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Pain is entailed in all healthy relationships. Swami Chetanananda writes, “Everything has a price, and every loving experience we have ever had and ever hope to have will include pain” (Open Heart, Open Mind).
As I prepare to assume a new pastorate, I am aware that the relationship will entail bliss and pain. How do I know this? I have learned that is the nature of healthy relationships. I have learned that immense suffering arises from trying to pursue relationships based on a false hope of love without pain. And this applies to our relationship with others, with ourselves, or with Spirit.
One blessing of midlife and beyond is having learned enough to temper idealisms. This pertains to relationships. We are not, if we have worked through deep-seated relationship challenges, pessimistic about relationships. If we are pessimistic about relationships, we need more time to work with some deep-seated issues that remain in need of attention and, likely, counseling. However, while not as idealistic, we are wiser in estimation of what relationships can and cannot offer. This takes a lot of pressure off those we are in relationship with and off ourselves, as well.
Chetanananda observes two aspects of the pain in relationships. First, is the pain we feel when we learn the limits of others. Then, we feel pain when we learn the limits of ourselves.
What do we do with this pain? Chetanananda teaches that we transcend our reaction to both to discover our basic oneness with Life. Why? Pain and love are two sides of the experience of Life, both will arise if we are growing.
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Relationships provide a dynamism of extension and contraction. Chetanananda calls this a “kind of pulsation.” The pulsation is a paradox. We do not try to resolve it. We do not try to understand it, fully.
Therapy is not designed to seek the mystical depths of Love. Therapy is, principally, about resolving issues and getting healthily adjusted to a norm. When healthy emotionally, we can proceed to explore spirituality more indepth.
What I am speaking of is beyond therapy, and it pertains more to what one might seek through the help of a Spiritual Director. What we seek in the pulsation is to find balance, our True Self, and remain aware inside the paradox of a pouring forth and, then, a pulling back. Unlike the seeking of knowledge and resolutions in therapy, here we are seeking to enter more deeply into the fruit of not-knowing and not having resolution. Paradoxically, not-knowing is a deeper knowing and no-resolution is a healthier resolution.
The pouring forth is not seeking to attach to another. Pulling back is not flight from intimacy. The pulsation is part of the healthy tension in discovering the core of Love. This dynamism is the dialectic of a healthy relationship, evidencing growth to deeper levels of intimacy. Again, we need to have caution here, for Love pouring forth is not, again, some immature seeking for fulfillment in a person, and this pulling back is not avoidance of intimacy. This pulsation itself is the action of Intimacy coming to know itself. Love discovers Love in this dynamism.
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