Personal Relationships
Lesson 4: More successful relationships
1. What Works for You, What Doesn't
2. Finding Love
3. What Are You Looking For?
4. Reactive Relationships
Exercise One
5. Cyclical Relationships
Exercise Two
6. Progressive Relationships
Exercise Three
7. Intimacy
8. Marriage
9. Sex, the Solution or the Problem?
10. Commitment and Faithfulness
1. What Works for You, What Doesn't
The fundamentals of relationships are: love, truth, and simplicity. These qualities are fundamentally empowering to you, both in relation to others and your self. They are creative and progressive, and they are the basis for true success in relationships. They are qualities of the real true self in you.
Additional qualities which work in relationships include honesty, trust, integrity, nonviolence, respect, commitment, responsibility, and faithfulness. These qualities only arise from love, truth, and simplicity — they depend upon a willingness to accept the simple truth, with love, and to relate from there.
The very great importance of all of these fundamental qualities is that they work. They give you a place to come from, a foundation, for successful relationships. And they give you a way to get back to having your relationships work, if you ever leave that place.
Your relationships will only give you what you want and need when they are based in these qualities. If you do not appreciate and cultivate these finer qualities, and have true love and respect, relationships can degenerate into conflict and ultimate separation, and become a battleground of selfish egos.
A relationship works only when it is a meeting of two true selves.
The alternative to a relationship which truly works, is one which doesn't work, or one which supports ego selfishness — which is always destructive. There are enough examples of relationships on shaky grounds, and ones which have ended, to make it a necessity to establish relationships on a more solid foundation.
Can you see that something deeper and more true than emotion, past conditioning, or ego is needed for a relationship to have a true, stable, foundation?
What keeps you removed from the highest qualities of your true self is most often found in the form of resentment — which is of the ego. Resentment closes your own heart. The way you accept or hold on to resentment is by erroneously telling yourself it is justified. But the truth is, resentment doesn't do you any good. It interferes with your ability to truly love or to experience any of the finer qualities of the true self in your relationships.
True love and respect only find expression when there is no resentment. Choose to give up resentment, now. You don't have to like everything that has ever happened to you; but, hating it, resenting it, only keeps you filled with hate. Your relationships cannot truly work when you are filled with hate — instead, your relationships come to nurture the hate in you, not the love.
Realize, the identity you take on out of resentment is not really you — it is an ego identity which displaces you from your real self, and which feeds the "hate self" in you. If you want to have your relationships truly serve you, especially your relationship with your own self, you need to give up resentment.
"Bad feelings" always accompany "ill will" or resentment. However much you resent, that is how much love, truth, simplicity, and self is lost to you. You cannot simultaneously hold on to resentment and upset feelings and be in a place of calmness and peace with your self.
You can learn to be centered in your true self, and act from there, always.
The result is that your relationships will fundamentally become based upon the higher qualities within you — to the extent that you and the person you relate to are willing to forgo egotistical illusions and embrace a higher reality.
Until you do, until you let go of resentment and bad feelings, the inner conflict you may experience will influence you and all of the choices you make in life, work, and relationships — you will act out those feelings.
2. Finding Love
Would you know what love was if you found it? How do you recognize love?
Whether you've experienced it yourself or not, we've all seen young teenagers holding hands, kissing, acting as if they were in love. This feeling can come at a young age. But, is it real love?
We've all seen adults who seem to be in love, who are romantic, passionate, and excited to be together. But, is this real love?
What do people who get married out of "love," and then divorce out of hate, really know about love? It is far too common in our society.
What is commonly called "love," is a feeling, an emotion. And when a person feels something they believe is love, they really tend to think it's love. They think, "This is it."
Dating, meeting people, searching for that special someone who generates that feeling within you, is the way we find "love." Or is it?
When you think about what people call "love," you realize that love doesn't have a whole lot to do with it. People feel "good," loving things that are not good for them at all. So, what are they feeling, if not "love"?
They may be feeling a kind of magnetic pull, social conditioning, desire, fantasy, imagination, illusion, delusion, fascination, obsession, seduction, excitement, emotionalism, pleasure, active hormones, sexuality, romance, infatuation, attraction, comfort, acceptance, lust, egotism, possessiveness, control, or loss of control. All of this is mistakenly interpreted as "love" by almost everyone.
The questions we need to ask ourselves, when we label something as "love," are: "What, exactly, is it that we are loving?" And, "What do we imagine we are getting from someone or something outside us, labeled "love"?"
Do sports fans really love their idols? Is that real love, or is it a form of obsession? Do people really love movie stars and idols? Is that love, or is it a form of obsession? The fact that there may be endless television programs, magazines, and other media catering to this type of delusion does not make it real, or real love. Is the "love" that movie stars have for each other real, either in their movies or in their real lives? Apparently, not. They divorce at least as often as everyone else. It is just an illusion of a "perfect love" which the media endlessly broadcast, which erroneously programs people who have no idea what real love is.
You may be deceiving yourself by waiting to fall in love, or waiting for romance, or an ideal partner, before being willing to know the love in you, to come from love, and express your love. Love — your love — is there already, in you, and is not given to you by, or created by, someone else.
Love is so much simpler than all that. It is not an illusion being sold to you by anyone, especially what you often see in the media.
You have to be willing to see what isn't love, if you wish to know what is love. Love is not external stimulation. Love is a quality of your inner being, a feeling of wholeness and aliveness, a sense of completeness, a feeling that you have found what you are looking for within you. It is the sense of goodness you have within you, which seeks positive expression. And it is the appreciation of these qualities in another person, as well.
3. What Are You Looking For?
Have you found what you are looking for in relation to others? Do you knowwhat you are looking for? Do you think you will recognize it when it comes along? How? Do you have a lot of preconceived ideas or images in your mind as to what relationships should be?
Are you looking for love, appreciation, acceptance, caring, joy? What do you find of value in you, which you are looking for in others as well? What do you feel you are missing? Are you seeking it from someone else?
There are many things we may seek in relation to others, ranging from things that are least true to who we truly are — such as the pressure to have a sexual relationship, regardless of our long-term interest in someone — to the things that are most true to who we are, such as long-term love, support, sharing, and growth to be more than we are.
The most important levels of interaction and fulfillment with another person are the least obvious.
The most important aspect of all relationships is what is happening on the subtle inner level, not the gross outer level. The grossest level is physical or sexual. More subtle and of greater impact than the physical level is the emotional and mental level. Finally, there is the most subtle level of all, the spiritual level.
People sometimes talk about finding their "soul mates." That is a term to describe a feeling of familiarity with someone, on a deeper level than the physical or emotional or mental levels. People sometimes feel as if there is a meeting of "souls" with certain people in their lives, perhaps only one. And it need not be a spouse. It could be another relative, a child, or your dearest friend. There is something that just "clicks" between you, a knowing of the other person, what they think, what they feel, what they need. And it has nothing to do with the gross outer level, physical appearance, or sex.
Without trying to promote the idea of "finding your soul mate," it is still helpful to realize that such deeper relationships do exist. And, if they exist for other people, perhaps they exist for you, too. The idea is, basically, if you wish to have a deeper level of interest, interaction, and compatibility with someone, you need to go beyond the grossest physical level, and seek a more spiritual or soulful relationship. Think "soulful," not "soul mate. "Soul mate" implies that there is perhaps only one person in the world who you may be compatible with or able to truly love or be loved by. That limiting concept means your every interaction with everyone else is bound to be less than satisfying, or less than loving. And, if you wish to have successful relationships, that probably isn't satisfactory to you. In fact, you can have deeper, more meaningful, more loving, and more rewarding relationships with many people. You just need to know what to look for, and what you have to give.
And, you have to know what not to look for, the stuff that just gets in the way of a true loving relationship, true love, and a truly rewarding relationship. You have to be coming from the right place, and not deluding your self.
Physical and sexual attraction are often a match up of negative programming and ego, feeding self-delusions. Love is not, and cannot find expression in, lust. No matter what you might imagine, "what feels good" is not necessarily love.
Physically/sexually "falling in lust" comes from extreme neediness, weakness, or selfish desire, not love. It is the result of emotional trauma, ego excitement, social conditioning, and self-destructive, self-negating programming. The ego trip of lust, or using people out of selfishness, is contempt for true love.
Real love far transcends physical appearances or sensual desire. True love is based on a true appreciation of the highest in you and in others, not delusions. It is essential to separate the pure and noble quality of love, in the inner being, from the "bump and grind" of ego/emotional/sexual gratification.
Perhaps you have the mistaken impression that romance is love. Love can find expression in romance, but romance is not necessarily love. Romance is a matching up of two people's illusions about each other — who you want each other to be, and who you are not. Sooner or later you will be disillusioned by reality if you relate on the superficial level of ego, emotion, sexuality, romance, or appearance.
Do you fall for appearances? There is a big difference between catering to someone's ego (or having your ego elevated by someone) and real love. The more ego, the less space there is for the true self, and true love, in you.
4. Reactive Relationships
Reactive relationships are the least workable, least enjoyable, least rewarding, and least loving relationships.
Relating successfully means choosing love, being in love, staying in love, and growing in love, within your own self. If you prefer not to use the term "love" in characterizing relationships with others, think in terms of uplifting and progressive interaction, with a creative, productive, corrective flow of energy.
There is a need to learn relationships skills which allow the presence of love, which protect love, and which do not drive away love. Relationships work to the degree you have learned to relate with loving cooperation. You have to learn, practice, and master the most workable, progressive ways of relating.
The ways of relating which you have already learned in life come from others' examples, and are probably no more workable for you than they have been for them. Conditioned patterns of relating fail to keep relationships progressing; they ultimately produce greater conflict, separation, and less love in you.
There are three ways of relating that you may have experienced or learned: (A) reactive, (B) cyclical, and (C) progressive. The reactive way is the least workable; the cyclical way is a bit better; and the progressive way is the most workable. You may, perhaps, experience each of them at various times.
The least workable way of relating is the reactive way, in which you do nothing progressive from your side. The relationship interaction looks like:
cooperation ←——→ conflict healing/growth
The reactive way generally involves a lot of conflict, some cooperation, but no healing. You just alternate between cooperation and conflict. There is a sense that the relationship just isn't going anywhere. Without healing or growth, a relationship can only serve as a breeding ground for further emotional upset.
When you have not learned an effective way to heal the emotional needs or hurts which come up in relationships, you function this way by default. You lose your own center — love — while reacting to other people's behavior. You then experience varying degrees of frustration, misery, disharmony, and upset in you.
Exercise One: Take a moment to consider a relationship that follows this reactive pattern. Simply allow yourself to be aware of that tendency to bounce back and forth between getting along and fighting. Notice what comes of that behavior. Does it produce love, growth, and healing? Where have you seen or learned that behavior in your life? Do you think there might be a better way to relate?
Reactiveness usually happens if you do not know how to remain centered in your self. If you are reactive you let other people's behavior emotionally upset you.
Reactiveness and resentment are played out in a variety of ways, none of which works, including: attacking, defending, screaming, withdrawing, crying, blaming, and emotional loving or "making up." Nothing is gained, and real love is lost.
You begin to feel dissatisfied. Whatever "harmony" or "progress" exists is really not on the level of the self; it's superficial, meaningless, unsatisfying or somehow not true to you. You might feel that you are moving in different directions. You become conditioned to emotional reactions, unloving feelings.
The level of loving cooperation becomes less evident, or harder to get to, or not worth it. Either conflict grows or else you learn to ignore each other, and are no longer "there" for each other. Such a relationship tends to stagnate or deteriorate, and may lead to abusiveness, turmoil, separation, or just apathy.
5. Cyclical Relationships
A slightly better way of relating than the reactive way is the cyclicalway. This is how it often looks:
cooperation ——→ conflict
———→ healing/growth
←————————————————
In this way of relating, you cyclically go from cooperation to conflict to healing/growth, back to cooperation, and so on. "Healing/growth" means resolving issues on emotional, psychological and other levels, and growing within you.
When you know how to heal your emotional needs or hurts, you can face the issues, clear your feelings, release the emotional upset, and find a common level of harmony, healing, and satisfaction. This takes love and understanding.
You may start with cooperation, but then some antagonistic or disharmonious element arises. You may then experience some reactiveness, conflict, fighting, arguing, or a lot of emotion coming up. After damage has been done, you move into the process of healing emotional needs or hurts, and get back to a place of love.
Notice the varying amount of time delay (and suffering) until a person may be willing to, or able to, come back to a place of love in their own self, and experience love and understanding. Often, the only impetus is the pain of upset.
Exercise Two: Take a moment to consider a relationship that follows this cyclical pattern. Simply allow yourself to be aware of that tendency to bounce back and forth between getting along and fighting, and "making up." Notice what comes of that behavior. Does it produce love, growth, and healing? Where have you seen or learned that behavior in your life? Do you think there might be a better way to relate?
Depending upon the amount of conflict or emotional upset that has occurred, and the quality of the healing process, you may still continue to experience various degrees of upset and disharmony in the relationship, or emotional aftershocks.
What may happen in time, in this cyclical mode, is that you may feel that you are just going round and round in your relationship. Emotions flare up and recede, over and over. Over time, your conflict may get progressively worse, if you develop the habit of emotional upset, arguing, fighting, and resentment.
This form of relating can become more and more like the reactive kind; and you might not feel that the highs are worth the lows. The main problem with this way of relating is that it includes, and accepts, unnecessary conflict.
Fighting, conflict, ego, and emotion are erroneously accepted and become a structural part of the relationship. Conflict may even become the dominant factor, rather than loving cooperation and healing. Love may be lost over time.
6. Progressive Relationships
At this point, you may come to realize that conflict is largely unnecessary, and destructive in a relationship. A much better solution is the progressiveway of relating. It works like this:
conflict
cooperation
healing/growth
←————————————→
Notice that the progressive way includes cooperation and healing, but not emotion-based or ego-based conflict. Cooperation and healing work for you when you learn how to relate without conflict. Don't imagine that conflict works for you, or you will act it out in your relationships rather than eliminating it.
Relating in terms of opposition and conflict is unworkable in a true loving relationship. It is necessary to learn how to create a higher level experience of loving cooperation and harmony — out of love and harmony — not out of conflict. What is necessary is non-acceptance of emotional exploitation or upset.
In the progressive way of relating, you practice cooperation and healing. You learn to gain greater progress and more loving cooperation, and heal your deeper needs — without fighting. You just don't invite conflict, enjoy conflict, or waste time or energy in self-destructive conflict. This is a choice you make.
Most conflict occurs between competing egos, not true selves. To the extent that you can get your ego, pride, emotion, and past programming out of the cycle, you can bypass a lot of unnecessary pain, suffering, and unloving behavior.
What is meant here is learning to relate in the right way — not avoiding or ignoring what is wrong. A person will still experience conflict with what is wrong, but they can respond to it in the right way, without being emotionally drained, without having any ego investment, without being displaced from self. This requires awareness in the present moment to overcome the habit of conflict.
Of course, nothing here is intended to suggest that it is possible to make any and every relationship work. There are many exploitive and abusive relationships which need to come apart. But, it may be possible to overcome the unproductive habit of fighting in an otherwise truly loving and progressive relationship.
Exercise Three: Take a moment to consider a relationship that follows this progressive pattern. Simply allow yourself to be aware of the choice that can be made to cooperate and heal, without engaging in unnecessary fighting, conflict, or drama. Consider what comes of that behavior, in terms of love, growth, and healing. Where have you seen or learned that behavior in your life?
The most successful, healing, creative, and enjoyable way of relating must be learned. It goes against most people's past experience, conditioned forms of relating, present habits or expectations. The very idea of not fighting or suffering emotional and mental abuse or anguish, may appear "idealistic."
Ultimately, you need to realize that conflict, fighting, antagonism of any kind, is not necessary in a true loving relationship. But, be sure that you do not compromise what is right, good, and true, for the sake of avoiding conflict with someone. Do not favor a habit of weakness, or giving in just to avoid conflict.
If you merely try to avoid conflict with others, you may suppress your feelings and intensify the situation or your own upset. Rather, you have to practice being calm and nonreactive and remain centered in your self. This is the only way to relate in a progressive way — with love — to see and do what is really right.
The essence of progressive relating is love and healing, allowing the corrective power of love. When you learn to come from love, to stay in love, and to not allow unnecessary conflict, you can begin to relate progressively. You can grow in loving cooperation, and develop greater joy and wholeness within you.
7. Intimacy
Intimacy acknowledges the love and unity which can be found at the basis of true loving relationships. It allows you to discover the deeper levels of mutual caring and sharing which are available in your self, in relation to another.
True intimacy is more than just affection or appreciation of another; it is a deeper process of opening up and culturing of the heart, which leads you to greater love in you. Intimacy must come from real love, and grow with love. It takes time to develop the friendship, trust, and respect essential to intimacy.
Intimacy is a sharing of your inner being, your self. In the absence of true love (or in the presence of ego, emotion, or self-destructive programming) much vulnerability and hurt ensues. Intimacy requires love, not sex; it must not involve using someone or being used, sexually or selfishly. This only violates the inner being and eventually destroys trust; intimacy requires trust.
Love requires discernment, not a mindless acceptance of others as they are — or as they would like you to think they are. You need to be more aware than that.
Be cautious of intimacy. You are letting someone into your private space, your private life — into your boundaries. Some people have the false notion that if they get rid of their boundaries, they can be close to others, get all the sex they want, and suffer no down-side. But, there are many dangers to such a wanton openness, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
Other persons have a harder time with intimacy. Too much "stuff" comes up when they get close to another person, especially on a deeper level. A physical or sexual relationship always has many deeper issues, no matter how readily they may have been suppressed, ignored, or unresolved in the past. They come up to be resolved. They come up as a result of intimacy — it isn't intimacy which is the problem. Rather, it creates a space for deeper issues to come up so that they may be resolved, released, understood, healed, and gotten past.
The self-negating programming to seek love from others sets you up to be used by them. Love and trust must be real and mutual, to develop a loving relationship. It is essential that you do not look for or give emotional love or ego support, or rationalize an exploitive relationship as "taking the good with the bad."
In an intimate relationship, upset feelings, hurts, and needs can come up after trust and acceptance are established — when someone is "there" for you. You need to realize for your self whether true love is actually there, or if it is a matter of emotional use, abuse, or exploitation. Only when you have true love, and proper understanding, can emotion and negative patterns be safely released.
Have you gotten close with someone, but felt disappointment in not finding true love in them? Don't make the mistake of trying to make them love you, or imagining that they love you because you might love them. You have perhaps experienced that the love you need is not found in another person — it's in you. Realize that love is in you; it is not something you get from someone as a reward for either loving or accepting them. In fact, you need not try to draw love from someone, or expect them to give love to you, ever.
Love can only be given freely. Without this understanding, you might blame the other person, or feel guilty, or inadequate, or undeserving of love, when you don't get it. Or, worse, you might try to draw "love" out of them, and begin to act in a way that is not true to your self. Love is not love unless it is given freely, with absolutely no element of selfishness, neediness, control or manipulation. Don't fall into the trap of feeling inadequate or undeserving of love.
Intimacy can bring up fear of rejection; it hurts to have your true inner self or your love rejected. You can only open yourself up to someone when there is safety and trust, not selfish interest. Love and openness of the heart does not mean letting yourself be used, abused, taken advantage of, or emotionally exploited.
You have to be true to your self and what you know in your heart is right. Intimacy doesn't mean giving in to someone else's expectations, pressures, or desires. Someone who wants you to love them, when they do not love themselves or you, will drain the very life energy from you to support what is wrong in them.
Seducers, or selfish manipulators, know how to pressure someone (especially emotionally) so that they will resent the pressure, feel guilty for resenting, and then find themselves attracted to a person they actually hate. A person may feel compelled to be in a relationship, or even marry, out of guilt or upset.
You may also feel pressured from negative programming within you, or social programming outside you, to act in a way which is not in your best interests. Be aware of the programming to "be like others." Listen to your own conscience and be true to your self; never reject your conscience to be accepted by others.
If you feel that you are ready for an intimate relationship, then be friends. Be true friends, and do not take advantage of the relationship to use each other, selfishly. Trust comes only over time; and, it takes time to know what someone's true motives are in relation to you. Do not be tempted to shortcut the path of the heart by way of sexual gratification. Intimacy is deeper than that.
8. Marriage
Marriage is ideally the product of true friendship. It is a true compromise: two people, seeking a greater unity of being, in the wholeness of love, each surrender their self-interest and self-importance in order to experience a greater unity. Yet friendship, intimacy, and marriage do have their pitfalls.
The question that needs to be addressed and hopefully answered is: "If marriage is really made in heaven, then why does it so often end in hell?" At best, half of all marriages end in divorce (which is rarely quick or painless). What is it that countless millions of people are doing wrong? What can't they see, or what is it that they think they see which for some reason is not there in reality?
Very often (more often then you may care to think), marriage is really "mirage," and it fails to work for the same reasons that a mirage in the desert never helped anyone. When a person is very needy (sometimes desperate) for something, they imagine that they can see it or almost feel it — whether water or "love."
We are so lacking in love, and so displaced from our selves, that we follow the "promising" path of ego and emotion, seeking "love" that evaporates as quickly as water in the desert. Love and marriage are often a promise, unfulfilled. Our illusions and fantasies encourage or perpetuate a marriage which is a lie.
Do not mistake emotional excitement for love, as in thinking that someone who really makes you mad loves you a lot, or someone who "excites" you "loves" you. Marriage is not an emotional relationship meant to keep your illusions and ego alive, but a commitment to the highest in you, to nourish your true self.
Unless there is true love, a surrendering by both to the one, there is no union and no true marriage. Most marriages are not true, workable or fulfilling. This is why the divorce rate nears the marriage rate and why divorce is brutal; the person we most imagined would "save" us ultimately is the one who hurts us most.
Actually, it is extremely rare for two true selves to marry at all. More often, there is merely a "joining" of two egos, or a true self and an exploitive ego.
Marriage is often entered into as a result of: cultural programming, emotion, ego, pride, selfishness, appearances, monetary considerations, convenience, social or parental or peer pressure, pregnancy, parental abuse, the promise of available sex, or the conditioning to have children and feel "worthwhile."
Can you see how all of these influences lead to marriage for the wrong reasons?
A marriage for the wrong reasons will often stay together for the wrong reasons or come apart for almost any reason. When it stays together, growth is unlikely. Marriages entered into due to false programming, emotion, and ego can become enormously exploitive, abusive, or violent — and that may even be accepted.
The social conditioning and programming influences of alcohol, drugs, sex, and "emotional love" set a person up to be exploited by exactly the kind of person they need to avoid. Parental abuse or rejection can separate you from your true self, diminish self-esteem, and condition you to accepting abuse from others.
There is never a good enough excuse for accepting abuse (emotional, mental, physical, or otherwise) in any loving relationship, especially a marriage. A marriage license is not a license to abuse, or a contract to accept abuse. Do not listen to those who say that a marriage has to be "for better or worse."
Marriage must be a choice to do what is true to your self. You simply have to be your self, not what anyone else expects or desires you to be. This does not mean keeping a selfish ego identity, but the opposite — giving up selfishness, pride, a life dictated by egotistical desires and choices, and self-delusion.
The value of marriage is in cultivating true love, healing and growth of the true inner self, and the elimination of false ego. When these attributes are missing from a marriage it just doesn't work, or worse, it is self-destructive.
Many people leave a marriage without having learned anything; they go off in search of the same illusions that they had the first time around. They "vow" to find someone who will cherish and never disturb them or their illusions. There is always someone better at reassuring ego, pride, and emotion, loving and feeding ambition, lying, telling you how wonderful you are. Such a person is not really a better marriage partner, or even a friend, but only a manipulator. Yet, most people would rather have comfortable illusions than face the truth.
Ego keeps people from ever making right choices. In fact, many people feel more "deserving" of love the more selfish they have learned to be. They may even feel that they can't "get" enough from others, that it's hard to find someone to take care of them and their "needs" the way they deserve. Without love, they only seek to succor their own ego, or hope to "fill" themselves with someone else's love. This doesn't work. It is marriage in name only, not substance.
Marriage is a real opportunity to learn loving cooperation, based upon unity, harmony, oneness of being, and true love — which are all the same thing. You can learn how to get past conflict, heal deeper needs, and get back to the love in you. Learn to work as one, on the same team, coming from the same place.
It is important to marry in love — not haste. Be sure that you do not only have a superficial agreement on the level of social, career, or cultural "values." These are often just a matter of conditioning and have very little real value in promoting a relationship that is lacking in more spiritual values of true love and understanding of life. You can love a lot of people who would not be suitable marriage partners. Look for a common purpose, if you want to grow together.
Further, learn the relationship skills that help keep a good marriage growing in love. Give up any resentment, practice being centered in your self, and act from there. This is the basis of a marriage that will stand the tests of time, changing outer conditions, external pressures, and personal responsibility.
9. Sex, the Solution or the Problem?
Almost everyone has very real problems with sex, none of which is as superficial and meaningless as the quality or quantity of pleasure derived. Sex is one of the greatest sources of confusion in relationships — and in one's self. There are three very far-reaching problems to overcome in relation to sex:
1. You may be confused about your own sexual identity or act out your early trauma, abuse, or sexual programming in your relationships, self-destructively, compulsively, addictively. Your sexual identity or behavior may be fallacious, resulting from bonding at birth, trauma, abuse, or erroneous sexual programming.
2. You may be so programmed or socially conditioned in your sexual behavior that you fail to see that sex does not really fulfill you or make you "better" or "more," but instead often makes you less, or degrades you. You may not see how sex makes your partner less, or realize how abusive and manipulative sex can be.
3. You may addictively use sex to "prove" yourself by conquest, seduction, or by letting others use you — which only serves your ego and/or theirs. You may mistakenly glorify the process of ego-emotional gratification, and think it is "love," or rationalize the addiction as "good" because it makes you feel "good." In this way, sex overshadows or blocks true love, and causes great insecurity.
Of course, most people imagine that sex is "good," as long as it takes their mind off of their problems, reduces their awareness, and makes them "feel good." The hypnotic conditioning and programming effect of sexual pleasure combined with emotional love strongly overrides conscience and the truth in oneself.
Sex is very often used to cover up weakness and failing, and all of the guilt, lack, hurt, hate, and trauma you may have inside you, with false "loving" reassurance. Sex is one of the most powerful ways of renewing the ego, the "non-you" in you; you imagine how wonderful and "good" you are, while preserving what is wrong in you. In fact, many people are obsessed with sex, even in their 70s and 80s, because they remain so empty and devoid of love, and they still have the illusion that sex will make them "better." Such illusions about sex are carried to the grave.
There is a great difference between true love and sex; one is essentially healing — a solution to problems — while the other is mainly a source of problems, and often the opposite of healing.
This is what sex is most often used for, to lose ourselves in it, like drugs, alcohol, anything which "takes our pain away" — the pain of the emptiness within us, the lack, the hurt, the fear, the loss of self. It provides the same false ego illusions and escape from true change and growth as any addiction.
Sex is the domain of conditioning, loss of self, hypnotic ego elevation, and unsafe escape from reality. All of the experts and authorities who will tell you that the only problem with sex is not having enough orgasms or pleasure, or leaking condoms, have lost themselves in their genitals and want you to, too.
The traditional "experts" on the problems of sex are too often the ones who have the most problems with it, who are lost in it. In losing themselves in the problem, they imagine that they have found the "solution." Whether they are well-intentioned or ignorant, they can only enable you to be just like them.
You don't need authorities to tell you what is right; you need to know and do what is right your self. The path of blinding your self to inner conscience, the path of egotistical conquest or seduction, the path of ego reinforcement, the path of glorifying your failing and weakness, is that of self-destruction.
10. Commitment and Faithfulness
Commitment is dedication to what is right and good and true — moment by moment. Commitment isn't unchangeable, determined in the past and then unquestioningly perpetuated into the future. It takes present moment awareness to discriminate between what is really true for you versus what is merely a trap of past programming or conditioning. Commitment is a true, conscious, free choice.
Before you consider workable commitments, you need to consider whether you have any commitments that are not true to you.
Many people are unfortunately committed to things which will bring them great emotional pain and suffering in the future. They have a false sense of loyalty to any choice they made in the past, because: they do not want to acknowledge they were wrong (they have too much pride); they are unaware of being exploited or used (they are conditioned to expect that abuse); they are trying to merely perpetuate the past (because it is harder to change); or they don't know better.
Many people are similarly committed to ego illusions. The ego places emphasis on whatever feels "good." This produces false attachments, not true commitments.
Love is not a "fix-all" for wrong relationships. Successful relationships do not come from compromising with what is wrong, or selling your self out for the sake of "harmony," approval, or some other ego-emotional satisfaction or "need." That is not a true commitment.
As you become more aware, you will give up many commitments — to whatever is wrong, outside you — and align yourself more closely with what is truly right, within you. This shows a true commitment, to the highest good of all.
It is sufficient to have a commitment to what is right and good and true; no further emotional/ego investment or attachment or obligation is necessary.
Commitment is acting in accordance with true inner awareness of what is right — not past programming. Find a place of conscience and will, inside you. Do not abandon true choices because of some external difficulties. Seek a larger, long-term, perspective.
Commitments are most often forsaken out of resentment, feelings of anger and hurt, and lack of integrity. It isn't possible to be committed, or consistent in your choices, when you act out of resentment. Resentment cultivates ego and selfish desires; you lose sight of the commitments that are really true to you.
Faithfulness is a commitment to truth and honesty; it is an agreement to not abandon what you know to be right and good and true, for what is not. Be aware of commitments you have made, and realize the value in doing what is right, good and true. Realize this is a choice you make, not just a matter of conditioning.
Faithfulness is ultimately having faith in your choices and in your self, having an inner certainty in the truth, even though it might not be evident. Faith does not look for ego or emotional reassurance from others, out of doubt, fear, a feeling of lack, or pride — but looks within to find what is needed.
Faithfulness is ultimately remaining true to your own self, disallowing ego, doubt, or any programming to accept or exploit weakness. Faithfulness is not blind faith, but true inner awareness. It is trusting what you know in your heart is right, and giving up all self-deluding fantasies and false expectations.
If you imagine that you get what you need from others — anyone else — it is possible for you to imagine that you can get more of what you need, from someone else. Until you realize that what you are looking for — love, peace, joy, respect, or acceptance — needs to be found within you, you will mistakenly believe you can only get it from others. And you will go looking for a better "source." This is very self-deceptive and destructive of relationships. Realize, if you tend to think this way, you are pursuing illusions of having what you want, and will not likely find it elsewhere.
Commitment and faithfulness are basically commitments to your self, to honoring what is right, good, and true, and holding to it.