My Divinity Reflected In Your Eyes

My Divinity Reflected in Your Eyes

What is it about relationships? Especially our primary one -- you know, “the love of your life?” Oh, the falling in love stage, it’s so sweet. It’s the time we get to see who we truly are, our divinity. We get to experience union with the beloved and it is blissful! We see our perfection through the eyes of our beloved. But then, after a few years something happens, something so disturbing and upsetting it sometimes ends the relationship.

We wake up one morning and realize we don’t have a clue who this person is we fell in love with. And the scariest part is they are feeling the same way.

Fear begins to creep into the joy, the bliss. There’s doubt, insecurity, criticism, judgment, pulling away, blame, oh yes, our good friend blame and of course there is anger. The power struggles begin, who is going to get it their way? Who’s right, who’s wrong?

This is when we need courage, lots of it sometimes, because “relationships are the master game” as my old professor used to remind us. He had been married five times and had gained a certain amount of ‘street’ wisdom about relationships. He was also the one that taught me to begin to embrace all of who I am, even the not so pretty parts.
Which brings me back to relationships. That’s why they demand courage, because when we look into the eyes of our beloved we see ourselves…all of who we are….The good, bad and the embarrassing. And that can be frightening.

I recently ran away from a relationship, took a break, thought he was the problem. I found myself wondering how much was about me and how much was about him? It didn’t take me long to realize I was really running away from me, from the uncomfortable feelings that the relationship had kicked up in my face. I wasn’t sure I wanted someone so close, so intimate. What if he didn’t like what he saw? What if I didn’t like what I saw? And what would that mean about me?

You know how they say you can’t love someone else till you love yourself? Well I don’t think that is totally true. How do we separate ourselves from another in order to learn to love ourselves? That’s right, we can’t. We aren’t separate. It is a dance, a flow back and forth -- another reason why relationships can be difficult.

It's a big question: How do I take care of myself and take care of the other at the same time and how do I let them take care of me and encourage them to take care of themselves at the same time?

But listen, this is the point, Relationships are supposed to bring up all these issues and more! That’s the nature of relationship, to bring to the surface our needs, our desires and the parts of us that want to be heard, healed and integrated. Relationships are a path, I think a spiritual path or at least a path towards greater self awareness and love.

I just read a Facebook conversation about relationships and it was filled with idealisms about how loving, open and transparent relationships should be. I think what was missed is that the mere nature of transparency is to show all of who we are and that will make the relationship not look ideal sometimes. It will get messy, painful, infantile, and frightening sometimes. But contrary to popular opinion this isn’t bad; it is good, because with presence, support and yes, love, we can learn to embrace each other's pain, wounding and younger feelings that sometimes make us do things that aren’t ideal. And in this process of opening to our deepest vulnerabilities, we find we not only begin to love our partner more but we miraculously find we love ourselves more.

In the Greek myth, Narcissus loves his image as reflected in the pool, but over time, as he looks deeper and deeper in the pool he begins to see who he truly is and eventually falls in love with his true nature, his divinity. He then falls into the pool becoming one with the Beloved or with divinity itself. The wood nymph says to the pool, “Don’t you miss Narcissus, he was so beautiful?” The pool says,” Oh was he beautiful? I didn’t notice. I miss him because when he looked into the pool I could see my divinity reflected in his eyes.”