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

Binsar - Dhaulchhina - Jageshwar Trek..- Day 4- Naukutchiatal and Bhimtal

Naukutchiataal

Fun at Bhimtal

Boating anyone

one last side ride

The island at Bhimtaal

Binsar - Dhaulchhina - Jageshwar Trek..- Day 3- Dhaulchhina - Jageshwar Trek

Ankur and Amit - one for the folks back home

Rambo 1 and 2

As washed out as the Old Jeep behind me
Taking a well needed rest after a hard climb

At Buddha Jageshwar

On the Trail to main Jageshwar

looking down at Main Jageshwar

Valley View

Trekking down to Jageshwar

Dandeshwar Temples in the Gori Ganga Valley

Ramprakashji - our navigator

Main temple complex at Jageshwar

Binsar - Dhaulchhina - Jageshwar Trek..- Day 2/3- at Dhaulchhina

Arriving for Lunch at Eco Camp Dhaulchhina

First Sight of Eco Camp Dhaulchhina

Another view

Camp Fire keeping warm

Snow view atop Eco Camp


Remember him

Amit enjoying the Sun

With Kesar Singh Mehra (owner)and other tourists

Atop the Camp - we were here 1st Oct 2007

Binsar - Dhaulchhina - Jageshwar Trek..- Day 2- Trekking to Dhaulchhina

Wide angle view of Binsar TRH

Windmill at Binsar - CDM Anyone ??

Himanshu in the frame

The Early morning view from Binsar TRH

Hitting the Track to Dhaulchhina

The Woods are lovely Dark and Deep

Dancing on the log

Thats Kathghara Village on the opposite hill

With Amar Singhs family at Kathghara village

The Peak with the Cloud- thats Binsar. you've come a long way boys

Taking a rest ( tiffin time) at Kathghara Village

Amar Singhs house in Kathghara village