by Joan King, Ph.D.
What are you seeking in relationship?
A longing to connect reaches out from the core of our humanness. We ache to belong, to feel the still point of our closeness to another or a group. Who would we BE without our relationships, loveless? Yet, without a provoking event we devote little time reflecting on the churning energies of our relationships. Eager to pull a curtain over their dynamics, we dare not to view them from both sides, to ask without words about them, to sense what is stirring in their depths.
[box type=”success” align=”aligncenter” ]“The sum of all our connections permits us to see the world …from many different perspectives. If all of our connections were focused in only one direction, our world would shrink to one dimension.” Joan C. King. The Code of Authentic Living. Cellular Wisdom, Fort Collins, CO: Beyond Success, 2012.[/box]
View your relationships as branches of a tree to individuals or groups. What does the tree reveal about your view of the world? Are your relationships primarily professional? Who embraces you in times of challenge? Who helps free you from the constrictions of your negative self-judgment? Who listens to the part of you straining to be heard? Examining your tree of relationships, what captivates you? Does it suggest exploring or forging new relationships, and/or releasing some others? What relationships energize you? Which drain you?
Focus on your five significant relationships. What are you seeking in each of these relationships? Is it a place of safety? Does it free you to expand into more and more of who you want to become? Does the relationship continually puzzle you? Bring heartache and a sense of emptiness? Or does it so cherish you that you break open in its arms? Does it provide a window into the unseen aspects of your being?
What do you provide to the other/others? What does the relationship call forth within you to share? How meaningful is the relationship to the other/others? Is it time to break open and burst out of the confines of the expected to touch that which is stirring deep within each of you?
The French philosopher and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin reminds us,
“Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.”