MQ: As your awareness expands, note that the quantity, quality and intensity of the love you feel for those special people in your life is not at the heart of this discussion. What is most important are the ways in which you express that love. Eric’s Story brings us back to an earlier tenet of the ego’s dharma, which tries to convince us that: Repetitive conflict in personal relationships is unavoidable, normal and healthy. This is true, but only when you are involved in relationships in which the malevolent aspects of the ego-mind are at the foundation.
P: What then is the greatest expression of love toward another person?
EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: Awakened love is to care about the spiritual development of another person more than you do any other aspect of the relationship itself.
MQ: This can be achieved by replacing the lesser-self’s relentless need to be right—in the exact moment of conflict—with compassion for the evolution of that individual. You are ultimately compassionate because your partner may not be aware that the unwholesome part of the ego is moving in them to sustain emotional and psychological conflict in that relationship.
P: Okay. But, what if I think that I already relate to others consciously?
MQ: The ego’s dharma tells us that part of conscious relatedness is to be open and aware of the suffering of the other person. Fundamentally, this is correct. The ego’s dharma, however, ignores the fact that if we are interacting without any requirement of resolution with the root of that anguish—the lesser-self—we are also the cause of that person’s suffering. All too often, the ego’s opinion about what is conscious rings loudest in your ears, so much so that those judgments are all you can hear. Therefore, your relationships will be conscious, but only at the level of inherited habituation.
P: Can I be sure that my relevant relationships are free from the influences of the ego-mind?
MQ: Yes. Return to the four statements in the Introduction of this book and see if you answered ‘Yes’.
EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: The evolution of the basis of your relationships beyond personal conflict is impossible when your attention is trapped by concealed conditioning, yet, at the same time, you may be convinced that you are already maintaining conscious interactions.
Carla’s Story: Carla was separated and raising her twelve-year-old daughter alone. Since her declaration of freedom, her intention to awaken was unfolding as complete self-reliance, autonomy, peace and harmony. As part of her on-going efforts to bring her awakening to all of her relevant relationships, Carla began to screen her cousin Jenna’s intrusive, and sometimes caustic, phone calls. She did this in spite of a gnawing desire to not offend Jenna and to just put up with more years of such treatment for her cousin’s sake. As Carla removed herself from Jenna’s irrational demands, the relationship with her own daughter opened up tremendously. Together they were able to face the challenges of life in unison. Carla discovered a direct correlation between her willingness to not interact with the malignant ego in Jenna, and her ability to identify and transcend the manifestations of that same unhealthy ego in herself, and therefore in her relationship with her daughter. By letting go of a long-standing self-image of being a ‘good cousin/friend’, she was awakening the relationship with her own daughter by truly being a good mother. Carla realized that only the unhealthy-ego would enforce a self-image as a ‘good cousin/friend’ in order to sustain intentional or unconscious mistreatment from other people. In time, Carla condensed her interactions with her cousin so that they were no longer relevant to her awakening; simultaneously, she and her own daughter enjoyed an awakened relationship that was free from personal conflict. In time, Carla’s daughter passed on these skills of peace, gratitude and awakened compassion in relationships with her friends and eventually to her own family.
EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: Because a truly awakened person cares more about the spiritual development of others than he does about his own personal comfort, he is simply unable to sustain the malevolent aspects of the ego-mind in any of his relevant relationships.
( © - "The Uncommon Path" by Irish author Mick Quinn.)
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