Valuing Our Relationship
Coffee Time: Thursday December 27, 2012
In my meditation I saw my longing for having value just as I am – not needing to prove myself in any way, especially to myself. Pathwork Lecture 174 Self Esteem came to mind. I’ll have to read that again.
Could my relationship with Pat be enough without having to blog about it? Could I just be in it moment by moment? Or be fully into relationships in general – say with my kids and grandkids. If I took away my website, my blog, my recordings of the Pathwork Lectures, my photography, the roles I play at Sevenoaks, my mentoring, and all the rest and were left only with my relationships with Pat, with family, and with friends, what would life be like? That is a scary question for me.
I ran across a quote in The Week magazine a few days ago. I was struck up by it message: There is only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child’s embrace, that is true. President Obama, speaking in Newtown, Connecticut.
I simply do not know that space experientially. It scares me to know this about myself.
I am reminded of the quote that Julie Murray gave me when she sent me off to Pathwork in August of 2000:
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved,
to feel myself beloved on earth.
This quote, from the work of Raymond Carver, has stuck with me for all these 12+ years. It is certainly my longing! To FEEL myself beloved on this earth.
Pat then joined me for coffee time…
Pat: We have had a couple of wonderful days together – fire in the fireplace, cooking together, nowhere to run off to. Gary (after sharing my meditation time reflections): I am trying to settle into that energy of USness that you are experiencing. Can I let our USness be enough for me? Such a scary question for me. Pat: That would be a very untrustable space for you, since you have not felt the experience and space of that kind of connection. There has to be such painfulness in that lack.
Pat’s response and her understanding and acceptance of my fear of lack of connecting feelings calmed my fear. Gary: I’ve numbed out that pain – it was too horrific to take in. Yet I consider that I’ve had a “good” life – it has just not been a relational life. Pat: Yet relational energy, connecting and loving – these are huge longings for you.
Gary: Absolutely. In my tsunami with a woman at midlife I was willing to give everything else up for that experience. This powerful relational experience pulled me off my non-relational moorings. Only that experience made it possible for you and me to get together later. Without that experience, without that woman, we would not have our relationship today. It just would not have happened. I would not have known what I truly longed for. Yet that was not a relationship that could work – we were so different in many ways. So here we are today, you and I, forming a loving relationship. A true loving relationship is so challenging for me, and this difficulty saddens and frustrates me. Can I just hold the longing and trust that as I face and resolve my images, blocks, and wrong conclusions about myself and out others that stand in the way of a true loving relationship, that growing into such a loving relationship will happen eventually?
Pat: There have been and still are lots of people in each of our lives that have been long-running teachers for us and great change agents for us. Gary: Yes, men in your life and women in my life. Each one played a role. Some still play a role. Pat: I am thankful for all the teachers in both of our lives. These have been for US, for our benefit, but also beyond us – helping us to come to trust love, to be open to connection, to be open to the path within the path that an intimate relationship can be. Our actions are seeding consciousness. In some way consciousness is all that is here: Big Mind, Big Heart, as Dennis Genpo Merzel says in his book by that title.
Shared in love, Gary