The Sideline Story

When we enter a relationship we’re forging a spiritual contract with our partner saying, “I’ll be a mirror for you so you can see your divine reflection — all the attributes, light and shadow, that reveal who you are and who you are becoming — if you’ll do the same for me. This spiritual contract allows relationships to act as catalysts for our spiritual growth and evolution. When another person acts as our mirror and reflects all of our attributes back to us so we can see ourselves more clearly, we enter the fast-track to finding true love in relationships — discovering our infinite potential to completely love ourselves. From this place of self-love we have a greater capacity to extend and share our love with others. The love shared in a sacred relationship is a gift reflecting the infinite self-love within each person. The mirroring of our light and shadow attributes continues until there is no duality or polarity within us; until we are truly heart-centered in all ways and at all times. This is the ultimate potential of a sacred relationship. Sacred relationships create no need and no dependency. Both partners simultaneously grow into higher and higher states of self-love. In a sacred relationship, partners grow along side each other while mirroring and reflecting each others divine qualities.

When you let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are, what happens to confusion? Suddenly it is gone. When you fully accept that you don’t know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!” It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Just because I liked something at one point in time doesn’t mean I’ll always like it, or that I have to go on liking it at all points in time as an unthinking act of loyalty to who I am as a person, based solely on who I was as a person. To be loyal to myself is to allow myself to grow and change, and challenge who I am and what I think.

To love without knowing how to love, wounds the person we love.

The truth is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself.