I’m often asked: what is the difference between the relationship in spiritual practice, when both evolve together, from the average relationship? And many of them expect to hear “Oh, they are absolutely different! It’s amazing!!!”
What can I say, of course, it’s amazing! Because moving together in one direction is always gratifying. And when the goal is as global as in our case, then it is also great luck. It is impossible to overestimate the power of joy when you feel the support of a loved one.
At the same time, such a relationship expose a number of requirements to you and if you do not carry them out your fairy tale can be easily ruined!
The most important difference from a social relationship is the firm recognition that your beloved is not created for you, but for “God”. In other words, the main goal of his life is self-development, evolution, the movement towards the Light, the revealing its true nature. But not the gratification of your ego, no matter how it protests (and it does sometimes, significantly – this is the same as in social life). In this case, you have two ways: either you admit the situation and help your beloved in every way to follow the path, or desperately “hog the blanket” and get stuck in that “blanket” in the end, rolling back to the generally accepted a favor for a favor type of relationship.
It is very difficult to change your habits, even if you think you know a lot more about life than before and understand how things should be done. However, you should not underestimate your egoistic mind. Every day it throws the pile of templates, concepts for the relationship between a man and a woman. Romance. We hear this word everywhere since childhood and accumulate a lot of concepts about it without even noticing. We even have our own experience.
At the stage of getting to know each other, these concepts can help – when they have something in common. The egos of both partners are happy, finding confirmation of their illusions in the partner. It’s funny, but it gives a feeling of joy, happiness, love and there appears a desire to get to know each other closer.
But then we face the fact that we don’t really have any guides on how to be happy together! Only, perhaps, a few moments from movies (if only our parents were not enlightened, of course, but that’s an exception). But in real life, we often have either a single-parent family or suffering and harassing each other parents.
Here our brain gets stuck. And often, especially when we are tired and under stress, it forces us to do the things that will make us unhappy. We notice that only after we already hurt our beloved and ourselves.
Here comes the question: what should we do with that? I made the following decision for myself:
- to see and admit the fact that I am controlled by mental programs but not my conscious choices; – it is difficult to fix anything without understanding what is happening;
- you should accept and feel your negative emotions, don’t flee, don’t drag it out too long until they transform into diseases; – confront them with courage;
- take responsibility for what is happening to you. It is important. I think this is not a secret for anyone, but we should remind about it to ourselves constantly.
You should move consciously from being selfish and obsessed with your experiences and emotions to helping your beloved to be happier. Ideally, you should do something that will make him closer to his most important goal. But sometimes brewing a cup of tea for him also helps.
So what we get – a lot of inner work. Especially in the beginning. It is difficult for me to judge yet. With this approach and when you practice spiritual development, all the processes are more intense as if the purification from various misconceptions runs at full speed. But it’s good. What people usually work on for years, they may go through faster and reach a new level of relations. I believe in that. But I understand that there are no guarantees, and everything depends on our commitment, and only we can complete this path. With God’s help, of course. Life will always tell you what to do, and it will be the voice of the heart!
Nadezhda Petunina