To love something is to take it as part of yourself. It is an experience more than it could ever be a concept. Love is inclusive. It is the energetic movement towards oneness. When you love something, you energetically pull it towards you and include it as you. The ultimate reality in this universe goes beyond oneness. But for the sake of this discussion, lets say that the ultimate reality in this universe is that of oneness. We may perceive there to be separate things in the world. But this perception is an illusion. We are all comprised of the same energy that is merely expressing itself as different things. And this energy is not only infinite; it has consciousness. This is what we have been calling God or Source for thousands of years. We are indivisible from it. So the ultimate reality is that we are part of all things in existence and all things in existence are part of us. To understand more about this watch my video titled: What Is Love.
Trust cannot be accomplished without love because to trust is to be able to rely on someone taking your best interests as part of their own best interests. So here we have trust and love, the two pillars of a good relationship. Both are about taking the other person, their feelings, needs, wants, perspectives and best interests as part of our own. The highest practice of all is this practice. Even when another person’s feelings, needs, wants, perspectives and best interests seem to conflict with our own. When this is the case, we need to expand wider than our individual perspective and self hood. We need to see the human us and this other person as two warring parts within us that we need to create integration with.
There is an assumption that if we do this, we will let other people hurt us. There is an assumption that we will self sacrifice or give ourselves up in some way. But this is not the case because to do that is to not take yourself as part of yourself. Sometimes, incompatibility exists. When this is the case, loving someone and creating further closeness and integration with them might be to let them separate in the physical dimension. It is a bit like trying to force two magnets faced the wrong way together. The forcing of them to be compatible, in the form we want them to be compatible in, is like forcing a bird to swim or a fish to fly. It is to enhance the suffering and polarization and even opposition between them. To understand more about this, watch my video titled: Incompatibility (A Harsh Reality in Relationships).
When we are living in this physical time space reality, which we are experiencing through an individual perspective, it is so easy to see yourself as separate from every other thing in existence. It is in fact the basic assumption that we are separate. Only awakening shows us otherwise. Only the awakening to love shows us that we are indivisible from all things in existence. But when we are caught up in the illusion of our own separation, we do not take others as part of ourselves when we think about them, speak to them or take actions relative to them. We interact with them as if we can be against them without being against our self.
The golden key in relationships is to think of the other person as if they are a part of us… A part within us. Their best interests cannot ultimately be separate from our own. We may have to make serious adjustments to life if the best interests of our temporal self conflict with theirs. When we do this, the way we think about them, the way we communicate with them and the actions we take relative to them and towards them will change completely. Any time you have to spend really getting into their perspective and really seeing, hearing, feeling and understanding them so as to understand their best interests (without your self centered lens of what you think their best interests actually are), is well worth it.
It is important to not be fooled by the idea that finding balance between opposing things is a good method of conflict resolution. For more information about this, watch my video titled: F#!k Balance. We cannot impose our idea of what resolution should look like and our limited ideas about how to create resolution. We must fully adopt the perspective of the other person being part of us in order to see the true path to any resolution or the true action taken from a place of love.
Before you respond in any situation, make a practice of really seeing the other person, as well as your temporal self as a part of you… Part of you that you cannot ever and will never get rid of. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Am I thinking of this person from love? If he/she/it were part of me, how would I think about him, her or it?
- Am I communicating with this person from love? If he/she/it were part of me, how would I communicate with him, her or it?
- Am I acting towards this person from love? If he/she/it were part of me, how would I act towards him, her or it?
You will not be able to do this perfectly, which is why we call it a practice and it is the most difficult practice of all, especially when someone is hurting you. But the golden key of relationships is to make a practice of only interacting with someone from this perspective.
