In any close relationship (where we take the risk of allowing another to matter) we open ourselves to the two primary archetypal energies of abandonment and fusion. At a deep level there may always be some hesitancy in stepping all the way in, which is valid and worthy of our exploration.
We come into relationship with a living template of past relational experiences – will I be safe? Can I be fully as I am? What about all of my eccentricities, sensitivities, and essence-vulnerabilities? Will I need to become different in order to be held and known? Will I lose myself? Is this all going to be worth it?
Inevitably, ruptures will occur within the relational field, in that tender intersection between ourselves and another. But these ruptures are natural, organic, and quantum, and portals of wholeness and integration.
A healthy relationship is not one in which there is never any conflict, but one in which rupture is repaired. Through our shared, holy resonance circuitry and by way of right-brain attunement, we honor our connectedness as well as our own autonomy and integrity which, too, is sacred. The invitation is into the aliveness of paradox and contradiction, not unconscious merging into some homogenized leaky middle.
Embodiment to the cycle of rupture and repair is what allows the relationship to unfold, deepen, and disclose its secret essence.
Each of us arrives in the emerging we-space with biographical, cultural, and archetypal patterning, schemas, and implicit worlds of meaning and imagination. These intertwine to weave the interactional field, along with the companionship, play, and shepherding of the mysterious Other, the third who also appears.
Through co-illumination, co-articulation, and making sense of our experience together the templates reveal their transparency and become ripe for revisioning. But in the core of that ripening it is tender and sensitive, and will ask everything of us.
This is why, in part, close personal relationships can be so achingly painful, on the one hand… while simultaneously being the most majestic and transmutative temple on the other.
Photo by Valiphotos
My previous book - The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You
My upcoming online course on Resting Your Nervous System: Embodying a Trauma-Sensitive Spirituality and Discovering a Felt Sense of Safety, starting March 1st, 20202 - Befriending Yourself: Finding Safety and Rest in Difficult Times
Listen to two recent podcasts where I was interviewed:
