Discernment in Relationships and Conscious Relating

By Bernhard Guenther, November 19, 2017

Introduction

Relationships take on a whole new level for anyone who has taken the “red pill”, i.e. anyone who is sincerely engaged in seeking truth, self-work and cultural/social de-programming in order to transcend the Matrix on The Path Towards Awakening.

However, before two people can actually engage in (or enter) this “higher” level of conscious relationship, it is best if both individuals have done a good amount of sincere self-work on themselves on their own, confronted their shadows, childhood wounding, social/religious/cultural conditioning, mechanical behaviors, etc,…as well as having established healthy self-love parameters. Learning to thrive in and enjoy solitude without “needing” anyone is also a prerequisite before being able to engage successfully in conscious relationships.

Articles such as “what conscious women want from men“, “what conscious men want from women” or “you need a warrior man/woman” that have been circling around make no sense for the most part and couldn’t actually have been written by truly “conscious” men/women. These kind of articles oftentimes tie into “victim consciousness” on some level as well as projections, entitlement, lack of taking responsibility and lack of understanding that on some level we always attract (or are attracted to) someone based on unconscious Shadow aspects (like “The Dance between Codependents and Narcissists“) , even if we don’t see it consciously and hence “blame” the other person for not being “conscious”, having all sorts of expectations. There is also much distortion in the New Age version of “Twin Flames” with people over-estimating their level of Being (soul embodiment).

It always takes two to tango. As long as we haven’t owned our own shadow aspects, it will always come back to us (mirrored) through other people, or via occult entity attacks/interference, injecting through the cracks of our energy body due to lack of embodiment, past wounding/trauma and not having fully anchored our soul essence into the body/avatar. The extreme case of such a hyperdimensional influenced romantic relationships is the “Love Bite” or “Dark Side of Cupid”.

In short, if you want a “conscious” partner, the work is with yourself first and foremost with radical self-honesty. Anyone who is waiting for the perfect partner to appear without taking full responsibility for his/her own soul evolution and is caught in blaming/projecting/expecting, and feeling like a victim will be greatly disappointed. The relationships in your life (not only romantic) are also a gauge/measure/reflection of where you are at in your own soul evolution.

At the end relationships are lessons in love, not an end in themselves. Not every relationship can be worked on either and there comes a time to let go and move on without trying (and without blame) to force something that just isn’t meant to be, otherwise both people are keeping each other from growing/evolving. Knowing when to let go/break up or if it’s truly worth to work on the relationship depends on the specific unique situation, but mostly your inner knowing/intuition already and always knows but the mind can complicate things, especially if we don’t trust our non-verbal inner guidance.

People come in and out of our lives to provide certain lessons. Not everyone is meant to stay “forever”. Oftentimes we are meant to be “alone” for a period of time with regards to our soul evolution, aligning ourselves with our unique soul purpose/Divine Will (and Divine Timing), patiently learning our lessons as opposed to being “slave” to the whims and desires of the impatient, desperate, and conditioned ego-personality.

With that being said, here are some writings on conscious relationships from various authors:

1. Discernment in Relationships

from “Greater Community Spirituality” by Marshall Summers

[Note: The word “Knowledge” used in this article relates to Gnosis (Higher Knowledge/Embodied Knowing)…….nothing to do intellectual mind-stuff, nor just ordinary feelings and is deeper than “intuition”…directly related to one’s level of Being/individualized soul. “The steps towards Knowledge” are a process, depending on one’s sincere self-work, lessons to learn, talents to develop, aligning with one’s unique soul purpose/Divine Will (contrary to the desires of the ego mind and is most often a destructive process —> death of the personality identification to be reborn in one’s true “I”).]

There are very few people in the world who really understand you – your deeper nature and the deeper qualities that you have that even you have not discovered. At the surface of your mind, you might find much agreement, but at a deeper level beneath the surface of your mind, there are only a few who would be able to really recognize you.

To have many friends really does not account for much at all. To win favor amongst many people is to accommodate yourself to their expectations, and this will weaken and even destroy your ability to recognize yourself. People want to be loved and accepted and acknowledged, but this is driven by insecurity primarily.

At a deeper level, you need a more profound recognition. You need a true ally, not merely a friend. You need someone who recognizes your deeper nature and responds to this naturally. You do not have to perform for these people. But you do have to honor this nature within yourself. If it is unknown to you, or if you are resisting it or denying it by trying to be something else that you think will be successful, then your relationship with these rare individuals will not come to pass and you will have lost a rare and great opportunity.

As you begin to take the steps to Knowledge, to the deeper intelligence… within you, your criteria for relationships will change. You will seek clarity and honesty. You will look for deeper values. You will look for more permanent values. You will look for greater integrity within people, greater sincerity, more substantial values. Of course, this will rule out many people, even if they are very pleasant and very nice in a social sense.

If they do not have this greater capacity within themselves or have not discovered this for themselves, well, then there will be no place for you to connect with them. You can understand them at the level of their circumstances or their personality; you might admire their appearance or their charms or their unique abilities, but the deeper connection will not be there. They are living at the surface, and you have gone beneath the surface.

You cannot wait for them or try to educate or enlighten them, for this will not be productive. You have to seek for people who are ready, willing and able to connect with you at this deeper level. If you try to improve someone else or bring them to this greater state of recognition, you will be wasting your time, which is precious and should not be wasted.

What you are really looking for here is Knowledge in others. You are no longer swayed by beauty, wealth and charm as you might have been before. Now you are listening for a deeper quality, a deeper spirituality, a deeper awareness. And surprisingly perhaps to you, you will not find it in many people.You will not find it in the “beautiful” people [obsessed with their physical appearance], the charming people, the wealthy people, the socially popular people, the people who are aggressive and ambitious, the people who are constantly selling themselves, the people who are caught up in political persuasions or the people who are extraordinarily intellectual.

If they do not have this deeper capacity yet, it will be evident, and Knowledge within you will not respond to them. Knowledge within you will not criticize them or condemn them. They are just not there yet. And this will give you a very different understanding of what real advancement is in an individual’s development.

Placing all your emphasis on beauty and charm is clearly superficial, but so is placing all your emphasis on intellectual brilliance, and you will see this. You are listening for something deeper in yourself now, and that is why you are listening for something deeper in others. It is not just that you share ideas or beliefs. You may talk about spirituality, you may talk about God, you may talk about inspiration, but that does not mean there is a deeper connection at all.

Here, your mind must be clear and neutral. You cannot be judging, comparing and condemning other people, or you will never know the power of Knowledge within yourself. People are always judging one another, and this keeps them from recognizing one another or carrying on a deeper evaluation, which has nothing to do with condemnation at all.

You are looking for the evidence of Spirit in another, not just a conversation about Spirit, not just a liveliness in their personality. You are looking for something deeper in them because perhaps you have reached the point now where you are looking for something deeper in yourself, and you see that wittiness, charm, beauty and extravagance or even shared ideas, hobbies and so forth really is not it. You are surprised you find there are very few people who seem to have this deeper quality that you can discern and that Knowledge within you really does not respond to many people at all. And you feel alone, and you wonder if there really is anyone else.

Here you have to be willing to be alone if you are to have this level of integrity within yourself. Here you have to be true to Knowledge. If Knowledge is not responding, you do not need to respond. You can be friendly, you can be courteous – that is valuable – but you must be reserved.

If there is nothing there, there is nothing there. And if you realize there is no value and there is only unfortunate consequence in amplifying the attractive features of a person at the surface of their existence, then you will have to face the reality that there are but a few that you can deeply connect with. This will keep you from filling up your life with people and activities and involvements that really do not have anything important to offer and do not represent any serious or meaningful engagement for you. Here it is better to be largely alone than to have your life filled with people and engagements that have nothing to do with your greater purpose and destiny in the world.

Relationships take time. Serious relationships take a great deal of time. So many people are losing their lives, their time and their energy involved in relationships that have no greater capacity or greater destiny for them. Because they do not want to be alone, they are afraid that the person or the persons they are looking for truly may never arrive, so they will say to themselves, “Well, this relationship is not perfect, but if I wait, there may be nothing better for me.”

You have to be very careful what you tell yourself here. You must have faith in Knowledge and faith in life to bring into your life those people whom you are really destined to meet, who really have a great impact on your life, who will play a significant role in your own development and accomplishments in the world. You must build this faith.

If you are alone now, it is a valuable time to build your connection to Knowledge. Knowledge represents your most profound and important relationship. If this is not established, if this is not fully established, then your relationship with everyone else will be out of sync – lacking clarity and purpose, lacking meaning – and your life will be filled with people, engagements, activities and commitments that will never create a real opening for you. Beyond your need to go to work and to earn a living and to build your education for opportunities in the world, there is this greater destiny you have with certain people, and that is really what you are looking for.

But you must be patient. You must see that there is an appropriateness to when people appear in your life. Timing is very important. Many people think they are ready for true partnership, but they do not know what it is for, and perhaps they are armored against this realization. So if they met the right person, they would not be ready to participate with them, and this would produce a great and profound conflict.

You must be ready for a greater relationship. You must know where you are going. You must have a deeper sense of your purpose and destiny, even if it is not fully defined yet. It must be real and strong for you. You must be willing not to give yourself to other attractions. You must know enough not to give yourself to other seductions.

Part of your education here is really learning what does not work. It is more a process of elimination. As long as you are drawn by beauty, wealth, and charm, you do not yet have the discernment to see what is really meaningful and important. If you have never really felt a deep connection with another, do not think it is not possible and meant for you.

You have a greater destiny in the world, and there are others who are part of this destiny and who will play a significant role in its discovery and expression. This is an article of faith for you now, for not all your needs can be met in this moment, nor should they be met.

You have to have a sound relationship with your mind and your body. You have to develop your health. You have to develop your Pillar of Work. You have so many things to do now to build your foundation in life. You have the Steps to Knowledge to take to build your connection with Knowledge. No one should be pining away for a relationship when they have all of this work to do to build their foundation.

A relationship cannot take the place of this, ever. You cannot be waiting for someone to give you all the meaning and value of your life. For if you do not have this foundation, you will not be able to participate with them. You will not have the strength, the courage or the self-honesty to be able to participate with someone in a greater way. It will only be a relationship of convenience, a relationship of advantage, a relationship of attachment, a relationship filled with fantasies and expectations that will fail in the face of a real life.

People are attracted and then disappointed, constantly. They are not finding what they are really looking for in one another because they are not looking for the right things. They have not built the patience and the clarity and the discernment within themselves to really know what this means.

Discernment in relationships is very significant, for you can give your life away so very easily. It can be so easy to get involved and so difficult to free yourself later. There are many seductions and many traps. Look around you and see how people have fallen prey to these things. Look without condemnation. Look with the desire to learn, for people are committing every possible form of self-violation out there, particularly in their relationships.

They will teach you the consequences of choosing wrongly, of being attracted by meaningless things, of being seduced by others, by being trapped in relationships, held in place by someone else, unable to extricate themselves, sold on a relationship because there is nothing better or there is something there you want—financial security, beauty and charm, shared interests.

But none of these things really constitute a real connection with another. None of them speaks of a greater purpose and destiny in life. They are all momentary attractions, and if you commit yourself to momentary attractions, time will be very disappointing to you.

So you must have the strength, the faith and the confidence to wait, to look and listen. Do not shut people out. Really listen to them. Listen for Knowledge within yourself as you listen to them. If Knowledge is not responding beyond simple courtesy, you do not need to respond, nor should you. You are looking for one or two or three people who will make the great difference in your life. Perhaps one will become a life partner. Perhaps one will be a great teacher. Perhaps one will be a great companion in your work. Perhaps one will just teach you momentarily something of immense value or point your life in a direction, showing you the way to go.

You might need other people for simple things—to provide goods and services, for simple companionship, for lighthearted enjoyment, but do not give yourself away to them. Do not give yourself away to anyone until you have built this deeper foundation within yourself. Do not let impatience or compulsion drive you. Do not let the persuasions of others or the power of seduction drive you.

Take your time. Do not hurry into any relationship. Listen to others carefully, to hear what their presence in your life means, if it means anything at all. If you are patient and observant, you will know. If you are reckless and compulsive, your life will be calamitous, and you will have a string of failed relationships or be circumscribed in an unhappy marriage or other arrangements with people.

The longer you are in a relationship that does not have this greater promise, the harder it will be to free yourself, for you will become dependent upon security and familiarity. You will need the person more than really want to be with them. And this is a dreadful trap, dreadful to the Spirit, dreadful in that it pre-empts you from finding your greater purpose and the individuals who will make all the difference in your discovery and expression of this purpose.

Do not worry that you are getting older. Do not let that drive your decision. If you are not meant to meet the significant partner for three years, let us say as an example, what are you going to do in the next three years? Go in and out of relationship, experience frustration, heartbreak, anger or resentment, disappointment, burning up your life over engagements that have no promise, while the Four Pillars of your life (Pillar of Relationships, Pillar of Work and Providership, Pillar of Health, Pillar of your Spiritual Development) remain undeveloped and un-recognized?

Can you be out of relationship for three years while you are building other aspects of your life? If you cannot, then you have a problem with personality addiction and this has nothing to do with real relationships. This is a personality disorder. Can you face loneliness and emptiness, or must you have constant stimulation, constant romance, constant infatuation and with them all the disappointment, frustration and disapproval that this generates?

You will waste your life and other people’s lives doing this. It is not necessary, you see. Constant searching, constant hoping and wanting someone—this is pointless and unnecessary, you see, for when you are ready, Knowledge will bring into your life the individual that you need and the people that you need for other parts of your life.

Do not think that everyone who crosses your path has been destined to meet you. If you have many engagements with people, many people will be crossing your path. You might have momentary encounters with them. They too are looking for certain individuals. Everyone is looking even if they are pretending not to be looking. But it must be the real engagement, you see. Knowledge will know. If you are strong with Knowledge, you will know. You will feel Knowledge’s response. It will be clear. It will be simple.

Perhaps you will meet someone, and Knowledge will say, “Ah, this is your husband or your wife you are meeting here.” None of this drama and excitement and infatuation and personal suffering and anguish that people go through in their romantic endeavors, their romantic escapades—just a recognition.

Then you have to see if the person is really ready for this and if, in fact, this is who they are in your life, and you take your time doing that. It does not have all the glory and sensation and extravagance that you see in the movie picture. It is a simple recognition because the resonance is there and the connection is there. The right person is the right person. Now you must discern if they are ready for this and if you are ready for this. Then you must learn of their traits and their values to see if there is sufficient compatibility between you, to allow a relationship to be formed and sustained.

You may have a greater destiny, but that does not mean that you can function successfully together. You will have to wait and see. If you value your life, you will not want to give it away. You will not want to gamble it. You have nothing to lose by taking time to see. If this is really the person for you, they are not going to go away. You can afford to take time.

For a relationship to function in the world, it must have a sufficient degree of compatibility. That does not mean you are completely the same, of course not. But you must have compatibility regarding your values, regarding your lifestyle, regarding your use of money, regarding how you look at work, regarding, really, the Four Pillars of your life.

Here you cannot rehabilitate anyone, for they are either ready or they are not. They are either right or they are not. The relationship is going to work or it does not. All this work that people do on their relationships is foolishness. It means the relationship does not work, and they are to keep trying to make it work, and they invest time and money and energy and sometimes a whole life into trying to make something work that really just does not work. They have no idea that if the relationship worked, they would not have to invest this kind of time. Yes, there are corrections and learning to be done and being together. But if you are always working on a relationship, it does not work. Spare yourself this fundamental lesson in life that can occupy so much of your life to learn.

Knowledge will know. But then you must find out the particulars of a person’s life to see if you can communicate, if you can share your values, if you can be together harmoniously. Sometimes people are attracted to people very different from themselves, but these relationships are almost never successful. They require too much adjustment, too much conflict, too much disparity and too much personal adjustment.

If you are with someone whose values are very different from yours, you will never be comfortable with them, and your being together will never be smooth and easy. This is not about falling in love. You can fall in love with someone you can never be in a relationship with. So infatuation or even recognition does not mean a relationship. This is another great lesson of life.

Perhaps you will fall in love with many people over the course of your life, but you cannot marry them all. Some are personality infatuations. Some represent relationships from the ancient past that you are now re-experiencing and want to experience again. And some represent real connections that could not be brought into being because the people were not ready or mature enough to participate effectively together. In the moment, you will not know what is what. So be careful about letting yourself become so infatuated with anyone.

Do not want and try to be in love. That is blind and foolish. There are many people who could excite the deeper passions of the heart with whom you could never function together. You can be in love with someone whose values are so different from yours that you could not stand to be together beyond the initial romantic phase. You will constantly be arguing, constantly in friction, constantly disagreeing, constantly maladapting to each other. People fall in love and get married without any idea of what they are doing in their lives or where they are going. They just assume if you are in love you should be married. It is a great mistake. You might feel spontaneous love for someone, but do not let yourself go overboard with that.

In relationship, you are choosing your primary influence. You are assigning the person to be your chief influence, your chief advisor. It is a practical arrangement, not just an emotional one.

Do not think if you work hard enough, if you love enough, you will make it all work. This is foolishness. You will have to work at relationship, certainly, to a degree. You will have to adapt, certainly, to a degree. You will have to relinquish some of your personal freedoms and recklessness to be in a real relationship, of course. You will have to be attentive. You will have to be honest. You will have to be engaged. But people take this to mean that they can make a relationship work with someone whom they want for themselves, and this is a cruel error.

If you feel like you are going to fall in love with someone, hold yourself back, keep your eyes open. This is a very important learning and very necessary for you to become mature and wise. To be swept along by impressions and infatuations, to allow yourself to be seduced by others, to be overtaken by beauty, wealth or charm is such a form of self-betrayal. It is such a dangerous involvement. It has such profoundly difficult and unfortunate consequences.

You have to be very careful here. Who you associate with and how you associate with them has all the bearing for your life and the kind of life you have and the opportunities you have. Likewise, do not become sexually engaged with anyone unless it represents a real partnership for you, for sexuality is a commitment by its very nature. You may think of it as a casual involvement, but emotionally it is never casual. Your relationship will never be the same. And if it cannot fulfill itself at a greater level, it will be disappointing, and that will generate resentment and failed expectations, disappointment.

You can not always just be a friend with someone who was once a lover, for you have crossed a threshold where you are pretending to be in a real relationship even though perhaps you never were. Sexuality is wonderful with the right person and damaging with the wrong person. Never treat this lightly. Never think of this as a casual, recreational kind of involvement. To your body it is the real thing. To your emotions it is serious because it is consequential.

Here you may have to hold yourself back and learn to restrain yourself, or you will give yourself away recklessly, hopelessly and cause great damage. And as a result, you will never know what is really true within yourself.

People use each other so thoughtlessly in this regard and give themselves away so thoughtlessly in this regard. Particularly in the more free nations, the democratic nations, people have such access to each other that they can indulge themselves at great damage to themselves and to other people—damaging their own integrity and the integrity of another, playing with the affections of another, pretending to be serious when in fact they have no real intentions here. Do not play these games with yourself or with others, for they produce nothing but harm.

You will see through disappointment here that you really do have deeper intentions regarding relationships. You have a more serious intention here. And what is that? And what does that mean? What does that require? And what are you really looking for in another? And are you yourself ready to be in a relationship of a greater nature or are you only pretending and flirting?

People commit themselves before they are ready. They get married before they are ready. They give their life away before they even know what their life is for, where it is going or what it really means. This happens all the time. So you have unhappy marriages and unhappy families. People are trapped. People are unhappy. People have capitulated. And now you have unhappy children being taught all the lessons of compromise that their parents have made.

To break this pattern, to break free of this reality that people have created, you must follow a deeper Knowledge within yourself and know what this means and how it feels, what it feels like to be restrained by Knowledge.

Take your decisions to Knowledge. If Knowledge is not choosing, well, you do not need to choose. If Knowledge is not saying yes, then do not say yes. If Knowledge is silent, then you be silent. If Knowledge is not committing itself, do not commit yourself. If it is not a yes, it is a no. There are no maybes. Do not tantalize yourself with that. That is trying to get what you want in the face of all the evidence that you are on the wrong track. So there is no maybe. Take your time. Look and listen to another. Do not become sexually involved with them. Do not be pressured to do so.

People will tell you all about themselves right away: their behavior, their intentions, their self-honesty, their interests, their values, their sincerity or lack of it, their self-awareness or lack of it. Do not be convinced by appearances. You must look deeper than this.

This will save your life. Later on, you will think back and say, “Oh my God, I could have married this person. Oh my God, I could have become involved with this person.” And if your life is really moving in the right direction, you will see what a calamity that would have been and how that would have used up such a great part of your life to try to get clear and to extricate yourself from that situation. And when you finally meet the people you need to meet, you will be so grateful you did not compromise before. You will be so grateful.

Ultimately, your focus must be on contribution in the world—where you are meant to be, what you are meant to do, where you are meant to give. If this is the focus of your life, then relationships will easily be a part of that, or they will not. And it will be very much easier to see if a person can fit into that or not.

That is why focusing on the presence of Knowledge and learning to read the signs of your own deeper inclinations are so extremely important before you become committed to another. Here you are seeking the kingdom first. You are seeking the reality of your life first. You are trying to discern a deeper direction. You are willing to be alone to do this. You are willing to forgo immediate gratification to do this because it is so much more important. You will hold yourself back for this.

If you are not extremely physically attractive, it is such an advantage here because the people who are very physically attractive are being constantly bombarded with offers and persuasions and seductions. They are being given power and recognition though they have most often never really earned it through any real merit. They are being seduced, and they will seduce themselves, and you will rarely find a highly physically attractive person who has ever cultivated any depth within themselves. They have become a product to be bought and sold. They are a resource for others. Unless they can see beyond this deception, they will fall prey to it.

As long as you are not hiding from people, avoiding people and denying people, you will be able to see where the connections could possibly be. But in the interim, your real purpose and emphasis and priority is to discern the presence of Knowledge and the signs of a deeper purpose in your life. For whoever you meet must be connected to this Knowledge and this purpose if you are to be with them successfully and if this relationship is to yield anything of real value and importance.

Take the Steps to Knowledge then. Learn from the wisdom of others’ mistakes and your own errors in judgment. Learn to be clear and sober. Do not condemn people, and do not become infatuated with them either. Do not base your expectations upon potential in others, for what you see today is really what you have in front of you.

There are so many important lessons here in discernment. But they all must be practiced to be realized. Take your path and evaluate it. Watch others clearly so that their accomplishments and mistakes can educate you. Let the world teach you what is true and how to distinguish it from what is not true, what is really good from what only looks good.

Be sober. Be clear. Do not give your life away. Build your connection to Knowledge. Begin to discern the evidence that you are here for a greater purpose. Do this without coming to conclusions; just allow the evidence to grow.

Feel Knowledge moving you and holding you back. Take good care of your mind and your body. Be present to others, but be reserved. Then you will have the freedom to practice this deeper discernment, and you will see how invaluable it is and how it is so lacking in other people’s discernment and decision-making.

Knowledge is here to take you somewhere, to prepare you, to strengthen you, to show you the difference between what is real and what is not real.

You have a greater destiny and a greater purpose. You must follow this pathway and not give it up for love or money, not for beauty, wealth or charm. If you do this, your life will be preserved, and you will be able to become strong and mature enough to engage with certain people with whom you share a greater destiny. You will find them, and they will find you. And you will be ready for one another.

2. The Esoteric Perspective of the Polar Couple

from “Gnosis” by Boris Mouravieff

Human love is imperfect because it is instinctive and impulsive. As long as man automatically follows his impulses, his love will serve only the cosmic goals of the ensemble [the General Law/Matrix]. The pleasure he always gains from this is as much an equilibrating element as a reward. As it is, it will not serve his esoteric evolution in any way.

Yet Love is the surest and most powerful means of achieving this evolution. This is because Love is the one objective element in our lives. That objectivity remains true in all Love’s many aspects, and through all the variety of its manifestations. Love can, in effect, serve man in his esoteric evolution. However, to achieve this aim, man must apply conscious efforts to this love, not allow himself be led on by impulses. It can then be used to accelerate the growth of his Personality and its progress towards the second Birth, the first tangible result of esoteric practices.

This work, done by man and woman working together, can develop with extraordinary power and give rapid results… on condition that from the esoteric point of view the two beings entirely suit each other, and also on condition that they are a perfect couple, that is, that their combination — with reservations concerning the peculiarities of their human type — reflects the relation between the absolute ‘I’ and the ‘You’ before the Creation of the Universe. This is the case of those beings known in esoteric science as polar beings.

We must add that now, at the threshold of the era of the Holy Spirit, where all that is wrong—however well-intentioned—must fall and break, the problem of the real polarity of couples becomes crucially important. Two beings, man and woman, who are supposed to be polar, cannot be absolutely certain of their polarity until later on, when they have reached the level of man 4, on the threshold of level 5. This is because, although polar in essence, each of them brings with them a past that covers their real ‘I’ with a dissimilar crust. Those who are polar in essence must take this fact into account. It is only when they gradually shed this crust that the qualities of their essence will progressively shine through, bringing at each discovery an abundance of ineffable joy. Thus their love will always grow.

Conscious personal efforts, especially efforts between two polar beings, and the joint efforts of people who have already progressed in the search for the Way, mark out the route for those who want to serve, who wish to be useful to the task of redemption which esoteric work wants to accomplish today in the whole world.

To set out on the Way, man must necessarily go through an inner collapse of the Personality, what we call moral bankruptcy. Then he will know the vain illusion of pride, and the true value of humility.

To return to this source, the chief practical objectives are mastery of the sexual centre, and the training of the emotional centre. However, for this esoteric work to be completed successfully by two people, it is essential that the two beings — man and woman — are integrally polar.

Here the real ‘I’ is involved, and the couple’s Love, while containing all the possibilities already described in the preceding cases, has a singularly emotional character of a higher order. It naturally follows as this Love is hylic, psychic and spiritual at the same time, thus leading to an attraction that is visual, auditory and tactile, it is incomparably richer.

The chief characteristic of this so-called Royal case is the bi-polarity of the real ‘ I ‘ – one for each couple. This orients their Personalities and their bodies in such a way that what each hopes for and awaits from the other is precisely, and very naturally, what the other desires to and is prepared to offer. It is only in a case of this kind that there can be absolute harmony between a couple, and even this is conditional on each of them trying progressively to liquidate his or her karmic burden and to establish a balance between the lower centres, whose development must be pushed to the limit.

These are the combined objectives which the allegedly polar couple who enter on the fifth way must seek through their work. This means that, right from the beginning, the Knight and his Lady-elect must practice courtly Love, which unites in itself Faith, Hope and Knowledge (Gnosis).

3. Sri Aurobindo on the Soul Mate/Twin Flame connection

from “Letters on Yoga” by Sri Aurobindo

[Note: Sri Aurobindo’s comment is addressed to a man who asked the question. Obviously you can interchange the gender reference.]

Q: “How can one know when he meets his psychic (soul) mate?”

SRI AUROBINDO: “How do you know a spiritual experience? It is all a matter of feeling and inner perception. It is an art and not a science. When she walks into your life you will know her right enough. As I have told you again and again, no rigid and hard and fast rule is possible in things like this. Union with woman is right in one case and perhaps wrong in other 99 cases. In that one case again without his Shakti (i.e. feminine counterpart) the man’s progress will be very slow and he may even go wrong. In the other 99 cases contact with woman itself may prove an obstacle. There are so many hostile [hyperdimensional] powers working against the right union of complementary souls that very often, you can seldom meet your right mate. Of course I am talking of the path and not of the goal.

When you reach the highest you will have to see whether you can get your Shakti. Without a Shakti you can yourself be perfect, in the sense that you can attain full knowledge, power and Ananda and change your entire organised being into its divine nature, but when you want to throw your powers on the world for creation, it is different. Take my instance. It may so happen that I reach the highest all alone, my Shakti falling in the way. Then I cannot create without her. I can by my highest siddhi only prepare the way for others to follow and accomplish the rest in the future.

It is not only the [occult] dark forces who obstruct and make it impossible for the twin souls to meet, but even when they actually meet their life may get wrecked owing to mental and vital impediments. It is only when the psychic [soul embodiment] or the spiritual part is predominant in both, the two can really fulfil one another and progress higher and higher.

The [ occult hyperdimensional] hostile powers working against the siddhi of yogis are difficult to conquer. Ordinarily we are in complete darkness or ignorance with only flashes of knowledge now and then, even when the sadhaka has risen into a continual glow of knowledge and can discern the play of all the dark forces, he is not exempt from attack. Only when he reaches full illumination and is in serene and revealed knowledge he is beyond them and safe.”

4. Conscious Relationship

by Shelly Bullard

We are approaching a period of time when relationships are ready to go through a major redesign. The current paradigm isn’t working. People are unsatisfied in love; people don’t know how to make relationships work.

And, believe it or not, this isn’t a bad thing. Because when systems break-down, that’s when they change. I believe that’s what’s happening in the area of intimate partnership. The break-down is forcing us to move towards conscious love.

So what exactly is a conscious relationship?

It’s a romantic relationship in which both partners feel committed to a sense of purpose, and that purpose is growth. Individual growth. Collective growth as a couple. Growth that makes the world a better place.

As of now, most people get into relationships to satisfy their own personal needs. This might work for a few years, but eventually the relationship fails us, and we end up unsatisfied as a result.

But when two people come together with the intention of growth, the relationship strives towards something much greater than gratification. The partnership becomes a journey of evolution, and the two individuals have an opportunity to expand more than they could alone. Deep satisfaction and long-term fulfillment arise as a result.

So if you’re someone who feels called to take your experience of romantic love to the next level, below are four qualities that characterize what being a conscious couple is all about. Welcome to the path of the conscious relationship. This is next-level love:

The conscious couple is not attached to the outcome of the relationship – growth comes first.

Not being attached to the outcome of the relationship does not mean you don’t care what happens! It also doesn’t mean that you don’t have fantasies about how the relationship will turn out. What it means is: you’re more committed to the experience of growth than you are to making the relationship “work.” The reality is, we’re here to grow. Physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. When growth stops, we automatically feel like something’s gone wrong. Because it has. Without growth, we aren’t fulfilling our soul’s purpose.

Unfortunately, relationships today tend to stifle growth more than enhance it. This is one of the main reasons we’re failing at romantic love. We want our partners to act in a certain way, we repress ourselves to please others, and soon enough, we feel small, oppressed and puzzled about who we’ve become. This, inevitably, makes the relationship feel like a cage that we want to break out of. But the unfortunate truth is: we’ve caged ourselves.

The conscious couple values growth more than anything else because they know this is the secret to keeping the relationship alive. Even though growth is scary (because it takes us into the unknown), the couple is willing to strive towards expansion, even at the risk of out-growing the relationship. Because of this, the relationship maintains a natural feeling of aliveness, and love between the couple does, too.

Each person in the relationship is committed to owning their s#*t.

Conscious couples know that we all have wounds from the past, and they understand that these wounds will inevitably be triggered, especially in a relationship. In other words, they expect to feel abandoned, trapped, rejected, overlooked and any other shitty feeling that arises when we bond closely with another person.

Most of us still believe that relationships should only feel good, and when bad feelings surface, something has gone terribly wrong. What we fail to see in this situation is that these shitty feelings stem from our own faulty patterning! These issues are not caused by our partners; they’re caused by our beliefs.

The conscious couple is willing to look at their past and current issues in relationships because they know that by facing these beliefs systems, they can evolve into a new relationship-reality. Dysfunctional patterns will dissolve, but only when we take responsibility for them, first.

All feelings are welcome and no internal process is condemned.

In a conscious relationship, there’s room to feel anything. Not only that, there’s room to express those feelings and fantasies to your partner. This is edgy territory… it’s not easy to do. But it’s also one of the most healing things we can experience in a partnership

It’s rare to be completely honest about who you are, and to stretch yourself to let your partner do the same. You may not like what you hear; in fact, it may trigger the hell out of you. But you’re willing to be triggered if it means your partner can be authentic.

Like I already said, we’re used to molding and changing ourselves to please people we love because we don’t want them to stop loving us! This stifles the love out of our connections.

The only option is radical honesty: revealing parts of ourselves that are hard to share, and letting our partners do the same. This leads to feeling known, seen and truly understood — a combination that will automatically enhance your love.

The relationship is a place to practice love.

Love, ultimately, is a practice. A practice of acceptance, being present, forgiveness, and stretching your heart into vulnerable territories. Sometimes we treat love like it’s a destination. We want that peak feeling all the time, and when it’s not there, we’re not satisfied with what the relationship has become. In my mind, this is missing the whole point of love.

Love is a journey and an exploration. It’s showing up for all varied nuances of your relationship and asking yourself, What would love do here?” The answer will be different every time, and because of this, you’ll get to grow in ways you never have before! The conscious couple is fiercely committed to being the embodiment of love. And through their devotion and practice, love shows up in their lives and relationship in ways they would’ve never imagined before.

5. Evolutionary Love Relationships

from “Evolutionary Love Relationships” by Andrew Harvey & Chris Saade

What the Divine Mother is now birthing in all those open to her is a vision of total relationship between heart, mind, body, and soul, so that through that deep sacred relationship, we can come into the unified force field of reality, become completely embodied and present, and use that inner love to express our longing to see the world transformed. What is really at stake is this: If we continue to have a vision of relationship as purely personal, purely private, and something that we cultivate only for our own pleasure, we will keep feeding the tragic narcissism that is now ravaging the planet on every level.

The real thrust and purpose and meaning and divine importance of relationship is to give us the fuel to take on the world, the energy to keep on pouring ourselves out for the creation of a new world. It is critical to remember that this crisis we are facing is a crisis in which the sacred powers of love in the human soul are being diverted by distraction, by greed, by ignorance, by the pursuit of power, so that they never irrigate the world and transform it. What is needed is a vision of evolutionary relationship as a relationship that helps us come into the real, take responsibility for it, and enact our sacred purpose with a partner, and for the world: when two lovers come together in this dynamic love consciousness, they create a transformative field of sacred energy, from which both can feed to inspire their work in reality.

Both beings need to be plunged individually into a deep and passionate devotion of the Beloved [Divine], by whatever name they know the Beloved, because without both beings centering their life in God, the relationship will never be able to escape the private circle. From the very beginning it must be centered in the Divine. It must be a relationship that is undertaken in the coscious presence of the Divine for the Divine’s great work in the Universe. Only a relationship that is centered in God, and that has God as the prime actor in the relationship, will be able to bear the vicissitudes of authentic love, of dealing with the challenges of life and service in the world.

Both lovers [need to] completely abandon any Hollywood sentimentality about what relationships actually are. As love becomes more evolutionary and conscious, so does each lover’s understanding of each other’s shadow. One of the essential roles of this new love is to make each person in the relationship the safe-guarder of the other’s shadow—not the judge of the other’s shadow, not the denier of the other’s shadow, but someone who recognizes where the other has been wounded, and safeguards and protects them with unconditional compassion without allowing themselves to be mauled or manipulated by the other. This takes an immense effort, because it takes an immense effort to understand your own shadow, and an even greater effort to face and comprehend, without illusion, denial or repulsion, the shadow of the other.

If you are going to enter into the evolutionary process, you have to accept that it never ends, never stops unfolding. There is no end to transformation, because divine love is infinite. Evolution is fundamentally a death/rebirth cycle that repeats itself in higher and higher dimensions, and any authentic evolutionary relationship must have the courage to go through the deaths that engender the rebirths.

From the very beginning of this adventure into evolutionary love you must make the commitment for it not to be just a personal orgy, a cultivation of an oasis of private pleasure. You must engage consciously in this relationship, to make you stronger, to serve the planet, to recognize that it is a relationship not only grounded in God, not only infused by sacred practice, but it is from the very beginning dedicated to making both people more powerful, more reflective, more passionately engaged. We need a major revolution of the heart to empower everyone to step forward and start doing the work of reconstruction and recreation that is now desperately needed.

Authentic right livelihood is rare in this world, but when you see a glimpse of it, possibly even in yourself, you must dedicate yourself to a form of service that really absorbs your deepest gifts. And your partner needs to be involved either with you or act separately. Otherwise, the great ideal of evolutionary love, the ideal that an evolutionary love can co-create with the Divine a wholly new world and provide the kind of ecstasy, fuel, energy, passion, and truth for this great transformation cannot be realized.

Unless the two people involved in the relationship have an equal commitment to really pouring themselves out in right livelihood, they are in tremendous danger of using their relationship as an addictive drug, which is unfortunately what a great many tantric practitioners do. They use the pursuit of ecstatic relationship as a way of escape, to avoid deep plunging into the world. This is a subtle, but lethal, form of narcissism and aborts the evolutionary impulse.

The adventure of evolutionary love exposes you to yourself. It reveals to you that for all of your mouthing of sacred truths and your desire for passion and unity and commitment, there is a whole part of you that is lazy, slothful, in denial, corrupt, and profoundly narcissistic. This is shocking, but it is essential to encounter this [shadow] part of yourself, because you will be dealing with it in ever subtler forms as the transforming process grows more and more intense.

Evolutionary love will not be able to be incubated in the current religious, guru, or New Age systems because it demands that people step outside the religious inhibitions of all of the major systems and claim their divinity and do this radical work of marrying the authentic self [within], rooted consciously in its light-origin to its mission of sacred service. Most people look for a “correct” way of being, a “correct” way of being love [i.e. the disease of spiritual/political “correctness”]. They lose the authenticity of their own spiritual embodiment.

The essential part of the transformation we are seeking, this grassroots unleashing of love-in-action, has to come through a profound respect for every individual authenticity and for the sacred task of every individual spirit. That requires a smashing of the idols. ”Enlightenment” doesn’t have to be projected outwards [on to gurus/masters/others to follow with its side effect of group/hive mind/follower thinking]. But very few mystical or religious leaders are really giving that message. The New Age claims to give that message, but then, it defines the authentic life as being peaceful, passive, and gentle, not seeing the negative – all of this nonsense.

Our authenticity is unique, yet it is indivisibly connected to love. We can only fully understand the nature of our own spirit when we dedicate it to service, for the love of the world. Marry the passion you discover when you reclaim and embody your unique self to the passion to serve the birth of a new humanity and you will be borne into a new level of power, energy, and effectiveness. Imagine what could be accomplished by two people loving and encouraging each other to live this most potent of marriages.

6. The Foundation of Spiritual Relationships by The Mother Mirra Alfassa To unite your physical lives, your material interests, to become partners in order to face together the difficulties and successes, the defeats and victories of life that is the very foundation of marriage, but you already know that it is not enough.

To be united in your sensations, to have the same aesthetic tastes and enjoyments, to be moved in common by the same things, one through the other and one for the other that is good, that is necessary, but it is not enough.

To be one in your deeper feelings, to keep a mutual affection and tenderness that never vary in spite of all the blows of life and can withstand every weariness and irritation and disappointment, to be always and on every occasion happy, extremely happy, to be together, to find in every circumstance tranquillity, peace and joy in each other that is good, that is very good, that is indispensable, but it is not enough.

To unite your minds, to harmonise your thoughts and make them complementary, to share your intellectual preoccupations and discoveries; in short, to make your sphere of mental activity identical through a widening and enrichment acquired by both at once that is good, that is absolutely necessary, but it is not enough.

Beyond all that, in the depths, at the centre, at the summit of the being, there is a Supreme Truth of being, an Eternal Light, independent of all the circumstances of birth, country, environment, education; That is the origin, cause and master of our spiritual development; it is That which gives a permanent direction to our lives; it is That which determines our destinies; it is in the consciousness of That that you must unite. To be one in aspiration and ascension, to move forward at the same pace on the same spiritual path, that is the secret of a lasting union.

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