In the past year I have endlessly blogged and chatted to radio hosts about the intricacies of intimate relationships from communication styles to self observation, with unending awe as I explore the certain mysteries of love and how it affects us all. There are heaps of experts and books out there written by amazing people way more qualified than me about the psychology and technical workings of relationships, but it is my calling to offer you help in this wonderland of life, so it got me wondering, just what is a Conscious Union?
What has been emerging, as Conscious Union earns her place in the "New Earth" jigsaw, is a honing and fine tuning of ingredients that go to make up a conscious relationship and how it is the closest thing to "happily ever after" that we will ever see within our existing DNA structure!
So let me take you on a journey around a conscious relationship. If you are in one already then I don my hat to you and say well done...you are helping to pioneer the new relationship paradigm for future generations who understand the meaning of authentic love. If you are in a relationship but wonder if it sizes up then read on. If you are single, this will give you the goal posts within which to aim high for your next relationship!
The recipe:
1) Two fully committed people who are willing to help each other heal and grow from the past.
Human beings are a complex set of cells with a huge range of needs and wants, even though some of us don't say! From birth it is a near impossible task for any parent to meet the needs of their child 24/7 and to ensure their protection and safety from life, hence at some stage our childhood would have experienced a good few negative situations that may have become ingrained in our psyche and can stunt our childhood growth on the spot. Along comes our intimate relationships later in life which are fertile ground for healing from these ingrained experiences. But in order to heal, the wound needs to show itself and nothing quite like this kind of relationship, fires our need to look at these pain spots and allow them to surface and clear. Many people through lack of understanding of this occurring dynamic will assume that experiencing this kind of pain means "oh no my relationship is on the rocks" or "he/she is so not right for me" when in fact your partner is your directional arrow to what you need to look at together. This is the key ingredient in conscious love. It takes time, oodles of patience, compassion and willingness to stay open to whatever comes each day.
2) Two people who encourage full authenticity to be re-born in each other.
Love and approval is the human blueprint for life but from birth to now many of us lose the essence of our original nature by doing what we feel we need to do to be loved. Love and safety are life saving as children, without them the feeling is one of death and the motivating emotions that keep us as far away as possible from this fear, keep us chained in a symbiotic dance between trying to be loved and our drive to be authentic. Imago call our adolescent self the "fragmented" self because we have evolved disowning and denying parts of our full humanness in order to be approved of. Children see their parents as role models for life and no matter how "wounded" our parents and their parents before them, we believe that to not express anger or to "be seen and heard" etc. is the right way to be and so we endlessly try to be good little beings and then we'll be loved..right?! Sadly not, but like mice on a wheel we are programmed to press the "please love me" button over and again. Deep down however in the engine room of our being is the constant reminder, as Grace nudges us, that we are here to be authentic. Our relationships are a fertile ground for re-entry into authenticity. Conscious relationships positively encourage it! How? Well we must provide the safety and comfort for each other at all times to allow the emergence of wholeness. It takes a lot of time, encouragement and commitment..have you got what it takes?
3) Two people who are self aware and willing to take responsibility for every action and input into the relationship.
Sadly many people have the unconscious view that everything their partner does is either right or wrong and the focus is outside of themselves. They transmit feelings and emotions adhoc without due care of the relationship with a one way focus. When all is going great it's easy but when conflict strikes all hell often breaks loose as the victim and perpetrator archetypes play out their next scene. "She is never interested in sex not matter what I do....he never listens to me and never bothers to understand my point of view" There are many war crys but a war has two sides and one can't war if the other isn't engaged. A conscious relationship always asks "what am I doing to create this situation and what can I do to help it get better?" Blaming and shaming is like an 80's haircut...it's old and outmoded! Self awareness for me IS consciousness. We are constantly aware of the world around us but we randomly select what we do and don't put our awareness on. I see people in their twilight years who have never chosen self awareness and everyone around them is either too scared to tell them what they need to look at or are worn out from trying. A sad situation and like a diseased cell in the human body! Be self aware...it's a revelation and a miracle all at once. Someone once said to me "the journey of yourself is the most rewarding one you will ever take", so why spend all the time looking out the window?
4) Two people willing to change unhelpful behaviours.
All of our relationships are our mirrors. The way people react to us is a huge directional arrow to where we are at with our behaviour. If we act like a badly behaved child and speak in venomous tones to people then what are we expecting? My mum always says, "put yourself in the other person's shoes and imagine how you would feel". Ancient but sound advice. In your relationship you do need to understand and get a grip of bad behaviour. Change is required. It's common sense really, otherwise your relationship suffers constant erosion. My father was compelled to behave badly in his marriage to mum and the effects are a book load of sad stories. So unnecessary.
5) Two people who use kind communication verbally and physically and who can navigate the waters of conflict with ease.
Communication is the life blood of every relationship, period! It is absolutely possible to become authentic and say what you really need to say with kind words and body language. The problems start when people are triggered during an argument and often at lightning speed and reacting badly has become the pattern. It's here that full reigns on how we act must be deployed. I was a fine one for shooting my mouth off if I was pissed off with my partner but reacting with bad words and behaviour is so much harder work! More common sense really! I teach the Intentional Dialogue tool as a great way to find a calm platform for conscious communication.
6) Two people who are educated about relationship dynamics.
Do you know about the distinct phases of a relationship and what's happening in your body during the honeymoon and conflict stages? Are you aware that you choose partners who are designed to bring up your stuff so you can look at it from the past? What conflict style do you take and how does that affect your partner? Are you aware of your relationship space? These and many more things are the important resources of information that must be read and digested in your conscious relationship library. This information was instrumental in my own awakening. Never before had I understood that I knew so little about what goes on in relationships and by just by being in one didn't give me the insight. This forms the essence of my work with couples and singles who seek conscious relationships.
7) Two people who strive to maintain connection through all relationship weathers.
We can all do a great relationships when its' going well but bad emotional weather will strike at sometime in everyone's lives because life is always happening as we walk our path together. Life is designed to ebb and flow with the cycles of the Universe and a conscious relationship knows that when things ebb, relationship connection is paramount. It is easy to let life sweep us apart and to be too busy to talk or spend quality time together, but the velvet nature of connection is an elixir. Yes it takes effort but next time you feel like ignoring the relationship because you are too shattered to speak...take a moment to do something appreciative...even if it's a little note or an "I love you". Connection is the foundation of a healthy relationship.
8) Two people who are dedicated to allowing the otherness in each other with freedom to grow separately and together.
Unconscious relationships control and dominate. Conscious relationships know that each person was born separate and "other" and their ultimate goal is to be separately connected not symbiotically connected. Need prevents freedom. Love encourages freedom. But here's where we come unstuck at this stage in our conscious awakening. I believe intimate relationships are still conditional to hugely varying degrees and so freedom varies accordingly. Allowing freedom to "be and become" is a sore spot for many because there is so much fear about losing love once we are in love. We plant labels like "my girlfriend, my husband" etc. which suggests ownership of the other. Unconscious rules start to develop about what each person should do or not to do in the relationship and a stifle can begin to develop. This part of the conscious relationship recipe, I think, is the toughest, but with tender loving care blended with all of the above we can and will get there!
9) Two people who housekeep their relationship space regularly and are vigilant about nurturing it's quality.
Hedy Schliefer always refers to the relational space between a couple and helps them focus on it as the barometer for relationship health. Like a walled garden of Eden, where the children and the animals live, it's space and quality and energy are critical to the health of a conscious couple. We communicate largely with energy. Have you ever walked into a room and could cut the atmosphere with a knife? Energy always speaks the truth but often underlies the words and actions in a relationship. The conscious couple strives to maintain a peaceful and happy relationship space so the energetic truth matches the spoken words.
10) Two people who know that it is what they give to the relationship rather than what they take from it, that helps them heal and grow.
Healing and growth, as I mentioned earlier, is a game for two. You can do all the self development you like but your intimate relationship will trawl up all your unhealed fears, worries and pain from the past. It is designed to do this! Conscious relationships know that it is their job to help the other heal and grow not to take what "I need". This sets up a beautiful cycle of mutual giving and nurturing which dispels any need to "get my needs met". Trust me it works...I am living proof. What I have with my beloved is a fertile ground of healing and growth every day.
So there you have it. The essential ingredients for a Conscious Union. The only way to love and be loved in these changing times. Open your eyes and look back down the road that you have come from and know that you are fully deserving every day to have a conscious relationship. No matter who you are or what you have experienced you have what it takes to create one. With a dash of self awareness and a tablespoon of willingness to change what needs to be changed, you too can learn to love authentically.
Blessings and love
I am a relationship educator and motivational speaker on the subject of love and a qualified Unity Hatha Yoga teacher specialising in partner yoga, teaching couples how to re-connect through the very powerful use of non-verbal dialogue. I am also a natural therapist offering spiritual guidance and healing tools as a way to discovering the true self and healing from the past. I am not a counsellor or psychologist but I would say, an expert in falling in love and getting hurt. I have a 25 year portfolio of experience in love relationships, which I often fondly reflect on and am now the proud owner of. I don't have any major sob stories to tell you, but it is true that I have allowed my heart to take a beating a few times. I wanted to know why I was so strongly attracted to the "wrong" men that were non-committal and dangerous for the female heart. During a trip to India in 2007, someone said to me "You must become the person you want to attract Gina". It was a revelation. I set about self education and reading all the books I could get my hands on about love and why we do the things we do. The result? It is ALL about me and what we give out we get back. Seems so simple but how many of us REALLY know what to do about it?
Web http://www.consciousunion.co.uk Blog http://www.ginahardy.blogspot.com
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