Relationship- Bridge to the Soul

by Chris G Moon

  Admittedly these tiny Revelations seemed to be created by my imagination, but what was it that provided the imaginative responses, and how did it occur to me at all to even consider such questions? I would like to say that it was all because of my commitment to the Truth and the evolutionary level of my soul, but I think there is a more relatable explanation than that.92 First of all, imagination is not fantasy (although the lower mind will use it for such a purpose). Imagination is the Soul’s reminder of all that is possible. Second, the questions were inspired by my choice to see love rather than what was causing the fight. The Soul honoured my choice and employed my imagination to allow me to see the love that was already there, because love never goes. It was then up to me to act on what I imagined, and thus make what was possible a reality. For a time, I was a conscious embodiment of love.93

  It is the nature of this life to constantly reveal to you who you are, and what you carry within you. Therefore there is constant potential for Revelation, and all so-called “learning” is simply seeing what is already there. Revelation is the bridge between Soul and personality. The Soul continually reveals itself according to your personal willingness to accept what is being revealed. Revelation is the conduit from the Soul to your conscious mind. What is your Soul revealing to you about your partner this very minute?

  The quantum tunnel exists in every stage of relationship, so it is possible to even move from Glamour into True Partnership if you and your partner are willing to come together for the sake of seeing beyond the personal veils. See each other the way your Souls see yourselves.

  So how can you be in a Soul-inspired relationship? You already are.

  EMBRACING MY BELOVED (A Vignette)

  ***

  The first time I can honestly say that I saw my wife was about three years after I met her. Up to that point I had had a great appreciation and respect for her. Her innate spiritual wisdom, depth of beauty, kindness, generosity, acuity of mind, and passion were a source of inspiration and even wonder to me. I could not believe how lucky I was to have been given such a wonderful gift in my life. But my boundless gratitude and appreciation for Su Mei was transcended on the night that her essence was revealed to me. We were spending a fairly ordinary night together. One minute I was sitting beside her, sharing a quiet conversation, and the next minute I was seeing and touching her Soul. I was filled with a bliss that I had previously attributed to mysticism or enlightenment, and a thought materialized in my mind that I had been living with an angel for the last three years. Any attempt to describe it further could never do it justice. For days afterward I floated on a wonderful high, looking in awe at the true beauty in this world—and the worlds beyond.

  Of course I didn’t stay up there. After a few weeks, Su Mei and I were wrestling with some dreary issue and we became estranged from that miraculous experience, but I carried with me the memory of the tranquility in my mind and the powerful love in my heart. For a brief time I was well beyond the walls of the Victim Prison. As far as I could see, what was beyond went on forever. I have had similar experiences since then, and each time my beloved is revealed to me, I lose some or all sense of separation. When I embrace my beloved, I experience myself being embraced.

  Back in Chapter One, I mentioned how the initial stage of “falling in love” gives us a tiny glimpse of what relationship’s true potential is. Throughout this book I’ve pointed to ways I have been shown, or discovered personally, the various traps of relationship created by the lower mind. Each time we find a way through, we get another taste of the nectar of what I’ve come to call Soul Relationship. After spending even a little bit of time in this experience, we begin to be illuminated with the Revelation that, without exception, love is behind everything that happens. This allows us to trust life more as we endure the birthing processes that are inevitable with each step forward that the Soul takes.

  The more you are influenced by the Revelations in your relationship, the more clearly you can see the gift and lesson that is being offered behind every problem. The naturalness of your essence gradually seeps into your behaviour and the inclination grows stronger to choose the kinds of work and activities that best express your gifts. The decisions you are called to make are not win/lose decisions, but rather questions of how to discern the most appropriate course of action—or non-action—that would be of utmost benefit to everyone.

  These are the kinds of understandings I have gained through Revelation. Revelation gives you a completely different perspective on the journey, allowing you to see the purpose behind the pain as well as the pleasure. Upon leaving that state and re-submerging yourself in the Power Struggles, disappointments, or stalemates that occur from time to time, the Revelation leaves an indelible imprint in your mind so that you can bring a little hope with you, along with faith that these discomforts will pass as you deepen your commitment to love.

  Whether we take the journey of relationship stage by stage, or slide through the quantum tunnel, it is ultimately by the grace of our soul that love’s purpose is revealed, and we walk through the gates to…

  * * *

  89 Although you’d think that I would know better by now!

  90 This quantum tunnel theory is one of the few things I remember from chemistry class. Another one is how to cause sudden explosions in the lab.

  91 Of course, if you were to ask Su Mei how we got through that fight, she might tell you it was because she decided to let go of her position, and make love more important. I had a small Revelation that explained this: every step in a relationship towards love is taken simultaneously by both people.

  92 Or at least a more believable one.

  93 Which brings up the question: when we are not embodying love, what are we embodying—and thus expressing—to our partners, family, friends...and the world?

  CHAPTER 6

  SOUL PARTNERSHIP

  ———————————

  “Caterpillar sheds its skin to find a butterfly within”

  —Donovan

  When I write about Soul Partnership, I do not intend to draw a picture of what one looks like. Many people might assume that such a relationship would be monogamous by nature. Some might even conceive of it as being holy, in classical religious terms, with the partners having halos around their heads. Still others might hold some other image according to their beliefs and values.

  Personally, I am not convinced that monogamy is an essential ingredient to sacred relationships, nor do I feel that Soul Partners would comply with anyone’s conceptions of what such partners should look or act like. The more one walks the path of the Soul, the less one is influenced by the glamour of appearances and dogma.

  I am not inclined to describe a universal experience of Soul Partnership at all, since how I experience it is according to my individuality. What I hope to make clear in this chapter is that relationship is a spiritual path that reflects love’s plan for all of humanity. That your partner is your teacher is obvious, as is the fact that what you are being called to learn is the way of unconditional love. What people sought in monasteries, ashrams, and mountain tops can be experienced on your living room, a corporate board room, or a South Seas beach at Club Med. In learning to love your partner wherever you are, you learn to love everyone. Every encounter with another human being can then become a spiritual encounter that brings you closer to the realization of love’s plan.

  ***

  ALLOWING

  ———————————

  “Whisper words of wisdom, ‘Let it be...’”

  —Paul McCartney

  Many years ago, I was thinking about gravestones. Not that I plan on being buried when I die, but I was thinking: if I was going to be buried, what words would I want on my gravestone? Out of the blue came the statement “His life was full of doo-doo.” This idea emerged from the sense that I was a very busy youn
g man, always doing something. Doing, doing, doing! Busy, busy, busy. I was constantly pursuing some very important goal, which of course was important only for as long as I was chasing it. Once I reached the goal, all of its importance was immediately transferred onto some more distant goal.94 No matter how many goals I reached—or failed to reach—I never questioned whether it was truly worth my time pursuing them. “Doing” was my life. It made me useful, provided me with a sense of importance, and gave my existence a certain purpose. But it was often very empty as well.

  Once again, my wife was instrumental in showing me what all the great sages have been trying to get through to us all along: it’s not what you do, but who you are that counts. In my relationship, I did everything I could to make the marriage work. In my mind, usefulness would make me irreplaceable. Being busy would keep the material aspects of our life stable and secure. My raison d’être was to provide and protect, because, well, that’s what I did to prove to my wife that I was worth keeping. Marriage and relationships were things that I had to do, so, like the rest of my life, my marriage was being contaminated with doo-doo. The problem is you cannot “do” relationship. You cannot “do” communication; you cannot “do” letting go or commitment. As you walk through the veil of the ego’s illusion and begin to serve relationship’s true purpose, the rules change drastically from doing to something else.

  When the spiritual teacher Guru Maharaji was a young man, he was asked what the most important word in the English dictionary was. His reply was, “let.” He must have been on the other side of the Wall when he said that, because Soul Relationships are all about allowing. You don’t just sit in a chair and remain inactive, of course. It is simply that your actions are more often directed by who you are in your heart, rather than who you think you have to be. When in the state of allowing, actions emerge from inspiration, creative thought and Revelations. When you look at the chart below, it is easy to see the vast difference in terms of quality of life, between doing and allowing:

  DOO-DOO

  ALLOW

  Worry

  …

  Patience

  Have to

  …

  Want to

  Pressure

  …

  Flow

  Struggle

  …

  Ease

  Work

  …

  Art

  Formula-oriented

  …

  Creative

  Emergency

  …

  Emergence

  Burden

  …

  Joy

  Concrete thinking

  …

  Intuition

  Figure things out

  …

  Wait for clarity

  Rely on known skills

  …

  Rely on genius

  Make things happen

  …

  Watch unfolding

  Compulsive

  …

  Inspired

  Goal oriented

  …

  Design oriented

  Independent

  …

  Co-creative

  Push the river

  …

  Sit in the boat

  Rather than explaining the terms above, I ask instead that you simply look at the words on both sides and determine which side induces more peaceful feelings in you. Then consider how much of your life is spent on each side.

  You may remember Chapter Three, where we discussed the principles of communication and the necessity of practicing those principles. In the Disillusionment stage, we are often preoccupied with “doingness” and feel the need for a formula to follow. I outlined what may have appeared to be such a formula (the eight questions), but my last words on the subject were about surrender. Because although the practice of guidelines is important, its real purpose is to prepare the individual to follow the steps that a person in conscious relationship would follow naturally. In Soul Partnerships there is less and less doing, and more and more allowing. Communication does not follow a formula, but flows out of an intuition that fills the heart, an inspiration that lights up the mind, and an illumination that reveals our deepest feelings.

  Typically, actions are not appropriate when the doing comes from a need-based compulsion. In Soul Partnerships the need for specialness is subordinated to the call for what is best for all concerned. The actions that follow this call have a sense of flow and emergence rather than the sense of pressure and emergency that so often accompany the ego’s compulsion to do. In order to live your life in the experience of allowing, you must be able to determine what is influencing your choices of action. Since personal feelings, desires and compulsions are so effective at interfering with your connection to Soul, it is important to develop an ability to allow us to choose freely. This ability I call...

  ***

  IMPERSONAL DISCERNMENT

  ———————————

  “In matters great and small, the heart always knows best.”

  —Anonymous

  In the first three stages of relationship, many of us are largely preoccupied with the personal aspects of our existence. The misguided behaviours, the attractions, the fights, and the Victim-Persecutor-Rescuer entrapments all result from personal feelings related to the pursuit of needs. In those stages we think that the personal is always important. There is little room then for discernment or discrimination since all our decisions are influenced by personal bias. When you step across the threshold into Soul Relationship, you begin to recognize the impersonal nature of the soul, and its focus on a larger picture. Within that picture you can see love’s design for all human beings. In order for the soul to manifest that design in the world, sometimes the personal is willingly subordinated to what is more important—love. When love becomes the priority, personal requirements are handled in the most fulfilling way possible. Being able to determine the most loving course of action amidst all the personal influences, emotional biases, and self-doubts requires the development of your spiritual discernment.

  When I realized this, I became aware of how every true step forward in relationship involves making that choice for love. You can see this if you examine the past Power Struggles in your relationships. Each time you were willing to admit you were wrong, rather than stubbornly defending a position, you sacrificed what was of personal importance to you for the sake of love. Naturally the love benefited you, but when you were making that decision your ego could not see the benefit of your selfless choice, and would have defended its position to the death had its interests not been overshadowed by the power of your heart and soul. Every time you let go of an expectation, chose acceptance over blame, or expressed sincere appreciation instead of judgement, you chose what was important, rather than what seemed important, but was in fact only personal. The love was always there behind the scenes, waiting for you to choose it over everything else. It never pushed itself on you, never manipulated you, never took
away your free will. It simply waited for your invitation. I have created another chart to outline some of the differences between the personal and the important. Hopefully this will help you in situations where discernment is required:

  PERSONAL

  IMPORTANT

  Need to be special

  …

  Love

  False loyalties

  …

  Commitment to the Truth

  Self-concept