An Adult View of Expectations & Love

"As a man thinketh in his heart so is he."

“All human development comes out of desire, and these aspirations do not have to be an affliction” –H H the Dalai Lama

To the average person, Life is an enigma, a deep mystery, complex, an incomprehensible problem, or appears so, but when we understand life, it no longer appears mysterious.

The physical body is an animal body which mainly eats and reproduces. The big action in human life though is not eating and reproducing; the big action which consumes most of our attention in this life is feeling and thinking.

Most of us are unconscious victims of the tremendous traffic of thoughts which parades through the human mind minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour.The average life is, unfortunately, quite wasted in the effort to follow one's thoughts. Many incarnations are spent completely, in a frenzy of urgent desire, without any moment of "awakening" into enquiry. It is indeed a blessing to even begin to wonder about the suspicious origins of these urgent "mandates" and "directions" emitting from the Mind. 

The progress of the individual is largely determined by his ruling mental state, because the mind is the basic factor and governing power in his entire life. The ruling state of mind is made up of various mental attitudes which the individual adopts towards things, events, and life in general. If his attitudes are broad in mind, optimistic in tone, and true to life, his predominant mental state will correspond and exhibit a highly constructive and progressive tendency. As almost all the forces of the personality function through the conscious mind in one way or another, and as the daily mental and physical acts are largely controlled by the conscious mind, it is obvious that the leading mental state will determine the direction in which the powers of the individual are to proceed.

Thought is a subtle element; although it is invisible to the physical sight, it is an actual force or substance, as real as electricity, light, heat, water or even stone. We are surrounded by a vast ocean of thought stuff through which our thoughts pass like currents of electricity, or tiny streaks of light or musical waves. You can flash your thoughts from pole to pole, completely around the world many times in less than a single second. Our thought travels 930,000 times faster than the sound of our voice. No other force or power in the universe yet known is as great or as quick. It is a proven fact, scientifically, that the mind is a battery of force, the greatest of any known element.

If we take the thought of success and keep it in mind, the thought elements will be attracted, for "like attracts like." We are mentally drawn to the universal thought currents of success, and these thought currents of success are existent all around us. We will psychically contact minds who think along the same lines, and later such minds will be brought into our lives. Therefore, successful minded people help success to come to them. That is how successful living is founded.

The astral plane contains a huge "ocean of emotion". On the astral plane, negative thoughts will manifest in a roller-coaster of that surges from wild fantasies of total redemptive love to blackest despair of abandonment and total rejection unto death

The Law of the mind is in perpetual operation, and it works both ways. Persons who dwell on thoughts of failure or poverty will gravitate toward like conditions; they, in turn, will draw to them people who accept failure and poverty. On the other hand, we can think on positive conditions, on success and plenty, and in the same manner, enjoy full and plenty. What the mind holds within takes its form in the outer world.

All our thoughts must be directed to that one thing which we desire in order that our desire may be fulfilled. Our method is not manipulating two powers, but as we follow the Law of Good and dwell upon that which is good we shall bring to pass all good things.

LOVE & COMMON SENSE – AN ADULT VIEWPOINT

Normal Adult behaviour - behaviour that society admires and rewards - is all about predicting what other people are likely to do in various settings and developing responses to predictable behaviour. We know what to expect and what is expected of us. Investing our energies in rational prediction has definitely worked for us as a society. Adults are survivors. Adults have figured out what to expect from their environment. Adults don't make stupid mistakes like kids do. But adults also get sour and disappointed by life, whereas kids are generally happy go lucky and free from prejudice.

In order to love we have to give up all our adult information about how things work and what is realistic and give up our disappointment and fear of rejection and all the other ego protections that we have been conditioned on since school.

I know that giving up control of any section of one's life is the most difficult for adults. As we progress in life we create very respectable, responsible careers and rational, independent lifestyles marked with sensible, sustained adult behavior that respect the power of time, money, and reasonableness.

Maturity, rationale, logic are all social constructs of an adult world which we are conditioned to think like survivors from school, trained by, who else, Adults.. Maturity works well at work, in the place of worship, serving others charitably, when parenting, paying taxes, planning vacations... Almost all of the rational, socially responsible functions we perform within our extended family, corporate and community lives benefit from realistic, mature thinking.

Yet, maturity is the Kiss of Death in love.

Most people have trouble finding love and keeping it. Even if they "fall in love" temporarily they can't sustain it, so they split up and go through the cycle of love, disappointment, etc. again. Most people are serious repeat offenders in love. This is because most people are using their mental survival skills - using their built-up "smart" toolkit of predicting what others will do and avoiding getting hurt or starving - to run their love lives.

In fact, having love requires dumping all of your survival skills And being open like a silly little child. But wait, silly little children die first in war and famine. Absolutely right. Trusting, naïve children die first.  In order to have the love you want, it is required to be ridiculously open to it. I say ridiculously because it feels silly (in the beginning) for an accomplished, mature adult citizen to act like a silly kindergartener. But that is precisely what is required. 

 

We adults make agreements and promises with other adults and we build a very robust mental toolkit of behaviour expectations in various social environments. The Adult brain is constantly telling us to watch out for threats, be careful, and get enough to eat. Constantly. The brain signals our "new brains" - the reasoning brain, and the intuitive love brain - to focus their powers on defensive prediction of human behaviour.

In the area of human relations, increasing maturity means increasing certainty about what to expect from other people. In your case, you are quite sure that this person whom you love, would have to follow certain preliminary steps in order to be with you. They must (1) make the first move so that your dignity is protected (2) abandon their moral principles (3) possibly make catastrophic changes in their family arrangements, and (4) all of these actions are motivated by the other person, not by you.

Our assessment of "what has to happen" is "right" in rational terms, correct from the point of view of an experienced socialized adult survivor. But its absolutely wrong from the love perspective! In the love world, our very sensible beliefs about "how things work" are huge obstacles to our happiness.

Fear is the great obstacle to love. Our fear of disappointment causes Over-predicting, and the over-predicting shuts down the beautiful golden advertising energy in our aura that says "love me now - we both feel it - merge with me". That golden energy is so amazing and so compelling but it can be shut down by the cold grey energy of fear. Insisting that love must conform to fear-based social expectations is doom for love. Love does not follow social rules. Love is the opposite of control, the opposite of reason, the opposite of fear...

Love is something else entirely. Love is the OPPOSITE of survival intelligence. Love requires trust. Abandon your survival fears that creates the expectations. Take the limits off on what must happen and in what order.. Moral principles are a social survival device and they do not particularly affect love which is a much bigger, much more subtle cosmic force.

Try outsourcing to the Divine. Tell the Divine that you love this person and you want to be held by them...let go and let god take over. The Divine has myriad ways of doing things in ways that we cannot even begin to comprehend the magnificence of full Divine power. 

To have love, to enter the " kingdom of heaven" of merging with Divine bliss, it is necessary to abandon one's beliefs about how things work and what is " impossible" and see things from the kindergartener's point of view.

We create every moment of our life experience through projecting our subconscious expectations upon the blank movie screen of our perceptions. Therefore, observing the intricate process of that projection will eliminate karma of powerlessness, victimization,  and enslavement very quickly. Our partners are actors on a movie screen. We are producing and directing this movie in real time. We each create our own reality on a minute-to-minute basis. We create the casting, we create the scenes. It is all one big huge projection. Everyone is projecting on everyone else. 

In fact it is not your partners choice. It is your choice. What they are doing is a function of what you subconsciously expect them to do. You probably don't realize it but your subconscious expectations are programming your beloved's responses to you.

The truth is that we are simply walking through a complex dance of agreements that we have made before birth with all of the partners we have in the current life. Hence, a spouse would have known her partner through many lifetimes. When it is time to activate the joint-past life karma, attraction happens, there is tangible soul recognition from past lifetimes. We attract and are attracted to partners with whom we have a past life agreement to work together on a grand mission towards our own self knowledge necessary to feel validated, balanced & complete within ourselves. the karmic forces of marriage are so strong that it matters not whether one chooses one's mate through "falling in love" or allows the mate to be chosen by ones social guardians. when it is time for the karmic partner to find you, they will find you. In the broader context, the word “partners”,means everyone with whom we have a relationship, from parent/child, Lover ; all of these relationships are scripted.

The scripts are stored in the subconscious. They are hard to get to because we “believe” there are no scripts and that things just happen randomly and that we have to put all our energy into surviving. There ARE scripts which dictate interactions in relationships, and we can change them as soon as we realize what is going on. Look into your expectations. Do you really expect to be loved unconditionally, or do you secretly expect to be denied the love that will nourish your soul because your parents told you - overtly or covertly - that you are not deserving of true love? That is worth checking out because that is a very likely unconscious love-seeking script stored in the subconscious.

Subconscious expectation is extremely strong and has built up through many lifetimes. Humans, at birth, carry in a great deal of reactive baggage from past lives. This great bundle of historic (but largely unconscious) memory of past life accrual is commonly called "karma" (the obligation to action and reaction). The vast majority of the expectations and beliefs are subconsciously held. Very few people "wake up" during life to realize that one is generating one's own reality precisely according to one's own mental and psychic practices. Precisely according to the map of the heavens. Reality is constantly being created by a mechanism of projection of accumulated expectations, many of them fear-driven, upon the blank screen of consciousness.

The power of flooding with prayer is well-known - the person simply prays constantly, with a single thought in mind, until that thought manifests. There is only one creative power in life, and that is the power of Divine Intelligence which runs through the human mind. Becoming a source of spiritual light by constant focus on good thoughts and well-wishing toward others, the person may find they become completely free of worry and want on the material plane

As our spiritual awareness expands, we learn to recognize the presence of many guiding forces that surround and protect us here on Earth.

However, there will always be one special, intimate relationship with a particular form of divine consciousness that makes us feel most deeply loved and cared for. In Sanskrit this special divine love partner is called the "Ishta-devata"or "the god of one's heart."Use the name of that divine protector whom you recognize most intimately That is the name which safeguards us while it resonates warmly in our heart.

Punishment, Neutrality & Liberation

When the Buddha identified the origin of suffering, he pointed within and not outside, because he knew that the principal causes of our suffering are our own negative emotions and the actions they drive us to do.....HH Dalai Lama (2001)

Suffering negative emotions is punishment energy. Everyone has their own quantity and quality of punishment energy. Moving punishment energy out of one's space is a priority for health, but the person must want to/be ready to do it.One cannot get started in the clean-up if one is clinging overly to ego attachment. If the native is too invested in the anger /frustration/invalidation cycle, subconscious desperate clinging will prevent release. And there has to be replacement energy available to surge in immediately after the release.

Often, such a sophisticated & elaborate network of ego-responses to the punishment energy has developed over time, that the person's entire identity seems to depend on staying connected to the punishers (who dole out the guilt & grief). The elaborate ego-protective mechanism for surviving the punishments so dominates the field of awareness that one is unable to see the possibility of breaking away from the punishers. This is what stuck energy is all about, allowing oneself to become the result of things forgetting that one is a participant-creator of things.

But at some point the karma of bondage to ignorance reduces through compassionate actions, and as a result the field of awareness will slightly expand. An objective view emerges. The connection between the punishment energy, its agents, and the patterned ego-responses it invokes becomes fairly obvious, and the person is motivated to break the chain. One tires of "being the result of someone else's energy" and wants to create a more self-directed path.

If the punishment energy that holds the victim role (either living it or enabling it) in place is consciously released and spiritual harmony becomes the core truth, then spiritual harmony will be reflected back in all the heart relationships that ground through one's core." It's a personal spiritual decision to set one's personal energy at a higher, lighter, more subtle level; which entails the decision to un-set the center, to move the center, from a lower, heavier, more gross level. One simply asks oneself "how do I want to feel?" If the answer is "I want to feel relaxed, neutral, and amused" then one commits to being in that space and returning to that space if one should stray.

Having set the energy at relaxed neutrality, it is quite easy to catch the people in one's environment who are throwing negative, grosser, reactive energy into one's space, because the contrast between the nice vibe where you set your psychic center versus the icky vibe where they pitch the energy, is felt in the physical body. It's easy and obvious to feel the difference in vibration.

After the core energy is set at neutral any non-neutral energy (anger, anxiety, guilt grief etc.) that tries to penetrate the core is very easy to spot. And the purveyor of that energy is easy to identify because when you're around that person *if the boundaries are weak* you will lose the neutral centering and slip down into the lower poo-poo to match the privileged invader. (I.e. when the boundaries/conviction weaken one remains vulnerable to invasion by historically privileged negativity, old yucky patterns that might not be nice but one is habituated to them and they sneak in with a familiar person...).

So having set the core energy, made the commitment to operate from a psychic base of neutrality and amusement, what happens when some familiar person constantly barrages one with sustained onslaughts of negative energy? Initially there is lots of trial and error. I set my energy high, I want to live in peace and awareness, but some privileged person in my life constantly throws at me criticism, fear, belittlement, free-ranging anxiety, obsession, etc. What can I do to sustain the relationship?

Perhaps the person throwing negative energy, trying to control the relationship through fear and anxiety, is just about ready him/herself to take their own step up. Maybe the script at this juncture is that they just need a little reminding about where that neutral space is, they just need a little role-modeling to demonstrate a higher center that they too have experienced before and they too want as their next step. This is a nice result, when a karmic phase of ignorance and suffering ends for both people at approximately the same time. One partner may be slightly ahead, but the behind partner catches up quickly.

Each soul is determined to advance out of ignorance toward merging with the divine. That's what souls do; that's what we're here for. If my awareness just took a big step up and I actually recognize the beauty of that neutral, reflective, clear state I am going to want to stay there - stay high on the ridge top. I will naturally, because of the nature of the human spirit, resist going down into the foggy bottom again. Just as the seed grows upwards. It's our nature to strive upwards in consciousness, toward God, toward bliss.

Good verbal communication is the key at these junctures: the partner ahead talks about how he/she wants to feel in the relationship, the partners talk together about the repeating event configurations where habitual negative energy arises, and they work together consciously on those troublesome configurations to proactively release negative energy as it enters the shared activity field, never permitting it to enter the core.

However in order for the following partner to catch up with and match the leading partner's energy he/she MUST BE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE THE NEUTRAL PEACEFUL SPACE within themselves and they MUST WANT TO BE THERE. If they don't know what that space is, if they have never felt the calm bliss of trust, or if they have perhaps felt it but they have been acculturated to believe that this calm state is the enemy -- so that their instinctive reaction to that neutral space is to destroy it, try to weigh it down into something grosser, slower, more familiar like anxiety or hatred or bitterness or fear - then from where would they match? They can't match "up". If the behind partner can't match "up" then in order to sustain the relationship the ahead partner will need to abandon his/her higher center and match "down". The path to the divine is orchestrated into a series of love matches, as we meet people who are running very slightly higher vibrations than ourselves, are attracted to them (gurus, parents, partners, children, friends) and we match "up" to the more subtle vibration of their higher awareness. The prognosis for successfully "matching down" is poor indeed because it is simply against nature to "choose" unhappiness.

After much deliberation one is firmly committed to feeling neutral [technically the valence of that state is neutral-to-slightly-positive, it's blissful amusement] but perhaps a financial obligation persistently invades one's space with negative energy. Say it's an old debt, maybe it's not a "fair" debt and there's lots of injustice, scarcity, bickering energy around it. Perhaps it's been hanging around forever dragging down one's energy but one stays in the conflict about whether one "should" [guilt language] pay the debt. If the commitment to neutrality is strong one wants this type of repeating negative energy out of one's space pronto. It becomes obvious that -- regardless of legal or moral principle -- to get this lingering junk out of one's space it is most efficient energetically to pay the bill and get on with life. In obvious housecleaning issues like money and law courts one knows that the goal of resolving the dispute is to obtain that feeling of freedom; knowing how one wants to feel and generally what it will take to restore that feeling allows one to cut to the chase very quickly. There is very little lingering in matters of principle and who was legally or morally right etc. By contrast, somebody who is stuck at the lower levels will want to drag out these discussions about "fairness" forever as a control strategy. But "fair" is a construct of social morality designed to sustain societies full of people operating at lower levels of consciousness. So one of the consequences of setting higher core energy is that one is prone to "let go" of negative energy very quickly.

Liberation from obsessive relationship to material wealth tends very much to increase wealth at ALL levels as state of trust/openness to abundance greatly eases & increases permission to enjoy!)

People talk about one last chance to salvage a core relationship. This is what last chances are all about -to make sure that the fallen-behind partner is given every opportunity to match up. But if they can't match up - which often they can't for karmic reasons - then there will be separation on the path for the remainder of this life, although you can be sure to meet up again in a future life because this closely involved person however damaging the results of the closeness IS a core connection.

There are 50-60 such core connections for each of us which follow us & reconfigure thru each lifetime.

,

Shani, Ego, Marriage Conflict & Forgiveness

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
- Shakespeare ( Portia's Speech - Merchant of Venice)

Prologue
Most of us are unconscious victims of the tremendous traffic of thoughts which parades through the human mind minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour. The average life is, unfortunately, quite wasted in the effort to follow one's thoughts. Many incarnations are spent completely, in a frenzy of urgent desire, without any moment of "awakening" into enquiry. How many of us even begin to wonder about the suspicious origins of these urgent "mandates" and "directions" emitting from the Mind.

The single greatest threat to human peace of mind is -- not hatred, anger, or guilt -- but rather doubt. You have the intelligence and the self-discipline to make a practice of becoming aware of the presence of doubt and negative expectations. If habitual, fear-driven thoughts of failure, ignominy, and zero-option despair are caught and identified at the mental level, then they can be dealt with quickly. They might not be able to be completely extinguished because they are the result of past-life karma. They will have to be understood and accepted before they can be eradicated.

The conscious human has less control over the flow of events, and more control over how one reacts to those events. Hence, if one is able to capture and consciously work on to cancel the negative thought process at the level of direct mental perception, one can be spared much unhappiness. If the negative thoughts are not recognized at the mental level, then the information will be passed on to the next gross particulate level of the astral plane, where it will try to gain one’s attention

The astral plane contains a huge "ocean of emotion". On the astral plane, the negative thoughts will manifest in a roller-coaster of emotion that surges from wild fantasies of total redemptive love to blackest despair of abandonment and total rejection unto death. The astral plane is not governed by time, so one might experience violent fluctuations of feelings - from bright to black and pure merging love to total isolated death - in a matter of minutes.

Holding onto the negative mental process of resentment, guilt, anger, & sorrow from the past, is a psychic disaster. It takes a huge amount of creative energy to manage our detailed inventory of past hurts & grievances. The more deeply one invests in the commitment to hold the perpetrator until they are properly punished, the less energy one has to do anything creative at all.

Shani

Shani's job is to inculcate personal responsibility (without guilt) and neutral acceptance of the karmic process. Shani's mission is to convert ignorant error into calm wisdom. Shani will do "whatever it takes" to command the native's attention. Shani will recall the native over and over to a central difficulty, a repeating failure, or an insurmountable obstacle.

Shani's job is to bring forward the people we have inadvertently harmed in past lives, give them the opportunity to enter into a negative relationship with us, harm us in return, and thereby allow us (in the best case) to consciously realize that we attracted those people into our lives in order to learn a lesson about compassion. This is a painful and frustrating process but it is really the only way to balance the karmic ledger. Spiritually, there is no advantage to having Shani-evoked troubles magically evaporate. To the spiritually aware, there will be deep gratitude for having been offered the chance to suffer consciously, and consciously forgive. This is the single greatest achievement of the human soul.

Shani's impact on life experience is painful and frustrating but, in the end, extremely beneficial. The pain can be reduced dramatically through neutral awareness and acceptance of the role one plays in creating one's own destiny. Once one has established a pattern of calm and non-judgmental reaction to the flow of events, Shani's job is done - and the pain stops! (The events continue but they just roll past...)

The faster one can achieve neutral awareness of one's own negative expectations, the faster one can eliminate the pain. Unfortunately for the slow learner, Shani will give all the "time" necessary to repeat the lesson. For those of us who live a bit behind the curve of total wisdom, it is valuable to be aware of the most acute effects of Shani. With forewarning, one can address these "scheduled" negativities, as they arise, with consciousness. One can meet each well-timed disappointment with a deeper commitment to acknowledgement, forgiveness and release.

Ego & Marriage Conflict

In each life, certain intimate partners are permitted access to the soft, childlike, sensitive ego core - or very close to the core. Often the marriage partner has permission to press our buttons, criticize our practices, question our validity, and rattle our cage. These are the partners with whom (against whom) we negotiate our core identity.

These intimate partners are pre-assigned. They enter our current life by invitation. These intimates are souls with whom we have built a shared inventory of both trust and grief over many lifetimes. They know us well. We all can handle a professional attack pretty well, but an attack from a loved one hurts horribly, coming from a person with whom we have entered into a loving promise to love and protect.

The ego identity testing ground is marriage which in turn is the true testing ground for forgiveness. Unless the two parties are enlightened beings, the negotiation for valid ego identity in marriage can get pretty intense. The more fragile the two egos, the more desperately anxious the negotiation.

Essentially, "edits" of the marriage script require the power to "forgive" the other spouse for their supposed transgressions against what we believe to be good and true about ourselves - i.e., offences against our ego structure. Hundreds of these offences occur during each day of married life. Tragically, they are the primary cause of "irreconcilable differences" leading to divorce. In any relationship - but especially the queen of all relationships "marriage" - resolution of conflict requires dissolution of false ego.

The pain of ego-damage and the terrible anxiety caused by threat of ego-collapse is very stressful. Letting go of the ego is easier said than done. Once the crutch of Ego is gone, what happens to the mind when it has nothing to do? No values transactions (your way; my way or the highway; compromise) No negotiation. No discussions, agreements, or balance to strike, No conflicts to mediate, when there is no self to represent “Me” at the arbitration table?

The Ego does not go quietly. It goes berserk. It likes its dominant position in your consciousness. It likes its control. It goes on a rampage. It wants its job back. It goes on protest mode, insisting on its self-evident, constitutionally guaranteed "right to work

The threat of ego-collapse is enough, for some people, to force consideration of forgiveness as a survival strategy in marriage. Marriage often forces the reluctant ego to at least “try” the possibility of forgiveness. The pain of ego invalidation, coming from the person closest to us in this life - the spouse - is often unmanageable. Some souls are driven to the final extreme - forgiveness - in an effort to free themselves from a huge accumulation of toxic anger, humiliation, and grief acquired during failed identity negotiations with this most significant Other.

Forgiveness

It is not normal & natural to forgive. It is normal & natural and rigorously socially enforced, to store up offences and wait to get redress. It requires considerable consciousness to forgive our spouse for being a unique soul who is different than us, for exposing our faults, and for forcing us into levels of awareness that our sleep-walking egos did not want to achieve.

Forgiveness does not mean condoning or justifying the harmful acts done by others. The laws of karma ensure that those who do harm will themselves be harmed, when their time comes. Forgiveness does not erase the memory of the transgression. Rather, forgiveness "gives back" the unsuitable (ego-assaulting) energy to the original sender, which gives the spouse permission to be a separate person, have their own tastes and values, and make their own judgments. The trick is that their values and judgments are divinely theirs, not ours - and thus, we are completely freed from conflict and criticism in the marriage

The decision to forgive, especially for really grievous emotional wounding, is a desperate act parallel to radical cancer surgery. No one in their "right mind" would start taking apart their ego, which is the instinctive core of our social survival.

Forgiveness is not noble. We only do this in complete desperation, when all negotiation with the partner has failed. When we are incapable of discussing the matter; exhausted in our attempts; have no new ideas; have reached a total Waterloo; and furthermore are in deep psycho-emotional pain. Only then is forgiveness the way out of suffering.

The only useful motive for forgiveness is utter desperation.

If this is happening to you, you may be blessed to look back upon your troubled marriage and your hurtful partner as the best problem you ever had in your life. Because, skillfully handled, the anger (ego-threat), pain, anxiety, and sorrow caused by marital conflict can force the spirit who is ready, into a much broader campaign of forgiveness which encompasses not only the spouse but all the "usual suspects" who have harmed us in this life.

Marriage Conflict – Childhood Wounds and Relationship Traumas

" Out Beyond Idea of Wrong Doing and Right Doing, There is a Field... I will meet you there..." (Rumi)

Everyone has marriage stress. Marriage is socially comfortable but psychically demanding, because marriage demands awareness and conscious change in response to the partner's needs. That's the way it is and that's the way it's supposed to be. What we need to accept and understand is that conflict in a relationship is natural and is supposed to happen. Its the way of nature. Conflict needs to be understood in terms of the psyche trying to survive to get its needs met and become whole.

The good news is that we marry people who have the "keys" to our own spiritual growth. Therefore even when relationships aren't easy, they are purposeful & productive. Marriage is the single most powerful spiritual path there is. The spouse is a mirror into our soul. If we don't like what we see in the mirror, its time to get serious about changing our perceptions.

Often folks believe that if they are having problems there is something fundamentally wrong with the marriage. Not so! It is fundamentally "right" for a every marriage to have problems. Ignorant of the process of healing childhood wounds through conflict in current relationships, society has made "incompatibility" grounds for divorce. This arises precisely out of a childlike wishlist for conflict free relationships which is a distortion of the natural process. Divorce does not solve the problem. We may get rid of the partner but we keep the problem, carting them into the next relationship.

One of the major healing functions of marriage is to heal childhood wounds and we "should" learn how to find the middle path of peace by constantly negotiating with our partner "who is a completely different person" than ourselves. The conflict starts in this life where it left off in past lives. The person you marry knows you very well, from past lives. Having reconnected "where we left off" we can from the present-life start point, consciously, start to make progress again. Each marital conflict is a step up in self knowledge. Each conflict is the next lesson in finding agreement, building trust, healing old wounds, and learning how to love.

We don't really understand "love" until the end of marriage, after we have resolved hundreds of intense conflicts, and learned the path of tolerance, acceptance, compassion, & trust in the Divine. So, that's why marriage must have conflict and lots of it!! Everyone has the specific marriage conflict which they uniquely need to work on, to build those compassionate, loving, tolerant, spiritually aware conflict-resolution skills.

Everyone gets the partner they have asked for. Everyone gets the partner they deserve! The key to "enjoying" the conflicts is to appreciate that only conflict carried through to resolution can build "conscious" peace as opposed to passive conflict free peace. We can get unconscious peace through denial or suppression. That's always an option but spiritually it's a waste of a lifetime. Many of us were raised to believe that conflict in marriage is wrong; that everything should be peaceful & in agreement all the time. That's actually impossible, given the deeper purpose of marriage. If you want to do the most meaningful spiritual work of your life, get married and work consciously through each conflict, as it arises.

Humanity’s yearning - whether man or woman, is essentially the same. All of us seek connection. We cannot experience life in its fullness unless we have an intimate relationship with another human being. Each person needs a “Thou” to become a fully realized “I”. But in our Hurly burly, mad dog-eat-dog world, the individual ego transcends the relationship and therefore we have more of “ Me vs You” instead of "I and Thou".

Most people experience their first relationship difficulty in the first years of life. In order to experience strong and safe connections with the parent as a caregiver, children need attuned parents. Attuned parents hold you when you need comfort and physical connection. You are fed when you are hungry and you are soothed when you are irritable, afraid or in pain. The attuned parent also allows you to express the full range of your emotions, joy, playfulness, frustration and anger rather than suppress them. Children raised by attuned parents are more likely to create satisfying love relationships in adulthood. Because they had such a safe and nurturing bond with their caregivers, they are not swept away by exaggerated fears of abandonment and engulfment.

Regrettable many of us had unattuned parents and we bring the resulting unmet demands and fear into our adult relationships. Not only did we experience disconnection from our parents we feel disconnected from our innermost emotions. In the broadest sense the unattuned parents either neglected us by failing to attend to our needs or they intruded upon us by trying to meet their own unmet needs thru us. An unhappy childhood where the yearning for the caregivers love was unmet by parents too preoccupied with their own world, leads to fears and an active discomfort in adulthood in acknowledging feelings of love, dependence and vulnerability. The sense that nothing is truly stable, that circumstances can change in a heartbeat stays with them. The unhappy child turned adult still yearns for a close love relationship but also fears it, the feeling of becoming dependent on another person makes them uncomfortable. They are unable to fully trust the partner driven by a deep seated fear of abandonment that plays on their mind. Hence two people wounded at childhood cannot connect if they are constantly defending themselves against a barrage of negativity or they live in fear of being abandoned by their partners. They are likely to be friendly and relaxed on the outside but inside have deep psychic wounds that cause them anxiety within the relationship. This psychicly wounded child turned adult constantly puts their partner thru "tests", trying to discern whether their partners love is real or ephemeral. This untrusting behaviour can do serious damage to an otherwise perfectly good relationship.

Soothing the pain defuses the anger that no longer intrudes on the relationship. Mirroring is a powerful tool for creating an I-Thou relationship. To mirror your partner you have to turn down the volume of your own thoughts so you can LISTEN attentively. You have to switch the channel from “me” to “you”. In effect you are telling your partner I am no longer the sole person in this universe. I am acknowledging your separate existence. Your thoughts are important to me. Many people spend much time and energy trying to get their partners to think the same way as they do. It is important to understand that one does not have to agree with the partner. It is important that you affirm the logic of your partners thinking to see your partner as the other and not as an extension of yourself.

To unattuned parents, who could not transcend their own world view, the fact that different points of view could be equally valid was beyond their comprehension. Whether or not we were understood was dependent entirely on the mood and presence of mind of the adults around us. They could diminish what we had to say, ignore it, counter it and also shame us for even daring to express it. So conditioned are we to receiving such behavior that we carry these images into our adulthood and sadly perpetuate this pattern in our daily lives. Mirroring stops this destructive behavior in its tracks. When you mirror each other, you both get to experience what it is like to have someone pay close attention to what you are saying, understand what you have to say and honor your uniqueness. And because the brain does not differentiate present from the past, your unconscious mind perceives the attention you are receiving as coming from a caretaker not just from your present day intimate partner and the rupture in the connection just got a few stitches as repair. The partner’s keen interest in our thoughts helps repair those feelings of neglect from long ago. This in turn helps us to feel safer in our partner’s presence and we then discover parts of ourselves that had been hidden from us since childhood.

Love Heals all is a well known sentiment and it can heal even the deepest emotional wound - the ruptured connection between you and your caregivers. But it needs to be a mature and patient love that does not manipulate and distort and needs to take place within the context of an intimate Relationship. With this comes the realization that one is just as important as the other and has an equally valid view of the universe. Yet together they form a greater whole, kept connected by the pull of mutual love and respect. They Mirror the interconnected universe.

The Karmic Clean up

Countless rebirths lie ahead, both good and bad. The effects of karma (actions) are inevitable, and in previous lifetimes we have accumulated negative karma which will inevitably have its fruition in this or future lives. (His Holiness The Dalai Lama)

First is ignorance - not knowing the truth and not realizing that we do not know. Second is materialism - the belief that there is nothing but the physical. As spiritual beings, we long for the Divine, but we lose contact with this source of truth if we trust only our senses.

We all have unfinished business from past lives, in the unfinished cycle of action-reaction caused by karmic ignorance. We all are given all opportunity to clean up our act in the current life. Life force is arranged in such a way so that we re-encounter the same set of people, the same scene and forces that created the previous action. Only now we are given a chance to make a better choice.

When we inadvertently harm others out of karmic ignorance, the karmic machine is set in motion. The Life force of our current life is so positioned so that the native receives precisely in the same proportion we once gave to others in a past life. The karmic group being the same from life after life, the harming agent is precisely that person we hurt in our previous life.

People reincarnate in karmic groups over and over, specifically to facilitate this karmic payback. Although being in a dysfunctional family, marriage, or workgroup doesn't feel very pleasant, it's actually how we liberate each other. And Shani (Saturn) is the Karma planet that is the exacter of punishment or retribution. The transformation that shani forces upon us is ego-challenging, brutal but purifying. Shani's job is to force us to chip away at our karmic backlog. We all have a certain amount of debt to repay. Shani is the very definition of your karmic resistance: the acceptance and release work you have set for yourself in the current life. Once the native is able to fully comprehend the import of his past life errors that are the cause of pain in the present life, this spiritual attention and awareness is half the battle won. Once we recognize and own up to these errors we CAN overcome our bad karma through a simple release process. Standing outside of the situation in a neutral non-judgmental stance and accepting moral responsibility for the situation helps to create positive karma and release. Making amends to the persons involved may be helpful, but the essential chemical in the release process is simply gratitude. Once ignorance is transformed into wisdom (read awareness) karma is dissolved.

Shani's job is to bring forward people we have inadvertantly harmed in past lives, give them an opportunity to enter into a negative relationship with us, harm us in return and thereby allow us to consciously realize that we attracted those people into our livesin order to learn about compassion. This is a painful and frustrating process but really it is the only way to balance the karmic ledger.

Trust the pace of progress under Shani to be perfectly timed and entirely appropriate to who you are - and who you are becoming - in the big picture. By developing a knowledge of life outside the ego - by learning to think and perceive "outside the box" of material senses - Shani's suffering can be seen scientifically, as a real but impersonal phenomena of karmic clean-up.

Sai Baba of Shirdi spoke eloquently of Rinanubandh (the karmic association which tie two people together over many lifetimes)…Sai Baba said that even though there are those that enjoy a happy life in the current, even so man must think of the next life while performing virtuous deeds in the current life…in our lives my friends and my enemies have to be equally addressed to, as both have been created by me and are mine. Since both of them have been created due to karmic bandhan (Rinanubandh) it is our duty to neutralize the effects of both in this life so that we don't carry forward the seeds of cause-effect to the next life. Herein the karma theory says that a friend returns the pleasurable experience(s) as we had given same or similar pleasurable experiences to him in past life. Similarly an enemy would pay back the unpleasant or painful experience(s) because we had given him same or similar painful experience(s) in the past. When facing a situation of unhappiness created by the enemy we have two options to deal with him-either by going through painful experience(s) we neutralize its effects or by reacting adversely we carry forward a chain of reaction to future lives. Sai Baba has advised his devotees not to react sharply and adversely towards enemies with equal and opposite negativities but to allow negative effects of past karmas reflected through the enemy to neutralize gradually.

Marriage is the key karmic work of our era. Marriage is the core social and emotional bond of adult life. Marriage is a powerful yoga! For most people, ego-attachment to the marriage partner's body/personality is second only to ego-attachment to one's own body/personality. From a karmic point of view, physical separation and divorce is the result of a marriage contract having become “saturated” when this life's karma in the matter of marriage relations is completed, but like most forms of dis-enchantment, the divorce experience can willingly serve the spirit's hunger for karmic rectification. Two people who are divorcing each other are providing each other an important spiritual service, whether they recognize that or not. Material separation through divorce alienates the partners only on the temporary material plane of the current incarnation. It does not alienate the two souls eternally. Actually, the separation will be caused by past-life karma and will be precisely what each soul needs in order to advance its wisdom in the current lifetime.

In fact, there is no success or failure in marriage. People come together for the highest work that their mutual awareness will allow. When the work is completed, they move on. You will reconnect with your current spouse again in your next life. Our reincarnation groups are remarkably small. The karmic group consists of people who batch together for intensive interactive psychic work, over and over again. You can be certain that you have been married to this person before, and quit likely will be again. You have also been their mother and father before, been their child and boss before, their guru and their student before. Interpersonal psycho-emotional work is not any easier or more amusing than the work of physical or social survival. It is just another level of karmic backlog that is sitting there waiting to get worked out, i.e., ignorance transformed into wisdom. Nevertheless it is an earned privilege to reach the level of material luxury, which allows even the possibility of multiple, voluntarily chosen marriage unions.

Some people have chosen fast-track incarnations where they are healing a huge amount of old karmic backlog, by reconnecting with multiple serial monogamous partners. The key indication of success in a multiple-marriage lifetime, is whether one can remain neutral friends with the former spouse. Many people are able to enjoy good relationships with former spouses these days. The social judgment of “failed marriage” runs off them like water off a duck’s back. Many would bow to accepting the conventional social wisdom that it’s better to build character by staying with one difficult partner rather than indulging in multiple sexual attractions. Society very much criticizes change of any kind, particularly changes in caste, level, or power such as change of marital status. Social control judgment will punish you with criticism of “failed marriage”. But the spirit itself has only one simple goal: transformation of ignorance into wisdom.

Taslima Nasreen- A pawn in a Political Game

The art of political dissent is big business in India. Taslima’s book “Duikhandhito” was published in 2002 but there werent any violent protests for so many years bar the odd tamasha ; take the case of the song in Aja Nachh Le - Dhak Dhak queen Madhuri’s comeback movie.. For three months prior to the release of the movie the song with the allegedly offending verse blared out over loudspeakers and in discos all over the land, no-one had any problems.. but come the day of the release of the movie there was such humbug hungama orchestrated by politicians of all hue, it left you wondering what the tamasha was all about.. in days of yore it would be ignored.. but this is the India of the 21st Century where credence is given even to the most illogical and inane…that is our tragedy…so “India shining” is actually a cruel metaphor.. But coming back to Taslima , there wasent any threat to her life either of such earthshattering proportions that the government of the state where she was ensconsed comfortably for over so many years were forced to take action. So the question that automatically comes to mind to any rational being would be, why now ?? the answer it seems is obvious.

Has Taslima been sacrificed at the alter of political expediency ? just as the public wanted a figure to target their ire in the Rizwanur Rehman case to which the media served up Gyanwant Singh, IPS, in Taslima’s case the council of comrades in alimuddin street threw Taslima at the community most affected by the pogrom of nandigram. The demographic profile of nandigram being overwhelmingly muslim, the comrades seemingly were desperate to give them a sop withou appearing to do so. So the ghost of Taslima was conjured out of the proverbial magic hat in order to divert attention from the november 14th incidents in nandigram. Never mind if Taslima was not even remotely connected with nandigram, never mind if she was a guest of the Indian Government, never mind if it was the state governments duty to protect her. in the minds of the “wise men” of alimuddin street Taslima was expendable, a small price to pay in exchange for the supposed gains in the ensuing panchayat elections. the fact that rabble rousers like mamta bannerjee and the Italian lady who occupies 10 Janpath, even the redoubtable Brinda Karat, high priestess of the Left, chose to keep silent at the wanton harassment and complete disregard of human rights by the state government and its police in forcing Taslima out of the state post haste, shows the utter contempt the mainstream political parties have for the common sense of their electorate. Do they think the masses are so gullible as to accept Taslimas extradition from West Bengal as a sop for the happenings in nandigram. obviuosly they do. so mamta banneree may publicly cry hoarse over alleged CPM mob violence in nandigram ( forgetting her own role there) and routinely demand Buddhadeb Babu’s resignation (so whats new !!! -yawn) but privately it was literally “nod nod, wink wink” with the comrades on the obnoxious treatment meted out to Taslima Nasreen. this is what you call running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.. And what of the left ??…always uneasy bedfellows with the pseudo secular congress(Italia), it seems the party with the “real” claim to being different was happy to lose its secular tag for the sake of a few votes…when you sup at the table with the devil you are more than likely to pick up some mannerisms of the host. With the BJP’s avowed belief in majorityism and the congress equally guilty of minority appeasement of the worst kind, therein lies the rub and the root cause of the problem that bedevills our nation state for the last 60 years. The comrades were, if nothing else seen to be above such pretensions. The Left whose calling card on the national scene was their identity of being “secular” and a party with a difference , have seemingly lost it over these last few months. in hindi there is a saying “Kharboozey ko dekh kar Kharbooza rang badalta hai..” in the “blow hot blow cold” alliance with their congress friends, where the sole agenda is to keep the “communal” Bjp out, the comrades have adopted the role of the chameleon that changes its colour to go with the situation.

Never mind if there are red faces in the ranks of the left allies at the treatment meted out to Taslima.. After all there are some “bhadralok” still left in Bengal, even if they obviously arent many in alimuddin street. So the “Bhadralok” CM - Buddha Babu - a man of letters himself was promptly made to shut up by the CPM High command on the case Taslima while the party machinary (read radicals like Biman Bose) charted their unfortunate course. So even while Budhha Babu kept the peace on Taslima, it was the shadowy hand of Biman bose and his co-horts who saw to it Kolkata was witness to the most shameful display of mob violence on its streets, with the grander design of taking the heat of nandigram and telling its muslim votebank, that everything was well after all. Diverting the issue to Taslima would give the beleagured left time to clean up their act in nandigram. So much so even after the Union Government made it amply clear that Taslima was welcome to stay in the country of her exile the comrades were unrelenting - Taslima could not come back to Kolkata.. of couse cleverly guised in the cloak of doublespeak by putting the onus n the centre for deciding where Taslima should stay..never mind if the Lady , a Bengali by birth and mother tongue pined to be back in kolkata where she could be with “her people”..

Secular civil common sense was offended, nay appalled. the State had seemingly kowtowed in the most abject manner to rabid fundamentalism, stoking fires that bode ill for West Bengal, a State with an envious record post independence in communal harmony…furious debate was conducted in all the studios of the TV Channels - Was freedom of speech absolute ??… the country got to see and hear the rabidly communal and aggressive intonations of the likes of Syed Shahabuddin, Asaduddin Owaisi and Madani…As an Indian, you had to hang your head in shame…this was supposed to be the India of the 21st century, ? where we were pandering to obscure fundamentalists and allowing them to grab centre stage… where the state was duty bound to protect its citizen, but instead was a helpless silent bystander in the face of a rabid communal mob of a minuscule few…And having let the communal genie of the bag, the state watched in silence as more rabid elements, like Siddique Choudhury of the mili council emboldened by the state inaction, sought to challenge the statement of the External Affairs minister in Parliament on Taslima’s stay in India, by openly avowing that Taslima would not be allowed to enter Kolkata. Since when did the reds allow rabid elements to dictate state policy in their land.

And what of Taslima..by all accounts she is not the greatest of writers. Its doubtful she would ever win the booker prize, let alone be nominated for one…she doesn’t even lay claim to being an expert exponent on Islam…she herself has said that she writes about oppressed women and human rights for women…obviously her milieu is Bangladesh, where the demographic fabric of the society that forms the backdrop of her essays is overwhelming muslim. Is it wrong for a woman to write of her rights and the rights of her sisters…in the eyes of the maulvis (Owaisi calls it “practising Mussalman”) it is wrong to challenge what they have ordained to themselves… If you dislike what Taslima writes, don’t read her, put her books down to run of the mill madness colored with a vague sense of despair..but this is secular india not a muslim state…who gave the fundamentalists the right to decide who should stay or not stay in India…The Tragedy of Taslima Nasreen is that she has chosen for her “home “ – an India where the state is increasingly tolerant of fascist forces and the abdication of fundamental rights of civil society…Where are you Brinda Karat - champion of women in distress, high priestess of the left - Why are you silent at the ill treatment of a sister, a fellow rationalist and champion of oppressed women’s rights… or have you also sacrificed your principles to the high alter of political expediency like your fellow comrades