28/01/2024
Power & Love
Making space for each other’s fire is just as essential to healthy relating as making space for each other’s love - for as long as such fire is handled maturely.
When our fire is truly healthy, when we feel grounded enough to stay in touch with our heart, vulnerability, and sensitivity even while we feel intensity and aliveness within, then and only then can such heat illuminate.
Otherwise our heatedness burns, injures, and destroys. Such heatedness is not healthy anger, but aggression being weaponized against our “enemies” even if we have a smile on our face!
Anger can be extremely blind, yes, but it can also be an expression of great aliveness and passion speaking up for what matters. The choice is our to make. And make it we must, if we are to truly mature and deepen right in the midst of (and through!) our relational struggles.
To expect perfection in this anger-expression process from ourselves or others is to sabotage our relational capacities. That which matures cannot mature in the face of the heavy demands and pressures of perfectionism.
For our anger to deeply shed its conditioning, often a profound healing (and softening!) needs to take place in us. Such healing cannot happen in an atmosphere of finger pointing and blame.
Holding ourselves accountable is very different than holding ourselves hostage (such as in self-blame). And holding others accountable is also different than blaming them, weaponizing our self-righteousness against their “wrong-doings” or simply shutting them out because they are “angry.”
When there is spaciousness in our relating for a conscious process of healing and deepening to take place, safety and trust cannot help but deepen. Such spaciousness is not about tolerating each other’s “imperfections.”
Such spaciousness is love itself, having its eyes wide open and seeing the pain from which our partner’s reactivity arises without, however, making excuses for such reactivity!
People can feel truly safe and trusting in relationships where even very unhealthy patterns are being looked at, for as long as such patterns are really being looked at!
When both people are fully committed to their healing and sanity, the odds of their relationship working out skyrockets. In relationships where couples don’t make it through the challenges of healthy relating, at least one partner has given up on working on themselves in ways that are truly impactful.
I’ve had to see this very clearly, especially in the past 10 years of my life: It is not enough to be a good person, not enough to have good intentions, not enough even to be truly in love.
If there is any robust indicator of what happens in a relationship (other than compatibility), it is each partner’s willingness to heal and awaken all the way.
Only those who are thus committed finally get to taste and enjoy everything they’ve been longing for.
