Tag: relationships

Running away from parts of ourselves

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If there are whole parts of yourself that you are always running from, that you even feel justified in running from, then you’re going to run from anything that brings you into contact with your feelings of insecurity. Have you noticed how often these parts of ourselves get touched? The closer you get to a situation or a person, the more these feelings arise. Often when you’re in a relationship it starts off great, but when it gets intimate and begins to bring out your neurosis, you just want to get out of there.

So I’m here to tell you that the path to peace is right there, when you want to get away. You can cruise through life not letting anything touch you, but if you really want to live fully, if you want to enter into life, enter into genuine relationships with other people, with animals, with the world situation, you’re definitely going to have the experience of feeling provoked, of getting hooked. You’re not just going to feel bliss. The message is that when those feelings emerge, this is not a failure. This is the chance to cultivate unconditional friendliness toward your perfect and imperfect self.

Pema Chodron

Love

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Love is not a matter of getting what you want. 

Quite the contrary.

The insistence on always having what you want,
on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled,
makes love impossible.

Thomas Merton

Relationships as one way

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When we have achieved the stature of solitude, namely achieving a conscious relationship with ourselves, then we are freer to share with others, freer to receive their gifts in return and not be infantalized by the mutual archaic agenda of childhood, the agenda that covertly uses the other to provide for us….Intimate relationship, when it is in service of the summons of the soul, is only one of the many engagements we have with the mystery. Relying on it to replace the many other realms we, as spiritual beings, are meant to travel will not only burden the other with our unlived life, but will keep us from the appointment which the soul consistently solicits for us.

James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

Really seeing the person today

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I’d say that compassion begins with attention.

Daniel Goleman

The past is gone…

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Without a doubt, the past is gone. Unfortunately, when we carry it with us every day, our hurt feelings, judgments and anger keep recycling within us. We try to put a stop to it through pronouncements about the future, declaring, “I will never let _____ happen again!” These efforts at controlling our life are largely wishful thinking. So, unless you feel totally at peace with yourself, make it a daily or weekly routine to ask yourself these questions:

  • What unresolved pieces of my past am I carrying with me today?
  • Why am I still carrying that?
  • What do I need to do to let it go?

Make it a priority in your life to lighten the load you carry by letting go of what has happened in the past.

Judith Johnston, The problem with the Past and the Future

How love makes us vulnerable

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The big challenge through life is not letting our hearts get hardened. We are born into a world where we feel a danger of getting hurt if we allow ourselves be open at our deepest level. So there is a tendency to shy away from this, to armour our hearts, to hide behind our words or our achievements. Or we numb out the pain that comes from our wanting to be seen but are afraid to risk it.  It takes courage to stay open, to tell our story with our whole heart, to step out when there are no guarantees, to stay open to a relationship that may or may not work out, to keep the heart soft and vulnerable.

When I was a child, my grandmother died and was buried in the churchyard in Castlecomer,  Ireland.  The following year I went there on holiday.  One day we drove to visit relatives, I in the back seat with my grandfather.  As we pass the gravelled driveway leading up to the churchyard, my grandfather, thinking he was unobserved, pressed his face against the window of the car and with a small, hidden motion of his hand, waved. It was then I came to my first understanding of the majesty and vulnerability of love.

Herbert O Driscoll, A Doorway on Time