Long Term Relationship & Yoga

[tonightsthenight]

Karl, thank you for the perspective.

I didn't mean to convey a sense of exchange rather than surrender but i can see your point.

I will try to fully surrender without a sense of receiving anything in return.

nearoanoke: thanks for you words.

I am trying to accept this reality fully, and not live through the mind during this time.
This is more difficult than i would have imagined, because after several weeks i still experience waves severe pain and grief, and phases of total despondency. I have experienced uncommon pain and trauma in my life, but this is a new level.

You are right that i do not know that she is "the one." One cannot know anything like that. However, from several months before our meeting, I intuited that i would meet the woman of my dreams, and there were signs everywhere, constantly. it was an auspicious time and it was clear that i would meet this person i had (literally) had dreams and premonitions about since i was very young.
Sometime after our meeting, there was a simple moment with her in which the awe was only rivaled in my life by my initial awakening. I "knew" then, not with the mind, but with true knowledge.
I don't deny the possibility of being satisfied in that way again, however, my intuition, and not the mind, tells me that. Time is a great healer, but one does not fully recover from traumas like this. Wounds like this persist until the end of your life, and yes, they might become sources of strength instead of weakness, but time does not 'heal all wounds."

[karl]

No one said it would be easy. The pain is attached to a story, the story is about the future.

 However, throwing a drowning man a text book on swimming isn't always helpful in the short term.

I feel your pain and loss, I will share it. It is all I can offer.

[tonightsthenight]

I laughed out loud when i read your comment about throwing a drowning man a swimming book

You make another great point about the pain being attached to a story about the future. Though a lot of the pain is simply grief.

In reference to your prior point about surrendering in exchange for something, rather than capitulating to one's sentence... i am fulling ready to do that. There is not one thing remaining in my life that i value or fear to lose. I just need to figure out how to do that

[karl]

quote:Originally posted by tonightsthenight There is not one thing remaining in my life that i value or fear to lose. I just need to figure out how to do that

Accept that you cannot figure it out. Surrender the illusion of control.

[mikkiji]

I was also with a woman who was my "soulmate", or, in Hebrew, my "bashert", literally, "intended for one another by God". We met when we were 15 years old, married when we were 22, and were together until her death from cancer when she was 54.  You want attachment, pain, loss, grief?  Try that one on for size.  Not to diminish the feelings of anyone else, but this is what human life is about--the Buddha told us that we would suffer, and then, through our suffering, learn non-attachment and come to a cessation of suffering.  The main point is that we are to utilize emotional pain as a lesson, an opportunity to evolve and grow spiritually.  Otherwise, we have suffered without growth, wasting a great and valuable opportunity for spiritual evolution.  That is the real shame, the real loss, suffering without cause or gain.  We suffer in order to learn how not to suffer.  My time of mourning for my wife was a time of tumultuous change--and the acceptance of those changes is what began to end my period of suffering.  I eventually fell in love again, and had a difficult time resolving how to feel regarding my new love versus my loss.  I asked the rabbi if one could have two "basherts" in one lifetime, if this was allowed by God, if it was possible or proper, or was I just on a misguided mission to replace my loss with someone new.  I was assured that I WAS permitted to fall in love again, be happy, find a soulmate and be loved.  Change is difficult, and resisting change causes suffering--we resist change because of our attachments, after all.  A door closes.  Look around for another door to open--then go through that door and greet what is on the other side...
Michael

[tonightsthenight]

Thank you for sharing that Michael... i'm sorry to hear about your loss.

[gatito]

Dear tonightsthenight

Grief happens just like everything happens. It arises and it subsides. When it arises to the extent that it is arising for you, it seems like it will never, ever subside. I am truly sorry that you are going through this. It hurts like Hell to the extent that it can feel that something has physically broken inside you.

However, the good news is that it will eventually subside like everything else that appears. The bad news is that if you push it away it seems to give it strength. Feel it fully and know that it isn't you, it appears to you.

The grief is not you because it comes and it goes. What you are is constant, the Silence which is Knowing this grief.

Rest in what you are as much as possible and keep your practice as constant as you are able.

Nothing can impede the Silence and It always answers the call.

With Love

gatito

[SeySorciere]

Karl - I always find your posts a source of inspiration - thank you.

Tonight - people telling you to surrender will not make it happen;telling yourself with your mind to surrender will not make it happen. 2x daily meditation will do that...eventually. People telling you she is not the one, it's all stories in your mind; what do they know? There are stories in your mind and stories in your Soul (past lives?). If you feel it at Soul level, then don't try to tell yourself otherwise - that leads to further struggling with reality. Accept that she is indeed the one (but leave yourself open to the idea that she is possibly not the ONLY one), love her with all of who you are and joyously accept this loving. Does Love have to diminish in the absence of the person loved? All of this pain will not resolve itself overnight.

I am curious though as to why you identify her as your Soulmate. Same question goes to others who talk of Soulmates - cautiously I notice - because it does not appear to fit within the Oneness image.

Sey

[maheswari]

quote:There is not one thing remaining in my life that i value or fear to lose.

everything,everything that you think you have....was in fact given to you...it was never truly yours...stripping all these layers what remains is a no-thing....THAT which you are is a no-thing which is paradoxically  everything

 

quote:Surrender the illusion of control.

@ Karl...did you see this?.....originally posted in the forums by Ananda
http://www.youtube.com/user/francislucillevideos
i like your posts a lot

@mikkijji.. thx for sharing...life goes on[]

[karl]

quote:Originally posted by SeySorciere

I am curious though as to why you identify her as your Soulmate. Same question goes to others who talk of Soulmates - cautiously I notice - because it does not appear to fit within the Oneness image.

Sey

In what way does it seem not to fit?

[karl]

quote:Originally posted by maheswari


 

quote:Surrender the illusion of control.

@ Karl...did you see this?.....originally posted in the forums by Ananda
http://www.youtube.com/user/francislucillevideos

Yes. I have learned that words don't mean communication.

[maheswari]

quote: Accept that she is indeed the one (but leave yourself open to the idea that she is possibly not the ONLY one), love her with all of who you are and joyously accept this loving. Does Love have to diminish in the absence of the person loved? All of this pain will not resolve itself overnight.

the mind creates a fixation...."i want this person to be with me and to love me " .....it is a mental disease...for years i greatly suffered from it during "love" in teenage years and also with the married man i talked about ...only with practice one learns to notice the mind disease.. one will still feel the pain created by the mind,one will still suffer....it is hell of suffering..it is a long deconditionning process...now i am much much better at cutting the mental crap than when i was 14... the suffering will get shorter and shorter ...eventually you say to yourself 'ok i love that person even if he is absent...it is a great Love cause i am not getting anything out of it...but this person is not the ONLY one...other persons will eventually appear in my life"....and they do appear[]
luckly our mind's fixation is on love ....many many people's mind fixation is about money ,prestige,career etc...our fixation on love , if worked out through spritual practices and enquiry will lead to Love pure and unconditional

[SeySorciere]

@ karl
In what way does the idea of Soulmate not fit into Oneness? I am not sure... Oneness to me means that at the very core we are all one; of one consciousness. So strip away the illusion, we should feel the same amount of love for all (?).. so any form of preference is illusion?

@ Maheswari - Yes ! Lucky our fixation is on Love

[karl]

quote:Originally posted by SeySorciere

@ karl
In what way does the idea of Soulmate not fit into Oneness? I am not sure... Oneness to me means that at the very core we are all one; of one consciousness. So strip away the illusion, we should feel the same amount of love for all (?).. so any form of preference is illusion?

the world unfolds as it must. Time is none existent. Doors open and people and objects walk in and out of  perception. There is no separation.

It does not matter if you call the world illusion, or the world. Universal consciousness and oneness are part of that illusion Accept the world/illusion as it is, without attachment to it. Then you can observe the comings and goings and they will not trouble you. You can give without expectation.

If you are referring to the inner stillness as oneness then it is not. That is beyond concepts, beyond illusion, beyond beyond. It's easy to confuse that with the world, when the only perception is of the world.

[tonightsthenight]

thanks for the kind words gatito and everyone else...

i am making progress in surrendering and in my practice.

Karl, Oneness and Stillness are not the same of course. But we are alive, after all, and although we can perceive oneness, the world of forms offers distinctions: all things are not the same. So a 'soulmate' is different from a regular love, just as a beetle is different than a moth. (or whatever, hehe). if the world had no importance, than why are we here at all? just to get out? i don't know that many people would agree with that.


Seysorciere:

I can't really describe how i know she is my soulmate, because it is not something i deduced. i am certain that there are stories beyond this one life we live, as i have memories of moments not in this dimension. i do not know the details, i only know that i have dreamed of this girl since i was very young, and when i first met her, i did not recognize her. but soon after, there was a moment when all of it came flooding into me, like k just blows up your spine with radiance. and i "knew" in a blink of an eye...