People’s instincts are good… but your actions following are only as good as your interpretation of the instinct.
Instincts are sign language… with no well-defined sign-dictionary… on second thought, most words are like that too…
So you have an instinct, that you need to team up with another human if you want to grow… if you want to feel good, if you want a life you can love… and then you go south…
Oh, I need a lover, I need a wife, I need a child… and then you follow the yellow brick road to unhappiness.
The instinct says: TEAM up… and you say, ok, teams are about something, sex, security, blah blah blah… and they aren’t.
The best friendships, the best partnerships are about the participants fully becoming who they are, not about the agenda.
But, alas, you can only do what you see you can do… and lover, wife, child… all very visible, so you go for them… to your detriment.
Why? because there is nothing else in common between you and the other. In fact, everything else is working feverishly to break up the hodge podge, happenstance union.
I see this all the time, in fact I have seen real partnership only once, between my father and his third wife. It made me weep.
Of course I can see beyond the surface, I could feel their mutual determination to make it a good one… and they did.
On Thanksgiving day I have one person on my list, Judith, my father’s third wife, who made his last 20 years happy. He grew, as a person, in those last 20 years more than in the previous 60… in appreciation, valuing, seeing, and really becoming the best he could become.
And the important thing is: he didn’t do it alone. In fact no one can do it alone.
I am doing it with my students… with some more than others.
How does it work? How can it work given that we do have an “uneven” relationship? 2
I once did a “Kabbalah” class that mainly distinguished how to love, how to have a synergistic relationship, using Kabbalistic principles.
It said a few very surprising things, that were counter-intuitive… meaning society doesn’t teach it that way.
- Know someone and you’ll have built the foundation for love
- The lover is there to provide friction… only when there is friction you can grow
- You can have lasting and productive love if you desire to receive for the sake of sharing… meaning, for the other.
All three fly in the face of what we consider love…
And worse than that: if I have a relationship with you based on those principles, you’ll avoid being known… you’ll hate friction and will consider it not-love, and you’ll want to get the most for yourself, leaving me in the dust. You may even consider me a sucker…
There is real love, and then there is “love as a story”.
Real love is the meal… love as a story is the menu. You have been eating the menu… and it tastes like cardboard.
Love as synergy comes from the Life-Force, the one that makes you behave like Life: Life wants for life… Life… not “your” life. All of life.
I know because I have been growing for many years, and it is a very lonely business. People, the others, either put me on the pedestal, or wished for the gallows for me… Stealing the value they could see for themselves… hoping that they got my essence… giving me hollow thanks… maybe even gifts… but never what would give me, what would reflect my energy back.
Until quite recently.
Something changed a few months ago.
I, by nature,have a preference for asymmetrical relationships, where I hold the upper hand. Probably a combination of having been forced and overpowered as a toddler, being a Virgo, and having the Soul Correction of Forget Thyself, a haughty sign.
But I love my life… mostly. Especially on days like this, where I get proof positive of Source tipping me off… Source putting stuff in front of my nose.
It is obvious that in my relationship to and with Source, there is no it and there is no I. There is only we. And because source gets what it needs, energy, fulfillments of its purpose, I am given also what I need, what makes me feel good.
Partnership.
I never knew I can be respectful. I never knew I could care about anyone. I never knew that there was such a thing “we” and it was outside of my reach, until it wasn’t…
That the greatest feeling in the whole world does not come from money, accomplishment, praise, fame, sex, or alcohol. It comes from pushing yourself further than you ever imagined and proving to yourself that it can be done.
And an even greater feeling comes from “we” pushing ourselves further than we ever imagined and proving to ourselves that it can be done.
There are four distinct ways to interact with another, inside the “fields” called Father/Child, Mother/Child, Playmate/Sibling and Admirer/Admired… the fifth has been, universally, just a remote possibility… except between Source and me, and now my student and me.
No matter how ready one is for partnership, it does take two to tango.
With Source, it was my tango that was first missing.
With my students, it is always them applying themselves fully… Because only when you apply yourself fully can you benefit from the accelerating influence of your partner. Why? No because… that’s just how it works.
No action, no impossible mountains to climb… no need for partnership. Helping isn’t partnership, there is no “we” in helping. Helping, in fact, is serving only separation: the helper is superior to the helped.
I think this is why my mother decided, early on, that the moment she needed help, she would end her life… and she did.
There is a favorite saying of gurus, teachers, and other “spiritual” folks: we are one.
None of them have ever experienced it, it is some meaningless words that come out of their mouth.
The only we is in partnership… and in partnership the I disappears.
Given the average “about-me” measure, the size of you I occupying your visual field, chances are we’ll have to wait a few more million years before there will be another example of “we”.
- In the book, Love is a Story, author Robert J. Sternberg, PH.D. distinguishes in typical stories, one of the category is “uneven” or asymmetrical… where one is higher than the other… 1here are some stories that people imprinted upon and live as love-stories.
The Teacher-Student Story
The Sacrifice Story
The Government Story
The Police Story 68
The Pornography Story
The Horror Story
The Science-Fiction Story
The Collection Story
The Art Story
The House and Home Story
The Recovery Story
The Religion Story
The Game Story
The Travel Story
The Sewing and Knitting Story
The Garden Story
The Business Story
The Addiction Story
The Fantasy Story
The History Story
The Science Story
The Cookbook Story
The War Story
The Theater Story
The Humor Story
The Mystery StoryWhat you don’t really see is synergy story, soaring together, growing together.
