The New Nature of Relationships

Nature of Relationships

As a healer, I do quite a bit of relationship coaching with clients. That includes all types of relationships - significant other/significant other, divorce, separation, family member/family member, friend/friend. Regardless of the sexes of the individuals involved, the dynamics and vibration of relationships is the same. No one has a monopoly on that. Well, unless you subscribe to the traditional, conservative social mores and ethics. If you do, then you aren’t going to understand anything I’m about to say.

The nature of relationships is changing as the vibrations of the planet get higher. We’ve been in a huge vibratory shift for a long time now that has gotten very much stronger in the last year. It’s going to increase gradually over the coming years until we achieve a balance between higher and lower planes of existence. The Light, as we like to call Higher Vibration, is now firmly anchored into the heart of Mother Earth. As this has occurred, the Low Vibrational energy that has existed there has to be displaced. We tend to look at Low Vibrational energy as the Patriarchal Energy.

The Old Perception of Marriage

Patriarchal Energy has been what has shaped our belief systems and given us the boundaries that structure how we behave in relationships. We believe it’s immoral and unethical to covet another man’s wife because it was a law laid down by a bunch of men over 2,000 years ago. Who remembers that that law came into being because women were treated like property? It was illegal to covet another man’s donkey, too. I love donkeys, don’t get me wrong. But the old Mosaic Law put the punishment for stealing a woman on par with stealing a donkey. Both were considered equal assets to a man’s wealth. Today, in many states across the United States, you can technically be convicted of adultery and serve a jail sentence of as much as two years even for a first offense. There are people who have stolen a car for kicks who only get six months or probation for a first offense.

Now, a person getting convicted of simple adultery doesn’t happen too often anymore in this day and age. Mind you, I’m not talking about the guy who marries multiple women to swindle them. I’m talking about the common situation of when one person in a marriage decides to have an emotional and/or sexual affair with another person outside the marriage. If a divorce ensues, the "injured" party has the right to sue the person who cheated on the grounds of adultery. The Rule of Common Sense is applied in divorce cases by the courts because they have no choice but to rule on an ancient law that went on the books in the 18th or 19th century and never got removed or modified to fit the changing times. A judge who is capable of being truly impartial and discerning of the truth of the situation, listens to the story of how the adultery occurred and determines whether and how the behaviors of all the individuals contributed to the end of the marriage.

Almost always, the "injured" party claims the charge of adultery because money is involved and there was not a successful negotiation to the resolution of the relationship. The other aspect to this charge is the emotional reaction we still have as a collective consciousness to this situation. There is a lot of "trauma drama" in being able to go around to everyone discussing your hurt feelings and how awful it is to be betrayed and how justified you are in having a trial by jury so that you can get revenge and be proven in public to be the most moral and righteous in the drama. In the end, you might get the public to commiserate with you and the Ego that pushed you toward this behavior will be greatly satisfied. It feels good to the Ego to have people cluck their tongues and say "What a Pity!" and "Oh, poor dear so-and-so, how mistreated she was!" And then the truth of the relationship leaks out. The behaviors, beliefs, and actions by the "injured" party begin to circulate. And then the adoring public starts to say, "So-and-so really did that? Oh, no wonder there was an affair." All of a sudden, the person who cheated is viewed with compassion, kindness and understanding. The "injured" party has to eventually look inward to see what behaviors, beliefs and actions caused the irretrievable dissolution of a relationship that was believed to be "forever."

Somewhere in the last few hundred years, marriage began to be about Love. How do two people feel about each other? How do they behave with each other? How do they react to the world together? How do they influence each other’s behaviors, belief systems and actions? Was it a positive and strong enough experience to enter into a legal contract binding them together by law? Money and the acquisition of property and power is still a factor in why two people get married, but now emotions enter into the mix that make some people decide that money, property and power aren’t as important. They feel that a legal contract is an appropriate way to demonstrate their love for each other to the world.

Beginning a Re-definition

This is marriage: a legal contract between two people who promise what they will do and will not do while they are together, presumably "forever." Now, I sound like I’m against marriage. Trust me, I am not. I’ve never been married. Fortunately for me, I passed on that offer from boyfriends who weren’t equipped to be life partners. I’m looking forward to the day I can walk down the aisle in my non-traditional wedding dress, listening to the choir sing a song written especially for the occasion by my best friend. Don’t think I haven’t thought about this. The vows will go something like this: "I agree to make this legally binding contract with you because at this time in my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual evolution, you and I are matching vibrations with each other. Because we feel this resonance, we agree to explore the nature and wonder of what this experience can teach us about ourselves. I look forward to the good that comes from all of it, regardless of what that looks like. When our lessons are completed with each other, we may no longer be vibrationally compatible. If we decide to part ways, I commit to being in gratitude to you, recognizing that there is no blame, shame, guilt, judgment or condemnation so that I may honor the calm peace of my soul and yours." Wow. Kinda blows my hair back wondering how the congregation reacts to that, especially if they thought they were going to hear "love, honor, and obey." The thought of that makes me laugh.

Two people meet and feel that they want to be together, regardless of how they actually feel about the other person. All of us have entered into a relationship with someone whom we may not really like but feel compelled to interact. You are irresistibly drawn to the person. They drive you nuts, create chaos in your world, cause you to behave in ways you never thought capable, and no matter what you do, you can’t get away from them. WHY does this happen? Because at some level, there is a vibrational match. The Law of Attraction is always in play.

Ok, great, that’s not news if you understand and practice Universal Law and spiritual principles. Why am I talking about this? Because, people who are just entering into a spiritual growth process don’t understand how vibrational resonance works in relationships. All of a sudden, their marriage isn’t working anymore. "We’re just on different paths. He/She doesn’t understand me anymore. I can’t take his/her negativity anymore. I’m evolving. Why can’t my partner evolve with me?" are all things that people say as they realize they don’t want to be with the other person any longer. They are feeling the discomfort of a vibration that is now in disharmony with their own. The cacophony of that feeling usually begins subtly and grows into a loud, clanging noise by the time one person says "Enough! I want out." How a person decides to react to the change in vibration is where we begin to see why people have affairs of all kinds outside of a legally binding contract.

We all seek to be in vibrational harmony with another human being. When that is no longer possible with person A, person B will automatically seek out person C. Now, the problem comes when persons A and B don’t acknowledge that there is no longer vibrational matching between them. If either person is unconsciously aware of the evolution that is taking place, things can get uncomfortable. In a place of low vibrational energy, there’s going to be a lot of ugly behavior that doesn’t honor anybody’s Divinity. When there is consciousness from one partner, the process can still be ugly if the other person remains unconscious. It’s then up to the awake partner to work hard to maintain a high vibration in order to facilitate and negotiate a new arrangement that honors the Divinity of both people. The sleeping person doesn’t have the facility to do that. If both partners are awake, then they have an opportunity to create a new arrangement between them that works for them.

Application of Universal Principles

DISCLAIMER: The case studies represented here are a synthesis of many different client situations that have been in my practice over the last 16 years. No specific client's story is disclosed.

In my practice, I have coached many people who are just waking up to their spiritual evolution or who have been on the path for a while. Even for those who have been on the path for a while, there may come a time when they are unclear about what is happening in a significant relationship. In one case, a client's spouse had been having a long affair when he announced he wanted a divorce. When she came to see me, her body was clearly reacting to the emotional upheaval of the situation.

Because she had recently entered into a place of seeking spiritual information, she didn’t know how to use her knowledge to apply to the dissolution of her marriage. She realized that she had denied the evidence of her own feelings and intuition when she began to suspect that her relationship with her husband was uncomfortable several years prior. Everything was kept to a low simmer while the children were younger. Now that the children had become teenagers, things were beginning to come to a boil. She continued to deny that the relationship was tenable and felt that she was blind-sided by her husband’s actions – even though she had suspected that he was having an affair. At the point that she came for bodywork, her counselor had helped her to see that she needed to start releasing that energy from her muscles and cells.

When they finally entered into divorce proceedings, the counselor suggested that she have a final meeting with her husband so that she could "have closure with him", meaning that it would be her opportunity to tell him what a schmuck he’d been and how hurt and betrayed she felt. She had originally felt that she wanted to behave like the "betrayed wife" and wanted to hurt him with a nasty divorce. Before that meeting was scheduled, she asked what I thought about that. During our work together, I introduced the concepts of vibrational matching and the Law of Attraction. We discussed the impact her spiritual awakening was having on her relationships with her husband and her children. We talked about the positive things that could happen in her life if she realized that this was the Universe giving her a kick in the butt to facilitate her healing and purpose in life.

After working together for three months on these topics, I asked her how she felt towards him now. She realized that she had an opportunity to pursue her love of her old career. She went back to school. She realized that in those same three months, her husband had been in two car accidents, had incurred some professional chastisement at work, and generally looked terrible, as if he was getting sick. She was still uncomfortable about how things had turned out, but she realized that she wasn’t bitter and could have compassion for him. She didn’t feel a need to have a yelling match with him, so the meeting didn’t happen. The divorce went as smoothly as these things can and she was awarded by the court everything that she asked without any fight from the now ex-husband. Two months after the divorce was final, she had found the perfect job and was positively radiant as she told me about how well things were going. She continues to apply the spiritual, emotional, and life lessons she learned to help her complete her healing process and that of her children.

So, what happened? In a nutshell, she began to understand vibrational matching and that ultimately there was nothing and no one to blame for what happened. Everything had transacted Perfectly to help her make the breakthroughs she needed and wanted to make for her own evolution.

A client came who was seeking alternative therapies to help herself with a number of issues. She was in therapy with a counselor, working both individually and with her husband in marriage counseling. They were making an attempt to heal the relationship and find out whether they could create something new in their relationship that would advance them both. Her husband was a life-long spiritual seeker. They committed to finding new ways of being together, as she was able to release the old energies of things related to boundary issues. This knowledge helped her to identify unconscious thought processes, belief systems and behaviors ingrained in her energy form childhood that were impacting how she felt in all of her relationships, not just her marriage.

As we worked together to release the old cellular and muscle memories, she was able to easily identify that some very positive things had occurred. For one, her marriage was now becoming stronger than ever. For two, she validated her ability to honor her own boundaries. She is becoming stronger emotionally and spiritually. Physically, she no longer has constant pain and she’s more physically fit than ever.

In this case, one person in the relationship was already awake and instinctively applied his knowledge to the situation. The other person had been on the path, which helped her begin to understand the energies of the situation from a higher perspective. They are beginning to see that there is no blame, guilt, judgment or condemnation necessary since they are realizing the positive things that are occurring. These two people are at a complementary vibrational match that gave them the ability to create a new way of being together.

Our Role As Spiritual Seekers and Practitioners

In the old Patriarchal Energy, these two outcomes would probably have never happened. The first one could have portrayed the betrayed, grieving, "injured" woman, caused a scene with her husband, friends, and family. She’d be bitter, resentful and hateful for the rest of her days. The husband in the second case could have kicked his wife to the curb so he could "make her pay" for her betrayal by taking the kid in a nasty custody hearing. In the old energy, people would cluck their tongues, taken sides, made judgments and condemnations, and generally everything would be the way we’re used to seeing them in these situations.

And now, we come full circle to where we started. The Light is replacing the Patriarchal Energy. As we begin to raise our vibrations, each of us is pulled toward our individual spiritual awakenings. The Course in Miracles discusses in Chapter 21, Reason and Perception, page 448, how all we need to transform our relationship to ourselves, to the Universe (God, The ALL That IS, whatever you call it) and to others is the willingness to shift our vision from the Ego-based world we currently perceive in order to see the our Wholeness and Oneness with All. The affirmation stated there says:

I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide
Upon the goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me
I ask for, and receive as I have asked.

Ultimately, ACIM says perception is a result and not a cause. Damnation is your judgment on yourself, and this you will project upon the world. If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you hurt yourself. If you see holiness and hope, you will acquire joy and happiness. Perceiving the lessons you have placed before you as being a part of your path to Oneness, you no longer have to suffer and experience pain.

When we apply Universal Truth to how we perceive relationships and the nature of marriage as it stands today, we have an opportunity to realize that things are shifting. As more and more people become awake and aware, they are less willing or able to stay in a place of vibrational disharmony. This is evident as the percentage of divorces beats the number of marriages taking place in the U.S. alone in the last twenty years. This trend is only going to get stronger until things come into a place where the balance of masculine and feminine energies occurs.

Our lessons, as a society, as a culture, as participants in Universal Consciousness, are to help each other understand the application of vibrational matching, Law of Attraction and Universal Truth principles to create positive and joyous results that foster healthy relationships between each other. When we stop the blaming, shaming, guilt, judgment and condemnation, we shift our vision toward The Light. This new vision allows each individual to create exactly the Right and Perfect dynamic in every relationship. There can be no low vibrational outcomes as we see the wonderful results of what occurs. Everything happens Perfectly.