The Third Door: We are Relational Beings

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Stepping through the Door

It sometimes requires a radical shift in consciousness to see relationships instead of individuals. Two people collaborating on a shared project are obviously making something together, but so are two people having an argument. They are putting a certain kind of energy into their relationship, and giving the relationship a particular quality and identity. Relationships have their own nature and persistence. Some are healthy and creative, and give to the world. Others are destructive and unhealthy. All are held together by the energies we feed into them. We've all known people who continue to be defined by destructive relationships, even after the parties have gone their separate ways. In our atomistic way of thinking, we can't "see" that the relationship is still there when the person no longer is.

The Touch of Creation

To embrace your relational nature, try to see each event of your day as a spark of contact, an interaction between yourself and another. The other may be a person, but may just as easily be a plant, an animal, a rock, a place. From that single touch, something will take shape. What will it be like? What are you helping to make? Replace thought like I'm doing this to it or She's doing that to me with We are making this. You and the other being share the task of creating a new relationship. You may not share an understanding of why it is happening or how you want it to be, but you are collaborators nonetheless.

If you see good things growing out of a relationship, you can reinforce the energies you have put into it, and most likely will come into greater and greater harmony with the other, as you both reinforce the initial creative moment.

If a relationship is unhealthy or destructive, there are several things you can do. The most obvious is to change the energy that is going into the relationship. This is always a change for both parties. In our atomistic way of thinking, we usually imagine that bad relationships can be fixed by one party or the other behaving differently. There is some truth in that, but it overlooks the fact that the relationship has a character of its own. The relationship itself must change, and that inevitably affects both parties. If the primary shape of a relationship between friends, for example, is one using the other to serve their own needs, then "stop using me" is only a part of the change that must happen. The other person must also stop being used, and both must find a whole different kind of energy to invest in the relationship that has nothing to do with using or being used. This can be frightening, unexplored territory for both parties, especially in a relationship that has had a particular shape for a long time.

Sometimes, the best thing to do with an unhealthy relationship is to stop feeding it. If a relationship resists being reshaped, or if the motivation is simply lacking to work on it, then it's often best to let it go and invest in one's healthier relationships instead. As mentioned above, however, separating from the other party is not the same thing as not feeding the relationship. It is possible (in fact common) to continue to feed relationships after the parties are no longer in contact. It is also possible to stop feeding a relationship while the parties remain in contact, simply by giving it less of your emotional and mental attention.

Being a relationship-conscious person leads you out of unhealthy relationships and into healthier ones. Destructive relationships are usually the result of self-focused individualistic thinking. Once you learn to actually see your relationships as living things and to care for them, it becomes much easier to keep them healthy.

Venus

As a mythological/astrological image of our relational nature, I have selected the goddess Venus (Aphrodite in Greek). In mythology, she was hardly a model of empathy, being frequently self-centered, manipulative, and vain. However, she represents quite well the forces that draw us into relationship and open opportunities for connection and understanding. She was, of course, the goddess of love. In astrology, she presides over attractions of all sorts, including sexual attraction, the lure of the beautiful, and our desire for pleasure and comfort. Although these impulses have a selfish quality to them, the relationships that result need not be selfish themselves.

This is part of our programming, it seems, as embodied beings: to see in the other something that we lack, need, or desire. This lure of attraction is what draws us into new relationships and new experiences. Encased as we are in our separate bodies and individual personas, Venus is our lifeline into the larger world of connection and communion.

Venus rules Taurus, the sign of physical pleasure, creature comforts, and security, as well as Libra, the sign of marriage, harmony, and relationship. The two become very similar if we expand the idea of relationship beyond simply relationships with other people to include our relationship with our physical environment as well. Securing a safe, stable, and comfortable lifestyle depends critically on our relationship with things such as place, money, food, and possessions.

Venus, more than any of the other planetary deities, seeks diverse experiences of connection. What we make of those experiences is up to us.

Homework

Here are some ways to encourage your own relational nature.

  1. The next time you find yourself becoming short-tempered, defensive, or confrontational, visualize the energy you are sending out and what response it will evoke in others.
  2. The next time you drink water, imagine being the water (where it has been, how it has moved, what it has touched).
  3. List five important relationships you've had in your life, and reflect on their beginning, middle, and end.
  4. The next time you quarrel with someone, imagine them as a small child and see if you can sense the child's feelings in their words and actions.
  5. Think of an important relationship in your life. If the relationship were an animal, what animal would it be? (the relationship itself, not the other person)
  6. Think of an important decision you made, and assess how others were affected by it.
  7. As you encounter plants or animals near your home or workplace, ponder on how you seem to them, and how they feel about their relationship with you.

Seven Doors is a regular feature of Starweaver's Gems from Earth and Sky

Copyright © 2008 Tom Waters