A relationship with a partner or dear friend has ended. An old dream about who you were together or who you were with that person, has died. What remains may be a burning sense of loss, perhaps shame or guilt, maybe a deep longing, but for what? Perhaps you are wondering about moving into another relationship, making new friends or maybe you are wondering about remaining alone for now. There are no answers in these periods of transition. There is only an opportunity to move into the feelings, into the body of loss, into the emerging possibility that is unique to your purpose for being here. It is common and quite natural to want to re-establish the familiar or known elements of previous relationships, or to improve on past experiences by landing yourself in a safer relational refuge. There is a tendency to want to work it all out ahead of time; to make lists and define your next partner. But, alas, the truth of what you are, the possibility your existence represents will attract to you exactly what and who is resonant with that truth . . . or with your denial of it. You may wish to consider whether you are moving toward a new person to avoid some part of yourself, some ancient feeling that you just don’t want to feel? The answer is . . . probably . . . yes . . . At least if you are human! Is there some deep knowing in you that senses a new possibility, a new way of being in relationship? Probably, if you’re human! Most people want clarity about where to turn when a relationship ends, mostly to escape the pain of loss or lack. But in the realm of transitioning relationships, there will always be contradictory possibilities. "I want to be with someone. I’m repelled by the idea of being with anyone. I want to connect. I want to be separate. I want to be seen. I want to hide." We bump around inside the opposites of abandonment and fusion, unsure where to turn. Regardless of the path you choose, you will be guided to open into the distinctive inner images, feelings, somatic sensations, and lost pieces of self and soul that accompany the choice you make. You will have yet another opportunity to open into compassionate confrontation with your relationship with yourself; with those fragmented shards of your unlived life . . . the incomplete, unfinished, unresolved relationship with you. Getting tangled up in making a decision about what to do next in external, material reality is a very human impulse, and for many can also be a way to defend against the inevitable inner experience of loss, disappointment, and grief that will come regardless of the external choice you make or the path you take. Whether you choose to be alone for a while or go back into the old relationship, or go into a new relationship, you will inevitably meet parts, feelings and sensations with which you may have lost contact. This alive, achy process is filled with the wisdom of your personal, individual true essence. Unfortunately, there is no other option where you get to avoid your vulnerability and the tender, reorganizing influence of death and rebirth. How tragic, really. Yet what grace.
Comments