our True Self so that we can integrate Spirituality into all of our relationships is a very complex and complicated process because we are complex and complex beings.  It is also a very simple process.

"Codependence causes us to have a distorted and repressed emotional process, and the only way out is through the feelings.  Codependence gives us a scrambled mind, a reversed dysfunctional way of looking at ourselves and the world, and we have to be able to use the wonderful tool that is our mind while changing our attitudes and reprogramming our thinking.

It seems awfully complicated, doesn't it? 

That is because it is!

On another level it is also very simple.  It is a Spiritual Dis-ease.  It can only be healed through a Spiritual Cure.  It cannot be healed by only looking at the symptoms.  That is backwards."

So, the point I am trying to make here is this: 

It is not about doing relationships right or wrong - black or white - everything in this human experience involves the interplay of black and white. 

As we grow and heal - shift our intellectual paradigm and heal our emotional wounds - we will raise our level of consciousness, and ability to be conscious and present, causing a progressive increase in the percentage of Light and Love that we are owning for ourselves and therefore capable of reflecting out into our relationships.  The darkness caused by reacting to life out of fear due to our emotional wounds and negative attitudes will progressively decrease as we open up to receive the Love, Light and Truth that is available to us. ( That is, as we decrease the areas and levels on which we are still harboring - consciously or unconsciously - the darkness of denial)

We will all have moments that feel very dark - and others that feel Light and Joyous.  But the more we grow, the Lighter our dark times become - while our times of connecting with the Light and Joy are less attached to anything outside of us. 

The measure of a persons level of consciousness is not how high they feel when they are at their most Joyous, but rather how much Light is still shining through at the lowest moments.  The more we grow, the more moments we are able to stay in (or access) the Joy and Love no matter what is happening outside of us.  The more we heal the shorter the times that feel dark and painful last. 

There will always be some aspect of us (an age of our wounded inner child, for example) who wants to look outside for validation and Love.  The more we learn to give ourselves that validation and Love, the less attachment we have to receiving it from outside. 

There is no destination.  There is no absolute right and wrong.  We are works in process.  The goal is progress not perfection.  That is why it is so important to develop a sense of balance - a feeling for what a balanced, centered, clear space feels like so that we can recognize it when we are off balance, when we are in reaction (to old wounds and tapes or reacting to dysfunctional attachments - i.e. when we are allowing our self worth to be dependent on some outside situation or agent.)

The key to differentiating between looking outside for the source and combining our energy with some outside influence to help us access the Source within is in how we are feeling. 

"I can remember the first time in recovery that I was aware of feeling serenity - it was like, ick, what is this? I feel empty inside - because there was no turmoil or conflict going on."

So the next question then is:  am I feeling the tension and the turmoil because of what is happening now - or because of fears caused by my wounds from the past.  By being in the Loving observer self we can figure out how much of our reaction is to old wounds and how much of it is to what is happening right now.  If we figure out that we are reacting to the now out of our fear of the unknown then we know that we can walk through that fear.  If we are feeling terror, panic, desperate neediness, deep insecurity - then we know we are reacting out of wounded child places within.  The more that we can observe our inner process from a Loving, wise place, the more we can feel clear and peaceful about the fear of the unknown even as we feel it.  It is possible to feel peaceful and scared at the same time - or grateful and sad, or calm and angry.  The more we raise our level of consciousness the easier it is to discern between the types of feelings we are having so that we have a place of feeling centered and serene in the midst of an emotional interaction with another person.  We can learn to honor and respect and release our feelings but we do not have to identify them as our only reality.  We can feel the higher vibrational emotions at the same time we are feeling the lower - and can learn to discern between them.

In the beginning of our healing it is easiest for most of us to access serenity and clarity by ourselves in relationship to nature or animals or people we do not really care about.  It is hardest to have serenity and clarity in our most intimate relationships - because that is where we have the most at stake, where we are most vulnerable to getting hurt.  That is why romantic relationships are such a wonderful arena for growth for us, because it is the relationship that is the most important to most of us. 

As we do our emotional healing and change our intellectual paradigm, we increasingly have a calm place within that we can call on even in our most stressful moments - even in romantic relationship.

Unfortunately, men in this society have been trained to be codependent on their work/careers - and have been programmed to be emotionally dishonest.  This results in many men being incapable of emotional intimacy, and - since their self definition and self worth are focused on what they do rather than their interrelationships - to not have the motivation to change.

"Romance means nothing without emotional intimacy.  "In - to - me - see"  We can not share our self with another being unless we can see into our self.  As long as I couldnít be emotionally intimate with myself, I was incapable of being emotionally intimate with another human being. 

It is absolutely vital to learn how to be emotionally honest with ourselves.  It is impossible to have a Truly successful Romantic Relationship without emotional honesty. (Truly successful being used here to mean: in balance and harmony between the physical, emotional, mental, and Spiritual levels of being.)  Sex can ultimately be an empty, barren animal coupling - involving physical pleasure but really having little to do with Love - without emotional & Spiritual connection. 

 This results in one of the major problem areas of many relationships.  Without emotional intimacy many women get turned off to sex and withhold because their emotional needs arenít being met - and men get angry because they donít even have a clue of what women are asking for.

Also unfortunately, due to the imbalanced, patriarchal belief systems that society is based upon, most men are stuck in an a very immature place in their relationship with women.   Here are a couple of quotes from an article in the first issue of my journal about the inner work in relationship to romance.

"An unfortunate consequence of life in an emotionally dishonest and dysfunctional society that is based on beliefs that deny men the full range of their emotional being is that the great majority of men are emotionally immature in their relationships, not only to women, but also to other men.  Most men are stuck in a horny teenager place - the "Horndog" [a previously uncharted archetype that Jung missed ;-)] - in terms of how they view and relate to females."

This last paragraph contains one of the keys to how it is important to change our intellectual paradigm in order to have more clarity in discerning whether we are reacting to old impulses or intuitive Truth.

Everyone has issues.  You are never going to meet someone that does not show some red flags.  The goal is to be conscious and honest with ourselves about those red flags and to not sell our self out because we want a relationship in our life.  Pay attention and be direct and honest with the other person.  Do not assume, interpret, or mind read - ask if you are not clear.

We are taught in this society to play games.  To act a role, put on our best face, when we are starting to get to know someone.  We are taught to be dishonest in the beginning of a romance in order not to scare the other person away.  Like "duhî how can we have an honest, healthy relationship if we start off dishonestly.

Some other important points to integrate into our belief system / intellectual paradigm so that we can be more discerning and not set ourselves up:

A successful relationship is one that we grow from.  How long it last does not have anything to do with it being successful.  (On a Spiritual level there is no such thing as failure - only lessons, that if not learned will be repeated - nothing shameful, just cause and effect.)  The Cosmic plan may dictate that you are going to have 4 or 5 more relationships that will teach you different lessons before you have one that is worth sticking with.  To think that we can go from having dysfunctional relationships to having a healthy one in one step is silly - and the magical thinking of the child.  This is a process and we are making progress.

Falling in love is a choice - not some trap we have fallen into.  Buying into the belief that we are the victim of loving is a lie.  In working with people who have been in abusive situations and asking why they have stayed, when the response is "because I love him/her" - my response is "No, that is not the reason.  What's underneath it?  What are you scared of?"  Inevitably, it is something like fear of being alone, or that they will never have another relationship, or they can't support themselves.  Often we hang onto relationships because we are scared that we can not trust ourselves to make a better choice. It is important not to buy into the illusion that we are the victim of love.  True Love is empowering for both people - not debilitating.

If the other person is not involved with healing, is not on some kind of a Spiritual path, there is really no chance of building a Truly healthy relationship.  You can be healthy in your relationship to them (hard work but possible) - but if you are looking for a partner in growth both people need to be willing to do the work.

Intensity and passion are not the same thing.  There is a difference between the feeling of tuning into higher vibrational energy and an adrenalin rush. Falling in love is a wonderful feeling - a great high.  It is temporary - enjoy it, just do not expect it to last forever.  (That doesn't mean that it has to go away completely - it does mean that it will go away, and it can then come back again.  But it is not a state that we can get in and stay in permanently.  Expecting it to be a permanent state is dysfunctional and can set us up to feel victimized - by our self or the significant other.)

The other person (and these, and any relationship dynamics, apply just as much in same sex relationships as in heterosexual ones) is helping you to access Love - not giving you something you do not have within you.   It is important to not buy into the belief that the other person is the ultimate source of the good feelings.

You are not the source of each otherís Love.  You are helping each other to access the LOVE that is the Source."

In order to be discerning in our inner process - to start having some clarity between reacting to the old impulses and responding to intuitive Truth - it is very important to change our intellectual paradigm.  But in the moment, the place to focus is on our feelings - not in our head.  It is our heart and our gut that will tell us which way our path is heading - not our head.  We can do intellectual gymnastics on the right-wrong merry-go-round forever without getting any clarity.  By focusing on our emotional state from a Loving observer place we can use the magnificent tool that is our mind to sort out intellectually what is going on. 

Right and wrong is not even the functional paradigm.  "Will it be a mistake?" is not a question that is even relevant.  There are no accidents, coincidences, or mistakes.  Everything is unfolding perfectly from a Cosmic Perspective!  We are being guided to the teachers we need, to learn the lessons we have come here to learn.

There are things that feel like mistakes, and we have made so many choices that have been painful that we try to avoid making a "mistake."  There are no mistakes - only lessons!  Pain cannot be avoided. What we do have the power to change is we can learn to take the shame and judgment out of our internal process.  With the shame removed the pain does not last long and is not as painful as when we are beating ourselves up for "mistakes."

It is important to realize that we were powerless over the past and forgive our selves - so that we can be willing to take risks in the future.  That is what this healing adventure is about.  Going boldly where we have never been before - to Love.  Love that is coming from the Source.

Here is what I learned in my last encounter with romance:

"I have learned:

That when I know who I am and have my self-esteem rooted in my Spiritual connection then I have nothing to fear from intimacy.  I can be hurt for certain because I will be choosing to give some power away over my feelings - but hurt is part of life and well worth the adventure of Loving and Losing.

That it is Truly possible to do enough healing to be able to open my heart to someone and then not take it personally when the other person "rejects" me - because I Truly know in my gut that she is just reacting to her wounds not to some inherent flaw in my being.

That I can have my worst fear of abandonment and rejection appear to come true and not give it any power because I do not have to buy into the disease telling me that it is my fault - that I did something/said something/am something that is wrong/a loser/a mistake/unlovable/unworthy.  This is such a gift - to know that I can keep the critical parent shut up and out of the game is Truly an Amazing Miraculous reward for being willing to do my healing." 

An Adventure in Romance - Loving and Losing Successfully

Do the work.  Become willing to do whatever it takes to learn how to Love yourself so that you have the capacity to Love someone else in a healthy way.

Let go of judgment and shame.  Let go of trying to control life and other people. Let go of thinking you have to do it perfectly.  Let go of thinking in terms of right and wrong.

Learn to have compassion and patience with yourself.  Know that you are being guided and that you do not have the power to screw up the Great Spiritís plan.

Then just do it.  Live.  Suit up and show up for life today.  Be in the moment as much as you can.  You will not always be able to be clear.  Trust your Spirit to guide you.

When people ask me how to discern the really gray areas - like: Is this setting boundaries or being controlling?  Is this caring or codependent?  Is this a geographic or am I following Divine guidance? - what I tell them is to use the short version of the Serenity Prayer.

First I will give you my adapted version of the Serenity Prayer:

God, Goddess, Great Spirit,

Thank you for helping me to access:

The Serenity and Faith to accept the things I cannot change (other people and life),

The Courage and Willingness to change the things I can (me and my attitudes towards other people and life),

And the Wisdom and Clarity to know the difference.

Screw it.

The more you heal, the less power the painful lessons will have (because you are taking the shame out of the process), and the more Joy you can tune into.  The more you can let go and just live in the moment in a responsible adult way - the more your spontaneous, Loving, playful inner self can come out and play (because the more you trust your Higher Power and the process, the more your inner children can trust you to protect them.)

The more you align your intellectual paradigm with Spiritual Truth and heal your emotional wounds, the more freedom you have to be in the moment no matter what you are feeling.  The more that you can have the faith and courage to walk through the fear, the more you will take the power away from the fear and start being Truly free to Live.  The more you open up to receive Love and Joy, the more opportunities you will have to tune into Joy in the moment - and the more moments you will be able to stay in the Love.

Then you can, in the moment some of the time, learn to Love as if you have never been hurt.

"The Abundance of Love and Joy that you can help each other to feel by coming together - are vibrational levels that you then each will be able to access within yourself.  You are helping each other to remember how to access that Love - helping each other to remember what it feels like and that Yes you do deserve it. 

It is very important to remember that so that you can Let Go.  Let Go of believing that the other person has to be in your life . . . ." 

By being willing to be present to feel the difficult feelings -  hurt, sadness, anger, fear;

by being willing to walk through the terror of embracing life - the terror that this commitment to intimacy can bring up;

by being willing to take the risk of being abandoned and betrayed - to take the risk of completely exposing yourself to another being;

you are opening yourself to Joy and Love to depths and on dimensions that you have only had the slightest taste of so far.

BE each otherís sanctuary.  Be patient and kind and gentle whenever you can make that choice.

The more you do your healing and follow your Spiritual path the more moments of each day you will have the choice to Truly be present in the moment.

And in the moment you can make a choice to embrace and feel the Joy fully and completely and with Gusto. 

In any specific moment you will have the power to make a choice to feel the Love in that moment as if you have never been hurt and as if the Love will never go away.

Completely absolutely unconditionally with fearless abandon you can embrace the Love and Joy in the moment. 

Glory in it!

Loving is the Grandest, most sublime adventure available to us.

Lets your hearts sings together.

Let your souls soar to unimagined heights.

Wallow in the sensual pleasure of each others bodies.

Roar with the Joy of being fully alive.

Go for it!!!!"

Love - The Grandest, most sublime adventure available to us - it is worth doing the work, it is worth the risk.