Why Are Relationships So Painful?

Q: I want to ask you about the nature of bonds. For the past twelve months I had a strong bond with a woman. It’s very deep; it’s very vulnerable. A lot of love is there but also a lot of pain. The interaction, whatever relationship is there, is also painful. And it also feels like it’s holding me from going deep into whatever is there. It seems so mixed and I don’t understand what’s happening.

John: It’s your own beliefs that are the source of your pain. There is no pain in a bond, in a connectivity of being; there is only deep, quiet love and nurture. The pain comes from the contrast between what it’s like within that bond and what your self isn’t like. Your self is so different. There’s something that you’d like to have in your self from that bond and it’s not working.

Q: How to move naturally in that bond, in this level of the self? How can I connect them?

John: By being given: you, awareness, being given to what you know in the bond. The knowing in the bond isn’t of a mental information; the knowing is about the beingness, the connective flow.

Q: Can staying in the bond prevent going deeper?

John: If you’re given to what you know within the bond, that takes you into the deep. When you’re in response to anything that touches you that is of your being, or someone else’s being, your response to that takes you into beingness.

Q: Does bond want to manifest itself?

John: No.

Q: So the wanting of manifestation is only from the self?

John: Yes. There are two different natural flows. Both are within you, as awareness, and that is the flow within. The flow within comes by you being the same as your own being, enabling you to flow into your being, and because, as awareness, you have a body and a self in this life, there is another flow of being and that is the flow outwards. The flow outwards is for you as a being to fill your heart, to fill your self and your life. It isn’t for the sake of your heart, your self or your life; it is just a natural flow of being, out into form, because you, awareness, have that form. You having form draws you, as awareness, from within your being out into those forms.

Your flow, as awareness, moving within is a flow of being; your flow, as awareness, moving outwards is a flow of being. As soon as you make that flow, moving within or moving without, about your self, you’ll have pain. The pain is that you’re not acquiring what you want; you’re not getting what you want; your wants and needs are not being satisfied. The deeper the knowledge of being that you have, the more dissatisfied you’ll be in your self. But if it is your restedness as awareness in that flow, then you naturally flow within as a being and you naturally flow outwardly as a being, without that flow in either direction being about your experience or your self. It isn’t self oriented.

Any time you experience pain in relationship to your self, your being, your heart or the truth, that pain is a self orientation. When you are free of your self, you don’t have that pain. What you have is warmth, nurture, restedness and love in the midst of difficulty. The difficulty is that you have a body, a self and a life that isn’t all like your being yet, and that difficulty is really fine. You being the same as your being in the midst of that difficulty slowly makes your self just like your being.

When you experience a bond, that touches into qualities of being. Where that brings up pain for you is because you long for more than you have. Instead of being warmed in what you do have in the bond that is of your being, you are wanting to have what you don’t have; you want something of that in your self. You want it for your self and it’s not working. A bond shows you beingness that is there between you and another. The more isn’t about you experiencing more or having more; the more is you being what you know within that connective beingness, you being that everywhere else in your life. You are letting what you know within the beingness that is between you and another turn into perspective in all of your life: not just concerning you and that person, but everything. As soon as you realize a bond, you realize the truth of deeper beingness within, and then you go about in your life being that beingness, moving as that beingness regardless of what your self and your life is like. You’re not doing that to have a more fulfilling experience; you’re being that and doing that because this is the truth within that you know. It isn’t about getting something for your self.

Q: How does relationship form? Does it come from a bond?

John: If you can form the relationship in the same way that the bond is, yes. But having a bond with someone, realizing a bond, doesn’t mean at all that you need to be in relationship. Having a bond with someone means that you are realizing beingness between the two of you. If you are most sensitive within, you’ll realize a bond with everyone you meet, even if you only meet someone for a few seconds. Because you are there in what is deeper within, immediately there’s a connectivity of that beingness. As soon as that connectivity touches your self, you experience that connectivity. Just because that connectivity is nurturing, it doesn’t mean that you’re to be in relationship with that person. What it means is that you are connecting with that person in a way that is real. If you want something from that in your life, you create your pain.

Q: Why is that feeling of a bond only with one person, or a few? What prevents feeling the bond with everybody?

John: Because you’re not open to see that it’s there with everyone. You’re open to see where that bond is where you would like to have a relationship. Your sensitivity from within your self to the bond is preferential. It’s biased to possibility, the possibility of getting what you would like to have. So then you don’t see it elsewhere; you don’t see the connectivity of being that is there all the time with everything and with everyone. You see the bond where you see a possibility of relationship. You see the bond because of your openness to relationship, instead of your openness to deeper connectivity.

Q: Where does this energy start from?

John: Not needing a relationship. If you start from wanting and needing a relationship, you’re already relating in a way that isn’t like your being. You’re starting out with some blindness and a belief. The blindness is that you see a connectivity of being where there’s gain for you in your self. The belief is that you’ll be happy if you can have the relationship you want, that your inner well-being will increase if you can have a relationship, especially if there’s a bond, a depth of being that is there between you and another. That promises a really meaningful relationship to you in your self. It’s that need of a relationship: if you were to come into a relationship that’s full of depth of meaning, you will starve the relationship of that meaning. You’ll deplete the relationship of everything that’s deeper because you’ll be hinging meaning on getting something from the relationship and from that other person. So you can start out with a very profound bond, deeply loving that person and being in love. You start a relationship and then you wonder why, after familiarity has set in, that the in-loveness is gone, that much of the love is gone, and that the bond that’s there between the two of you is mostly covered. Then you might easily think that you’ve moved into a relationship with the wrong person. So then you try another. None of it will really work.

Q: What is a relationship for? What is the meaning of relationship?

John: It’s all for your being. It isn’t for your self. It isn’t just a relationship that is for your being, but your self is also for your being. Your future is for your being. All of your plans, your perspective, your mind, your thinking, your feeling, your emotions, are all for your being, and what you’re used to is having all of that for your self. That’s your pain. That’s why you have pain. The pain tells you that what you’re doing and what you’re oriented to, within, isn’t real. The pain is real feedback to you. The pain is telling you, very sweetly, “not that way – a different way”. You’re letting the pain tell you how much you’re not getting what you want. You want more connectivity, more meaning, more depth, more love, more being loved, more richness of being, all experienced in your self and in your life. All of that belongs to your being, and your being has no need of that so it won’t be oriented to what you would like to have even though your being, filling your self and your life produces everything you’re looking for. But as long as you’re looking for that, your being can’t have it because you are already wanting to have it. Whatever you want, your being can’t have.

When you are deeply gentled and quieted within unconditionally, at any personal expense your being, by virtue of you being what you really are, will fill your heart, your self, and your life. But as soon as you want to have the fruit of being that is already growing in your life, that growth stops because you have use for it; you want to have it. What lets your being fill your self and your life is that it is genuinely not for your self and not for your life. It really is for your being. When it is really for your being, you are happiness more than the need of more happiness. Then you are openness more than you are happiness. When you are being what you really are, the flow of that is unconditioned beingness.

Where your relationship to beingness is real, you would be anchored in that beingness in a life that is like a cold shower just as much as in a life that is like a hot shower, in a life of disturbance and difficulty just as much as in a life of ease, comfort, and prosperity. What you are being within is unconditioned and won’t hinge on your quality of life. It won’t hinge on what you experience in your self. It hinges only on the deeper truth that you know within. When what you know within is to open instead of to close, then to be that openness it won’t matter to you what the weather is like. It won’t matter to you what your quality of life is like. You will open and soften unconditionally within any kind of life because that openness is true to what you really are. You won’t live serving want and need in your life. You’ll live, in all of your self and in all of your life, being a beloved servant to the quiet beloved within. That enables the beloved within to have your self and to have your life. Without you being a beloved servant to the beloved within, you’re not able to be the beloved that has a self and that has a life.

Live for the beloved, and the beloved lives.