Understanding Relationships

By Colleen Block

Living life means to live in relationship: to family, to friends, to pets, to possessions, to the environment, to the grocery clerk or the person trying to sell us something over the phone, even to ideas. Most of the time, we look at our families and friends as our possessions. This is ‘my’ wife or husband, this is ‘my’ child, ‘my’ friend, which locks them up as ‘ours’ in the cage of our mind. In short, they become extensions of our own ego. We do not allow their actions, or decisions, to be their own. They must either reflect us, or we say, “No, no that action is not right. That is not what I would do, not what I want.” The only way to live a life peacefully and happily with all relationships is to live logically, which is to say, from the spiritual freedom of the overview.

We may know someone who lives to please their family. They anticipate the family’s needs and jump in as a protector at the first sign of difficulty. All their actions seem directed toward making the family happy, but often, their unconscious motivation arises from feeling unlovable or inadequate themselves. They hope that by giving others anything they want, those others will love them in return. They trap themselves and they trap their family into maintaining ‘expected’ behaviors. Such a person comes to see themselves as giving so much to the family that they begin to also feel that they deserve something in return. That kind of thinking arises from a habitual poverty consciousness.

When we grow up with a poverty consciousness, thinking we don’t ‘have enough’…love, money, beauty, personality, possessions, friends, praise…then when someone else gets what we want, we become jealous and angry. Wisdom Master Maticintin has said that we want to feel loved, however, the equation of getting things from love sets us up for unhappy times and mental suffering. This results in jealousy when somebody gets something or some attention, that we held expectations of receiving. Silently, we brood, which is a form of moody anger.

In some life situations, if we are not constantly being told what a good job we have done, we think we are not appreciated, which translates into our thinking we are not loved. And again, when someone else is praised, is put in the limelight, we think it has taken something away from us. “What about me?” we say. It is the pinnacle of self-centeredness. Wisdom Master Maticintin has taught that jealousy is the worst kind of anger because we do not even allow ourselves to voice it, and by keeping it hidden, it causes rot inside of us. When such feelings are kept inside, they fester and gradually turn into physical disease. Then we are in real trouble.

With poverty consciousness, we don’t live, work, play, or love from a pure heart. The gates of our hearts are closed, pinched off, protecting what we think belongs to us; resenting what we think others have. We are blind and deaf to what life has to offer. It is not enough; it will never be enough. There is a hole in the bottom of our coffers. We are impoverished. We are afraid of criticism because it proves once again that we are worthless, unappreciated. “Why don’t people see that I am doing my best?” It is about us, not about the good of the whole. Pain and suffering abound. Wisdom Master Maticintin has stated that we must learn to cling to nothing at all…but instead, realize that everything in our life, including our life itself, is impermanent. In this way, we hold all that we cherish in the open palm of our hand.

There is another scenario: What if we trusted that we are divinity wearing a body…and that there is only One divinity. There is no separation in life, except for the separation of how we view life in our karmic bodies, which is not Reality, but illusion. What if realizing our divinity, we express our true nature, which is unconditional love. When someone we know moves forward, is rewarded or praised, we would then rejoice because we are One. The hand cannot receive a gift without the whole body receiving that gift. We are intrinsically connected.

When we give up our jealousies and possessiveness, there is nothing to keep us from unadulterated loving. According to Wisdom Master Maticintin, our hearts then open to what is wanted…a dissolution of the mind passions eventuates. There is nothing to obstruct the clarity that we are all the same, and integral parts of the divine consciousness.

If a relationship is not constructive, if it does not uplift and if it does not serve, then there is no purpose to it.

Wisdom Master Maticintin

Comment On This Article

© HÜMÜH 2008