Here’s a text bite from my coaching to a divorced client in a new relationship who had lost herself in many ways in her marriage. It meant a lot to some folks who read it on FB, so I’m reposting it here tonight… plus the epilogue…. the new relationship “blessing” that took place next!
“Awww, that’s sweet — you’re right, he’s kinda smitten… AND… you get to stay centered in YOU. You can be open and fun and loving without giving it all away or putting anyone’s head higher (or lower) than yours. No teeter totters here.
In the Self-Solidarity Circle, y’all are learning to surf life and dive deep into yourselves when you need to heal or loosen up a concept or discover a treasure.
He can surf alongside if you want, and even catch the same wave now and then. But remember, you are both still being lifted by something greater.
Don’t let any of us humans become your higher power.”
And a few days later it was over….. So we talked about how brave she was to keep putting herself out there, and how much she had learned, and how well she was taking it. (We even got out that old poem about co-dependence… “With every goodbye you learn.”) But mostly we took the deep dive into the reasons she believed he ended it, and how they reflected the ways she was already critical of herself and her body. And she was reminded that in the end the real journey is to stand with, by, and for herself, no matter what.
“It’s great to keep noticing the ways that the very reasons you think he left reflect the ways you are already critical of yourself. It’s almost like we get to use relationships as a little cosmic joke. Relationships are SO accurate at reflecting to us the ways we think there is something wrong with ourselves via the ways others push that same button. And we will react to them in the same ways are impatient with or critical of ourselves. So who projected what onto whom? Is there any separation? Is there any reality outside our own perception?
Meditate on this: How could there be anything wrong with you? Who would be the decider of what’s right or wrong with you?
Only in the context of the mind coming up with a predetermined standard that you should be “this way,” (instead of the way you are) can we believe in the concept of wrongness.
And then you assign that same critical mind, or in this case his critical mind (with his own perceptions and limits), as judge and jury of the rightness or wrongness of you?
It’s kind of shocking to see the way we place our dear deer selves in the hands of external judges.
But with the Symmetry Principle, it gets predictable and even fun. Life finally makes sense! We can USE what hurts to reflect to us the judge that lives in our own mind. The ways we feel judged or rejected form a spot-on call-to-action to be the hero we’ve been waiting for.
YOU are the one who knows every little thing and has been with you from the start, so when you accept and approve of you, no one can take that away.”
xox
Shawn