How to fall in love with the person you married!

Remember the first time you fell in love – I mean really fell?  Did you count the minutes until you’d be with that person again?  Did you buy flowers or chocolates or champagne spontaneously?  Did your creativity blossom – through poetry, dance moves, or letters that you later regretted?

Through some miracle of genes, chemicals or perhaps the life force itself, you truly experienced what is known as “transpersonal love” – for a little while at least.  You loved them just for who they were, and they loved you in the same way.  It delivered energies of passion for sure, but also generally positive feelings that powered you through the day.  Remember how they hung on your every word, and how you really listened to them?  It's the stuff of romance novels and chick flicks – but both are signs of a desire for more of that magical state.

And so a serious relationship commenced – perhaps you moved in together and got married.  Perhaps your focus was on careers, or building a nest.  Perhaps your attention was distracted by children for 20 or 30 years!  However it happened for you, the everyday challenges of life demanded strong and resilient personality development, and you probably met those challenges head on.  The inevitable ego-on-ego relationship shifted your experience of love to something much more “grounded”.  No doubt you attracted a mate who in some way is your polar opposite, giving both of you the opportunity to grow and learn from one another.  The degree of polarisation and the joint willingness and ability to take up the growth opportunities, determined the course of the relationship. 

Of course you can reject the opportunity altogether and start again with someone else on a new and (apparently) different challenge!  But the point of this is, “What happens if you don't split up?”  You can either grow within the original challenge that your partner presents to you every day just by being themselves, or you can grow through therapy or a wide range of workshop experiences.  And the more you know about yourself, the easier it is to meet the challenge of partnership.

Every couple inevitably settles into ways of getting along with one another, (ideally) for mutual benefit.  If they successfully meet life's challenges for ego integration then they achieve the satisfaction of normalcy within society.  This is a kind of mutually interdependent-self relationship – it's reasonably comfortable, it's reasonably productive, and there is always some common interest that can be pursued together.  You know one another very well, you respect one another, you support one another's desires and aspirations, and you achieve things together.

Yet there is a very serious trap that lies hidden within that very success.  Life works reasonably well but the truth is that we can settle for a life that, while becoming more secure and predictable, actually reduces relationship to a series of shared, comfortable habits and routines.  The satisfaction in life that you have attained together gradually becomes less satisfying – not necessarily in quantity, but in quality.  For many people this is all that life is about – a kind of goal achieved – after which, having attained a certain objectivity about their life experiences, they retire and fade away.  But for others the “lack of satisfaction with satisfaction” demands that they continue on a longer, now spirit-centric journey.

With maturity and awareness, certain experiences guide the way: perhaps certain pieces of music; perhaps certain pieces of film or video; perhaps certain scenes from nature; perhaps certain types of story or poetry; perhaps certain types of spiritual practice – the common element being how far one can be absorbed into the experience – becoming one with the experience as it were.  This is not to be confused with a simple disassociation experience where one is simply “not present”.  This is the experience of being absolutely present, not as an observer but "as the experience itself".  As children we were naturally good at it, but we lacked the awareness to distinguish between that and the other reality.  And as an adult if you have ever truly fallen in love, then you have known the experience for that honeymoon period, but you probably still lacked the awareness and the skills to consciously create it.

But now, older and wiser, as you consciously explore those absorption experiences, and consciously allow the expansion beyond self, but fully inclusive of self, new skills and a whole new awareness begin to emerge.  For these are the transpersonal skills of “falling in love” consciously – of loving another person, or people, for no more reason than that they are who they are right now.  But it's not a passive or observer type experience any longer.  With it comes the spontaneity, the creativity, the physical energy and that old passion for whatever in life you choose to focus on.  A whole new world emerges – not simply a nostalgic recreation of the past.

So get yourself beyond your “satisfaction with satisfaction” – and you won't be able to help falling in love with that amazing person you married, all over again – and much, much more besides.

Perhaps this is your journey?

Your own VitallyMePersonal Development Guide will help you discover just what satisfactions you personally need to go beyond.  Nameste!