Dear Joshua,
Based on everything I've heard from you and Abraham, relationships are about my relationship with my inner self and not the other person. So to me, this would mean you should be able to make ANY relationship work and especially the one with your wife. So my question is - is there ever a time from a spiritual perspective where it makes sense for a couple to divorce and part ways?
Thanks!
Steve
Dear Steve,
There is no reason to get married or to stay married other than to understand your position within it and to bring joy to it. You can make any relationship joyous. This is true. You need not endure any relationship if you feel it is not joyous. But if you leave a relationship because there is no joy or because you cannot make it work, then you will face many of the same feelings in the next relationship. Many people realize this and decide not to pursue the next relationship and they decide that it's simply better to be on their own.
Co-creative relationships can be wonderful and they can be miserable. The closer to the other person you are, such as a child, spouse, or parent, the more potential for joy and pain. We want to stress that it is you who interprets the relationship, who decides what to say and how to be within it, that creates either joy, pain or ambivalence. It is never the other person, it is always, always you. Therefore you have complete control over any relationship whether you think you do or not.
You decide how to be within any and all relationships. But you also judge how the other person is being. If they are behaving in a way you deem correct, then you feel good. If you judge their words, actions, attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs to be wrong, then you suffer because you cannot change them to suit what you deem appropriate. When you allow them to be as they are, which is the definition of unconditional love, you will find joy. It is only you who keeps yourself from feeling joy in any relationship.
Now we understand that there are limits to how far you can allow other people to be as they wish to be. You believe that there are certain actions that fall outside the bounds of what you deem to be acceptable. This is quite alright for you to believe this. You will expand along these lines so really it doesn't matter. But, speaking theoretically for a moment, if you were to really truly allow others to be whoever they wanted to be, and you held no judgment against them, you would find that they would not have any adverse affect on you. You would love them and they would love you. This is a concept that is hard for you to imagine so we will leave it at that. If you thought of love first and released your fears, you would be in a joyous relationship with everyone you know.
Let's experiment with this for a time. We want you to take a radically new approach to your wife. We want you to see her as perfect, to see her words as perfect, to see her behavior, beliefs, attitudes, and everything else about her as perfect. We want you to notice her positive attributes and to focus on those with great intensity. We want you to release your fears because there is nothing to fear. You can stay married or get a divorce, but you will be eternally tied to her, so there's nothing to lose.
For the next thirty days we would like you to keep a journal. We want you to write a list of positive aspects of your wife and your relationship in that journal. Don't think about anything you want right now. Don't worry about the possible ramifications of this even if they are good ramifications. Don't worry about any decision you think you've already made. Just experiment with this for thirty days. Whether it works or not in the way you think it should, at the end of the period you'll notice something quite different.
Buy a journal today. In the first page write the heading "Marriage Appreciation Journal." On the first page write a long list of the positive aspects of your wife. On the second page, write a list of positive aspects of your marriage. On the third and fourth pages write a list of positive aspects of your children. On the fifth page write a list of positive aspects of your home. One the sixth page, write a list of positive aspects of your life. One the seventh page, write a list of positive aspects of yourself.
After you have completed that, write on the next page "Day One" and compile a list of all the positive aspects of your wife, yourself, your children, your home and your life that occurred on that day. Then do the same thing for each of the next twenty nine days.
In this experiment you must take action in order to bring joy into your marriage. Your marriage is not simply the relationship you have with your wife, it encompasses your children, your home, your life and yourself. You must lean into this and be the creator of it. Don't expect anyone to follow along. This is for you. This is a selfish endeavor. You are doing this to feel the joy in this marriage. If others don't seem to be playing along, don't worry, it's all part of the experiment. If others reject your love or your well intentioned plans, don't let it bother you. You are in an experiment and the whole thing lasts thirty days. You won't know the results of the experiment until it's over. Will it work? You'll have to find out for yourself.
We see that you are hesitant to try this experiment. We understand there is great fear around this because you don't want to face the possibility of rejection. What if you gave your unconditional love and those you loved the most did not reciprocate? That would feel terrible. But you have to remember that this is about how you feel about yourself, not about how they feel about you. They are simply responding to your feeling of worthiness.
When you judge another harshly, you do so to relieve your own sense of unworthiness. It is a self-defense mechanism and it has served you well. It's now habit and it's a hard habit to break. To be vulnerable, especially with those who you believe should love you, is scary, but you have nothing to fear. It is not their feelings that matter, it's what you feel that matters. They are simply perfect reflections of how you feel about Steve.
Your true feelings of self-worthiness lie at the core of all of your relationships. You feel more worthy with some people and less worthy with others. You think those who make you feel good are good people and those who make you feel bad are wrong for doing this to you. But it's only ever about one thing: how you feel about yourself in their presence.
You are worthy and you are loved. That's all you need to know.
Joshua
