Enriching Your
Relationships By Embracing Your Core Self
With
a tip of the hat to John Welwood
When we come on to
the planet we arrive with an open expansiveness but also with
malleability.
We have access to
our expansive true nature but we do not yet know it is ours.
Part of why we are
so malleable is because we have not developed any sense of
individuality. We come in feeling connected to all things, which is a
place of unconscious enlightenment. I say unconscious because there is a
sense of oneness but there is no consciousness of our individuality yet.
We have no grasp of the paradox of being one with all yet at the same
time being an individual point in consciousness.
At this time we are
completely identified with ‘other’. ‘Other' being all the
people and things that are reflecting back information. Now
unfortunately the people around us are not likely to be functioning from
the fullness of their core selves, their true nature. Because of their
background influences they will be functioning from a limited version of
their full potential.
As we start to
build our identity it will be based on how we relate to ‘other’ as
apposed to building it on an owning of our core self. This is because
‘other’ feels so overwhelmingly big at this time. If we do not learn
to relate to ‘other’ it is likely that our needs wont be met. So
here we are in a very malleable place, which could be symbolized as soft
flowing wax, but then we feel the influence of ‘other’ coming
into the wax as a stamp. We start to harden around the stamp, and
our soft flowing expansive self starts to solidify into an identity that
is limited to the parameters of the stamp.
So for example, in
the stage of development where we are still in a flow we may be
expressing a part of our true self that looks like excitement about some
wonderful thing we are experiencing. Then along comes ‘other’ who
has decided that our excitement is disruptive to them and they yell at
us to settle down. This is the stamp coming in to mold our behavior. If we depend on ‘other’s’ approval in order to survive, we will
harden into the molding.
It is not
unusual for us to have some life experiences that can feel like a kick
in the stomach. Most of us would agree that a pretty natural
response to a kick in the gut would be to double over in contraction. If
you see someone doubled over after a kick in the gut it does not look
like anything unusual is going on. But what if you see them a month
later with no victimizer in sight and they are still bent over? What if
you see them 30 years later and they are still bent over. Now it looks
like something pretty strange is going on.
Of course I am
suggesting that this is a symbol for what happens to us when our soft
wax hardens around the stamps of the ‘other’. If we knew we had a
soft flowing core self and we knew we could access it, we would be able
to start to melt the wax again. We could come out of contraction and
start to stand up straight again. But instead what is typical is that as
we get older we start to look at all the kicks in the gut of our life
and feel like the ‘other’ is the one that has imprisoned us in the
wax and so it is the ‘other’ that we look towards to set us free.
Lets build another
image. Lets imagine that our true core self represents a huge mansion.
This is what we start out with, but through the process of giving in to
the overt and covert demands of ‘other’, we start to feel like room
after room of the mansion is not acceptable. So we start to shut down
parts of our self room by room. Eventually even though our true core
self is really a vast mansion we have ended up living in a one-room
apartment in the middle of it.
Because all this
unfolds in relation to ‘other’, part of us can feel like ‘other’
has victimized us and sent us off to live in a one-room apartment. With
the assumption that ‘other’ is the one that imprisoned us, it
follows that it is ‘other’ that is the one that will set us free. So
now we go off in search for the perfect other.
What a set up for
intense pressure to be applied in relationship. After all, both people
in the relationship are going to be dealing with the same issue to
varying degrees. Both come in looking for ‘other’ (which is now
symbolized by this person) to set them free.
The hope that the
other can set us free is amplified during the romance stage of the
relationship. When two people are in love with each other, the message
is that we are loved and accepted for who we are. This is a message that
the core self can relate to. The love starts to melt the hardened wax so
we can be free to express aspects of our true self. We start to expand
out of the one room apartment and include more of the mansion into our
lives.
Unfortunately this
does not lead to a happy ending yet. Because we have neglected these
other rooms in our mansion, they have built up dust and spider webs and
all manner of critters can be living in them. This represents the shadow
side of us. This is not the true self but it is the false coping
personalities we have constructed in order to survive. This represents
the parts of us that have kicked others in the gut. But because we do
not want to look at ourselves as mean people we do our best to hide
these awarenesses in the shadows. Now remember that our shadow selves
are only as real as a stamp in the wax. The shadow patterns can be
melted with awareness, compassion and love. But in order to reach them
with our love we have to first allow ourselves to become aware of them
and be accountable for them.
In this process of
owning our shadow our partner gets to see us in our vulnerability. If
shame comes up we may try to hide for fear that our partner will not
love us any longer if this gets exposed to them. We may attempt to
retreat back to our one room apartment where we do not have to look at
the shadows that are in some of the rooms in the mansion. As long as we
still hold the idea that our life is shaped by ‘other’ and that
‘other’ has to set us free, this process of shadow awareness and
then retreat into the one room apartment can easily be blamed on our
partner. We can see it as being our partner’s fault that we have
retreated. The incomplete logic is that it is because of 'other' that I have
to hide away. If we were to follow the process more deeply we would see
that it because of our own shame and hiding that we have chosen to
retreat to the one room apartment.
These pressures
that come up in relationship are rooted in the idea that it is
‘other’ that holds us in prison and the false hope that some
‘other’s’ love is enough to set us free.
We are drawn to
relationship to work out the softening of the wax and the embracing of
our true self because it was through relating to others that the
difficulties got set up. The people we are in relationship with can not
free us, but if we stay conscious in our relationships we can see where
we have imprisoned ourselves by our choices around relationship and we
can start to see that the locks to all the doors in the rooms in the
mansion are actually on the inside and we hold the keys.
One of the great
gifts of relationship is that our interaction with ‘other’ can help
us see that it is not ‘other’ that holds us in prison.