The impact of spirtual awakenings on relationships

[baba432]

Over the past year, I have had the fortune to be a part of a really loving relationship with my girlfriend. But, this year has also led to a profound spiritual awakening that has helped me get in touch with who I am. I have always felt like an old soul in this incarnation who feels the happiest when his creative expression is dedicated to serving others and spreading the love around. So, the idea of love was never really relationship-centric for me. I felt compassion and empathy towards so many people without getting too caught up about the idea of attachment.

For a lot of the people around me, I guess I've always appeared odd since the general concept of socialization is based on everyone having their own clique and you stick to them for life. It's not like I stop loving people less, but I've never come to grips with the attachment attached to the feeling of love. Now that I finally came to terms with the essence of my reality through my spiritual journey, I have decided to restructure my career to become a social entrepreneur.

I feel like this is the path I have to walk on for helping as many people as I can and mobilize them to help each other. But, this path will alter my lifestyle in a way that will keep me on the road for a huge chunk of my life and I won't be able to give her the time and companionship she wished for when we met earlier. What really hurts me is seeing the irony of my pursuit of a compassionate lifestyle end up hurting someone who cares so deeply about me whom I adore too.

Would love to hear about your thoughts and this and get to know how your spiritual awakenings changed your relationships with the people you're closest to.

Long after my own awakening, the idea of static relationships seemed to be restrictive in a way. The impression I got through my awakening is that we are constantly shifting and changing, growing and evolving, our desires rising and falling with stages of our own personal and spiritual evolution. How could any two people make a life-long commitment when they didn't know where their journey would take them and how it might transform them?

This perspective still informs my view of relationships, but it has expanded some. I always felt that, since we as people have potential to always change, healthy relationships needed to be based on agreements and social contracts, and a part of those agreements would be a clear expression of what someone was looking for in the relationship and how they felt their life-trajectory might change them. It was hard for me to truly see myself in a committed relationship because of a sort of fear that you have described in your post - what if my life shifts and takes me in a direction that the relationship cannot follow? On paper, I feel like I would handle a shift like that with minimal fuss, but how can I trust that a romantic partner will not be hurt by such decisions? If I enter into a relationship knowing this is a possibility, then I share some responsibility for that hurt. And the weight of that responsibility coupled with my aversion to hurting someone may even keep me from taking "the next step" or seizing an opportunity, instead remaining within a relationship and possibly building some resentment for "being held back" (in reality, holding myself back).

There are a couple things that I continually contemplate that help to ease this kind of spiritual anxiety. A big one is the fact that I truly believe we attract people into our lives for a reason. When we find ourselves entwined with someone to the point of a deep romantic relationship, there must be a larger dynamic at play, some lessons for both people to learn, an intricate dance of distortions that attracts two people like magnetism. I can trust that if I truly am at a certain level of maturity in relationships, then a person I find myself genuinely attracted to in a romantic sense will also be at a certain level of maturity. At a certain level, this maturity comes with open and honest expression early within the relationship of the social dynamics and agreements of the relationship. If a spiritually mature person does not think that their own distortions include a life-long partnership at that point in their life, that person would not hesitate to explain how they feel and understand how the other person feels about that expression, and be open to receiving expressions from the other person as well. That person must be ready to walk away from a relationship if they can clearly recognize the incompatibility of their two lives.

(Note, baba432, I don't intend to say this is my perception of the situation you described - rather, something that might happen once one has already awakened and begins approaching relationships from that standpoint.)

The other big nugget for contemplation that helps to ease this type of spiritual anxiety is the fact that the period of large, sweeping, massive transformations is, in my perception, my more common in the early stages of awakening (though not always). To me, spirituality has been a path to my true essence, and immovable and seemingly-eternal aspect of myself which is consistent through all change, all transformation, all life circumstances and all relationships. Getting in touch with this deeper and truer part of one's self allows for this persistent self to be expressed more easily and recognized more easily in others. In tandem with my other thought about attracting certain people at certain times, I can trust that at a certain point, the person I feel magnetized towards (and who feels magnetized towards me) will be seeing this true essence, and will be expressing their own true essence. The nature of this essence is so persistent and constant that I can trust that it is this true essence that is attracting us. This type of recognition lends itself much more to lifelong monogamous relationships, or any type of fulfilling lifelong relationship, whatever that means for the individual. 

That's not to say that transformations may not be grand and change the landscape on which the relationship is based. I do think they are less frequent and we might find a sense of stability in our life as we find a sense of stability in our spiritual growth, but the transformations can happen. However, at this level, it seems those types of transformation are more conducive to including the other person in the relationship, or happen with the complete understanding and consent of the other person. If it changes the nature of the relationship and two people must separate, I think people at that level of maturity will recognize the nature of this transformation and ultimately (though perhaps not initially) be accepting of the change and bless the time the couple spent together, not begrudging the change that has changed their lives. 

Whether or not any of this is true, I do believe that we are fulfilled the most within relationships by appreciating them in the moment, without attachments to any future moment, and finding a mate who shares this type of appreciation is the best way to feel both fulfilled and free within a relationship.

Thanks a lot for sharing. This really helps.