Happiness, Love and Peace

What is the meaning of desire in our relationships?  Basically, all of the suffering we experience in life is because of what we want to see rather than what is.  Whenever the world shows something different than what we want, we experience the discrepancy as suffering.   For example, from a young age we are taught that we should grow up to get married and have a happy family life.  We are taught to adopt an image of an ideal mate and we go out in search of that.  Really, there is no such thing as an ideal mate, but we go on trying to stuff that poor person who lands with us into the metal cookie cutter we picked up as a child and modified as a young adult.  When the two don’t fit we go on chastising them demanding that they fulfill our desires.  Of course, it is not possible for anyone else to fulfill all our desires.  It is much healthier to take a second look at our perspectives and desires and reduce the gap between what we want to see and what life’s happenings are presenting. As young children we label the happenings in life with our own emotional interpretations.  This becomes the “movie script” of our life and obscures many more productive interpretations.  All we have to do is flow with life as causeless happenings and give our desires less importance.  Simply understanding life as more than a way to create or fulfill our own personal whims is enough. 80% of our energy can be locked by our wants of what life should be.   The conscious choice to see life as happenings rather than a personal emotional movie script will eliminate much of the resistance we have to life.  This will reduce the demands and desires we try to pry from loved ones and bring acceptance and gratitude to our relationships. Just making a conscious decision to just flow with a relationship can be the first step to seeing a positive transformation in our interactions with the world.

There is nothing wrong. Sadness is not wrong. Fear is not wrong. Confusion is not wrong. Our pain is not wrong. Resisting our pain is what makes everything seem wrong. And yet here is a deeper truth, for those who are open: even our resistance of pain is not wrong. If that’s what’s happening, it cannot be wrong. It is a valid expression of life in the moment. Beyond ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. This love even embraces resistance. This Now is vast, and forgiving. Yet even ‘resistance’ is just another concept. Another judgement. Another way to make ourselves wrong. “Resistance bad. Acceptance good.” That’s what we learn. It’s not that we “resist” our pain. We just never learned how to be with it. How to sit with it. Stay with it. Have a cup of tea with it. See it as a beloved friend, at home in the vastness. Our ignorance is our innocence. We just never learned. Our pain is not wrong. It is an invitation. An ancient teaching. Universal. Free. Life invites us to come closer… Falling through imagined layers… Into great mystery… 

Maya Angelou (via onlinecounsellingcollege)