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July 2009 
Demise of a kick-ass integral couple
yeshe
I'm off the map here for a while. It's been coming since day one, but now it's here, it hurts. Geert and I have decided to release our relationship from the constraints of coupledom. That leaves Geert free to go off and find someone with whom he can start off from scratch, who doesn't come in a package complete with a life and a family, non-negotiable, and no time left for more children.
It leaves me free to breathe into what's hurting. To explore what it is to feel alone, and where I feel it. I wonder if, when he comes home tonight, we will be free at last to look at each other and see what's there, rather than what isn't.
For me, I can pick up parts of my process that I knowingly set aside when I began to understand and accept the limitations of our particular relationship. Free again to open without encountering the pain of instinctive, sometimes choiceless, often chosen closure from the significant other. Free to take up the evolutionary challenge again...
...to quote Andrew Cohen - through my headache from too much crying and not enough food - "I'm talking about a repeated demonstration of spontaneous integration and wholeness of intention and action, week to week, month to month, year to year, in such a way that we can unequivocally say: "This individual is awake"".
So let's integrate this... staying open to the knots in my throat, staying open to my imploding heart in contraction. Staying open to this feeling of defeat and loss and pointlessness. Staying open to the knowledge that my failure in this has been the failure - again - to allow my vulnerabilities and fears to be seen. A trick I learned as a very small child out of fear of losing my mother's love...
...And my failure to challenge the incongruence in my beloved for fear he would reject me. So, well, shit, I knew he would, and in the end I did, and he HAS!! So let's integrate this! The kind of ecstatic intensity I tend to avoid on most days, because it wreaks havoc with my To Do list. Not rejected as a person, no. But as a woman, yes. In that part of me which is so vulnerable and under-represented in my life as the provider - a role I can't walk away from.
Staying present with it all. I've been mercilessly present with it all day. Holding the truth of a broken heart... the swelling and receding. Pain and numbness in cycles. The karmic headache. Come into my arms, shadow mine, that I may embrace thee. Devour me, so that I can transform thee from within.
Let there be no more holding back.
Access: Public
Gddmn it Helen, I wish knew what to say, but I don't.
Feeling for you, inspired by your words, and some of them hit close enough to home for me to stop and think about where I'm at in my relationship. I hope you find some clarity and become more of what you're always already.
Love,
Diederick
Sweetie I send Kosmic hugs from the point of all places. A hand on the heart,
stuart
I love you guys. Diederick and Stuart, be mine forever!
Seriously, though, kick-ass integral couples don't die. They transcend coupleness and include all the freedom that that “couple” label screwed up. At least, that's the plan. Why lose the love and the friendship because of the fears?
We shall see how it pans out.
Helen - Your pain is apparent in your words. From someone who has just been through a heart break, I am sending you lots of love and light. You will make it through this. Stick with the pain and fear. It will subside after some time and reflection. Peace and Love to you.
Dear, dear, Helen…
let it be and maybe jot down any lessons … that have been hard fought
like… maybe…
1) You are not a separate person and the feelings coming up are only a reflection that you still don't “know” this (in my humble opinion) - he may not either, but that's another story.
2) There really is not a “2” … unless it is that we can't teach anyone … but only create an environment of safety for them to “see” ,,, the truth of #1
3) The “Holy” relationship of ACIM (A Course in Miracles) would be a good joint course or seminar … for couples that are serious about growth to take together.
You two may decide that “we nearly had it right” and go ahead and take a joint learning / growing / seeing … kind of course together… but this little hurt just tells you that there are more courses the fictitous “you” that hurts… has to take …
= = =
I wish you tons of Love and Peace
your friend (who still needs so many courses it's not even funny - I'm not even close)
Donald
Absolutely: there is no separateness. Relatively: I am incarnate. I'll take 'em both.
As Marvin the Paranoid Android said: I ache, therefore I am… or is it I am, therefore I ache?
I'll take 'em both. If it's all or nothing, I'll take it all.
I've decided I don't want them to write on my gravestone: “She held back”
hey there:
i'm sending you some tonglen light, and maybe lifting just a bit of that black smoke from your shoulders. i congratulate you on staying open and staying with the energy that is arising from moment to moment. (even if some of it sucks!) :-)
i literally know how you feel. my relationship is falling apart. i'm still not sure whether it can be salvaged, but in order to go any further, i've already had to give it up and try to stay present with both the sorrow and the freedom.
téyatha om békhandzé békhandzé, maha békhandzé radza samungaté so ha
- medicine buddha mantra
Ah dear Rigzin - we can do tonglen together - pass the hot potato!!
I really do find staying present to pain the most fabulous sacred practice. It has put me much more deeply in contact with my body and busted my heart wide open. Expanded sense of fearlessness. And this transparency of the thinking process, when I am no longer afraid to witness my own motivations and stooopid stuff.
And running away from the pain is so much more painful (and futile) than holding it, being with it and allowing it to soak away into the ground of being…
Thank you, everybody, for being here with me.
i totally agree. i realize how much conflict i was having in my relationship because i was trying to manipulate the situation to make the pain go away. it takes so much energy!
when i finally let that go (probably not finally - i'll probably have to do it a million times) i felt so much “lighter.”
still sad, in a way even more sad. but also more free, clear, intense.
as ken says, the farther into this you go, the more exquisite the pleasure, and the more devastating the pain.
i like the hot potato image!
r
This is the truth of self-liberation, my friend. No matter how huge the pain, we're big enough to hold it all. I find the secret is in the breath…
Hugging you tight, brother
H
i'm starting to hook in to that mystery and it floors me. that our “mission” here could be that big (and even that such a thing could be possible.)
thanks for your great words and lovely presence here. we'll all hug, huddle and breath together. Ah….
r
Wo, man, if we can hold that enormity together, then Zaadz will really have seeded something…
But your sense is correct. It is that big. And it's possible. In fact we're already doing it, all the time.
Life is sweet
yeshe-
I feel your pain. You touched my heart. My understanding today is that relationships never really end they just change form. I also believe that there are no coincidences today only God-incidences. So stumbling onto your blog this morning was a God thing. Remember God is with you. You too are blessed! halo
Hi
I am impressed by the positive outlook and perspective you are able to give to your pain and sorrow.
respect. and good luck
The more time goes by, the more I am blown away by the power of this practice of just holding whatever emotional discomfort arises, being with it without engaging in cognitive speculation, and then allowing it to dissipate. As Ken would say: it comes, it stays and tortures you a bit, and then leaves.
What's interesting, though, is what happens afterwards. I think that releasing this emotional stuff somehow unblocks the subtle energies or something, because I find myself inhabiting states of heightened consciousness for hours on end afterwards. I've been in a state of almost permanent bliss and presence for over a week, now, and my whole spiritual practice has rejigged itself without any effort or volition on my part.
I don't suppose this is universal, but in terms of the 1,2,3 of God, from a heavily I and IT preference, I have become sucked into a sublime THOU space which is tickling me in places I'd forgotten I had. I think I'm going to get back into the study of David Deida!
Strange to be saying that as I exit a relationship, rather than as I enter one…
I've certainly found that… while in a “relationship”, certain needs are met, but that while not in a “relationship” other worlds open up… and continue, and continue… so now, I think I know why monks are often … not in relationships …
so the “Holy” relationship described in ACIM is really the way to have both…
ACIM = A Course In Miracles
As of late Monday night/early Tuesday morning, my relationship is done too. Although I felt it coming and had “released” it in my own mind and spirit, the real thing hurts way more.
Its that death/loss feeling that comes over me in waves at the darndest times. The heaviness in my chest, the fatigue, the desire to just walk away from everything and hide.
I'm hurting pretty bad and miss him so much. Although I feel it had to end this way, I would have rather found a way to make it work.
But I have to agree with you on the practice side. There has been an ease and bliss in my practice as I breathe and witness the sorrowful swirl that is going on in my awareness. It really helps put to a larger “container” around all those questions about whether I did the right thing, whether I missed something, what I might have done differently… I don't have to identify with all of that as “me.” And I don't have to go on and on with stories and mental chatter about the whole thing.
Eventually, all that stuff drops away and, for a while, I can rest (even in the sadness and pain.)
Lots of breathing….
RigzinI'm with you brother. Oxygenate them hot potatoes…