Healing Relationships
By: Varun Jain
Tags: Wellness, Life, Spirituality, Relationships, Wellbeing

As I am getting to know myself, I tried using my past relationship as mentioned in the previous post, as a case study to understand why I felt the way I felt then, also started to observe the people around me and also all my current relationships to understand what really goes on within in this interpersonal energy exchange. The breakdowns or the challenges we face in relationships start happening when there are desires and expectations from the other. These expectations come from a really deep-rooted habit of ours where we tend to blame others incase we ‘feel bad’ or tend to believe that the other one is the cause of our ‘happiness’, and it is due to this habit which has penetrated into our subconscious through lifetimes of conditioning, we tend to look for certain feelings ‘outside’, especially in our relationships.

We get into relationships with a subconscious feeling of lack which we feel the other one is supposed to and will fill. The funny thing is the other one also comes with the same belief. It's like two people coming together with a bowl begging from each other, each believing the other one will perhaps complete them, but Alas!, that never happens. We can only give what we have. All human beings lookout for the same common feelings, which are love, peace, and joy, albeit in different ways, but not feeling those feelings within us, we look for those in our relationships outside.

Self Love

The reason, I created so much suffering in my relationship was due to a lack of self-love. I was looking for love and happiness outside of me. I gave the other person my ‘remote control’, I gave her the power to make me feel ‘happy’ and make me feel ‘sad’, not realizing I am responsible for my own feelings. Self-love is something that is imperative to have relationships of the highest quality. To the degree one loves the self, inversely, one will look for security, validation, appreciation, or look for the other one to make him/her feel ‘loved’ or feel good about himself/herself. The more self-love, the less are the ‘wants’ and fewer expectations from the other person resulting in more acceptance. When ‘wants’ are less automatically, one starts giving. Giving the energy of cooperation, the energy of acceptance, understanding, care, and compassion. It is only then we can naturally let go and forgive ourselves or someone, and release what we have been holding onto. As you start loving yourself, you start taking responsibility for how you feel. You reclaim your remote!.

The river of love already flows within you, just dissolve the dam of I want and start to give.

- The Author

Not allowing the river of love to flow because of our ‘dam of wants’, affects our relationships, and doesn’t allow us to live our life at the highest potential. It will not allow us to celebrate life as it should be. The greatest sages who have walked upon this earth had dissolved this dam completely and love flowed through them to the entire cosmos. The likes of Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, Brahma, and many more. These were the souls who lived their highest possibility and lived out the true potential of man. Most of us live our lives and leave the body with the same potential as those sages but unmanifested.

This doesn’t happen in a jiffy, but it is a process, as we get to know the real self, we start feeling that love that is within us. This requires unconditional acceptance of ourselves as we are: accepting this body I have been gifted with; accepting my past; accepting my weaknesses, my fears; along with my virtues, my strengths, my talents. Not being in a state of resistance to whatever has happened and whatever is happening. It is being grateful for life itself.

Few Things I put my attention on:

Awareness

Practicing being aware, and bringing our attention back to this moment can give us a glimpse of our true nature. And with practice, this glimpse will be sustained for longer periods. This glimpse is nothing but a taste of self. When we are being the self, even for moments, there will be a deep sense of peace and joy emerging from within. In that glimpse, we will realize the self as beyond this form and experience ourselves as love itself. As we practice more awareness, we start understanding the games of the ego within us and thus able to see when others are also being trapped in those games, as in, we start to understand why others behave the way they behave, allowing us to be more understanding and ensuing more compassion for them.

Acceptance

Somewhere I wasn’t able to accept myself as I am. Due to this, there was a lack of self-love. We need to accept our past, present, and our self as we are. Accepting self, apart from accepting our bodies, virtues and strengths also include accepting our shortcomings, weaknesses, and any mistakes that I may have done in the past. It is also completely accepting your past without complaining and in this acceptance, forgiveness will be inherent. This acceptance of past and self will allow us to heal our scars and enable us to let go of what we have been holding onto in our minds, which was impacting our emotional as well as physical well-being. When we learn to accept self it will very easy to accept other beings. Awareness and acceptance heal the scars of the past.

Gratitude

Being grateful for what we’ve got, is something we tend to miss out on. We take what we have received for granted. Take some simple example, we have this beautiful working body who has been cooperating with us since our birth, but it is only when some part pains or doesn't work as it should we realize the importance of it. We should bring to our awareness what all we have been gifted with, things we got without us working for it, this body, friends, family, and countless other things. Keeping this in our awareness will keep us in a higher state of mind where we will dwell in contentment and again creating space to share the same with all we meet.

Self Talk

The quality of our self-talk greatly impacts how we feel about ourselves. Am I too self-critical? Do I put my self down? Do I think less of me? Do I feel I am no good? What is the energy of the words I use for myself whether loudly or in my mind? What are the adjectives I use for me? What kind of thoughts I have for myself and others? All this has an impact on how we feel and consequently our vibrational field.

People who come in contact will only receive what I have to offer. If I resonate with love and joy, people will feel the same when around me. As we develop this love for self, automatically we will have a lot to offer in our relationships and we won't be in the wanting state but a giving state of mind. We will have to work on ourselves, instead of trying to change the other person as we would want them to be. Let's work on the self, absolutely fall in love with the self(not in a narcissistic way) and we will be able to accept people the way they are and also accept things the way they are. Love is oxygen for the soul. Let’s breathe it freely and deeply.