THE POET RILKE once wrote, “For one human being to love another, this is the most difficult of all our tasks, the work for which all other work is but preparation. It is a great, exacting claim upon us, something that chooses us out and calls us to vast things.”a In these few words Rilke addresses the totality of what an intimate relationship presents us with: the most difficult work of all, and at the same time, a calling to vast things. A deep, loving connection with another being always leads in both directions—bringing up tremendous challenges, while also inspiring us to expand in new, unforeseen directions. We cannot separate the difficulties from the vast things—they go hand in hand.
Now that the traditional rationales for marriage have withered away, and the modern dream of living happily ever after in romantic bliss has not borne fruit, we need to re-envision the purpose of intimate relationship from the ground up. It is time for couple’s consciousness-raising, starting with the most basic questions: What is a couple? What is the purpose and meaning of intimate relationship? What are two people actually meant to do together?
One way to approach these questions is by considering what makes being in love such a powerful experience. When I ask people what they most value about falling in love, they mention qualities such as joy, truth, passion, acceptance, vitality, surrender, innocence, power, magic, openness, curiosity, aliveness, creativity, awakeness, purpose, genuineness, trust, appreciation, and expansiveness. When we recognize that these qualities are facets of our true nature, it becomes clear that falling in love can provide a powerful glimpse of who we really are. Opening to another in love gives us a taste of what it is like to be fully present and awake, with access to a rainbow spectrum of human resources emanating from deep within. Falling in love is an act of grace that stirs our dormant seed potentials. Though some people regard falling in love as an illusion or temporary psychosis, that is true only when we imagine our partner to be the source of these larger qualities, and then grasp at the other to give us what is already ours.
For most of us, our deepest potentials are like seeds that have gone dormant or become deformed in the course of our development. To the extent that we were not received with unconditional love, or never felt truly seen or encouraged to be ourselves, we had to shut down as children to protect ourselves from the enormity of that pain, which threatened to overwhelm us. Emily Dickinson wrote of this in one of her poems:
There is a pain so utter
It swallows Being up.
Then covers the abyss with trance,
So memory can step
Around, across, upon it.b
As children, the pain of not being truly seen or loved is so utter that we contract and thus disconnect from the original openness of our being. This loss of being leaves behind an abyss, a gaping hole, which we cover up with trance—with beliefs, imaginings, and stories about who we are. Our ego structure develops as a survival strategy, as a way of getting by in a world that does not see or support who we really are. It is a protective shell, which diverts our attention from the abyss of loss of being, so that our mind can “step around, across, upon it” without falling in. Yet the shell of our self-constructed identity also blocks access to the deeper seed potentials—for passion, vitality, joy, power, wisdom, presence—contained in our basic nature.
Later in life when we experience a deep loving connection with someone, it is like letting in the warmth of the sun, which stirs the dormant seed within the shell. This might happen with a lover, a spiritual teacher, or a friend. Yet as the seed starts to swell, this expansion brings us up against the hard shell in which we are encased—our conditioned ego structure, which now functions as a soul cage.
Thus, at the outset of a relationship, we expand, until we hit the imprisoning shell of our self-concepts, based on our early transactions with adults in childhood: “I’m a bad boy . . . I’m a good girl . . . I’m special . . . I don’t need anyone . . . I’m helpless . . . I’m inadequate . . . I need to maintain control . . . I need to please.”
As the expansive force of love threatens these outmoded identities from the past, this brings us to the razor’s edge. Here in this zone of uncertainty that emerges when we move from the known into the unknown, we can no longer bear to continue playing out our old patterns, yet nothing new has emerged to take their place. This provides an opportunity to experience what it is like to simply be, without knowing who we are. It can be a scary place to be. At this point people often start to feel, “I don’t know if I can handle this relationship. This isn’t what I bargained for—not knowing who I am!”
A Hasidic master quoted by Martin Buber describes this in-between zone: “Nothing in the world can change from one reality into another unless it first turns into nothing, that is, into the reality of the between-stage. And then it is made into a new creature, from the egg to the chick. The moment when the egg is no more and the chick is not yet, is nothingness. This is the primal state which no one can grasp because it is a force which precedes creation. It is called chaos.”c We all experience these moments of chaos when an old identity, with its sense of safety and security, is threatened. This is one of the most creative moments in a relationship, since it is where something really new can happen. As Chögyam Trungpa once said, “Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news.”
The deeper a relationship goes, the more it brings old darkness and pain to light. A genuine soul connection between two people always challenges any identity that interferes with the free flow of love, such as “I can’t really have this” or “I don’t deserve it.” Even if we are discovering a depth of connection we’ve never known before, if we have a subconscious belief that we don’t deserve to feel this good, it’s not going to last. The undeserving identity will cut it off. Therefore, true love calls for the death of this false self. As the Sufi poet Ibn Al Faradh wrote:
Dying through love is living;
I give thanks to my beloved that she has held this out for me.
For whoever does not die of his love
Is unable to live by it.
Of course, the prospect of letting go of our old, cherished identities inevitably brings up tremendous fear and resistance. Yet if we can let our resistances—which are signs of where we are attached to an old identity—come up and be worked with, this will allow us to take real steps forward on this path. Just as all forward movement—foot against ground, wheel against pavement—requires resistance, so too love advances through encountering and overcoming resistance. In this sense, every psychological difficulty in a relationship provides a spiritual opportunity—to work through the obstacles presented by our conditioned patterns and gain greater access to essential inner resources.
The Sufis make an interesting distinction between what they call “states” and “stations.” A state is a temporary moment of access to an essential human quality—such as aliveness, joy, strength, kindness—that arises and passes away spontaneously, beyond our power to call it up or hold on to it. A station is the same essential quality when we have fully integrated it, so that we have permanent access to it whenever it is called for.
In love’s early grace period, we experience the state of love and presence, but we are not yet installed in the station of love and presence. We glimpse the gold of our true nature, but soon discover that we don’t have full access to that gold. It is still embedded in the iron ore of our conditioned patterns. If love or any other quality of our being is to become a station in our lives, rather than just a passing state, we must go through a refining process, in which the gold is extracted from the ore. This refining is the journey of conscious love.