Thursday, August 3, 2017

Rupture and repair


It is no secret that, for many, intimate relationship is one of the great amplifiers of the unlived life. We can count on our partners to relentlessly illuminate everything that is unresolved within us. Not because they have some agenda to do so, but simply by the nature of the crucible that is formed when we allow another to truly matter to us.

We come to our relationships with an already-existing patterning that formed long ago. While this template longs to be updated, until reconfiguration it looms over us and colors our perception. It functions by way of a time machine where, when activated, it is as if we have left the “here and now,” crossed the liminal, and found ourselves back in the “there and then.”

There are aspects of ourselves that are aching to come out of the shadows and into the warmth of holding awareness. Not to harm, but as emissaries of wholeness. There is nothing like a close relationship to remind us of the orphaned feelings and vulnerable parts that have lost their way in the tangle of somatic and psychic pathways. They are exhausted from a long voyage to reach us, but have not given up.

The reminder of this truth can at times be a bit agonizing, as the other seems to have extraordinary powers to open the raw, tender, and naked dimensions of our being. But this achiness is sacred. Inside the ache is a jewel. Go there.

Please be kind to your partners and the inevitable conflict that will arise as you make this journey together. Training ourselves to harness the energy of conflict – and engage it directly, skillfully, and with an open heart – is the activity of inner and outer revolution, and requires the encoding of new circuitry.

The transformative art of rupture and repair is one that is endlessly profound, revealing that relationships of vast depth and meaning are not those free of conflict, but ones where working through conflict is embraced as path, where the participants are transformed into an alive vessel of purification, love, and healing.

This is a difficult realization to come by, and one that is unfortunately not all that popular in a world that has forgotten the gold buried in the dark. But here we are. It is up to us to bring these fruits into the collective.


Photo by h.koppdelaney by way of Flickr

My new book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available