Adahlia,

Bonds between you and everything else, everyone else, expand and contract in concentric circles depending upon levels of energy, awareness, and authentic communication.

All relationship moves through phases of growing towards (spring), fruition (summer), pulling away (fall), and separation (winter). Every relationship starts with the excitement of spring, builds to the joy of summer, experiences a falling apart during strains of autumn, and comes to a place of more or less separation, as though, dead, in winter.

These cycles will repeat themselves over and over, as long as you live, in all relationship. If you pay attention, you will see that you fall away from your partner when the time is right to grow individually again, and separation can be on many levels. If you are both working towards your soul or self actualization, when you come together again, the relationship will be on a higher plane, and spring and summer will be as wonderful as before. Knowing this, you will be able to let go in fall and still love from a respectful distance during winter.

Some people claim pride in bring together with the same person their whole lives. Others adhere to the principle of moving on with new folks, to start “fresh.” Neither way is important. You will always be stuck in the same relationship if you don’t give yourselves the chance to grow and evolve. The face, whether new or old, doesn’t matter. The relationship will simply repeat at its old resonance and patterns with the same or new person until you begin to see your relationships in this way. Going into fall and winter is sad and scary. Those are the emotions of fall and winter, and they are natural, because it is a death of sorts, and there are no guarantees about your next spring. Fearlessness, not the aggressive sort, but the courageous, honest, simple sort, is required if you wish to germinate the seeds for spring on a higher plane.

Challenges will continue to come as long as you are in relationship, the cycles continue as you move onto higher planes, and the challenges will likely become more intense. If you are experiencing it, it is because you are ready to try to handle it. If you do not succeed, do not worry. The challenge will simply repeat itself with that person, or with a new person in a slightly altered form, until you figure it out.

No, there is no such thing as not being in relationship. You are always in relationship with the world around you. And you are ultimately responsible only to yourself. You cannot blame others (they are on their own journey and its up to them how consciously they want to, or can, live any given moment) and it is not helpful to blame yourself. You are learning. It is pointless to toil over independence or dependence. You cannot do anything alone, and at the same time, you always do everything alone. It is up to you to create healthy relationships, and that means recognizing when it fall or winter.

You can choose whether or not to actively be in partnership. At its worst, if you let it, partnership can be very destructive, restricting your ability to be your highest self, and at its best, if you let it, it can be a shining mirror and springboard for self-realization.

The energy associated with a brilliant love connection is a fire energy. There are many people who create shifting bonds that never mature beyond the first fire. They think they are living “in the moment” as they move from new passion to new passion, but they do themselves disservice, for they lack the understanding of that moment’s connection to the larger fabric of universal time and space, which exists irrespective of form (or person).

A state of relationship exists where likeness of self is recognized in another, and sensual, romantic caring can blossom without limiting the autonomy of either person. Mutuality coupled with autonomy is the realization of the potential of human relationship. A relationship can only exist at this level with dedication and love in both parties for their own and each others evolution of self into highest being.

Clearing and creating space in partnership for this sort of cultivation and understanding is vital, for it is in this space that soul lessons are learned and evolution of self – illumination of self in other – occurs. Using relationship to develop such understanding is the true power of partnership. (It is the story of Devi and Shiva.)

Consider this: there is one god, one holiness, that flows through all. But how can god know god all by himself? He must divide into two, into three, into ten thousand things. Then, in each of those vastly different things, he can see and recognize an aspect of himself. In relationship, be it with plant, mineral, animal, or person, god is manifested, reflected, and realized.

The bodhisattva only exists because he hears the light in the unenlightened, and in assisting their transformation, is transformed himself. He cannot be without a mirror. This is why all teachers are actually taught; all students are simply unaware masters, and each true teacher is in deep awe and love for each student.

Namaste, little one. Thank you for being.

Adahlia,

Yes, everything is connected.

How could it not be?

We accept that a loss of honeybees would mean destruction of ecosystems, the chain reaction that could spell our own destruction.

We accept that physical neurochemicals affect our thinking, our personalities even, and that our thoughts and personalities are reflected in our postures, possibly even in our diseases.

Yet so many people shy away from the larger implications of our mental-emotional-spiritual states to our physical heart, to our bodies, and to the heart and health of each other.

People say: “as above, so below” without any conception of what they are actually saying.

Just like: “we are all connected” becomes a slogan – yet, it is popular because when we hear it, we recognize a fundamental truth.

Our subconscious attracts us to things like that constantly, in its attempt to “wake” our conscious up, to get us to get our sh*t together. Such truths run through movie, after popular movie, after popular movie. The universe constantly inspires us to spit them back out: same message in varying forms. We yearn to hear these truths. We yearn to really know them, not to just intellectualize them.

But to know them requires life to be shaken up a bit.

Oh, people.

People can be very flippant in good times, and run very quickly away in the difficult.

It is much better to learn to relax in the difficult, so that neither the difficult or wonderful will make you want to crawl out of your skin.

Remember that everyone will struggle. Everyone will go through difficulty. Life is not meant to be charmed. We build up false expectations, especially in this society. Nothing we can do, no matter how careful we are, will insulate us from misfortune. The goal should not be to protect against calamity, but to learn more and to listen more (to your inner self first, and then others perspective second) and to become wiser, so as to be prepared to do what you can whilst surrendering to nature (god).

It is a balance, a floating. Feather in air and fin in water.

People create unrealistic plans that actually prevent them from being able to appreciate what’s happening now. Hardship allows us to see, allows us to glory in our blessings, in thanksgiving in the moment.

Do not get ensnared with plans, especially plans to escape current hardship. Let go of dreams, to live your dreams now, at the level you are prepared to handle them. You always have everything you need. When you are ready to move to the next level, it will present itself to you. This is true in all endeavors, in creative (artistic) passions, and it is especially true in love. If your path is difficult, you will have more opportunity to learn how to love. You cannot love if your heart is never challenged.

Once you realize great truths, you will receive many blessings. Then, you will receive many calamities. This will allow to bring those great truths to even higher realization.

Yes, there are always higher levels of realization.

You will always get exactly as much suffering as you can handle. If you want your soul to grow, accept suffering and blessings equally. They will rain down upon you. They will wax and wan, you will be called both extremely lucky and extremely ill-starred, and neither and both is true, for there is no stop-point in this motion picture.

Look around you. They are suffering too.

Look in and around you. You have exactly the support you need, exactly the tools necessary.

Start within yourself. Before you can help another man, before you can connect with anyone else, you must know what it is to be connected within yourself. You must at least taste the potential of these infinite connections. Allow yourself to be challenged in this. You could spend a lifetime simply learning your own landscape.

Remember, everything is connected. Hone your inner perception so you can learn to trust it in your dealings with the outer world. Your body – your unique blend of physical body, spirit, mind and emotion – is your ally in this adventure, but you must learn how to use it.

And there is simply no way to use it until you first learn that it exists.

Adahlia,

Do not listen to people when they talk of good and evil.

Or rather, listen so that you may understand them, but do not believe them.

All is the hand of God.

How then, can there be evil?

There is only perceived isolation from One – be It called God, Love, Him, Allah, Jehovah, Goddess, Existence, Yahweh, Creative Force, I AM, Nature, Collective Unconscious, Spirit, or Universe – and what many call evil is only an illusion, from having forgotten how to listen to the whisper of the wind, the songs sung through the trees, echoed by birds and the soft tread of animals through leaves.

There is only learning, here. Everything is for your learning. Even the cruelty, the hate, the anger, the wars. Do not worry. Do not get caught up in wounds. Watch it all. Be very observant. It is for your learning.

Do not cling to anything, that is what is meant in Bhuddism, by non-attachment. When one love leaves, rejoice! It is because you are ready now, to have your heart opened to something or someone larger, a love on a higher plane. This is the way it is until death, when we are ready, finally, to know God in entirety.