There are seven steps, I'll list them in order of sequence:
Entering the Stream
Mindfulness
Efforts
Success
Powers
Awakening
Humility
1. Entering the Stream
- Beyond Anger
- Beyond Greed
- Beyond Hatred
In order to enter the stream of healthy relationships you need to make sure you are not carrying baggage from the past.
Most single people, when asked about the past, reveal that "I'm over it, I let go" but that's like cleaning dog business off your shoes, the stuff goes but the scent remains.
To really clear the past a single person needs to be ready, willing and able to re-enter a relationship with any one and all of their past partners. But choose not to.
This is the acid test. Self-righteousness kills the future and single people who carry blame and victimhood into their next relationships sabotage them before they start or push people away before they even get close.
So the first key in entering the real stream of a healthy new relationship is to heal the old one. Now, please don't make the mistake of thinking that healing old relationships involves apologies, public displays of affection or even bonking with ex partners. No... That's not the healing. The healing is a spiritual one, where there is absolute gratitude, no victim, an appreciation and thankfulness toward that person. You'd even recommend them to your best friend.
Some single people blame, hate and remain angry at their ex partner for years and years. Even if that single person finds a relationship, that relationship will be a fraction of what they dreamed of. When we hate, blame and be angry with just one person in the past, we bring that horrible mindset to our new love, albeit subconsciously, and set up a false dynamic from the start.
So, enter the stream by taking off the concrete backpack and lead boots. It makes it so much easier to swim.
Cleanse yourself of the past, bathe yourself in love, learn to discard those old crusty feelings and emotions that have moved you through a hurt, but which, if not released will bind you to it.
This is the first key, to be ready, and really, genuinely single. No longer wishing or hoping for the past to be different or the future to have any reflection from the past. Your new partner might be sympathetic to your issues from the past at first, but not for long.
Clear heart, clear mind, clear emotions. An emotional and spiritual cleansing is a really big step in creating a new long term relationship.
Wash off the blame, work through the shame, get back on the train.
2. Mindfulness
- Mindful of Body
- Mindful of Feelings
- Mindful of Mind
- Mindful of objects
Single people are notoriously self aware. They've become aware of their thoughts, ideas, beliefs, feelings and lifestyle. They know what they want, want what they know to be good and really feel self-actualised in their capacity to be content sitting in their own wet nappy.
But this sort of self-awareness is often verging on self-obsession. And there are a few tricks and traps to be aware of.
First, separate body awareness from mind awareness, then mind awareness from spiritual awareness. Be careful that you keep them separate and don't confuse them. Why?
Because body awareness is vital to love and intimacy
Because mind awareness is vital to romance and love
Because spiritual awareness is vital to long term choices in short term circumstances.
This balance between mind, body and spirit awareness is expressed in your environmental awareness. Be aware of the clothes you wear, the things you surround yourself with and the people who you welcome as friends.
It is all too easy to drag those things from the past into the future and think they'll bring you the luck and fortune you deserve, but sometimes those people, things and places carry memories that are not yours, not clear, and impregnated with history that will make your new life and love impossible. You don't need to add challenges to new relationships, there will be enough just dealing with the future and present.
So, your mindfulness can include your thoughts, your feelings, your body health, and appearance. It also includes the space and place you create, with new sheets on the bed, new underclothes and even some new books to surround your new love.
3. Effort
- Doing the right thing
- Fixing and preventing doing the wrong thing
- Be aware of causing the right thing
- Sustaining and holding the right space
The effort required to move from single to couple is a complete change in strategy.
As a single person your strategy is built on your needs, your wants, your life, your future, your happiness, your comfort, your food, your work, your friends and your inspiration.
As a double person your strategy includes all those things from being single, plus those exact same strategies for your new partner.
There is no need to compromise, and it is certainly not wise to. Instead, find as many things to serve your common interests as possible. For example you might go to the gym early in order to accompany your partner to a function... Both are happy.
Doing the right thing is an intention.
But don't expect to be placed on some sort of pedestal for having this intention. Because there's two sides to everything, you won't always be rewarded for your efforts in the form of acknowledgment or appreciation.
Doing the right thing is always vulnerable to interpretation and therefore prone to error. So, intend to do the right thing, help your partner at all times but don't always expect their recognition. Instead give it to yourself. Recognise your intent and be kind to yourself.
The time to practice this is when you are single. Create a positive intention and deal with people's negative opinions by relaxing into your intentions.
Holding a good space means that you process your stuff quickly and cleanly. When you are single you might be willing to feel angry or resentful about somebody for a day or a week but when you get ready to be in a relationship, you have to recognise that holding such ugly mindsets for a longer time creates spaces that partners don't want to be around.
A thankful, appreciative, inspired place is attractive for a partner. So, if you are going to create a healthy relationship from being single space, you need to intensify your commitment to processing your baggage (negative or unhealthy emotion).
Many single people think that how they look or what they say is what causes attraction. But that attraction is only at the body level. Mind and spirit attraction are primarily internal attractions and come from feelings that no words can express. So, your Innerwealth, your inner dialogue is what causes attraction that is sustainable.
This is why you need to enter the stream cleaned up. Because if you are still having moments, seconds or days or resentments, anger or bitterness toward your ex, it ooozes out of your being and creates an unattractive presence for mind and spirit.
Many single people tell me that mind and spirit don't really matter in attraction as long as they feel physically connected and attracted to their partner. That's a choice but I don't see those people in long term trusting relationships.
So, as a single person getting ready to re-engage in a relationship, make sure you've learned how to focus life on love and goodness, being supportive, complimenting, encouraging, and appreciative toward others.
4. Success
- Diligence
- Energy
- Awareness (focus)
- Penetration
In this fourth step you have to step back a moment and ask, why do long term relationships succeed, and why do short term relationships fail?
In nature the answer is simple. Some have short term goals and some have long term.
Short term relationships are not wrong. They are simply not meant to do more than they do in the time. However, if a person is hoping for long term and acting for short term then there's going to be a heart break.
Short term action focuses on the physical. Long term action focuses on the spirit.
The human spirit is keen on one key area of life, and that is the future.
Many people obsess with being at peace. And peace is in the now. So, they become self-obsessed because in the now, there is only the physical. Mental is dead in the now, and that's why it is so peaceful. Everything is OK.
But the spirit is inspired by the future. A sense of purpose and outcome, a destiny and this is what binds two lovers for the long term. A sense of common destiny.
To move from single to double is easy when you know your VIP... Vision, Inspiration and Purpose in life. Vision sets up the future in everyday language, Inspiration is the expansion of the Now into the future so that there's a real sense of enthusiasm toward it, and Purpose is the underlying intent for the future.
100% of sustainable attraction is explained in those three letters, VIP. So, the most critical element of VIP is the ability to articulate them. This is the outcome of a Vision Quest and you are wise to do this before you meet someone new in relationship. Otherwise you will be confused.
This is the turning point. Because a relationship based on VIP will last and last, but a relationship based on short term goals will fill those goals (like car, children, house and dog) and then lose attraction. (this is when affairs happen)
Your VIP is in your heart. Do a vision quest to bring it out to life as part of your preparation for relationship.
5. Powers:
- The strength of Confidence
- The strength of Energy
- The strength of emotional and mental Stability
- The strength of emotional and mental Concentration
- The strength of true Understanding
We mentioned in the fourth step, Success, that VIP is a turning point between short term and long term relationship.
There is, however, a critical awareness that follows.
Only 33.333% of your VIP will be integrated in your relationship. 66.666% of your VIP will be up to you... And therefore, your independent commitment to your longer term vision, inspiration and purpose will remain separate from your relationship.
A single person is not challenged on their VIP. They are their own challenger. But in a relationship, partners question, challenge and provoke VIP.
To make it clearer: a single person might say, "I want peace in my heart" and because they are alone a lot of the time, or at least able to choose their challengers, they stay at peace a lot of the time. But peace is a no grow zone and relationships are meant to grow us.
So, underpinning a healthy relationship, is challenge.
Challenge thinking, beliefs, self ideals, expectations, desires, values, ethics, and more.
Many people don't want to be challenged. So, they remain single.
Single people often choose their beliefs, religion, ideals, ideas, philosophies, expectations and don't want those questioned.
Automatically, that person must remain single forever. Because any relationship will challenge what they don't want challenged.
Most long term single people are highly attached to their beliefs about the past, present and future, and although they might welcome some debate around those topics, they don't like to be questioned too much.
A relationship that does not question beliefs and ideas, is no relationship, it's a friendship and it won't satisfy.
To enter into healthy challenge one must have a strong and clear confidence from which they receive and send challenge. If that confidence is fragile it will become volatile and aggressive.
A strong sense of self, separated from beliefs and ideals is therefore a vital key to a healthy relationship. And this is where single people most often get stuck.
Developing self confidence is a journey that can often get trapped in ego pockets. We love to reinforce our ego but this is learning and makes us even more insecure.
Real confidence building and power comes from unlearning. Unlearning means that the more we know, the more we know we don't know.... It is a simple spiritual awareness that, the bigger we think, the less ego and therefore the less we see to judge in others.
Some single people gain self confidence by being right, or happy, or comfortable in their attachments to what they believe. But that confidence is an isolating confidence and no partner will celebrate love with a hard headed, closed minded, fixed person. There is no communication on a mind or spirit level possible with them.
So, for open hearted loving relationship, focus on unlearning in order to develop the following traits in your self.
- The strength of Confidence
- The strength of Energy
- The strength of emotional and mental Stability
- The strength of emotional and mental Concentration
- The strength of true Understanding
6. Awakening
- Full attention
- The Universal Laws - Cause and Effect
- Energy
- Joy
- Ease
- Concentration
- Letting go
There are seven layers to love. Starting with the physical and moving all the way up to the spiritual, or unconditional love.
Many of us get stuck in the lower realms and forget to explore the higher ones.
If that happens, love making can become repetitive and boring, and many married couples report a diminishing frequency of love making, or the need for mechanical toys and other things to cause arousal.
There is a way to explore higher levels of love and intimacy that also helps develop our own soul.
That development is in the awakening of deeper connections above and below.
Such connections have the capacity to change the way we see. A person who sees meetings, and sport and food and schedules lives the same day as an awakened person but they see the day totally different.
For the awakened person every day is filled with miracles. That's a key... To see more beauty in the day. This in turn brings joy and joy is an energy that could, if contained bring long, long life.
When people search for answers about why some people live long and healthy, while others are on life support drugs from the age of 20, the answer is in this level of awakening, rarely in diet or secret herbs.
Single people might jump to this sixth stage in the seven steps and ignore the first five in the simple desire to transcend all the muck of everyday relationship and hope that there's a way to live in divine love without the nuts and bolts but this is more self-obsessive single person idealism.
The key to awakening is that it will never happen for our own pleasure or comfort. It will only happen to enhance the service and love we give to others.
A leader will attract awakening in order to lead better. A parent will attract awakening in order to parent better. A doctor will attract awakening in order to serve better.
Awakening is not possible for the sake of our own soul. It comes with training and underlying that training is a sense of purpose and duty to others. To love more, give more, share more, offer more.
So, a single person can easily become awakened without relationships however, their relationship must be existing with their service or duty to a mission greater than themselves.
This is often missing in the teaching of awakening in western classes.
7. Humility
- Loving Kindness - Give joy and happiness to others.
- Joyfulness - Happiness for ourselves and others that causes no harm.
- Equanimity - Give and act unconditionally
- Compassion - Remove suffering from others
Automatically, through step 6, step 7 is realised.
To arrive at awakening and sustain it, one must be humbled to some greater purpose.
Pattanjali says it perfectly
"When you are inspired by some greater purpose, some extraordinary project,
all your thoughts break their bonds, your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world.
Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be."
This is a beautiful achievement but more importantly it opens the door, when built on the previous six steps in love, to a relationship that is what every human on earth dreams to have.
Most relationships don't achieve this state. They achieve sexual and physical bliss, and moments of unconditional love, but this is punctuated with many disappointments.
The achievement of this human dream of divine and sacred love is not difficult. It does however, cost.
The cost of divine love is the discarding of much of what binds individuals into family, work and social unconsciousness.
To discard these things is not to isolate or separate from them, but moreover, to become un-reactive, not influenced or swayed by them. This is a very big ask for some single people whose identity is wrapped up in push pull relationships with siblings and family.
Ultimately humility is not vulnerability. Instead it is the capacity to see through what others often take seriously.
This last step, cannot be taken without the wisdom gained in the first six, and this is the journey from single to absolute, and unconditional, sacred love with a partner.
Wishing you happiness.
Chris
Innerwealth < http://www.innerwealth.com > is a real life, everyday, raw and nature based awareness that helps people live from the inside out. It opens hearts from past challenges, frees vision, inspiration and life purpose and gives rise to true human potential in all the seven areas of life. Innerwealth is also a process, a process that helps people deal with everyday challenges, tap their intuitive nature and live, in a sense, guided from within. A leaders edge, a lovers heart. There are twenty books in the Innerwealth Series, including Sacred Love and Innerwealth, plus "the Laws of Nature for Better Relationships" weekly blogs and podcasts. Chris Walker also runs consultations, interventions and seminars on Innerwealth at work and at home. < http://www.innerwealth.com >
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