Find peace in your relationships on earth, and you will find peace in your relationship with Heaven.
It may seem strange that a book on meditation should include a chapter on relationships. Along the path to spiritual healing, however, relationships and sexuality deserve special attention, because our relationships tend to be especially screwed up! It is in our closest relationships that we tend to act out all our latent animosities and insecurities, feeding our ego a bottomless supply of negativity. Often, these relationships are where the guilt cycle is most acute and the ensuing blocks to healing most formidable. Therefore, relationships become the primary battleground where our disconnection from our core self and Source is most pronounced. In so many relationships, anger, guilt, and fear are the dominant emotions, while love is relegated to a secondary position, assuming it is present at all. Meditative practice is difficult under these circumstances for the obvious reason that turbulent feelings and thoughts directly hinder meditative states, being the exact opposite condition. For this reason, healing your relationships is an important key to learning how to meditate.
Like forgiveness, the healing of relationships is self-healing. When you come to peace with another person, your spirit naturally reaches out and unites with that person’s spirit. Through this union, the sense of separation between the two of you vanishes. To feel at one with another person heals us at a deep level. It paves the way for reconnecting with our own soul, which is the ultimate healing. As you come to peace with others and abandon the urge to use them as targets for guilt, you simultaneously release your own sense of guilt; and as a result, you come to peace with yourself.
Likewise, we often harbor much hidden guilt and shame in our sexual persona, which also may act as a block to meditation. As with any dark emotion, it is important to heal these feelings. Sexual guilt is usually directly related to the damage in our relationships, past and present, because sex is quite often used as a weapon in relationships. Also, parents sometimes unwittingly reinforce sexual guilt in their children with psychological programming that runs so deep, it can persist for a lifetime.
To heal on a sexual level, we need to stop using sex as a weapon and a reinforcement of body consciousness, and begin seeing it as an affirmation of union and love for another person. This viewpoint gradually removes the sense of guilt associated with sex. We needn’t view our sexuality guiltily, but can look on it with innocent eyes. Our core self always seeks to unite with others, and sex can be one form through which this is expressed. The physical act itself does not accomplish this union. It is the purpose behind sex that matters. See it, like the body, as an expression of love, and it will no longer contribute to the guilt cycle. This reinterpretation of the sexual act is an important step in healing.
While this chapter is in no way intended to provide detailed instruction for healing sexuality and turning our special relationships into spiritual ones, here are some basic, essential guidelines to help you get started in the right direction:
1. Seek only to heal yourself. This is the first rule, and the one on which all the others are based. It can also be the most difficult to follow, but when you are able to set aside the need to try to fix others, the entire paradigm of your relationships will shift. The ego is always seeking to control and change other people, but only rarely does it accept responsibility for its own mistakes. When you follow this rule, you begin to put an end to the constant projection that makes healing impossible. By projecting the responsibility for our own feelings onto someone else, we eliminate any hope of fixing the things that are wrong inside us. When you follow rule 1 for healing relationships, you put the responsibility for your own peace and healing right where it belongs and where it can actually help — in your own hands. This guideline reflects the ancient truth that nobody can force another person to change, but people are free to choose change and healing for themselves. In fact, one must choose for oneself. To begin fixing your relationships, you have to withdraw your focus from trying to change others — or any external circumstances, for that matter — and reapply it toward yourself. Before this shift occurs, no healing is possible, because you will always blame someone else for your own distress.
2. Don’t ask, don’t expect. This rule follows naturally from rule 1. By relinquishing our expectations concerning other people’s behavior, we free ourselves from the endless series of judgments and disappointments that keeps us chained to negative emotional states and experiences. This interrupts the vicious cycle of guilt and blame, freeing our relationships to heal. The rule is simple: The less you ask of others, the purer your relationships will become and the freer you will be. Just take your hands off the steering wheel and free all other people from everything you think they should do, how they should behave, who they should be. Following this guideline will bring you incredible relief. As you release other people from your expectations, you will realize that you have also freed yourself. By setting up rules that other people must adhere to, you are building a prison out of your own expectations. It becomes up to you to monitor the people for violations and to guard them carefully to be certain that they follow your rules. Thus you become a prison guard, as much a prisoner as those you guard. Husbands, wives, and parents are particularly prone to this type of trap, but it can occur in any relationship. The instant you judge or attempt to control another person, you shackle yourself to that person — and there you will remain, imprisoned together. For a prison must have a guard, and no one will stand watch over your prisoners except you. Why should they bother, when they have so many of their own? This is the type of situation that can keep your ego happily engorged for years upon years. Interestingly, people are often surprised to find that the less they ask and expect of other people, the more that others are willing to give.
3. Give freely and without fear. Our third guideline for healing relationships takes things one step further. Not only should you stop asking things of others, but also it is critical to learn to give freely to them. Give of your spirit; give your energy, your attention, your love, and your time. Give, give, give, and then give some more. There is an inherent fear in each of us that as we give, we lose, but this is not the case. As you give, you will discover that you gain. We have already discussed this. Perhaps the form may change, but that is hardly important. This notion is so counterintuitive that it must be practiced to be trusted, but with experience it will prove itself to you. Try it and see. Set aside your fear of giving, and you will find a great reward. Everything you give to others, whether it is of your time or of your love, will find its way back to you, since the law of reciprocity is fully active in all our relationships. When you relinquish your ego’s demands while simultaneously giving more of yourself, those people who share your life with you will inevitably respond positively and learn the joy of giving too.
4. Cultivate unconditional love. This last suggestion is perhaps the most important of all. Peace is not found by imposing your will upon another, but instead through the relinquishment of judgment and the establishment of unconditional love. Defy the fear of giving love, and you will free yourself from fear. Love heals. This may sound trite and no more than a flimsy cliché with no effects in the real world of relationships, yet nothing could be further from the truth. Unconditional love heals because it is the emotional state that most closely reflects our Source, and so it invites the healing energy of Source into our relationships. As we shape our own thoughts to mirror Source, it is like opening a waterway that was dammed up. When you learn to love unconditionally, you invite the incredible healing energy of life to enter, and this energy naturally balances your relationships, essentially joining two seemingly separate individuals in one Spirit. This causes you to realize that your partner’s needs are also your own, and vice versa, which leads to the related — but equally important — realization that by attacking your partner, you are really attacking yourself; by loving your partner, you are loving yourself; by freeing your partner, you are gaining your own freedom.
Applied together, the above guidelines will lead you to the awareness of your underlying unity with other people, which is what heals all relationships in the long run. The endless divisions of the world — reflected most clearly by the physical divisions between our bodies — weaken us, whereas through our unity with each other, we realize that our life is not limited to just one body. By recognizing that we are joined with another, we realize that we must be made of Spirit, because the life of flesh is obviously one of separation. The fact of unity proves to us that the body is not what we really are but just a passing image. Therefore, by healing our relationships, we undertake to heal at the most profound level as well — spiritually. For what is spiritual healing but the healing of the belief that we are separate from each other, our core self, and our Source?
Start implementing these guidelines today in all your relationships. Every day should be devoted to strengthening your connection with everyone you know and everyone you meet. Begin this process by working with one of the above guidelines per week for a period of one month. For instance, begin with rule 1, “Seek only to heal yourself,” and become determined to apply this to all your major relationships for a full week. Remind yourself of this goal each morning, and also remind yourself of it throughout the day whenever you are dealing with other people. Whenever you meet someone, especially if you are feeling irritated, tell yourself silently, “Let me seek only to heal myself.” Use it like a mantra, repeating it as often as needed. The following week, work with rule 2, and so on.
Try to sense the ways in which these four simple guidelines make your relationships less stressful by removing your ego’s agenda from them. Applying these ideas will automatically strengthen your relationships with other people, which really consist of your core self’s relationship with their core self. All of our relationships should be purified in this way until interacting with others on a core level instead of an ego level becomes automatic.
When you meet people today, look beyond their behavior, the words they speak, and the ego characteristics you see in them. Instead, direct your attention to the signs of their core self. Seek out the underlying presence of their spirit. Just as you have a core self, so do they, and each of your worldly relationships has a spiritual counterpart, or what I call a core relationship. This is the relationship that your core shares with their core. Relationships heal when we learn to look beyond our ego struggles with each other and perceive only our own core connection. This realization will bring you peace, and it should come as no surprise that your meditations will deepen many times over as a result.
Celebrating our differences from others marked an important stage of human evolution. This occurred only relatively recently, gathering momentum over the past century. This stage of development was important because differences have been, and frequently still are, used as weapons of attack. For example, racism derives its energy from the concept that people of a different race are inferior. Yet racism is just one example of the ego’s drive to feel separate and distinct by emphasizing how it is not the same as other egos — and then to attack those differences. Any difference is suitable from an ego standpoint — race, gender, nationality, socioeconomic status, sexual preference, political affiliation, and so on. Because of this tendency, celebrating our differences instead of attacking them is certainly a step in the right direction. However, the next stage in our evolution goes a step further toward healing the space that appears to separate us from each other. Look carefully and you will discover that only our sense of differentness from others keeps us feeling separate from them. We have mentioned this point earlier, but it still needs clarification.
It is our sense of sameness with others that heals separation. Unity brings strength because it makes conflict impossible. How can a unified being conflict with itself? In your relationships, perceiving unity will do much to bring you peace. The old saying “There is strength in numbers” is truthful, but it needs one small tweak to make it more accurate: there is strength in unity, not numbers. The uniting of wills for a common cause is what lends power to any goal or situation. By joining together, we unite our power with another’s, and the less sense of division there is, the more we are able to catalyze our goals.
Relationships are dynamic systems of energy exchange, and at any given instant you are using your energy to strengthen your partner or weaken them, to make them feel empowered and secure or unworthy and alone. You accomplish either of these states simply through your own focus, which alternates only between emphasizing unity or differentness. This vacillation goes on all the time, whether or not you are aware of it. The latter emphasis causes imbalances in relationships and makes them unstable. For instance, in a romantic relationship, when you make your partner feel unloved, insecure, or unappreciated, you cause them to feel unsure about the relationship. They will inevitably pull away to try to protect themselves, or they may attack you in return to try to restore their sense of self-esteem. Either way, you are not only wounding them but also weakening your own position by destabilizing the relationship of which you are an intimate part. Being in a relationship with another person is like being in a small boat together. Even when you are physically separated, your feelings and moods affect each other. And if the boat sinks, you will both go down with it. Your happiness and survival are thus tied together. So when you attack your partner, you are attacking yourself.
The closer you come to realizing unity with your partner, the more at peace the relationship will be, and the happier you will feel. This applies to all relationships, of course, not just romantic ones. Growing up in our world, which is based on differences and individuality, we are taught to either attack the differences between us or else celebrate them. Certainly, as noted, the latter advice is more positive, but an even more powerful stance is to celebrate our unity, to emphasize our similarities, and to acknowledge that our needs are firmly tied together. We live in one world, and though it may seem large, humanity’s fate is interconnected in the most intimate sense. We think of our species as being composed of billions of separate individuals, but a more accurate perception is that our species is only one organism with many parts, like a plant with billions of flowers. We are humanity’s flowers, and each of us depends on the whole plant’s health and well-being in order to thrive and survive. If the plant dies, we all do.
You are not an island of flesh, blood, and bone with independent emotions and needs, but rather an intimate aspect of a dynamic energy play. Like it or not, the feelings of everyone in your life rub off on you because in truth we are joined as one. Their needs are your needs, and their peace is your peace. Make sure they feel loved, appreciated, and secure, and you are sure to feel loved, appreciated, and secure in return.
Today, let us join together in a campaign for freedom. Let us seek to free ourselves from the delusion that by controlling other people, we will somehow find peace. Let us vow to make no demands on anyone except ourselves as we set our determination only to celebrate freedom of will for ourselves and everyone.
By trying to control others, we are heading in the direction opposite of peace, because we establish a circumstance destined to bring conflict and stress. Nobody likes to be controlled, and even if they “obey” us, they will still resent us and our relationship with them. How could peace and joy be found in such a relationship? There are far better ways to manage our relationships.
The need to control is often based on the tendency to try to make our own circumstance more stable and predictable by forcing another to adhere to our rules. For example, parents may try to control their children’s choice of friends out of the fear that they might fall in with the “wrong crowd” and get into trouble, or start using drugs or having sex, and so on. This seems reasonable on the surface; however, the parents are really teaching their children that they do not trust them, that their children are not wise enough to make good decisions, and also that some people are more worthy than others. Furthermore, they are unwittingly setting up an ego need in their children, making it even more likely that they will do the very things their parents don’t like. This negative parent-child dynamic weakens relationships, increases resentment, and damages children’s self-esteem. It is the exact opposite of empowering them, which is the only thing we need to be concerned with if we want to protect them. Empowered people love and respect themselves and are much less likely to make poor decisions — even when you are not around to monitor their behavior.
Before you set up any expectations for someone you love, pause and remind yourself that all relationships follow the law of reciprocity, so the content of what you give to them will find its way back to you. With this in mind, ask yourself, which is the better course? To force your will on others, or to show them directly how much you trust and admire them, and to celebrate their wisdom and strength? How do you want to feel about yourself? Consider this question carefully before deciding how to treat others.
None of us are perfect. That’s why we are in Earth School. We all need healing. By acknowledging that you still have healing to do here, along with the fact that you can never force any other person to change, you place yourself in a position of true power. When you withdraw the energy wasted on judging others and turn that energy around to initiate personal growth, healing becomes inevitable. If you want to succeed, this is surely the way to do it.
You can’t control another person’s willingness to grow and evolve beyond ego. The best you can do is to provide an example of the joy that comes to those who are willing to do so. Ego loves to control, and it also loves to keep your attention focused far outside yourself and turned away from your core. It wants you to believe that the key to your own peace lies in changing other people instead of changing yourself. Look at how this ridiculous presumption makes it impossible for you to get to know your own core by keeping you constantly focused elsewhere. If you wanted to study the sky and the stars, wouldn’t it make sense to begin by purchasing a telescope and taking a good look? How could you hope to learn anything about the heavens if you buried your head in the sand like an ostrich?
Release those you love from the constant need to control, direct, and judge them, and focus on your own healing instead. This way, you will be putting yourself in the captain’s chair of your life by taking charge of the one thing in this world that you have power over — yourself.
If you were to do nothing else but learn to give unconditional love to everyone you met, your life would be transformed from the inside out. The act of giving unconditional love is so powerful that it charges you with energy and infuses your life with a genuine sense of purpose. By loving another without exceptions, limitations, or conditions of any kind, you are learning to love as Source loves, and you become a channel for a type of healing that is not of this world.
The opposite of unconditional love is judgment. Judgment shuts us down from loving someone else fully by narrowing our focus to the things we don’t like about the person. When we shut down from loving another, we simultaneously shut down from loving ourselves. Love is total. When you love another, you love yourself, and when you judge another, you judge yourself. We can use our mind to do only one or the other at any given instant, and we do so all the time. Our thoughts are never free from both love and judgment. As you let go of one, the other instantly fills your awareness.
What good is judgment? Has it ever given you anything of value? Did it solve your problems? Bring you joy? Infuse your life with a sense of meaning? Or did it make you feel angry, increase your sense of guilt, and bring disunity to your relationships?
You do not have to wait to learn what joy comes from releasing judgment. You may be accustomed to judgment, but you can quickly adapt to its opposite — unconditional love — because the feelings you will experience as you practice unconditional love are overwhelmingly compelling. Just remember, either love or judgment is with you each instant, and both have power over your relationships. If you want your relationships to be happy, you don’t need to fix anything other than your own ability to love openly and unconditionally. Make it your mission to discover just what loving without exceptions means, and you may be surprised to find how powerful love is. It isn’t just a sweet concept, a powerless cliché, or a lofty notion. Loving without exceptions aligns you with Source, and you will never find any experience more gratifying and empowering than that.
This simple change in your outlook will produce such a powerful shift that it can change the dynamic of all your relationships overnight. When you start treating the people in your life in a way that shows them you truly care about them and let them know through your attitudes that they matter to you, they will feel it. Perhaps not instantly, but over time, everyone in your life will feel the effects of this profound and fundamental shift. This alteration in attitude will produce sweeping changes in your own internal world as well, because as you show others that they are worth caring about, you begin to believe that the same must be true about yourself.
You have no need to control the people in your life, it isn’t up to you to be their guide or offer them sage advice, and you aren’t here to save them. You are here to learn your own lessons. This is your one and only responsibility. Try looking at yourself as a student of everyone you love and also of everyone you meet. All relationships, no matter how casual they may seem, share the potential to become your teachers if you are willing to set aside your ego and accept your role as a student of life. It is Source that is the teacher. Whenever I meet anyone, I always attempt to see that person as a teacher of mine, for all beings originate from Source, and therefore all beings can potentially reveal God to me. Learn to be grateful to everyone for what they are, and you will be flooded with gratitude for what you are.
The universe is kind to those who live in sync with kindness. Become very quiet during your practicing today, and meditate on the sense of perfect safety, protection, and quiet kindness. Realize that you are an eternal part of an eternal universe, and dissolve into the stillness that comes with a tranquil mind. You are a pure, holy aspect of a pure, holy Spirit, and you need no other training to achieve enlightenment beyond accepting yourself as you were created. Acceptance is the key to awakening. Acceptance of what you are fundamentally, not what has been added on to what you are. Focus only on letting go of all self-made images, thoughts, and personality characteristics, and listen to the silent, still spaces between your breaths and in the tiny lulls between your thoughts. Let your sense of time vanish, let the world disappear, and release your own ego as you dive deep into your core self.
Healing our sexuality is a major step toward healing our romantic relationships, and it begins with releasing the notion that sex is a guilty, sinful act. This belief bombards us from numerous sources, including our parents, churches, sex partners, and television, and we must actively refuse to accept it. Because sex can feel very primitive, it tends to remind us of our animal roots, emphasizing the body. The ego uses this as leverage to increase our sense of distance from our spiritual core. Guilt, being the epitome of dark emotions and the foundation of the guilt cycle, is the ego’s greatest energy source. If it can use sex to exacerbate your sense of guilt, it will do so at every level.
A second source of sexual guilt stems from mistakes we have made in the past. Nearly everyone is “guilty” to some degree of using sex as a weapon of attack. These may be blatant attacks, such as affairs, or less obvious forms, like making our partners feel ugly, unworthy, or ashamed of their own sexuality. Whatever the forms, when you use sex as a weapon, you will feel guilty. Sex, then, will tend to activate these old guilt feelings, and by doing so, it will make your current relationships all the rockier.
Begin to heal this sense of guilt, first of all, by seeing sex not as a sinful, animal-based act but as a natural expression of Divine love. When you are intimate with your partner, use the experience to deepen your connection with them, and to make them feel loved, beautiful, and appreciated. At its highest, sex should be not just a physical act of pleasure but also a spiritual act of bonding, which is the heart of all healthy sexual relationships.
Second, examine your own sense of guilt carefully, and if you feel guilty over past actions, make a concerted effort to heal these feelings. This is not always easy, but if you are willing to look at these ugly moments as simple mistakes that all people are bound to make, but that you are determined to learn from and not repeat, you will more readily give yourself permission to move beyond them. The way to heal errors of any kind is to begin by recognizing them; become determined not to repeat them; make amends with those you have injured, if possible; and then move forward with your life as a kinder, gentler person. Healing sexual mistakes is no different.
For some people, the act of admitting their mistakes and making amends with people they’ve wronged can be tremendously valuable. If there are people you’ve hurt badly enough that you feel the need to apologize directly to them, do it. Let them know you recognize that what you did hurt them, and apologize sincerely, without asking anything in return. This has to be an unconditional, no-strings-attached deal. Keep this exercise short and simple. Don’t allow yourself to be dragged into a continuing ego exchange where guilt is reinforced and more attacks ensue. Just say you’re sorry, in a meaningful way, and then move forward with your life. It’s an old-school rule that Mom taught us as kids, and it still is wise advice. Whether they accept your apology is not your concern. Like you, they also have lessons in forgiveness to learn.
For today’s practice, think of one person whom you felt attacked by on a sexual level, and also pick one other person whom you have similarly attacked. Imagine them both sitting before you as you meditate, and briefly consider how both the hurt you received and the hurt you gave are similar. Regardless of form, they are both expressions of the guilt we all feel over our sexual urges.
Next, think of the person who injured you, and tell them, “I understand that what you did to me was a reflection of your own pain, and I forgive you for it now so that we both can be released and find peace.”
Say this several times slowly and as genuinely as possible, and imagine that they acknowledge your forgiveness. Then turn to the person you hurt by your own actions, and tell them, “I understand that what I did to you was a reflection of my own pain, and I ask you to forgive me now so that we both can be released and find peace.”
Listen and hear this person tell you that they forgive you. Even if they are so angry that you know they wouldn’t accept your apology in real life, a part of them is still connected with Source, and this part does forgive you. Their core self recognizes the gift you are offering through asking for forgiveness, and this part of them is thankful.
Finish the remainder of your meditation by sitting quietly or using whatever technique you like.
Whenever you meet people, train yourself to see them in the grandest of lights. The more you view them as holy teachers, the more you will learn. The more you look on them with peace, the quieter you will become. The more gratitude you give, the more you will be prepared to receive. Because you lift them up, they will lift you.
Even the things that interfere with seeing them in light — the hurts and the trials — are lessons in peace because they provide you with the opportunity to learn and grow through forgiveness. Be grateful even for the trials, then. Each time you let forgiveness replace a grievance, you brighten your heart and bring yourself one step closer to Source, one step nearer to perfect peace.
By searching out the greatness in others, through all circumstances, you will begin to awaken to the greatness that is a part of you as well. This greatness comes from the Spirit in us, of which each of us is an indispensable part. You can never be replaced. Each of us is a unique, powerful, and highly creative being. Some people believe in angels, but few of us realize that we are all angels. Think about that. You are an angel of Heaven, and you are literally surrounded by other angels! They may be angels who are learning to remember their identity, but even in this you can be of service. You become of service by seeking out the glory and power that are locked inside them, hidden even from their own view. Lift them up and remind them who they are, for they are no ordinary beings. Neither are you. But you must choose carefully how you will treat them, or else you will fail to remember your own power and glory.
By being grateful to everyone you meet, you begin the process of turning Earth into Heaven. Gratitude is a mighty spiritual teacher, for it can show you how great you can be too. Instead of judging others, begin searching out those characteristics in them that you wish to cultivate in yourself. Always look for the good in others, and you will find it both in them and in yourself.
Try to remember to thank everyone you meet today, silently in your own mind. Don’t allow judgment to trick you into becoming blind to the greatness that surrounds you. These people are more than just your companions; they are all great spiritual teachers — and so are you.
Our focus today will be on trying to sense the strength and peace that come from cultivating unconditional love — not as a nice idea, but as a force with real effects in our lives. Some people believe that love is just a feeling, but true love is a dynamic energy that derives its power from Source. By true love, I do not mean the destructive type of “love” that is found in violent, obsessive, and codependent relationships. Just as forgiveness has both true and false forms, so does love. True love is unconditional, pure, and free from ego. It brings you a sense of harmony, quiet, and peace. Another important characteristic of true love is the feeling of freedom that comes from it. True love does not seek to control, suppress, or stifle, but to liberate and bless others.
One could not ask for a more beautiful and faithful companion through life than true love. Learn to cultivate unconditional love for everyone. If you were to do nothing else with your life but focus on this simple goal, you would become one of the most powerful human beings who ever lived. When you feel the strength that comes from unconditional love, your life will be so transformed that you will realize the path of love is the key to a deep happiness, sense of safety, and inner guidance you never dreamed could be possible in this chaotic world.
Never go anywhere without love in your heart, or else no matter where you go, the world will seem empty or, even worse, dark and dangerous. Love will soothe your memories of pain, wrap your future in peace, and paint your present with its warmth. Everything you look upon through the lens of love will seem different, new, and bright with life.
I realize that all this may sound like an exaggeration, but love does not ask belief of anyone. It only asks that you welcome it into your life, despite your doubts and uncertainty. What you then experience will be convincing indeed. Use today’s mantra to begin opening up and welcoming true love into your life, and try to sense the energy of love within you. Learn to give and receive unconditional love, and watch the world transform before your open eyes.