Personal Relationships
Lesson 5: Relationship problems
1. You Live With the Choices You Make
Exercise One
2. The Nature of Relationship Problems
3. Recognizing a Relationship Problem
4. Emotion: the Problem, Not the Solution
5. Emotional Addiction
Exercise Two
6. Escaping the Trap of Emotional Addiction
7. How to Deal with What is Wrong in the Right Way
Exercise Three
8. Changes Leading to Growth
9. What's Missing?
10. Past Relationships
Exercise Four
1. You Live With the Choices You Make
Relationships are, literally, the way you live with the choices you make. You can see the quality of the choices you have made — and continue to make — in the quality of your relationships.
Relationships already exist between everyone and everything; everyone and everything has an influence on everyone and everything else. There are co-existing relationships with spouses, parents, children, family, co-workers, peers, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. The more strongly you are influenced by conditioning and programming, the less aware you are, and the less likely you are to experience the truth of a relationship. You have to be aware, choose wisely, and foster true loving relationships where appropriate, and reject those relationships which do not truly serve you. Realize that you do make these kinds of choices, continually, in relation to others.
Relationships are, largely, a means by which we are conditioned and programmed, and subsequently act out that conditioning. Thus, relationships are often the domain of emotion, ego, conditioning and programming — not true love. They are often a means for playing out the wrong influences, the wrong behavior, and for becoming further and further removed from true love in your own inner being. In wrong relationships there is a continual reinforcement of emotion and erroneous programming as to what love is — until you become aware of the false conditioning and learn to break the pattern. Emotional addiction and addictive relationships are "learned" while young, but are often carried through life. They are the basis of terribly unloving relationships.
Exercise One: This is an exercise in
awareness. Allow yourself some time to be with the
following questions. Sit with them, and be aware of the
thoughts, feelings, and desires that come into your awareness.
Questions: Have you made relationships choices that did
not work out the way you might have hoped or expected? In
what ways did you compromise what you know to be right, good,
or true for you? Have you excused, allowed, or rationalized
what was hurtful or wrong?
Be aware of what is really happening in a relationship. You may experience self-destructive relationships as long as you do not know who you truly are in your own self or how to fulfill your own true needs. Relationships, including the typical emotional relationship, may actually suppress or oppress the true self, and represent a denial of love and self. The strong influence of negative programming is so pervasive, that unresolved, emotionally exploitive, or abusive patterns keep repeating — even when a person might not want them to, even with different partners.
Your relationships may produce harmony or conflict — not just on the level of differing attitudes, beliefs, desires, perceptions, or understanding, but on the deepest levels of being. The influence of programming and past conditioning is almost always contrary to making the right relationship choices. You may feel attracted to those with whom you are not truly compatible, and repelled by those with whom you would find harmony. There is a certain programming which can set up the most good-natured and loving person with the most selfish and unloving person, in an exploitive or abusive relationship.
2. The Nature of Relationship Problems
Some difficulties you may have with others originate with the other person, and some may originate with you. Notice how you still feel upset whether it is the other person or you who may be the source of the problem. What most people do is to simply blame the other person for whatever problems they are experiencing with them. You have to be very aware in relationships. It is often a mistake to try to "fix" problems on your end which actually have their origin in the other person; and, it is equally unworkable to deny problems which originate within you, when that is the case. You need to look deeply into the nature of problems.
Relationship problem are deeper than the superficial level of "emotional needs," "sexual fulfillment," or getting someone to "make you happy." These commonly experienced "lacks" are matters of conditioning, programming and ego, and have very little to do with the true inner self. Often, such "problems" are a "smoke-screen" to cover up deeper problems or incompatibilities between inner natures.
Those who have a good nature, or an essence of love in their inner being, will often find themselves: (a) emotionally exploited or abused by, (b) confronted by, (c) governed by, or (d) deeply in conflict with, those who do not have an essence of love in their being or those who are heavily programmed and unaware of the love in their being. Their inner natures are opposite to each other.
You have to be very aware, and discern clearly who and what you are dealing with in your relationships with others; take no one and nothing for granted. This includes the most unquestioned relationships (such as relatives) or the most "casual" (such as a neighbor). You need to learn to deal properly with all others, to firmly reject whatever is not right and good and true to you, and to accept only what is. Practice firmly rejecting what is wrong. And, learn to extract your self from your own self-destructive patterns of behavior — which reveal your own tendency to fail to deal properly with the wrong influence of others.
The classic age-old battle between what is right versus what is wrong, what is good versus what is evil, what is true versus what is false, is played out not only within each person, individually, but in all of their relationships with others as well. This "battle" is found underlying many relationship problems. It requires clear awareness to see the true nature of a person — beyond any illusions, programming, conditioning, or emotions — and then act accordingly.
When you see no wrong in others, there is something blocking what is right in you. If everyone is all right with you, you are very unaware; there is something in you which is finding harmony and agreement with the wrongness in others. If you embrace wrong relationships, and will not come to the truth in your own self, relationships become just a greater means of self-deception or self-destruction, with an endless variety of problems.
3. Recognizing a Relationship Problem
Basically, you can only deal with, resolve, or overcome problems when you can see them. Awareness is desirable; seeing a problem does not make it a problem, but leads you to see the truth which frees you from the problem. Contrast this with the mechanism of denial, which is the preference to deny that problems exits — to deny or see no wrong — rather than to accept responsibility for correcting what is wrong (or to at least respond to it in the right way) by actually doing what is right.
You are either aware of and acknowledge problems in a relationship, or you deny them (or go looking elsewhere for a "better" illusion). Denial only reduces your awareness, and diminishes your ability to recognize or resolve a problem.
Since there are so many people who are in denial, or who have lost connection with their true selves, there are always others to share delusions with — who will not see what is wrong in you, who will lie to you or help you lie to your self. In this way, you feel "happy" with your unconsciousness or negative programming. You may further have developed an ego mechanism which feels "good" when it is "stroked" or approved of by others, and "bad" when confronted by the truth of what is wrong. Instead, you need to learn to be happy when you become aware of what is wrong — this is the only chance you have to resolve it, and move in the right direction. You have to face what is wrong in you and others.
You can recognize a relationship problem whenever:
- you have any strong emotions, emotional "needs," attachments, upset, or dissatisfaction
- you are confused as to what is happening in a relationship, or possibly find your emotions overwhelming your thinking
- you have habitual or conditioned reactions, such that you are experiencing some form of limiting or self-destructive behavior
- you feel bad about things that have happened to you in your relationships with others, and you perhaps wish to resolve those feelings
- you have love in your relationships, but you also have conflict, upset, unloving feelings, or a lack of fulfillment in your self.
Again, it is not bad to be aware of a problem. Relationships problems (including those in relation to your own self) require self-referral, looking within your self to see what you need to do. Basically, you need to be aware of the problem, and remain emotionally uninvolved. Awareness and emotional reactiveness are not compatible. Emotion restricts your awareness and intensifies any problem.
Emotional upset is one of the clearest indications of relationships problems. The test of a relationship is whether you can remain in — and grow in — love, truth, peace, and happiness within your own self, or whether the relationship causes you to leave this place, or to lose your own self, or to begin to suffer.
4. Emotion: the Problem, Not the Solution
To solve a relationship problem, you first have to look within your own self, and see what you are bringing into the relationship. (Then, you may more clearly see what the other person's influence is, as well.) This takes some real practice, to divorce your self from all of the emotional influences which keep you unaware of just reacting to the other person out of habit, conditioning, programming.
Any emotional reaction blocks connection with your true self, and therefore connection to your true inner guidance and direction. Emotions, whether activated or suppressed, overshadow the truth that can be known by you. This is why emotions need to be either cleared, or explored — to determine their origin and what is anchoring them in place or activating them — and then released. You need not lose your self in a sea of emotions; just be aware of your emotions and learn to pull your self out of them. The result is intended to be a clearing out of emotional energies, and an inflow of new understanding.
Be aware of the energy or emotional content which motivates or influences your thoughts, feelings, and desires. Learn to be aware. Discriminate. And pull out of the grip of emotion. You will be amazed at how clearly you can see things, for perhaps the very first time. Do not mistakenly value or rely upon emotion, mistaking emotion for truth — they have very little, if anything, in common.
Emotion is a poor substitute for true awareness and the quiet centeredness necessary to know the truth within you. Emotions can't help you to realize your potential, direct your life, or even make a true decision.
Emotion is extremely hypnotic and distorting of your very perceptions, thoughts, desires, and behavior. And the more you react emotionally to being in an emotional situation, the more deeply you sink into it — like quicksand. The deceptive "emotional love" which may cause you to enter into relationships is not a true means for staying in them and growing. There are good and valid reasons for entering or leaving a relationship, but these are not included: your emotions, satisfying or perpetuating ego illusions, your desire for ego support, or your not learning the necessary skills to perceive or work out problems.
There are those people who proclaim that the only problem you may have in relationships is not having enough emotion or emotional love, or not being more dramatic about them. They are "selling" emotion, and are like the people who would say that the only problem with smoking is not having enough flavor in your cigarette, or that the only problem with sex is not getting enough of it. These are the purveyors or merchants of self-destructive behavior, who cater to your every emotional "need" like the pusher catering to every "need" of the addict. This is the trap of emotion: it makes you more emotionally "needy" and leads you to "dependence" and all kinds of self-limiting or self-destructive behavior.
5. Emotional Addiction
Emotional addiction is the basis of addictive relationships, or ones with undue emotional dependency, emotional reactiveness, or emotional upset or drama — none of which is necessary.
Emotions are an addiction, a trap in themselves. Have you ever tried getting out of the grip of fear, worry, anger, jealousy, guilt, hurt, or sadness? It doesn't matter much what you tell your self, emotion has a grip that won't let up, at least until much of your energy is spent. A person may have very strong conditioning or addiction to negative emotions when these emotions have been repeatedly activated, accepted, or suppressed in the past.
Perhaps less easy to recognize, because it feels "good" emotionally, is the trap of false emotional love or ego-based "joy." True love and true joy originate from within; they are not a product of thoughts, attitudes, or beliefs; they are not emotional reactions, but qualities of the true inner being. They expand your awareness of true inner harmony and wholeness. Emotions, on the other hand, reduce your awareness and govern your behavior via habit, mood, conditioning, and programming. Falling in emotional "love," as opposed to rising together in real love, can be like falling into a pit of seething emotions — including negative emotions — out of which it can be extremely difficult to raise your self. When you cannot control your emotions, or cannot pull your self out of them, then they control you. If emotions continue to control you, you come to erroneously depend upon them or accept them. Over time you can become addicted to emotions, and lose your self in the process.
Exercise Two: This is an exercise in
awareness. Allow yourself some time to be with the
following questions. Sit with them, and be aware of the
thoughts, feelings, and desires that come into your awareness.
Questions: Take a moment to think of a time when you
may have been emotional with someone. What feelings came
up? What did it feel like in your body; how was your mind
affected; how was your behavior affected? What part of you
was being activated in relation to them? Was there a feeling
of upset, or displacement from your calm center? In what
way? What do you want to be
different from the way you are or react,
emotionally?
People often lose themselves in their relationships as a way of not facing themselves or their own problems. Most people have this problem whether they are aware of it or not. It is very difficult to see this as the problem it is, instead of as an imagined "strength." The more readily people lose themselves in their relationships and embrace emotional dependency or addiction, the less connected they are to their inner being, the easier it is to deny what is wrong in them. The nature of any addiction is that it relieves you of the pain of realizing or facing the truth. Emotions cater to this self-deception; emotional attachment and self-destructive behavior is the end result. Rather than freeing you from your problems, emotions pull you more deeply into them. Once emotions get into your thinking, they cloud your thinking or distort the truth.
It is essential to truly get out of the trap, and not go from one emotionally addictive relationship to another — imagining that you are leaving all your problems behind when you leave the relationship. Do not merely change the allegiance of your emotions, or transfer your emotional attachments to someone or something that makes you feel "better." The habit of emotional reactiveness and dependency will soon reappear. Previously developed emotional bonds reattach themselves very quickly whenever they are given a chance to do so, whenever a person falls into the trap of emotion, or "emotional love." You can only love others, and your self — and do what is right — when you are emotionally unaddicted and emotionally unattached. Overcoming emotion itself is the key.
6. Escaping the Trap of Emotional Addiction
The key to recognizing and overcoming emotional addiction, emotional traps, and emotionally addictive relationships is to learn to be aware. Awareness and emotion are very different; and it is much better to come back to true awareness in your self by forsaking emotion than it is to lose your self in emotion. Before emotion overshadows your thinking or desires — in the brief instant when you are still aware and not emotionally reactive — you have to stand back. You have to refuse to be pulled into emotion, even if you feel as though you don't know how to act without emotion, or as if it is a tide which will go rushing by you. The whole idea is to let it go by you, and learn to not be moved by it or caught up in it. Emotional addiction is such an ingrained "habit" that you may feel uncomfortable if you simply refrain from it.
Notice the analogy to withdrawal symptoms from other addictions. You may feel empty, dull, lifeless, or powerless without this emotion. But, by disengaging from this inappropriate, overshadowing, and self-defeating behavior, you allow your self the opportunity to learn to act in a way that is true to your self, and find your true power. If you can be aware even for an instant, you can choose to reject the lie of emotions, the incessant pull or emotion/ego-based desires and behavior, and come back to your true self. Emotions are an illusory trap which you have the choice to not fall into — or to pull yourself out of.
Don't imagine that you can get anything positive from emotions. What may be mistaken as a "valuable" emotion is often just the opposite. For example, a person might say that they did something great out of fear, such as an act of heroism. The truth is, they did it out of courage, in spite of fear. The same is true of guilt and other emotions. Guilt doesn't keep you doing the right thing, it keeps you stuck in a pattern of doing the wrong thing. Be aware of that.
Emotions have a very subtle effect of tempting you to reject the truth or your own conscience, and instead to embrace the emotion. Take for example guilt, which provides the very temptation to do what will produce more guilt. Guilt obsesses a person and actually tempts them to eat what they shouldn't, drink what they shouldn't, or do what they shouldn't — as if to say, "You know you can't get your mind off of it, so just go ahead; you'll do better tomorrow."
Emotions often cause a person to do exactly the wrong thing just for the sake of satisfying the emotion or suppressing it (which also feeds the emotion). The continual nagging of emotion gnaws at you, reduces your awareness, then leads you astray. Notice how emotional love is a lie because it says that something outside you will fulfill you, that your source of love is outside you. Emotional love holds the false promise that it will satisfy your needs, it will comfort and console you in your time of need and be your ally. In reality, emotional love is the very temptation for you to fail to find true love in your self.
7. How to Deal with What is Wrong in the Right Way
Emotions are a complex mechanism of reaction which manifest effects on the feeling, thinking, physical and behavioral levels. The effect is always that of draining energy, reducing awareness, triggering habitual reactions, and blocking the resolution of a problem. Emotion, very simply, is the energy of the problem, not part of the solution.
Emotions are very prevalent in daily life, whether they are activated or suppressed. They become a motivating force behind wrong thinking and behavior in the most simple and innocuous ways, and in more tragic ways. It is important to deal with emotions properly in any problem, so that they do not enter into or become an erroneous "solution."
It's not that you can't have any emotion at all at any time, but rather you need to understand emotions and their effects, and minimize their influence as much as possible. Some people think that minimizing emotions is being "heartless," but in reality the opposite is true; emotion always takes you out of the love and truth in your own heart. People who rely on emotion are unaware of either the existence or enormous potential of the true inner being. When the inner self is free from emotional blocks, conditioning and reactiveness, it is empowered to express itself with great truth, love, and correct action.
The key to dealing with emotions is to be unemotional. In other words, the only way you can see emotions for what they are is to not be lost in them or reacting with them, or having them determine your actions or intentions. Emotional excitement is not the answer to any problem; it is merely a distraction from problems. Any apparent value in "pleasurable" emotions is temporary and fleeting and eventually leads to pain and suffering. Emotional reactiveness is like an open door, through which any disturbing emotion can enter to displace you from your true self and rob you of inner peace, joy and true inner direction.
Exercise Three: It may be helpful to visualize yourself
in a situation that tends to throw you out of your center,
before you are actually in it. This is like a
mental rehearsal, where you can practice not reacting
emotionally, as you might ordinarily tend to.
Take a few deep breaths, close your eyes, and begin by
seeing yourself surrounded and filled with a bright white
light. See or feel or think of the light clearing away any
upsets or dark clouds around you. See yourself as clear and
bright, calm and clear, inside. When you are ready, you may
begin to picture yourself in a situation, or with someone,
where you would ordinarily expect some emotional upset — a
temptation to react emotionally to what they say or do. See
the white light all around you, filling you, not allowing any
negativity or upset to enter. It is like a light dispelling
shadows; they simply disappear. See yourself in the
situation being calm and clear inside, without feeling any need
to be emotionally reactive. When you feel a tendency to
react, just let it pass by you. Don't pick it up or
grasp for it; don't hold on to it; don't try to find a
justification for it. Simply allow it to pass, like a
shadow. It has no substance; it is just a passing energy.
Let it go, and remain calm and clear inside. See yourself
standing back from the habit of reacting, remaining quiet,
calm, centered, clear.
When you are ready, you may open your eyes. As you
encounter situations that ordinarily would generate an
emotional reaction from you, practice seeing yourself in this
light, remaining calm and quiet and clear. And let any
tendency to be upset or reactive just pass by you. It
will. All you need to do is to wait and watch as it
passes. You will feel stronger, clearer, and brighter every
time you do this.
It may be easier to not be emotional where there isn't any external stimulus, prompting, or temptation to react emotionally — when someone isn't "pushing your buttons." But, this is a skill which must be learned: to not be emotionally reactive to those specific situations, people, and events which do tend to upset, irritate, or annoy you. It is only by practicing this skill that you develop true strength of character. What is meant here is being free from emotional reactiveness — and not mistaking suppressing emotions for letting go of them. Above all, do not practice being a martyr; but remove your self from as much negativity, abuse, and emotional exploitation as possible.
Find the courage to be free from emotion. The more aware you become, the more subtle influences of emotion you will see. You will notice how your thoughts, perceptions, and motivations have been shaped, influenced, or determined by your emotions. These realizations actually bring you closer to your true self.
8. Changes Leading to Growth
As you learn to let go of emotional reactions, you will simply be more authentically you. You may notice that you are more free from influences that might once have controlled or hurt you — and learn how to minimize fear, anger, hurt, upset, and suffering. By unplugging your self from the energy of emotion, you will discover the motivating force of true love. You can learn how to stand back from what is wrong, evil, or delusory, and act from a place of centeredness in your self, in a way that is right, good and true. Getting free from the gross and subtle influence of emotion lets you move in the direction of greater purity, love, and truth, in your self and behavior.
Experiences with strong negative emotions produce deep impressions, emotional scars, or wounds. These wounds must heal — not be picked at over and over again or renewed by emotional reaction. The first step in cleansing the wounds is coming back to the truth, purity and love in your inner being. It is necessary to see emotions for what they are, from this place of greater awareness, and greater clarity, in your own self.
In this way, you may:
- become more aware and less emotional
- learn to remain calm, clear, and centered within your self
- gain more understanding, connect with love and other true feelings, inside
- not desire emotional excitement or emotional attachment, and
- let go of the past and all emotional scars, pain and suffering which you would otherwise carry with you into the future.
Your thinking will change as emotions no longer distort your thinking or perceptions, and as your awareness expands. What is sometimes mistaken for "depression," such as loss of interest in food, sex, hobbies, can sometimes be an awakening. It may not be depression (suppression of the self by strong emotion), but an opening to greater awareness of what is really important to the self. Many old patterns of behavior will be seen as a means of keeping you unaware, as you begin to wake up from the hypnotic influence of programming and emotion. You may very likely become disillusioned — which is all right. It is necessary to let go of illusions, emotional attachments, ego support systems, fantasies and delusions. (It is unfortunate that the word "disillusionment" — being divorced from illusions, and coming closer to reality and the truth — has bad connotations. It's a common reversal of meaning.)
Who you once thought you were will change and come closer to who you truly are, especially as you discard old self-negating programming and conditioning. You will get clearer, brighter, and stronger; your inner being will be filled with love and joy. For some, it may take a while (after all, it took a while to accumulate all that negativity). For others, it may be quicker. As the influx of purity increases, many things which you once imagined were good, or thought of as good, will be seen as the illusions they are: negative, harmful, destructive influences. You will be stripped of pretenses, lies, falsehood. Whatever is not right, good or true will die out as a motivating force in your life — for good.
The power of love is such that it will free you from wrong relationships, the more you hold to what is right and good and true within your own being. True love is the means by which growth and healing takes place. Love allows you to establish and maintain a satisfactory, workable, and progressive relationship with others and your own self. Love arises from true consciousness, clarity of perception, discernment, choice, and appreciation of what is right, good, true.
True love does not mean being "mushy" with everyone. This is not love; this is merely undiscriminating, ego-flattering pretense, or foolishness. Love is not a coat of whitewash to be painted over everything, so that everyone and everything appears in your vision to be "okay." The idea is not to love everybody and everything indiscriminately. Do not fall into the trap of resolving all relationships with the whitewash of "unity" and "brotherhood" and "equality." There is no equality or compromise possible between good and evil, between right and wrong, between truth and lies. According to your own nature, you will choose to "love," accept, and value one or the other. If you truly make the choice to love only what is right and good and true (and how else could you ever hope to find your way), then you establish a proper relationship with your own self, and with all others as well. In this way, you can move towards what is true to love, and free your self from what is not, in all your relationships.
You may need to wait until you become more clear as to what love is, within your own self, before trying to sort out your relationships. Love is not an intellectual evaluation of others, or emotional acceptance or rejection of them. It is a quality of harmony on the level of your inner being. You may become more aware in your self as to what true love is and what it is not, and resist the temptation to judge others out of ego, pride, prejudice, bias, selfishness, or narrow perception. Such ego reactions cannot serve as a proper criteria for relating with others, any more than they can with your own self. Only true love in your self can help you to experience a proper relationship with others.
True love requires purity of intention. In your heart, you have to love what is right and good and true more than anything, and let that love be your guide.
Over time, whatever is for your highest good becomes better, and what is not for the highest good can be released. Thus, self-destructive or bad habits will drop off; emotionalism will die out in relationships. As you unfold your true self, the non-self (or ego) will begin to fade in its imagined glory. Many preconceived ideas you may have had will no longer hold any truth for you. And behavior which once brought ego gratification or excitement will no longer be attractive to you. One way or another, true love will overcome whatever brings you down, in relation to others or your self.
9. What's Missing?
Long-term relationships can become very unquestioned, as long as you seem to be getting what you want. You see what is there, may take it for granted, and may not be aware of what is missing. Over time, a loving relationship can become an unloving relationship. The things that once allowed a greater experience of connection may diminish over time, often from lack of attention.
It isn't so much that love goes away, as it is not acknowledged. Love, honesty, kindness, respect, and appreciation should not disappear in a relationship. They can grow. And the time to realize this is now. Always "now." Not on some special occasion in the future, not when the mood is right or you can make time. Now.
These qualities of the inner self need expression or else they fade from view.
You may wish to survey your relationships in your life, and see what is missing. What good thing was there before, which has somehow lessened or gone away? How did it happen?
It is important to let go of the things that should naturally leave a relationship: the excessive focus on outer appearances, ego, emotionalism. These things should not gain ground.
In the same way that you might survey your own life, consider how your relationships meet your needs in all areas: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Are you ignoring any of these areas? Are you ignoring your partner's needs?
If you are in a committed relationship, it is important to first find the place in you where you connect with the love in you, and then connect with your partner in the same way. Do not go looking to satisfy your need for love elsewhere. Don't imagine that because you cannot find it in you, and you cannot find it in your partner, you "need" to find it elsewhere.
Love may be missing; appreciation may be missing; honesty and growth may be missing. But, you are responsible for finding those things where they should be — within you and within your committed relationship.
Countless relationships end when one partner decides they aren't getting what they "need" from the other. They want the romance, the ego boost, the stirring of emotions that they may experience in the early stages of a loving relationship. It is possible to find these things in another relationship; there is always someone wanting to enter a new relationship just for this reason. But, this initial excitement in a relationship always goes away, as it should. That makes room for something deeper, truer, more honest and loving.
Illusions fade in relationships, over time. Don't go looking for a better illusion, mistaking that for what is truly of value in a relationship. The perception of your illusions passing may be quite accurate, and there is nothing wrong with that; it is what you tell yourself about it that is the problem. We are so programmed by the media to desire more and more illusions, fantasies, and everything that satisfies our egos, that we wrongly interpret the passing of illusions as the loss of something of great value. That is simply not true.
What is missing in relationships is not more or better fantasies and illusions, but more real and true love, honesty, truth, caring, respect, and appreciation. You have to appreciate what is real in someone — including your self — more than you value illusions. Look more deeply than that.
10. Past Relationships
Any past relationship in which you did not acknowledge or clear upset feelings, or realize your true feelings, remains incomplete. You carry it, and these feelings, around with you still. Those feelings may continue to, in a very real way, influence your life — and may even govern your present relationships.
By exploring your past feelings, your present relationships (in which you may continue to experience these old feelings) might begin to make more sense to you. This will help you see where you choose to keep particular feelings alive or suppressed in you, and how this influences your behavior. Then, you will have the chance to make new choices for greater emotional freedom.
The emotional reactiveness you may experience in your present relationships with those who are closest to you, generally comes from past relationships. It is a way of reacting that you "learned" in the past. Over time, a pattern of reacting becomes conditioned, habitual, and unthinking. You generally become unaware of its origins in the past, and believe that your emotional reactions in present relationships are due solely to causes in your present relationships. But, this is often not the case.
When you are willing to look past the person you are relating to, to literally consider what you may have experienced in the past with someone close to you who shaped or impacted your emotional reactions, you have a chance to release, resolve, or get beyond the deeper — true — causes of present relationship problems.
Exercise Four: This is an exercise in awareness. Take a
moment to think of your present relationships, and consider
whether you have any feelings or emotional reactions that may
have occurred in past relationships.
Are there any past relationship feelings you may yet
have, which continue to influence or upset you somehow, whether
the other person is with you or not? This could relate to a
parent, spouse, partner, relative, or close friend, who may or
may not still be alive. But, your feelings may still be
there, in you, to this day. Think about it, and see who
comes to mind.
Do you have some negative emotions, or negative reactions
from the past, which come to mind, which are similar to
reactions or emotions you experience in the present? Are
they related to limiting or destructive patterns of behavior,
feelings of not being good enough, guilt, anger, sadness, or
hurt?
Notice what you tell yourself about your feelings, and
their desirability or acceptability. Realize, you are the
one who chooses to hold onto, store, suppress, resist, avoid,
or accept your feelings. The emotions or upset remain,
inside you, until released. And these emotions do seek
expression or justification in your behavior.
Perhaps you can see how emotions can program your present relationships, choices, and expectations. If you are willing to see, and choose to give up, your reasons for either acting out or suppressing your feelings, they will lose their power over you.
Be aware of patterns of compensating for, rather than releasing, negative emotions. Do not be deluded by emotional love, ego support, or other "consolation." These can mask over a great deal of emotional upset and conflict inside, which, as a result, does not get resolved. Rather, it is necessary to see the truth and realize what true love is, free from encumbering emotions.
Past conditioning, self-negating programming, and emotional reactiveness reduce your awareness; then you automatically or habitually accept "more of the same." It is much better to learn to release or clear these feelings, no matter how old they might be. They seldom go away on their own, but rather remain dormant until reactivated once again, over and over, when you encounter similar situations or behaviors.
Notice the way in which you hold past emotions and emotional attachments. Most of these come from little or large traumas, stress impressions, or conditioning. It takes a simple, free, and clear awareness to resolve past feelings. This will keep past emotional attachments from stifling your present relationships.
Do not allow either attachment or resentment to somehow justify holding on to old feelings. Resentment is a commitment to remaining upset and uncentered in your self. Resentment is a mechanism which transfers upset feelings and self-defeating behavior patterns from one relationship to another. This keeps you re-acting out the past. Such strong upset feelings will not go away, or be released, until you stop resenting.
You can learn to let go of upset feelings and emotional attachments, and come back to a place of more centeredness, peace, and harmony in your self. This will help you to deal with any remaining issues, to feel complete on your side. You do not need to change anyone else — their attitude, their beliefs, their feelings towards you — in order for you to feel complete.
Sometimes, forgiveness is appropriate in order to truly release unresolved past relationship feelings. Forgiveness, here, means releasing old feelings, and more importantly, your self — it does not mean accepting more hurt. Forgiveness allows you to have more love and peace and joy in your own heart, to be free.
Choose to give up resentment, which hardens the heart, which takes away your true love or joy in life. Learn to cut the ties. Learn to make peace within your self. Letting go of emotions is the simple choice to be free.
Realize, this is a choice you make.