Tears to Triumph

by Marianne Williamson

  None of this is merely a matter of theory; it’s only meaningful if borne out by practical experience. And it will be. Next time you’re waiting in a line at a store or sitting in a restaurant, silently send peace and love from your heart to the people near you. Your energy, the look on your face, even what you say and how you say it will change. And see whether or not what you put out then comes back to you. You might be reading a book like this one, but the words in a book can’t substitute for the power of your decision to see another person as a child of God. The only church, the only temple, the only shrine that ultimately matters is the ground on which you stand right now. It might be an airport. It might be a deli. It might be your bedroom. Just make it holy, and peace will come.

  RELATIONSHIP ASSIGNMENTS

  According to A Course in Miracles, relationships are spiritual assignments in which the Holy Spirit brings together those who have the maximal opportunity for soul growth. It should be no surprise to us, then, that relationships are not always easy. They’re magnifying glasses through which we can view what does and does not work in how we’re relating to other people. Every situation in life is a relationship in which we—and often those around us—can see exactly where we are free to love, and where we are bound by fear.

  While the ego would argue that there’s a different kind of love for different kinds of relationship, the spiritual basics of relationship are the same no matter what form a relationship takes. Whether you’re my business acquaintance or a family member, the issue is this: Am I meeting you on the level of my personality, or am I extending to you the gift of my love? Am I here to judge you, or to forgive you? The answers will determine what happens next.

  The ego sees other people from a transactional perspective, looking for how others can serve our needs. The spirit sees other people from a relational perspective, seeking for ways that together we can serve love. To the ego, relationships are fear-laden traps; to the spirit, they are holy encounters. The last thing the ego wants us to believe is that relationships form the basis of the spiritual journey. But they do. Every encounter, large or small, is an opportunity to glorify love. When I surrender a relationship to serving God’s purpose, the relationship most probably will bring me peace. If I try to use it to serve my needs as I define them, then it most probably will bring me pain.

  So how do we get our needs met if our only purpose is to love? How do we set standards, get work done, have reasonable expectations, and not get taken advantage of if we see ourselves in any situation only as a miracle-worker, a channel for love, a servant of God?

  The answer is, “Far more easily.” The miracle does not occur on the bodily level; it has less to do with what happens on the outside than with what happens on the inside. People can feel when they’re being blessed, and they can feel when they’re being judged. Everyone subconsciously knows everything.

  If I wake up in the morning and pray for your happiness, meditate on our spiritual oneness, set my intention on being a representative of love in your life today, surrender all temptation to control you or judge you, then you will feel that. Our relationship will have a chance at being a positive experience. Otherwise, it will be everything the ego wants it to be, and you will feel that too.

  The primary issue in our relationship to anything is purpose. The ego’s purpose in a relationship is to withhold love, while the spirit’s purpose is to extend it. The ego sees the world as something to serve it, while the spirit sees the world as something for us to serve.

  How many times have you been asked, “What are you looking for in a relationship?” rather than, “What is the greatest gift you feel you can bring to a relationship?” How many times has someone asked you in reference to a relationship, “Are you really getting what you need?” as opposed to, “Are you really giving all you have?” A Course in Miracles says that the only thing lacking in any situation is what we’re not giving. It’s amazing how often we’re counting up someone else’s demerits, while hardly giving any attention to our own. The wily, insidious ego calls this self-care.

  The ego sees every relationship as a chance to monitor another person’s spiritual progress, but never our own. The ego is like a scavenger dog seeking any possible evidence of another’s guilt, that we might attack, judge, criticize, and blame him or her. Its ultimate purpose is not to hurt the other, however, as much as it is to hurt us.

  The ego never sees a reason to be satisfied with someone. It slyly tempts us to the thoughts and behavior that would keep love at bay, even while protesting that we want it desperately. “The only reason I want you to be different is because I love you!” According to A Course in Miracles, the ego’s dictate is “seek, but do not find.”

  In a world where fear dominates the consciousness of the human race, it takes conscious practice to develop the emotional musculature of love. But boy is this hard when someone pushes all our buttons and triggers all our wounds. We can be all lovely and enlightened in the morning, and crazed with anger by noon.

  And then, unfortunately, we’re off to the races. Some of the biggest judgments we make, the most pernicious attacks, are made before we even have a chance to think. We send a reactive text or email. We say things we later regret having said. We make decisions that only in retrospect we see as having been self-sabotaging.

  This is why spiritual practice is so important. The most powerful tool for success in life, in any area, including relationships, is that our minds be channels for right thinking. And for this, they must be trained.

  We do weight-bearing exercises to train our physical muscles, and spiritual exercises to train our attitudinal muscles. The first give us the power to physically move, and the second give us the power to remain internally still. One empowers us externally, and one empowers us internally. And both take effort.

  It’s extremely helpful to spend time each morning, even if only five minutes, using whatever meditation or prayer technique you relate to, to train your attitudinal muscles to think with love. At the beginning of each day, before you meet or interact with anyone, consciously and proactively send your love before you. Then, say to yourself silently as you look at others throughout the day, “The love in me salutes the love in you.” To any situation, surrender to God whatever judgments you bring with you. This kind of practice will give you more than peace; it will work miracles in your life. There’s no room for darkness in a house that is filled with light, and there’s no room for fear in a mind that is filled with love. The key to attracting, maintaining, and healing relationships is to fill our minds with light—surrendering ourselves to be used by God, that we might become a blessing on everyone we meet.

  Consider affirming these truths each day:

  1. I don’t need anyone else to make me whole; as a creation of God, I am whole already. I go into the world today to share with everyone I meet the abundant truth of who I really am.

  2. My function on the earth is to love, to forgive, and to bless. Every person I will meet today is an opportunity for me to act as love’s representative on earth.

  3. What I give to others, I give to myself. What I withhold from others, I withhold from myself. Everyone I meet today provides me with an opportunity to increase my joy by bringing greater joy to others.

  As it says in A Course in Miracles, “prayer is the medium of miracles.” Consider it one of the greatest powers in the miracle-worker’s tool kit.

  Dear God,

  Please make my life

  A sacred place

  Not only for me,

  But for those I meet.

  May everyone who enters my life

  Be blessed,

  And may I be blessed by them.

  Send to me those

  With whom I am meant to grow.

  Show us how to love each other

  In ways that serve You best.

  Amen

  ATTRACTING LOVE

  The universe itself is intentional, guiding all things to the actualization of their highest potential. T
his includes not only individuals, but also relationships. Love is always seeking us. The problem is how often we hide from it, scurrying away from the light of love into the darkness of our fearful selves. It wasn’t that love didn’t show up for us; it’s that we didn’t show up for love.

  A Course in Miracles says that our job is not to seek love, but to seek all the barriers we hold against its coming. Those barriers, those walls in front of our hearts, are the places where we turn our backs on love. We do various things to keep love at bay, from behavior ranging from needy to controlling, dishonest to manipulative, avoidant to addictive, too hot to too cold, self-centered to smothering. These character defects are not where we’re bad, but where we’re wounded. Still, no matter what childhood experience might have caused those defects to begin with, they’re our responsibility now. When we are displaying our rough edges, other people don’t think, “Oh poor dear, you’re wounded.” They’re more apt to think, “Oh Lord, get me out of here.” Which totally makes sense.

  So, time and time again, we find ourselves blowing it at relationships—with friends, with colleagues, with family, with partners. And once again, the only real problem is our separation from God. The key to fostering soulful relationships with others is fostering our primary relationship with God, for there, we’re healed of the pieces of false self with which we so often sabotage our relationships. In my relationship with God lies my relationship with my true self, and only when I’m aligned with the truth of who I am can I align with the truth in you.

  HOSPITALS OF THE SOUL

  Relationships are where we come to heal, not because we’re always able to be our best within them, but precisely because we’re not. They do not just highlight our strengths; they put a magnifying glass on our weaknesses. And in a way, that is their purpose. They do not just expose our rough edges; they give us the chance to smooth those edges out. Healing is a kind of detox process, in which everything that needs to leave our systems must first come up and then out. That which lies unhealed within us comes up for review, that we might consciously see where we’re wounded in love and surrender the wound to God.

  All of us are lonely, lonelier than we know, because we feel separate from God. And the ego, which is what convinces us that we’re separate from Him to begin with, offers us the most twisted of solutions: that we find one special person who will complete us, and then we will not feel lonely. This is seeking salvation in separation, which will only deepen our despair.

  The obsession with finding what in A Course in Miracles is called “a special relationship” is one of the biggest guns in the ego’s arsenal. The reason we obsess about romantic love is because we project the expectation that it can heal the pain of our disconnectedness from the whole. We feel disconnected from God, from ourselves, from the earth, from other living beings; then, feeling bereft, we look for that one relationship that will make all the pain go away.

  Wow, no pressure or anything.

  Yet the idea of one special, exclusive relationship is a search for unity in separation. This goal of finding wholeness in one person not only counters the principle of enlightenment, it counters intimacy. For how could we be more intimate than that we are each other? Intimacy isn’t something to try to create; it’s something to accept as already accomplished. When we realize the other is us—not outside us—then we are likely to treat them as tenderly and as authentically as we would like to be treated. Which then creates . . . intimacy!

  My ego decides I need you to behave a certain way in order to make my world okay. What I really need is to release you from the hook of my ego’s agenda for your life! We can release our grip on other people’s emotions, thoughts, and feelings. We can desist from writing agendas for other people’s lives. And we can detach from thinking that anyone or anything external to ourselves is the source of our good.

  When surrendered to God to use for His purposes, the ego’s special relationship is transformed into a holy one. What A Course in Miracles calls a holy relationship is a hospital for the soul, where we recognize that our weaknesses will be made evident in the relationship for a reason.

  If I only meet people who bring out my best, then, as wonderful as that is, there are probably some lessons left unlearned. It’s in those places where our unconscious wounds are made conscious that we have the opportunity to heal them, because only then can we see them. Until then, they direct our lives in detrimental ways.

  The closer we are to genuine joining, the greater the probability that the weaknesses of one partner or the other—usually both—will be subconsciously triggered. “You’re needy and emotionally demanding” will meet “You’re arrogant and selfish.” Although the ego seeks relationship as a place to hide our wounds, the Holy Spirit uses relationships to bring those wounds to the surface—not to destroy the relationship, but to make it all that it can be. In the presence of mutual understanding, compassion, faith, and forgiveness, our wounds can be healed.

  Sometimes, two people understand this, turning their relationship into a holy encounter and a conduit for continuous growth. Realizing that wounds are exposed in the relationship in order to be healed, they cleave to love despite resistance and commit to the effort of forgiveness and understanding.

  She listens, and understands that her behavior was needy and controlling; she apologizes and behaves differently. He listens, and understands that his behavior was selfish and inconsiderate; he apologizes and behaves differently. As both become more aware of their own weaknesses—as they apologize, forgive, practice mercy, and seek to do better—the spiritual purpose of the relationship is served. Things that the ego sees as reasons to leave a relationship end up being things that the spirit sees as reasons why the relationship was formed. Sometimes, the lesson in a relationship is to stay and learn from what’s happening, whereas at other times the lesson is to realize that it doesn’t serve to remain there longer. There is no outer indicator of which lesson we are to learn; as with everything, the voice for God within us is ultimately the only reliable guidance system.

  Whether the ultimate wisdom is to stay or to go doesn’t matter as much as whether we use the experience to expand our hearts. Even if we’re led to leave a relationship, it is as important that we be loving while leaving as that we be loving while staying. If we do not do this, then we will simply meet someone down the road who provides us with another opportunity to see our resistances to love, and to heal them.

  TENDING THE GARDEN

  Most of us are clear that once we buy a car, even if it’s the best car in the world, we’re going to have to do some things to maintain it. But for some mysterious reason, we often fail to recognize that we have to maintain our relationships just like that car. Anyone in his or her right mind sees a deep relationship with another human being as more precious than a car, but it’s amazing how much more attention people will give to tending their “things” than to tending their relationships.

  The most powerful way to tend a relationship is to place it in the hands of God each day. Surrender to God is not just a principle; it is something we do. At times I’ve said to people, “Did you pray about this?” and they have responded, “I know it’s in God’s hands.” But that wasn’t what I asked! I did not ask whether it was in God’s hands (ultimately all things are); I asked whether they put it in God’s hands. All things will ultimately result in a loving outcome, but it is completely up to us how long that will take. Through prayer, we invite the Holy Spirit to enter into our minds and readjust our thinking, to produce a loving outcome not just in an ultimate realm but in the reality of our daily lives right now.

  Dear God,

  May I be only a blessing on this person,

  And may he be only a blessing on me.

  Heal us in our wounded places

  And cast out our resistances to love.

  Lift our relationship to divine right order,

  Above and beyond all walls that divide us.

  May forgiveness purify

  Our hea
rts and minds,

  That we might see only the innocence

  In ourselves and in each other.

  May my presence in his life

  Contribute to his happiness,

  And serve him on his path.

  May our joining be a holy thing.

  May it serve Your purposes

  For us and all the world

  And bring joy to all living things.

  Amen

  None of us is perfect. All of us make mistakes. And close relationships are a place where we’re bound to make them. In fact, until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know them. And until we’ve forgiven them their darkness, we don’t really know what love is.

  Our relationships are temples of healing when we allow them to be. The ultimate truth of any relationship is that two innocent children of God are seeking to love and be loved. Someone else’s mistakes are simply where they hit walls which in that moment they could not see beyond—and it’s the same for us. A Course in Miracles says that we should interpret all that is not love as a call for love. If I judge you for your errors, I simply fortify them in your mind and in mine. If I forgive your errors, I give both of us the chance to feel the healing power of love.

  Who among us is not scarred from the battles of love? Who among us is not pained by the struggles of love? Who among us is not longing for the comfort of love? As much as we all desire to love and to be loved, in this wounded world it can be very hard at times. But the only failure in love is to give up on love. A broken heart need not be a bitter heart. And while love can pause, it can never really end.