Golden Keys to Effective Romantic Relationships
- numbers 1-10 taken from "Ascension and Romantic Relationships" by Dr. Joshua David Stone
1. Unconditional Love
Personality-level relationships function on a premise of conditional love. Soul and monadic level romantic relationships strive to be unconditionally loving at all times. From the perspective of the soul and monad, it is never acceptable to attack your partner. It is important to be honest, but this is always done in an unconditionally loving and respectful manner no matter how bad the misbehavior of your partner is. In truth, each person is the eternal Self, and all ideally are related to from this vantage point.
2. Relationship to Self and to God
The most important relationship in your life is not your relationship to your spouse or partner, your children, the ascended masters or God. The single most important factor in your life for making your relationships work is your relationship to yourself. If you are wrong with yourself, you will be wrong with God and your partner. If you are run by your emotional body, your inner child, your negative ego and your subconscious mind, how can you possibly be right with another person?
In my counseling practice of over 15 years, whenever I would see a couple for relationship counseling, I would see them together only once. Then I would do individual work to get them right with themselves before I would see them together again. In my professional experience, 80 percent of the problems were cleared up by getting each person into their personal power, self-mastery, self-love, proper parenting of their inner child and the conscious creating of their own reality. The second most important relationship in your life is your relationship to God. If these two relationships aren't right, your romantic relationship will have problems.
3. Forgiveness.
This includes self-forgiveness and forgiveness of your partner. Jesus said, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," As A Course in Miracles says, "Forgiveness is the key to happiness." Lack of forgiveness hurts self much more than it hurts others. Everything that happens in life is a lesson, a challenge and an opportunity to grow. Mistakes can be turned into gold by learning from them!
4. Preferences, Not Attachments
Learn to have preferences instead of attachments and addictions in your relationships. Buddha said that all suffering comes from your attachments. A preference is the attitude that if you don't get what you seek, you are still happy. With attachments and addictions, if you don't get what you want, you lose your happiness and inner peace and usually you get upset and angry. These negative emotions are caused by one's own faulty attitude.
5. Self-Actualization
Learn to develop centered, whole relationships and not father/daughter, mother/son relationships. When each one is right with self and right with God, the couple bonds as two self-actualized, independent people. When one is not right with oneself or right with God, one ends up seeking wholeness in another person instead of within one's own being. There is no judgment in this, for we have all done this in past lives and this life. All is forgiven, but as one evolves, one's romantic relationships need to change.
6. Communication
What may be the most important key of all is communication. Virginia Satir, the famous marriage/family counselor, said, "Communication is to a relationship what breathing is to living." It can't get much clearer than that! Where the lines of communication are not open, the relationship is doomed to failure. When the lines of communication are open, anything can be worked out. People who communicate effectively' make mountains into molehills. People who don't communicate effectively make molehills into mountains!
7. Commitment
Being committed is keeping one's spiritual vows to your partner on all levels. It is also a commitment to communicate when things are bothering you and not to stuff things away. Commitment deals with holding up your end of the partnership on all levels. It is a commitment to love and help your partner as well as yourself to become actualized to your highest potentials.
8. The Need to Be Right
The key question is always, "Do you want harmony, or do you want to be right?" You cannot have both. The need to be right is run by the negative ego. Set the example of admitting you are wrong and have made mistakes. This example will inspire your partner to do the same, and even if it doesn't, you are doing it for yourself and God anyway. Never forget that God and the ascended masters listen to your every word! This is especially true of high-level disciples and initiates.
9. Communicating through Ego
Never communicate when you are caught up by your negative ego or in excessive anger. Make this agreement with your partner. When the negative ego is engaged, you are not right with yourself or right with God. In this mode, communication will only end up hurting and scarring your partner. You will end up feeling guilty later for what you said when you were too overidentified with your emotional body. It would he better to go off by yourself and cool down, meditate and journal.
It is always better to communicate about heavy things in a calm, rational, loving manner. When I started doing this in my relationship, we were able to improve our relationship as much as 80 percent from this simple insight. Usually when we would come back and communicate after cooling down, we would resolve things in short order. We would both set a spiritual example upon resuming communication, for we would both realize that we were off center, and this would inspire both of us to he as Christ-like as possible.
10. Anger
Anger is ego, and don't be deluded into thinking it isn't. When your buttons get pushed and anger arises, it can be dealt with in your relationship in one of two ways. One is intrapsychically and one is extrapsychically. The intrapsychic method is to resolve the issue in your mind or journal and/or do attitudinal healing work. Catharsis on occasion may be also appropriate.
The extrapsychic method is to express and communicate your feelings to your partner, but this must he done in a loving way. There is no such thing as righteous anger. The negative ego will tell you there is, but there is not. The true definition of anger is "loss of control and an attempt to regain it." Negative anger is transformed into positive anger by using it as an energy source channeled in a proper direction. Tough love and being a spiritual warrior is one example. Energy is transformed in a positive direction.
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