Dance of Love

"Relationship is a powerful, often dizzying dance of polarities - sometimes delightful and seductive, sometimes fierce and combative, sometimes energizing, sometimes exhausting... The dance of relationship always involves alterations - between coming together and moving apart, taking hold and letting go, yielding and taking the lead, giving ourselves and maintaining integrity. It is not an easy dance to learn. Many people soon loose the rythm and wind up deadlocked in opposing positions, knowing only how to attack or withdraw."

Most books talk about "What's wrong with relationships and how we can fix them?" and the beauty of this book is that it focuses on "What's right about relationships that are already working successfully?" with concrete examples from real couples the author interviewed for this book.

Relationships or any form of commitment for that matter, are never easy... so is marriage, both parties have to work on it. The love experience is largely that of our own essence, as it is evoked by the presence of the other. Presence means presenting our own essence, taking off the masks and defenses, having our hearts open. It is the commitment to work diligently on their relationships, to persevere in resolving any difficulties and to consistently support each other.

I love the use of analogy of yoga to describe relationships - relationship requires awareness, focus, intent and consistent practice.It teaches us to stretch and strengthen parts of ourselves, to take unfamiliar positions while remaining centered and in balance, to direct our energy in new ways and to relax. We have the choice to be protective and avoid pain, or to open and learn to work with it. Yoga is challenging and invigorating, hard work and great fun. It gets easier and brings new insights as we move along the path. And it requires... commitment, commitment to integrity, to embrace our wholeness and the wholeness of our partner... seeing the oneness while seeking resolution of differences, without attempts at manipulating one to satisfy the other.

Hmm, the book asks if you have been in a relationship where in large or small ways, agreeing to things that you don't want to do? How often do you lie about your feelings or behaviour for fear of rejection, anger, loss, pain or hurting someone's feelings? And how often are you able to maintain your integrity in the face of those fears? These are questions worth exploring.

The books encourages us to practice the Voice Dialogue - recognising our inner selves: the pusher, pleaser, controller, critic, vulnerable child, rebel, good parent, and many more. Giving the various selves a voice helps us discover what each one feels and thinks, what it needs and what it has to offer. Some of these are primary selves, those which we most value and identify with as who we are. Opposite each primary self is a disowned self, one which we judge as bad or deny exists. When some selves take exclusive control and others are shut down, inaccessible, we are automatically out of integrity. All aspects of our wholeness want to be recognised, accepted and integrated in some way.

Interestingly, our partners will often embody the selves we disown (polar opposites attract) and this can be a source of great conflict for couples or else they can come to appreciate that each partner holds an energy that the couple needs to develop... bottomline we need to look out for complementary characteristics in that each partner brought balance and new ways of being for the other to integrate - the key: allowance, agreeing and disagreeing at times. And being mindful or one's Aware Ego is the central aspect of personality which recognises and honors all the many facets of ourselves, consciously choosing which energies to bring into expression at a given time.

I've just finished chapter 2 of chapter 9 and what I gather from this book is that relationships require self-awareness, persistence, flexibility, patience and lots of honest communication, which is the subject of the the subsequent chapters so stay tuned!