Three big reasons why spiritually awakened people struggle in romantic partnership.
So we are more virtually connected than ever before,
And yet.
.
.
Many spiritually awakened people still feel more alone than ever.
Many of us have awakened,
But we still struggle to create lasting,
Loving,
Deeply aligned spiritual and awakened partnerships or relationships.
Maybe you've experienced incredible synchronicity,
Intense chemistry.
Soul recognition,
Even spiritual or kundalini experiences with someone that were completely unexplainable.
Soul mating,
But.
.
.
Eventually,
The relationship becomes difficult.
The shadow appears,
Patterns appear,
Conflict appears.
Suddenly the love that felt cosmic becomes confusing.
And many spiritually conscious people quietly wonder.
Why is love still so hard if I've done so much inner work?
By the end of this video,
I hope you'll understand why spiritual people struggle in partnership,
Or at least three reasons why.
Why awakening alone is not enough to create lasting love experiences.
The hidden ego patterns that sabotage spiritual relationships,
And how sacred partnerships or spiritual partnerships can become one of the deepest paths of transformation available to us.
Reason number one.
We've been taught to choose between awakening and living our humanity authentically.
Many spiritual paths teach transcendence,
Rise above the ego,
Detach,
See the illusion,
Dissolve identity,
Awaken.
Other paths focus on healing the self,
More psychological.
Spirituality,
Boundaries,
Self-worth,
Emotional awareness,
Trauma healing,
Attachment styles,
But very few teach us how to do both of these things effectively,
In a balanced way,
Both transcendence and eminence.
When I was in India last year getting my 500 hour yoga teacher training certification,
I got to meet an amazing yogi and teacher.
He had supernatural powers that blew away anything I had experienced previously.
But there was one big problem that he didn't seem to have an answer for.
His ego was fear-inspiringly out of alignment with love.
He would cut people down when they asked questions that he thought were stupid.
He expressed robust contempt for other spiritual teachers,
Mocked them and their teachings,
And otherwise had one of the most uncompassionate,
Unloving attitudes that I've ever experienced in anyone,
Let alone experienced within spiritual communities for that matter.
When we,
The audience,
Asked about his ego,
Which was very apparent to us,
Was driving a lot of his experience.
He answered contemptuously with something akin to,
The ego is nothing more than an illusion.
Why would I spend any time addressing it,
Developing it,
Or working with the silly illusion?
I knew that he suffered from the same fallacy that I had experienced and many other.
Non-contemplative spiritual communities in the past such as Advaita Vedanta,
Non-duality,
Different forms of Buddhism and other yogic schools of thought,
Which.
.
.
Seek to simply dismiss any illusion as silly or meaningless,
Something to derealize.
As if God or the universe made a mistake in creating the ego.
So therefore it's best to,
Like a surgeon,
Find it and remove it so it doesn't cause any more symptoms of disease.
That's the spiritual paradigm of the past,
In my opinion,
And all the corrupt,
Exploitive,
Narcissistic gurus who have fallen from grace are testament to that.
We need a new path forward which addresses not only the vertical dimension of transcendence,
Or the horizontal dimension of psychological and egoic health,
But one that accounts for both intelligently.
One that understands that,
Though,
Yes,
The ego is an illusion,
And it is,
It's like a Magritte painting.
It's a meaningful illusion.
It's there for a reason.
It's not an accident.
The ego is not evil.
It's just unfinished,
Like your spleen.
It has been long misunderstood and overlooked as an unimportant developmental organ,
When it's actually an important part of your body.
System.
That's where relationship yoga and spiritual partnership come in differently.
See,
Spiritual partnership requires two abilities at once.
The ability to lovingly understand the ego and the ability to not become imprisoned by it or to have it run your show,
Own the moment,
If you will.
The goal shouldn't be ego destruction.
The goal should be ego transparency.
To be able to see it and see through it,
To be able to relax it.
To be able to transcend it,
But also develop it.
It's a both and,
Not an either or.
Okay,
Reason number two.
Most people don't understand their relational energy.
Most relationship dysfunction lives somewhere between two poles,
Self-absorption and self-abandonment.
We are,
As a global culture,
In my opinion,
Through lessening our in real life relational interdependency,
Becoming more narcissistic in general.
Because of the value placed on social media status,
We're often self-image driven rather than self-authenticity driven or real.
Combine that with the transcendency,
Manifestation,
Law of attraction,
And misunderstood non-duality aspects of awakening-only spirituality,
And we've gotten ourselves into not only a personal but also a spiritual narcissism.
A loss of empathy for the mere illusion of suffering that others are experiencing,
And a focus on spiritual materialism as a sort of new social hierarchical value.
We can get lost in self-image and lose track of the fact that discussing matters of consciousness.
.
.
Care,
Compassion,
Owning our stuff,
Taking responsibility.
Appropriate amounts of guilt or shame if we do something wrong.
Owning our mistakes.
Being virtuous even when no one is looking.
That that matters just as much as discussing matters of consciousness.
Which is very popular now to talk about consciousness.
But you don't hear a lot of people talking about conscience.
You won't find many Mindvalley courses in cultivating a virtuous,
Responsible conscience,
Will you?
So,
Either our energy is more in the self-absorbed aspects of awakening,
Or we are losing ourselves,
Our energy,
In others,
Which is more of the codependent side of the spectrum.
Where we are fine being spiritually enlightened all alone,
But when we have to bring our enlightened perspectives to others,
We get lost.
We sacrifice our grand visions,
Our connection to divinity,
And our sense of being guided from beyond goes away.
The other person's happiness becomes our full-time job,
Our main focus.
We feel entrapped when this happens,
When we.
.
.
Are in close intimate partnerships,
We lose that sense of liberation,
Don't we?
And eventually,
All we want is just to be free again.
How ironic.
To be able to make decisions intuitively,
Not to be anchored down by someone else's agenda,
To feel the lift of the winds of liberation and free choice blowing in our sails again.
So we give up our commitments to become single yet again,
And it feels good for a while.
Until we feel the itch of,
There must be more to life than this.
I want someone to share it with.
Once again rears its head.
These movements feel authentic,
But these are just entrained energy patterns that are trying to show us where either we aren't yet fully expressed,
Integrated,
And connected,
Or where we aren't yet empowered,
Unpatterned,
And already free.
Many spiritual people bypass these patterns by calling them bad vibes,
Energy sensitivity,
Or protecting the field,
While unconsciously repeating the same relational wounds again and again,
Sometimes even traumatizing others in the process.
Those who chase the light often cast the biggest shadows.
We need to walk a path.
That balances the transcendent with the imminent,
The vertical with the horizontal,
One that accounts for consciousness and conscience equally if we're going to live our awakening and liberation authentically within our relationships,
Within our day-to-day life.
Liberation is chaos if it isn't being bound to living virtuously,
Truth,
Accountability,
And compassionate care,
Empathy.
All that.
Lower density 3D stuff.
I digress.
Reason number three.
Awakening is easier when it's done alone.
When we're single and alone,
We can feel peaceful and awakened easily.
But when we get into relationships,
All this bad stuff gets activated and quickly we're longing for that solitude and solace again.
Partnership reveals attachment,
Defensiveness,
Control,
Fear,
Judgment,
Triggers,
Unmet needs,
Identity structures,
And unconscious conditioning.
Most all the spiritual growth teachings and practices are based on waking up only.
But waking up,
According to the spiritual genius of Ken Wilber,
Is only one fifth of the spiritual growth pie,
If you will.
In order to not grow a fake spiritual ego,
Become morally corrupt,
Non-dually narcissistic,
Christianly codependent or grotesquely guru-complexed,
We have to do more than wake up.
To consider ourselves spiritually balanced and integrated,
Embodied.
Besides waking up,
Ken says we must also commit ourselves to the cause of growing up,
Which is ego and psychological development.
Cleaning up,
That's our traumas,
Samskaras,
Karma and shadow work.
Showing up,
Which is about taking responsibility and being of service to others.
And opening up,
Which is a commitment to vulnerability and authenticity while keeping a radically open,
Non-conclusive mind.
Does your spiritual practice offer a balance of all these elements?
Or are we hitting the transcendent experience sauce heavily believing awakening alone is sufficient?
That's grasping.
We can only get so far alone.
Relationship is spiritual pressure.
It reveals where love is still conditional,
Where we are still unconscious,
Where our patterns are still in control.
Your partner doesn't necessarily create your unconsciousness,
They reveal it.
Often times.
But it's hard to own what's ours,
Isn't it?
It's easier to assign that to someone else,
Or to the vibes,
Or to.
.
.
The field of what's going on.
Beyond our control.
It's much easier to make it about them than it is to examine ourselves to the core and back out again.
To own everything.
To be integral.
We need to usher in a new paradigm of spiritual practice.
The traditions of the past have given us plenty of maps to help us climb to the mountaintop of transcendent awakening.
The non-dual,
Perfect absolute.
But they didn't leave us much regarding life back in the valley,
Did they?
In the inconvenient truth.
.
.
That they aren't willing to accept yet is,
In my opinion,
Is that we humans were not designed to live in the crazy altitudes found at mountain peaks.
If you go to one of these neo-advaitin,
Non-dual awakening immersions,
You'll find just the continual pointing back to the absolute,
As if we just were to hold that all the time and dismiss the illusion,
Then the game would be over.
But it's a little more complex than that.
We weren't meant to transcend the ego and stay there forever.
Unless that's true for you,
And I've met a few who authentically maintained such stage of consciousness for long.
I don't think that's the case for most people.
Same goes for the psychologists and the personal spiritual growth that's all on the horizontal level.
We weren't meant to stay in the valley forever.
We are meant to self-realize all the way into the deepest cosmic truth,
Not just read gabbermonte books and process trauma all day,
Forever.
Though we have to process some of our trauma,
It's true.
But all that horizontal work goes on forever.
We also have to learn to transcend.
So what is the one spiritual technology that spans the apparent gap between the seemingly intractable human need for both living in the valley of the ego,
The matrix,
And exploring the mountain peaks,
And maintaining a lifestyle that brings in healthy finances,
Relationships,
And fun,
All that?
That technology is called love.
Metaphysical transpersonal love.
That's what love is for.
Love is the reconciliation between the absolute and the relative,
How one exists and the other exists and how they can co-exist.
Though few philosophies or spiritual traditions have dared to take it on.
Even Jesus' Christianity,
Which is all about living love's commandments,
Tells us what?
But it doesn't tell us the how to be loved.
I want to offer a perspective that helped me in my relationships,
But is also the premise behind why relationship yoga exists.
And that is this.
Relationship is not a category separate from awakening or mindfulness or meditation.
Relationship is the next frontier of awakening.
It is how we apply awakening,
Mindfulness,
And meditation in order to do the spiritual growth work that meditation,
Psychedelics,
Religious study,
And other spiritually enlightening experiences can't do alone.
All theory and no action does not love make.
Including relationships in our yoga practice,
Making relationships a vital part of our spiritual practice,
It balances your awakening equation,
If you will.
Relationships,
When we shift the way we look at them,
Offer spiritual growth opportunities that integrate waking up with our need for growing up,
Cleaning up,
Showing up,
And opening up.
Integral.
That are otherwise left out of what we otherwise consider spiritual practice.
The future of spirituality is relational.
It's love-based rather than mind- and consciousness-based.
For centuries,
Awakening was often pursued in isolation.
Monasteries,
Caves,
Temples,
Worldly renunciation in a variety of forms.
But today,
So many of us are being called into awakening through intimacy.
Through our work,
Through living in the world and building something that hasn't been built before.
There's a way to have it all,
But we have to be willing to upgrade one primary institution to get there.
And that is partnership.
We have to be willing to leave behind the old paradigm of pursuing external power through old institutions.
Such as traditional marriage or traditional religions that leave us unsatisfied and unenriched and unbalanced.
We can find authentic power instead within ourselves,
Which is love itself,
And share it within a therapeutic,
Evolution-promoting container based in unconditional love,
If we see that spiritual partnership is a path.
It's love's path for our future where cooperation replaces competition.
Where we build a temple out of our relationships rather than have to go visit a temple somewhere else.
It's where empathy is viewed as a virtue,
Not a weakness.
Not just romance,
Not emotional dependency,
Not a soulmate fantasy,
But a real path where we get to practice becoming love itself.
Where soulmates are built over time,
Not just found.
Soulmate,
Something we've become.
That we make love true.
By adhering to truth and love.
Spiritual partnership means being committed to truth and love.
Remaining awake during conflict,
Learning to work skillfully with our ego along with its narcissistic or codependent energies.
Becoming more flexible and compassionate.
Using relationship as sacred curriculum.
Learning how to love without losing yourself.
And learning how to grow without abandoning love.
Love is not a feeling,
Though it does feel like something when its power is coming through us and into life.
No,
Love is a practice.
It's a metaphysical property of the universe.
Many people think it's something you just fall into,
And though you may fall into it,
Which is amazing,
It doesn't mean that you have the skills to keep it alive and well.
Lasting spiritual partnership requires skill.
When we start a new relationship,
It's like we attempt to climb the mountain of love without sufficient preparation and equipment,
Without the right skills.
And then we're surprised that we tumble down the mountain and we blame the other person.
We have to start out in this journey differently altogether.
We have to be willing to shift our paradigm about what love is and what it's all about.
Love,
First of all,
Again,
Is not an emotion.
It's a metaphysical property,
Which means it requires consciousness,
Learning,
Awakening,
Developing our egos,
Humility,
And transcending our egos.
All that,
At least,
In order to align our lives and ourselves with it.
Love is a dimension of reality.
Love is a law,
Or the law,
If you will.
Love is also a craft.
A discipline,
An energy,
A way of being,
A dimension found in all of reality if we train ourselves to be capable of perceiving it.
Just as yoga trains the body,
Spiritual partnership trains the heart.
It redeems the ego,
Purifying it rather than bypassing it.
Relationship Yoga was created to span that gap between living in the valley of the ego matrix and the ineffable vistas glimpsed from mountain peaks of transcendence.
To make love a path.
One shared with a community of like-minded yogis and spiritual practitioners of all walks who want to devote their lives to learning and living love's ways.
To reconnect or to unify that which seems divided up in the world's various traditions.
Divided in their lack of understanding the power of love itself.
Love is where awakening becomes embodied.
You can play a part in this evolution,
In this grand reunification.
By starting in your own home.
By creating spiritual partnerships that finally address the ego,
The shadow,
Attachment styles,
Parts,
Holes,
The traumas of the past and the awakenings of tomorrow.
Both the sacred and profane.
Everything belongs because everything has the capacity to teach us.
In spiritual partnerships.
I co-developed the Art of Love series of courses to do my best to lay out a path of love as practicable as any other spiritual path.
The first course in this series is called How to Create Spiritual Partnerships because they are a core institution in how spirituality evolves toward love,
Toward the common good,
And away from narcissism.
This course is for spiritually oriented people who want to create conscious partnerships,
Understand the ego as life curriculum and meaning maker,
Deepen emotional peace,
Understanding,
And intimacy.
Heal relational patterns,
Or at least begin the process of doing so.
Grow in relational mindfulness and learn how to make relationship the cornerstone of your spiritual path.
So if you want healthier communication,
Better conflict navigation,
Emotional awareness,
Energetic awareness,
Relational discernment,
And a more interdependent and secure attachment leading to secure non-attachment,
And to be able to stay awake and present during conflict,
Then start your relationship yoga journey today.
Become someone capable of sacred partnership and discover a new way to attract,
Build,
And become the love that you want to have.
Search for my course on Insight Timer,
How to Create Spiritual Partnerships.
Thank you.
