{"id":69,"date":"2007-09-11T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2007-09-11T01:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/09\/a-new-way-to-relate-to-your-ro.html"},"modified":"2007-09-11T01:01:01","modified_gmt":"2007-09-11T01:01:01","slug":"a-new-way-to-relate-to-your-ro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/09\/a-new-way-to-relate-to-your-ro.html","title":{"rendered":"A new way to relate to your romantic Other"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This weblog creates, for us all, a chance to meet at the interaction of Life and the New Spirituality. It is written by the author of <\/em>Conversations with God, the worldwide best-selling series of books. The \u201cNew Spirituality\u201d is defined by the author as \u201ca new way to experience and express our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.\u201d)<\/em><\/p>\n

HIGHLIGHTS OF TODAY’S BLOG…
\n* What CwG says about being ‘in love’ <\/em>
\n* Turning relationships upside-down <\/strong>
\n* Is the another way to experience partnership?
\nIn my life there has been no greater challenge than the challenge of relationships. I am speaking here now of romantic relationships, although all of my relationships\u2014parental, familial, personal, business\u2014have been a test for me from the very beginning.
\nI suspect it has been this way for many others as well. Perhaps, for most others. For me, this has been because I never really understood the real purpose or the true meaning of relationships. I didn\u2019t understand how they worked, or how to get them to work. I didn\u2019t know what they were for. I only knew that without them I was miserable.
\nI\u2019ve had multiple marriages in my life, and that is not something I brag about. Two of my former wives died early in their lives, both after our relationship ended, and I will always regret the sadness and the pain that I know I caused them.
\nI wish I could go through the rest of my life without hurting anybody. I know now that I don\u2019t stand a chance if I don\u2019t know and understand the purpose of relationships from the ground up.
\nUnfortunately, there\u2019s no school that teaches these things. You can\u2019t take a high school class in Relationships 101. It\u2019s hard to even find such studies in college. We think we\u2019re teaching it in Social Studies, but that\u2019s not even scratching the surface. It\u2019s going nowhere near the real issues. We have to keep our schools as non-controversial as possible, passing on to our children only that with which everyone agrees, and so we pass on no Grander Wisdom at all.
\nOnly when Conversations with God<\/em> came along was a door finally thrown open for me. Only when these dialogues occurred was I at last given a beginning grasp of the true miracle and the true gift of relationships\u2014much less a strategy for how to negotiate them.
\nAnd I must say that CwG turned all of my previous understandings of relationship\u2014limited as they were\u2014upside-down. Because CwG said things about relationships that were the exact opposite of everything I had ever heard before.
\nFor instance…<\/p>\n


\n…, the startling statement \u201cRelationships Work Best When You Always Do What Is Best For You.\u201d All my life I had been taught that the way to make relationships work was to do what was best for the other. And so, I\u2019d been going around trying to make the other person in the relationship happy, trying to make the other person satisfied, trying to make the other person glad, and fulfilled, and complete.
\nNow along comes this book of messages from the Divine telling me that I\u2019ve got the emphasis all wrong. It is me that I\u2019m supposed to worry about. It is me that I\u2019m supposed to please. It is me that I\u2019m to pay my attention to.
\nFascinating!
\nCwG says that there are only two questions to ask when considering a romantic relationship:
\nWhere am I going?
\nWho is going with me?
\nAnd the important thing, CwG says, is not to reverse the order.
\nAll my life I had been doing that. \u201cWho is going with me?\u201d I would ask, then I would decide where I was going. Or, more accurately, where we were going, which was, more often than not, not where I thought that I was going to be going.
\nIn relationships, it\u2019s important to keep things going well by going where you were going to be going. If you\u2019re not going where you were going to be going before the relationship began, then you may not know where you are going\u2014and the relationship may soon be going to hell.
\nWhat this little play on words means is that we had better not give up who we are in order to make a relationship work, because all we will do is lose who we are, and the relationship will not work anyway.
\nYou cannot abandon yourself in order to find yourself.
\nSo often in my life I thought that I had finally \u201cfound myself\u201d in another. I hated being alone, and so would trade almost anything to have the company of another. What is understandable is wanting the company of another. Humans are social creatures. We do not do well in isolation. That is because we know, intuitively, deep down inside, who we really are (one with everything and everyone), and we wish to experience that. What is sad is wanting the company of another so badly that we give up the company of ourselves. That is, we disappear ourselves so that another may appear.
\nI did this over and over again in the first five decades of my life. Yes, that\u2019s right, I said the first five decades. It wasn\u2019t until I was a half-century old that I began to figure things out. And here is one of the things I finally figured out:
\nI will not be alone if I am my true self. Only by trading my true self for the companionship of another have I ever made myself alone. Because when I gave up my real self, I wound up resenting my \u201csignificant other\u201d for \u201cmaking me\u201d do that\u2014and it was this resentment that ate away at our relationship.
\nI now see clearly that the rock-the-boat truth in Book 1 of the CwG series\u2014that relationships work best when you always do what is best for you\u2014is a life-altering insight. It saves relationships, it does not destroy them. It creates harmony, it does not disrupt it.
\nThat\u2019s because all we are talking about here is honesty. You must act honestly in relationships\u2014that is, you must be true to yourself\u2014and only then do relationships have a chance to really work functionally. Oh, we can have dysfunctional relationships very easily, and all we want, but if functional relationships are what we prefer, then \u201cto thine own self be true\u201d becomes a maxim that cannot be ignored.
\nYet CwG opened the door to more than the Land of Self-Honesty for me. It also unveiled for me the real secret of relationships\u2014which is their purpose.
\nIf you want to have some fun sometime, just go around asking people a simple question. Tell them you are taking a survey. Ask them, \u201cWhat is the purpose of relationships?\u201d You\u2019ll be amazed at the answers you\u2019ll get. What will most surprise you, though, once you\u2019ve read CwG, is the one answer that you will not get. At least, not very often. In fact, hardly ever.
\n\u201cThe purpose of relationship is to provide a Contextual Field within which you may choose and declare, express and fulfill, experience and become Who You Really Are.\u201d
\nAnd this is done not through what you get out of your relationship, but through what you put into it.Relationship does not exist to give you something, relationship exists for you to have something to give.
\nOutside of the context of a relationship with some other person, place, or thing, you will have no one and nothing to give to. And it is the giving of Who You Are that brings you the experience of it.
\nAnd, of course, experiencing Who You Are is why you came here. It is the purpose of all of Life.
\nSo now it looks as if we have come full circle, yes? First I\u2019m saying, \u201cDo what is best for you,\u201d and now I\u2019m saying \u201cit\u2019s only what you give to others that brings you happiness.\u201d
\nI can see how, at first, this could seem like a contradiction, but stay with me here.
\nWhat if giving to others IS what\u2019s best for you? Then you are doing what\u2019s best for you WHILE you are giving to others.
\nYet how could giving to others be what\u2019s best for you? Only if you decided that the definition of YOU was larger than your previous definition, and included others. Perhaps, even, ALL others.
\nIf you decide CwG is correct in declaring that We Are All One, then your definition of YOU suddenly takes in everyone and everything\u2014and it certainly takes in the person you say you are in love with.
\nTherefore, what you do for that \u201cother,\u201d you do for yourself.
\nNow we have a whole different ballgame. Now, what formerly looked like selflessness begins to look like selfishness. Which is how it should be. You should feel SELFISH when you do something for another\u2014because there\u2019s nobody else in the room but you.
\nThis depth of understanding of the true nature of relationship renders resentment virtually impossible.
\nBut wait. Does this mean that we have to give up the wants and desires of the \u201clocal self\u201d in order to satisfy the wants and desires of the Larger Self?
\nFor me, the answer is no. For only when I have made the Local Self happy can I begin to be happiness for the Larger Self. That is why self-honesty has become so important to me. I have to be honest with my Local Self first, and act in accordance with what I know my own truth to be, before I can even start to think about moving out from there to the Larger Self.
\nInterestingly, this is what the Larger Self wants!
\nI know of nobody who is going to feel good if they think that I am sacrificing everything I am and everything I choose in life in order to make them happy. What they really want is for me to be clear about what makes me happy, then to come from that clarity and to live that clarity in all my announcements, choices, and actions. Then they can decide accurately, not based on false data, whether they can be in harmonious relationship with me.
\nThis is what everyone wants. Everyone wants to be in a relationship that works. And that means a relationship that works for everyone\u2014not just for one, not just for some.
\nIs it possible to achieve this? Is it possible to create it?
\nI believe it is. CwG says that it is. When I live the messages of CwG as a spiritual discipline, I experience that such relationships become the norm.
\n= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
\nIf you would like to discuss these and other
\nimportant spiritual and temporal matters with
\nNeale Donald Walsch, and, indeed,
\nif you would like to become a messenger of
\nthe New Spirituality, join Neale in the
\nMessengers’ Circle, a subscription-based
\narea of the author\u2019s website at www.nealedonaldwalsch.com<\/a>
\nNeale personally responds in that location
\non his website to many of the Comments
\nposted here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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