5 Pointers to a satisfying relationship

Creating a good (reciprical) relationship implies learning how to interact with your partner in ways that promote and enhance honest communication while allowing for trust and vulnerability. Becoming skillful at relationships requires both your own inner work and external work (on your partnership).  Consider 5 pointers to nourish a satisfying relationship:

Unconditional Love & Compassion: How to have a satisfying relationship? Some say its key to always put your partner first. Yet, you cannot ignore yourself. Focus on what you are giving and how you are caring in balance with what you are receiving.  Express your needs in a way your partner can understand. If s/he does not get it, this may not be the right person for you.

Absolute Courage and Vulnerability: Love no matter what and commit to absolute truth. Treat someone else as you would have done unto you or treat your partner better to raise the bar on how you would like to be treated. The power of compliments, kind gestures and expressing love is often underestimated. Yet, if this baffles or overwhelms your partner, you may not see eye -to-eye and the relationship may drain rather than energize you.

Know the Truth: This is not about blaming. The key to extraordinary relationships is to know your partner’s soul and never make them wrong. Understand their needs, past hurts, behaviours and patterns. If it resonates, do what you can to satisfy their needs.  Yet, being a good partner in a relationship is also about feeling complete unto yourself without the other person. Know that you cannot satisfy each other's voids, only enrich each other.

Be Honest with yourself: Get conscious and commit to moment-to-moment awareness. Your state, body language, words and actions have a direct and potentially lasting impact on your relationship.

Giving Freedom: The power of forgiving, forgetting is profound. There is a saying: if you give a bird freedom and he comes back, he is yours. If the bird never comes back, he was never yours.  This is not about possession but rather about free will.  Create a safe space for your partner to make honest mistakes and make them feel that they can take comfort in a secure relationship. You cannot force anything. Satisfying relationships arise from giving partners the freedom to value you as you are or move on without imposing guitlt or coersion. 

Dream Analysis of the Week- Relationship Change

Dream:

I thought i was going on a romantic island getaway with my partner yet had mixed minds about it. Instead, we found ourselves on a luxury yacht with hot tubs and spas in different rooms and were told by ship captain that the trip was going around islands in circles near the horizon with people we did not know. My middle sister showed up with a duffle bag full of white fluffy towels and put it on a big bed.  I went up on deck, saw a lifeboat tied to the side and jumped in. I started rowing toward a portal that opened in the ocean. As I passed through it, time stopped. I saw my children were playing next to neighbours at a park on a white fluffy cloud. My boat suddenly turned into a hot air balloon. I landed on the floating world and the kids climbed in.  We lifted off, flew in a new direction.  Another portal opened.  I navigated the balloon through.

Insight:

Relationship change on the horizon. The definitive decision is yours. Its clear your current personal life is not taking you where you wish to go.  You may feel unforeseen burdens by circumstances beyond your control.  Water and spas echo your emotions or empathy toward others. You might be overly sensitive and would benefit from freeing yourself from taking on other people's energies. Remind yourself you consciously define your own frequency. Making a conscious move to become the captain of your own ship would expedite a rapid change of energy and scenery. You may recall energy of doing it before. 

On another level, this is about re-adjusting templates of energy and recalibrating personal energies to align with inner wisdom you are ready to share. You may sense an urgency to shift or a sense of 'time running out' in order to prompt you to shift into your soul role. The quickening you feel echoes you are really have (and are in) 'no-time'. Pressure you place on yourself to be more authentic is helping highlight and let go of illusions that already served their purpose.

A lifeboat echos your ongoing spiritual journey is offering an exciting mixture of possibilities as you move forward. This includes switching timelines and dimensions according to the nature of your vibration. As you recall more of your true power, there is no choice only being in alignment. Lucid dreaming is a tool we can use to consciously move into dream yoga and new scenarios in waking life in ways that reflect our true nature. What would activate your own inner magic?

Fluffy clouds tend to represent peace and harmony. You are not only moving toward but also know what this really feels like. The true playground is unlimited, a holographic reality like the holodeck of the Starship Enterprise of Star Trek. Tune into your inner child.  Allow light-hearted feelings to guide you to the best course. Let Soul be your pilot. The moment arises to intuitively move beyond, reframe or rise above difficult life situations. Changes are definintely in process.  The direction you go from here is up to the degree you are willing to take radical responsibility, trust and surrender to the unknown.  To face oneself is to observe without judgement.

"When we're deluded, there's a world to escape. When we are aware, there is nothing to escape." -Bodhidarma 

We offer Dream Consultations of single and multiple dreams and also offer an Astral, Lucid & Dream Yoga course. Contact us for details.

Notice so often, many assume spiritual growth means achieving some extraordinary, other-worldly, blissed-out state where we are somehow transported out of where we are. This view leads us to constantly reach for the next spiritual high, focus on futures. Or we feel that with all our commitments, responsibilities we have few ways for developing our inner nature. Both of these views reflect an error in perception. Let's step back, take another look. 

In fact, our day-to-day experiences offer raw material for spiritual development. Conflicts that arise in our families and among colleagues, the pain of losing loved ones, or our resistance to paradigms, stories, events, do not prevent inner development. Rather, they point to our ignorance and all else that hinders us from knowing and embodying true nature. We must simply be willing to surrender to the process. We are each invited to meet situations that present with compassion. This is true nature. 

Many of us do not distinguish between true nature and our personality traits, particularly our less desirable traits. Thing is, we are not the body, mind, emotions, but spirit-soul. It is the nature of the untrained mind to want what it perceives as advantageous and resist what seems painful. Discovering how the heart and mind can work together allows us to move beyond resistance and start to know inner freedom. Every situation we create has potential to reveal our true nature.

At different stages, we can feel overwhelmed by life conditions or feel bound by past traumatic events. If and when this happens, we do not see things as they really are. They are just mind-states which can be known, seen as impermanent, do not belong to us. They do not define true nature. A spiritual practice can provide insight and discipline to explore our perceptions. We each must discover what is true for ourselves. Heresay does not cut it. We can each do this right where we are. There is no need to go to a monastery or get our life more together. The intensity of our will and fears is a catalyst that propels us to go down the rabbit hole.  We can choose how to see, reframe, respond to events that will lead us to a deeper relationship with true nature.

For many years, words by Viktor Frankl have inspired me. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

It is crucial to understand, from a spiritual perspective, that the pain and suffering with which we work is no less substantial, or less real or difficult than those others face. The constrictions of the heart and mind cannot be measured like so many pounds of pressure; they are energies we learn to feel, harness and guide us back to true nature. Funny, the quest to reconnect with true nature is often lost in ordinary life. To be wrapped up in the mundane causes us to forget the big picture.

Buddha teaches that true nature is obscured by veils of wanting, fear, and delusion (or ignorance). He urges us to look at nature of our mind systematically and observe how these three mind-states condition what we think and value, and how we behave. He teaches that to identify with these mind-states causes suffering.
If we are not our thoughts, then what is our true nature, how do we find it, and how do we live so that it may flourish?

Well, the true nature of love is not based on ego strategy, but on the sheer openness of one heart to another. This is the kind of heart-opening that provides us with courage to face what arises.

Buddha also echoes our true nature is emptiness- a lack of a permanent Self- and when this true nature is realized, the divine states of the Brahma-viharas – loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity- emerge. There is also a state of mind and heart known as bodhichitta that leads one to completely dedicate oneself to the liberation of all beings from suffering. In the teachings of the great yoga masters, our true nature is Brahman, the universal soul, of which the individual soul is simply a part. When this is realized there is satchidananda, the awareness of bliss, from the knowing that pure awareness is our ultimate nature.

At some stage, it dawns, feelings of true nature are real. What Buddha describes are actual states of mind- body that can be physically and emotionally felt as profound consciousness shifts. For some people, these changes in consciousness have a strong physical component or a marked shift in perception. Some of us experience dramatically altered states of being. Others know subtle shifts in clarity, emotional centeredness, spontaneous acts of kindness. Every moment the body and mind experience true nature may feel transcendent, and manifestation simply occurs without effort. To know a “soft heart” is to act with selfless compassion. This is dwelling in the divine aspect of true nature. The new normal can feel like a transcendent moment.

Being centred is key

Notice if we are truly committed to soul growth, this requires we shift our full, conscious attention in this direction. Wherever we focus in this world creates problems or distrubance until we recall our true relationship to energy and all things. Yet, what is it to devote ourself to our evolving relationship with self?

Contrary to popular belief, evolution does not necessarily require living in solitude in a remote place, leaving a job or family, though such experiences may be part of our journey. In truth, evolution happens as we prioiritize our liberation from illusion, decide to be conscious of our reactions/ responses to all things. See triggers as gifts to move though them. If the external happens to irritate us, evoke fear, negativity, imbalance, we accept this points to what is going on inside us. If people are talking and it bothers us, then we realize disturbance is within us. This is taking responsibility for our thoughts and feelings and recognizing power is within to direct every moment of our lives.

A being intent on spiritual grow uses every moment for this purpose. Its not only during scheduled meditation or spiritual practice. To sense energy is to realize wherever we are, we attract or repulse everything in our experience. We tend to look past what feels neutral to what evokes pain or pleasure, want to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. We are disturbed, experience pleasure through attraction or overlook things. Ponder why so many things are neutral. Within those moments, a peaceful relationship exists. There is nothing to do abouti it. Thing is, balanced states tend not to last long. Our conditioned habit is to push things away or cling to things we attract to stay balanced. Whatever we are constantly working on is not us. Problems and solutions are not us. Yet they take most attention. The spiritual journey is about shifting away from that to neutrality.

Yoga is about turning all this upside down. It helps us realize that only working with ourselves can change our external conditions. It is not about touching our toes but what we learn about us through the course of our practice. As opposed to what is widely taught, we cannot change 'life' by focusing on the external. Why?

A closer look reveals focusing on the external is giving our power away. The external solves itself when we work on ourselves. Life is energy simply passing by and we are at peace with it. All of life is beautiful. If we think something right or wrong with life, then judgment is within us about us. People are the way they are. Situations are the way they are. We are honoured to be here with it all. There is a dance of energy unfolding. Watch what happens when there is no attempt to control things. Put whole heart and soul into whatever is before us. What enables us to experience life as it is not on what we define it to be. All of life exist to free us from our own self-created limitation and illusions.

So, work on our inner selves can happen every moment. Until we understand what takes us out of the peace evoked in meditation, then we will not be able to prolong that experience. Pay attention. Watch what is coming up in you. Join the dots. Ebbs and flows of inner tides prevent us from being at peace. True spiritual growth is the revelation that we are working on ourselves every moment of every day and not simply when we are meditating.

Most people can maintain consciousness and balance in a relaxed situation. The key is to be aware of what draws us out of that state. How do we stay centred, come what may? Shift focus inward to how we are responding to life, relationships, situations. Enter a room and participate in interactions, keep the continuity of experience and leave still centred. The purpose of any event is never the event, it is what happens to you when you are interacting before, during and after a situation and how we grow to remain calm and centred.

Let go of will to control

Notice its common to wonder what determines how life unfolds. Yet, its not up to us. Its outside of our control. Feel into any resistance arising to not being in control. Everything that presents results from dynamic forces of equilibrium and natural laws interacting and creating what is seen and unseen. We do not have to know all reasons that needed to happen for everything to be as it is. This has nothing to do with us. Its completely impersonal. Everything is fine until we show up, judge it, attempt to force or manipulate. Energy flows where we are not. We are fine with that. We rarely or never complain about where we are not. Ponder this...

So, life is not about controlling energy. Its about our relationship with the force of creation unfolding outside us. We each inhabit a body and "the world" is outside. Energy is always unfolding, that includes before after time, before our birth and after body is gone.

Many people seek peace. Thing is, right now, we can be in a state of acceptance, awe, respect, honour, experience this moment as fresh and new. Insodoing, we gift ourselves whatever arises. We are the only being standing right here, now. From this view, no problems exist, simply experience we accept (or reject/ resist). For most, their relationship with life and self is not always peaceful. Why is that?

Well, we decide in the mind, develop ideas, of what life should be doing today, tomorrow, and beyond. In truth, we limit possibilities, make it all up, create a vison, goals, dreams we must realize and specific steps to get here. Ego decides what should and should not be, what we like and dislike, what is right and wrong in relation to our own self-created points of reference. A problem is that unfolding realities are not obliged to meet our expectations. Business projections are not always accurate. When what we want to happen, doesn't happen as we want it to and when, that is viewed as a problem. Yet, reality does not behave this way. We make up an alternate version of reality and get upset when the unfolding does not happen as ego wants. This brings suffering. We are the source.

In essence then, Buddha's Nobel Truths are simple. Everybody is suffering because they do not have the right understanding of the way things are, they have expectations for life that reality does not meet. The cause of suffering is desire, preference, our idea of ways things ought to be. We make it up and want things to happen, our way.

As it is, moments exist independently from the rest. Everything is interconnected. To end suffering, end attachment to desire and outcomes, stop being rigid about the way things must be. Come back to simplicity. The way the world is does not have to be the way you want it to be.

A key question to ask is what prompts us to fear things will not be the way we want? It evokes tension. A wise person does not renounce all desires. Yet, why do we insist on imagining an alternate reality instead of savouring the one that exists? Rather than struggle with life or ourselves, go deeper. Everything does not have to be a certain way for us to be loved, lovable, accepted, successful. We are a witness, guest and observer.