Emotion is energy in motion. At its most primal level it swings between extremes right or wrong, attracted or repelled. Emotion is the opposite to love. Highly emotional people are living in the most fundamental of human consciousness, whether they are fighting for religious causes, or in a relationship fighting to be right. This is emotional unconsciousness; "I've got to" do this and "I have to" do that, which are very violent and polarised positions. But nature will not allow this for long.
Nature destroys anything that does not fulfil its purpose, and staying primal, highly emotional, is not fulfilling natures purpose. The result is illness, nervous tension, stress, burnout, depression, disease and relationship failure. Natures weapons are so numerous, and all of them point to emotional stuckness. People who refuse to grow.
The most common way to avoid growth that love brings is by using blame. This moral high ground, emotional reaction and high expectation sits a persons mind high above the rocky swamps of real life authenticity, and is designed to avoid the love that comes from open communication. To stay dry while all else is wet, to keep the ego fully intact, avoid dealing with the stories and beliefs that they are attached to, and blame (judge) others for causing how they feel. Like religious fundamentalism, it is simply an unwillingness to let go of beliefs that come from a primal consciousness and are extremely one sided. Stories.
The more willing you are to see two sides of the coin, the less righteous you will be, and the less emotional your swings of emotion. Instead of "I am right" you might say "maybe we both are right" or you might say "I admit that I can only see my side of the story, and therefore I am wrong" - These honest and authentic statements of confessed righteousness free a person from the cave from which their consciousness is coming from, and steps them out into the possible realm of love. Being right, is the opposite to being in love. Then, as your emotional swings get smaller and smaller, less energy is spent on being right, and more energy is spent on growing and staying in love.
So, we use challenges to grow love. Every time we get challenged (emotionally negative) we process it, and turn it into love. That way, we stay in the honeymood. We can't just ignore the negative stuff because it builds up, causes abuse, and makes us resentful. We have to process the negative stuff so it doesn't block our love. It is like moving sand through an hourglass. In the top is the ego. In the bottom is love. We take the experiences at the top, everyday emotion, and move them to love. The more we process through the hourglass, the bigger our love can be.
Emotions block love. No relationship, sacred or otherwise, can thrive when a couple considers their emotions a foundation, because then they can't grow in love. You can't base your relationship with someone you love on feelings and emotions. It is a disaster, and you are like a leaf blowing in the wind. The wind (emotions) blow you left, you go left and shut down, they blow you right, and you are infatuated and happy. It is like a little child in a candy shop. No love can last in that whirlwind of emotional drama.
This is the choice you have. You can love people, but not be prepared to enter a relationship with them. That is a friendship. You can love someone and enter a relationship with them, and this means facing the challenges that a relationship brings in order to stay in love. But if you expect to be in a relationship with someone, and not face your ego, not confront your expectations and be revealed in your own judgments, then you do not really want love. You want peace, and in relationship, like nature, peace brings disease.
To be in relationship and hold love you need to stay vigilant to your ego. For example, our ego might want to see our partner as only a kind person. Our ego, if we empower it, says this is a good thing. We feel pleasure and this causes us to have a happy emotion. The ego is happy, because there is kind without cruel. But is this real, sustainable, true love, or is it the ego creating the grounds for a disaster in our relationship? The answer is obvious, projections and hopes are not love, they are our expectations, and expectations block love.
Infatuations mean we have half truth ideals and these are our emotional projections onto our beloved. That is not a true love, not love at all, just our emotional projection. In other words, infatuations make us blind to real love. We take our stories, our religious expectations, we take our reactions to our parents and build a model of who we want to be in love with. Then we say we are in love if we think this person matches our made up model. This emotional infatuation means we are having an affair with a fantasy of our beloved, not really accepting them for who they are. We mistake it for love and the confrontation of those expectations is called "growth".
Long term relationships cannot be based on this projection of fantasy, or delusion. In reality, all people have two sides. The more a person projects their "goodness" on you, the more they have mastered hiding their "badness", however, in the long term it will surface. Some people learn how to hide their other side, and get under your "half life" radar. This radar is looking for half a person, the good half, and as long as your illusions are justified, you can love them. This is the emotional definition of love, but it is false love, not real. No man or woman is half. They only present half because your projection won't let them in if they were real and showed you both halves. If they did, you would throw them out, because it would challenge your ideas, your expectations. You get what you want in the short term, the fantasy, but in the long term you get reality, and all your complaining, anger, blame and therapy won't fix the problem. But there is no problem to fix except your illusion of real people.
To say, "I love you because you are kind", is the ego speaking. Firstly, because kind has both good and bad in it, which you wont see until later. Secondly, you are assuming that there can be a half person in your life, kind but not unkind. So, we have half information and have an emotional upper. This is not love; it is a happy thought called the honeymoon. Sadly it will not last unless you are prepared to do some process on your expectations. There is nothing wrong with your beloved. You, your mind, your judgements, your expectations are at fault. You can blame them all you want, but this is not true love. And remember, how you treat others is how you treat yourself. How can you love yourself if you can't accept yourself? You'll end up your whole life in confession or asking forgiveness for being human. Is that self love, ashamed of who you really are?
This is emotional way of life is all very obvious when I take people trekking in the Himalayas of Nepal. They bring their way of thinking from back home, and try to apply it to walking up the side of steep hills. Their emotions take charge and at the bottom of the hill, they are enthusiastic, infatuated, brimming with excitement. But the hill is so long, that excitement turns to disbelief and frustration (the honeymoon is over). So, about 1 hour into the climb, the ego, being dualistic, swings to the other side, and our emotions "go downward", to balance the "upward emotion" of the first hour. People start to complain about the whole stupid hill, the boots hurt, legs ache. When the ego goes into emotional resentment it uses blame so that it doesn't feel stupid, and after 10 minutes blaming the bad path, the steep hill, neither of which really cares, they blame me.
Gradually the swings of emotion get shorter, from 1 hour down to 1 minute. An internal war begins, "Yes I can do it" to "No I can't make it" and finally, every step, "Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no." The brain is going mad, swinging, and just when it is ready to surrender, something else comes over them. The ego gives up and the emotions fall away. That ego which drives us in city life is just no use here, and we get a sense of spirit, our second wind.
Similarly, we start in a relationship by committing to climb this magnificent journey together. We jump in, full of tingles and bubbles, phone calls and emails, poems and flowers. Then we begin to close down. Emotions become more challenging than we thought, so we fight with our ego to change things, everything. For the first few years we are infatuated with our beloved. That is quite normal. It drives our sexual energy because nature thinks you are having babies. But then, you get resentful.
Infatuation breeds resentment. So then for the next years you start resenting them. Then after seven years or so, which we call the 7 year itch, you feel real love, balanced love but not emotional love. You loose the infatuation so you think it's over. But this is not over, you have finally found real love. Ambivalence means you have finally come the full circle, back to the beauty of authentic communion. Now you can have sacred love, because now it is not hormones racing, emotions infatuating, intellect projecting. Now, you can rest in love.
This means that to satisfy those primal elements of yourself, those elements that were so happy when you first met, you'll need to create them consciously. You'll need to know how to get your partner infatuated for a sexy night. You'll need to know how to get hormones racing. This is romance and it the essential ingredient of a long term relationship. Infatuation might have kick started your love relationship, but when all that settles down to true love, then your primal desires and needs have to be fed consciously. They don't go away, not even when you are 100 years old. Even then, a lover must know how to infatuate their beloved for a night.
It is inevitable in a relationship that is growing, that the infatuation that drove you together in the honeymoon period dies. This is not a time to part. No, it is a time to celebrate the beauty of a new level of love. Sacred Love. It has to because you want sacred love, not projections to bind you. But couples think because they are not excited by their lover, it is over. No, it is just ready to begin if we can get out of the cave consciousness and into sacred love.
So then, to grow in relationship, we can't remain a victim of circumstance. Otherwise, we or our partner are going to end up complaining that the passion went out of it. We'll be acting like cave people or like dogs, running around having affairs to keep our libido happy. Either that, or we simply resign ourselves to living an unromantic life. Dispirited at home and punishing everyone we know at work because of it. You don't run, you grow and take the bull by the horns. You learn to create those romantic moments, you create little peaks of infatuation. In order to move deeper in love, you need to keep the primal parts of you happy so they can liberate you for higher love.
Many people think that growing in love is not sexy, they think it is spiritual and they think spiritual is not sexy. But if the foundations are not poured, the building collapses. To grow in love to higher levels of love, you don't let go of the lower levels, you satisfy them. So sexy, romantic, infatuated (from time to time), values and more underpin the higher realms of love. However, instead of playing victim and complaining about your relationship, you know that nobody can do to you more than you do to yourself.
You can make your life as sexy, romantic and happy as you choose. You just need to get beyond victim and blame. Read the chapter "love is a lifestyle" and see just a few of the ways you can create passion and romance anytime you choose. It is important. Because it doesn't always take years to move from infatuation to sacred love. It can take days. And if you sit back being all spiritual or playing the victim (like he's just not into me) then, your love life and relationship is not going to take you to the magnificent place it can take you. Devotion, romance, authenticity, success, happiness, family and dedication do not come to you, they come from you. This is growth in love.
Chris Walker is a world leading change agent, an environmentalist and author of more than 20 books. Born and bred in Australia, he consults to people and organisations throughout the world on improved relationships, health and lifestyle through the application of the Universal laws of Nature. The result he offers is that we stay balanced, share loving relationships, work with passion, enjoy success, and live our personal truth. To learn more about Chris?s work and journeys to Nepal, visit http://www.chriswalker.com.au
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