Relationships are precious. There is the potential in each relationship to reflect back to us an aspect of the puzzle we are all here on earth to piece together.
Life itself has taught me this. Every relationship I have had, and continue to have, has helped me go deeper into the most important of all relationships – the relationship with myself. And then in turn, this has had a very positive effect on all my other relationships as well.
What I have learnt is that when a relationship is based on a commitment to bringing love to it no matter what, it actually needs no passport! It needs no physical presence for the relationship to deepen and for the love to grow. We can be across the world, sometimes not even speak to each other for some time, and this will not matter if the love continues to be there. Love remains at work, holding the other, as we hold ourselves and in that holding, immense healing takes place.
Some 16 years ago I chose to move from the UK to Australia. The call to move was undeniable and the moment I set foot on Australian soil I knew I was home. It was that simple. I arrived here with my then partner – with all my family remaining on the other side of the world.
I kept regular contact with my family, as one would expect, and would take regular trips back to the UK to visit. A few years after I had made the move, one of my brothers became mentally ill and a likely danger to himself and others. What followed were some very distressing times for my brother and my mother in particular, who was at the forefront of the situation. There were regular phone calls and Skype conversations to try and support with what was happening – and when I say support, back then it was all about fixing this problem to make it go away.
Yes, I wanted to support my mother and absolutely I wanted to help my brother. But I also wanted the problem to go away because it was so awful to have hanging around. Underlying all my efforts and intentions, there was this unreconciled guilt that I wasn’t physically there to support them from close.
This guilt was foreboding – what was I to do? Was I to pack up and return to the UK and be physically there? Was that what was needed? Would it make all the difference?
I took this inner turmoil I was feeling to a healing session with a very wise esoteric practitioner, who lived a quality of relationships with others that I very much admired. I remember the session as clearly now as I did back then, and it is these words in particular that keep coming back:
‘As you heal, those in close relationship with you will also heal.’
At the time I couldn’t really get this.
I got a sense of what the words were saying, but I couldn’t quite accept that what was being said was in fact a truth. How could this be relevant when my family was on the other side of the world, literally? But I decided to be open to what had been said at least, and to deepen my own commitment to healing all those unreconciled hidden pockets of pain within myself. I was curious to see what ripple effect this could potentially have on my relationship with my brother, and on my brother’s situation.
What unfolded over the years that followed was nothing less than a miracle. I watched from the other side of the world as my brother, who had become a recluse with a bleak future and nowhere to turn, took absolute hold of his life and turned it around. I watched him walk away from drugs and alcohol and from the party crowds he used to hang out with – even though this meant that he would feel even more lonely for a period of time.
I also watched him turn around from being staunchly against medical intervention to cooperating with the doctors fully, knowing that was an essential part of the responsibility he needed to take. I watched him make those steps to going back into the world again, to working, to being amongst people and developing a confidence within himself that he could now bring into social situations. This was a confidence he did not have before. And I watched the joy he would have as a little boy return to his face. His eyes once again saying, ‘I see you and I am here.’
I visited my brother just 3 or 4 times over this period – and this is in the course of approximately 5 years. Our relationship deepened with the physical distance being there, and it wasn’t about being on Skype or the phone every day. Sometimes we would not talk for days, even weeks. But what was always there was my resolute commitment to holding my brother and the situation in love, and addressing anything that would get in the way of this. This meant looking at any expectations or frustrations I might have had, any belief systems that I had taken on to consider the situation being under the banner of right and wrong.
Love doesn’t have right and wrongs. It simply holds the other person in the grandness they innately are – and this was my vantage point. If I was not seeing in my brother the grandness that he is, lurking underneath the turmoil he was in, I would look back at myself first. What was in me that was covering up the truth that love will always let you see?
It wasn’t smooth sailing by any means – there were challenges and difficult times, particularly for my brother – but underlyingly it was clear that he was now feeling held by something bigger, something far stronger, than the seeming darkness of his immediate situation.
I did not want to accept those words that the esoteric practitioner had expressed to me back then, because in accepting them I would have needed to accept my power as well. The power each one of us has in that the quality we hold ourselves in, is the quality we hold all others in.
And herein is the responsibility that we often duck from in relationships.
If we make relationships about “you do your bit, I do my bit and then our needs will meet in the middle”, we don’t need to consider the powerful ripple effect that is happening anyway between us. But when I say powerful – is it from a loving, healing quality if we are choosing to behave and relate in a way that is contra to this?
Whether we like it or not, we are always oozing something out of ourselves and whatever it is we are oozing is being latched on to by the other! So do we ooze love, joy and a commitment to letting go of our hurts, knowing there is a vastness of more love to connect to underneath them, or do we ooze the icky hurts themselves? Do we stand up the walls of protection where we allow some people to access some parts of us, but always with conditions and always with a get-out clause, which means we never let ourselves get too close?
A true relationship has no walls and no protection. We deepen constantly; we bear who we truly are constantly. We jump off the cliff knowing we will be held in God’s love, which is our love. And so we go for it in full.
I can even go as far to say that a true relationship is the communication of Heaven in physical form. What we exchange amongst each other is far from merely physical, emotional and spiritual – it is in fact, the exchange of the entire universe with the vastness of the stars coming through one divine spark to the other. Because it is through relationships that we remember the stupendous grandness we are from and that we are all, eventually, heading back to.
By Anonymous, Australia
Further Reading:
My Brother – Not an In-LAW
Making a relationship about true love
Constellations
389 Comments
What you are sharing with everyone is very beautiful and what can be if we commit to loving ourselves first. The knock on effect of this is that this love is felt by all others and can awaken in them the same feelings because we are after all, all the same we all come from a body of love and we will all return to the same body of love. Our future is written in the stars.
A responsibility to meet ourselves with all the Love that we are flows through our relationships with everyone else.
A great reminder this morning that what we see in others first tells us a lot about our relationship with ourselves. We can choose to see the issues or the grandness.
Appreciating the power of our essences is what is shared here as appreciation brings us so much as it holds us to the next magic moment of how divinity works and then we appreciate that until the next point of our evolution and a deeper relationship with our essences, which is the Love of God that is shared.
[…] a time in my past when I put myself on a program to bring deeper awareness to how I was in all my relationships, whether that was with my family, the shop assistant at the plaza, my hairdresser, the woman I sat […]
A magic blog. Thank you.
“If I was not seeing in my brother the grandness that he is, lurking underneath the turmoil he was in, I would look back at myself first. What was in me that was covering up the truth that love will always let you see?” What an inspiring story, thank you for all the wisdom shared from your experiences, and the simplicity of making our own lives about love and healing first and holding others in that equality and love. It’s a big difference between imposing and trying to “fix” things (understandable) and dedicating our lives to being love with ourselves and others.
I absolutely love this blog, to me it makes so much sense, when we think some one ‘needs’ us we tend to be all over them, when in fact the space betweens us can communicate all the love in the universe.
We learn so much from one another, and what is reflected, ‘Every relationship I have had, and continue to have, has helped me go deeper into the most important of all relationships – the relationship with myself. And then in turn, this has had a very positive effect on all my other relationships as well.’
I love what you have shared here Shirley-Ann in that the space between people is equally important as how we are within and if we tune into this or are allow ourselves to be sensitive to this how it can support all of our relationships.
Indeed love holds and can behold another, not in an emotional way but in energetic truth.
Being open and willing to learn from the reflections in all our relationships is a fantastic recipe to develop love within ourselves; they bring everything we need to grow and evolve and the end product is a forever increasing love held in the body.
It’s convenient how our normal idea of what Love looks like, is like a yummy dish we can enjoy with some but not others. It completely overlooks the fact that the level of love we live is a constant emanation – a quality of energy that will never pick and choose.
It is a very very gorgeous and freeing feeling to feel the impact we can have on another just by being our true self. It is equally an awkward moment because you realise that it is no longer all about you and what you want but more about what we all truly need.
The beautiful thing about love is that it simply is, no more and no less.
This morning I was lovingly given the link to this blog, one which I’ve read many times but now has a poignancy that offers such love. There may be big choices to be made in a potentially challenging time – which is a beautiful opportunity for great expressions of love. The choice of love is never less or more in any situation. When unloving choices come to a head it may seem this way. It’s important I don’t rush but stay in the spaciousness that is love.
I live away physically from my blood family, and this blog has moved me deeply as it clearly states a huge truth that we are all connected all of the time. To see the healing in our families is beautiful and to feel that love is always there no matter how far we are in space is a great confirmation.
There are no borders to LOVE.
Love simply is, ‘Love doesn’t have right and wrongs. It simply holds the other person in the grandness they innately are’.
I agree, it is undeniable concerning the way that our own healing ripples out and supports others in their own path of healing. It is selfless to heal, because through healing we are more responsible and become more aware of others and our impact on them. Healing ourselves from within to support life as a whole.
Yes, it’s totally selfless to heal. I know that when I have I then reflect to others the possibility of being free of these things. I reflect understanding and love and I have felt people feel the possibility of breaking free from whatever it is that binds them.
“‘As you heal, those in close relationship with you will also heal.’ Wow this is gorgeous it takes away all the unnecessary stress and heartache that we can have when fixated with wanting to ‘help’ another.
If I do not see and hold another in the grandness and beauty they are, then it is I that needs healing and not them. This is a wonderful marker I hold in my body. It stops and takes me inward offering and asking me to take responsibility and heal what is going on within me.
Opening myself up and letting people in is magic in any relationship. Feeling raw and exposed I allow myself to be seen for the woman who I truly am and not the woman pretending to be something she is not or fulfilling a role at the mercy of those around her.
‘There is the potential in each relationship to reflect back to us an aspect of the puzzle we are all here on earth to piece together.’ This is a wonderful way to be with each person we meet, that there is a grandness to them that we can never dismiss. It brings us all as equal as we all have a part of divinity to bring to one another.
‘As you heal, those in close relationship with you will also heal.’ This is pure revelation. We do not yet appreciate the simple alchemy we offer others by the way we live, if the way we live is deeply honouring of who we truly are and where we come from. We live in an ocean of energy and our every move sends out ripples that affect all others no matter their geographic location. There are no borders in the world of energy. This is such a beautiful example of everyday alchemy in action and your closing words bring tears of joy to my eyes, so true they are.
This just proves that everything is indeed energy, and everything we do right now effects everyone else, when we acknowledge this truth we confirm God.
All the artificial boundaries that we have eventually need to come down but in the meantime we just need to be loving towards each other.
I just love this blog it is gold from beginning to end. Thank you Anonymous..
‘What I have learnt is that when a relationship is based on a commitment to bringing love to it no matter what, it actually needs no passport!’ I know that the more I live love in my life without putting on any conditions, those who are in my life but I do not see do feel the changes and can learn to trust in themselves more again too.
Our energetic connection holds all the power of our relationships, not our physical proximity to each other.
This is an amazing perspective on relationships – ‘the exchange of the entire universe’. What is on offer when we open up to true relationship is stupendous.
What a stupendous revelation, we do not have to compromise ourselves to help others, it is the love for ourselves that reaches all.
Committing to a life of healing is committing the truth that we are, as all the hurts we carry from moving away from the love we originally are from is the root cause of all our personal issues, but too of all the issues and atrocities we have in the world for ages and ages, possibly as long as we live as human beings here on this planet earth.