It is not for love of your wife but for love of “Self” that a man says I love my wife dearly
A Hindu text
Happiness of individuals depends firstly on the quality of their loving relationships. When you are in love all problems seem to disappear. However search for emotional happiness is a painful path, full of frustrations and disillusions. The days of passion frequently give way to conflicts, boredom, and various forms of dependency, jealousy and possessiveness. These and many other destructive elements which soon occur in a relationship make a great part of love relationships difficult and painful. A lot of people try to forget their love troubles by settling for superficial relationships, others try to hide their inner emptiness investing their energies in the pursuing of power and money and focus onappearances.
The problem is more serious today because a lot of men are not prepared to adapt to the deep changes of nowadays. According to changes in the way people think, a woman is no longer subdued to a man and considered an inferior being in his service, a means of procreation without almost any rights.
For centuries love problems were considered secondary because marriages were arranged by families, generally for reasons for interest and practical issues. Roles were accepted as an inalienable universal rule.
From the Sixties onwards roles have changed totally, however contemporary man does not seem to be able to relate with a woman as his equal. He often seems nervous and insecure, or reactive and violent.
Separations and divorces are constantly increasing. Psychotherapist have more and more patients with love problems not to mention men killing their partners because they don’t accept to be left by a woman whom they consider their personal property.
I remember that, as a young student of psychology, I had the impression that all books I was studying faced the real problem of every man or woman indirectly; the problem of finding love. Nevertheless I found that psychology did not give enough importance to the most important problem of human beings which was, in my opinion, comprehending and overcoming obstacles that prevent all of us from establishing relations of true love.
Freud considered sexuality of main importance, but did not talk specifically in detail of love and completeness in a couple. He focused mainly on the development of sexuality and the overcoming of the different stages children go through in their first years of life until with puberty, genital maturity[1], and the impulse to reproduce take over.
I thought the only fulfilled man was one who could live an authentic and happy love relationship at any level, and not the one who had solved only his sexual problems.
I remember that one day, I expressed this idea to prof. Beluffi (head of the department where I was training at Hospital Paolo Pini and my mentor in my psychiatric studies).
I asked him: “Don’t you think individuals are sane and balanced psychologically when their inner evolution allows them to love with maturity and harmony and to build a really happy relationship with their partners and their families?”
He answered me with a short question: “don’t you think, on the contrary, that evolution may lead to individuals developing not only their male but also their female side?”
I thought deeply about this notion, which I had never considered before. I perceived the cultural contradiction on the one hand of the fact that men desire a relationship with a woman (or women chase men) considering a handicap to spiritual life and on the other hand men search for romantic love and see the union of male and female as a sacrament, a universal symbol of completeness, the summum bonum for ordinary people.
It’s like saying: “God is love, but if you aspire to freedom you had better avoid relationships which involve you deeply.”
In fact a woman was seen often as the main obstacle to a man’s self realisation. He has to go beyond being the slave of love, a situation that darkens his reason and the slavery of his sexual instinct if he wants to become wise and spiritual.
At the same time the Hieros Gamos[2] or the mystic marriage between the male and female principles (King and Queen) was the heart of symbols of alchemy I studied when learning of the psychological interpretation of Jung[3].
The Philosopher’s Stone symbolised the inner realisation of the alchemist and was externally projected onto the level of matter. The union of male and female principles of matter had the power to convert ordinary metals into gold, in the same way that within the being of a person the integration of opposites led to the realisation of “Self”.
To give one of many possible examples, the symbols of Hindu Tantrism have as their zenith the union between Shiva and Shakti, the male and female principles, emptiness and form. A Yogi can reach the Absolute through erotic rites[4].
In Hinduism Shankara[5]’s philosophy is highly valued and his commentaries to the Upanishad still represent a peak of human thought.
Even if Shankara never refers to sex, he expresses the same concept of the union and integration of opposites, like other mystical paths. According to Shankara and the Vedanta Masters only Non Dualistic Conscience leads to the true reality beyond the illusions of mind[6]. I was very impressed by part of a sentence written by him. To the questions: “Which is the most difficult thing?” and “Who is a real hero?” He answered: “Understanding women” and “The one who doesn’t let them confuse him”.
With regard to Tibetan Buddhism, this sentence from Mahamudra[7] by Tilopa[8] suffices to indicate the importance of tantric sexual union: “When serving a karmamudra[9], the pure awareness of bliss and emptiness will arise: Composed in a blessed union of insight and means, slowly send down, retain and draw back up the bodhichitta[10], and conducting it to the source, saturate the entire body. But only if lust and attachment are absent will that awareness arise. Then gaining long-life and eternal youth, waxing like the moon, radiant and clear, with the strength of a lion, you will quickly gain mundane power and supreme enlightenment. May this pithy instruction in Mahamudra remain in the hearts of fortunate beings.”
In ancient Chinese philosophy a man was a mediator between sky and earth; in Taoism, the union and balance of Yin and Yang (male and female principles) leads to the path to liberation.
Through experience, I realised that the union between a man and a woman is possible and can be happily achieved only if an individual accepts his essential loneliness, which is the acknowledgement of real Self containing male and female polarity.
A man will resolve all his problems with the opposite sex only after he has achieved self-sufficiency and the integration of opposites.
Most men and women live unhappy relationships because they avoid reality.
Through self-analysis and the observation of many cases, I realised how wrong it is to search for happiness and completeness outside oneself without recognising first the inner emptiness we all want to fulfil.
IN OUR THINKING WE WILL NEVER FIND REALITY BEYOND OUR THOUGHTS
If there is no integration in the conscience of “animus-anima”, if we don’t surrender to our most intimate feelings without being confused by desires and identification with the self, this lack will be projected outside of us and continue to manifest itself in unsatisfactory relationships.
As long as we hope to find (or fear we won’t find) something in life, our attitude of desire and fear will make us live blocked by our thinking, which distorts a right perception of reality: if we continue on this path we will always be deluded.
In the tension towards the outside we loose contact with ourselves i.e. with a clear perception of the present day originating in a free mind. Endless illusions and delusions will originate from this lack of clarity.
Alchemy of the Male-Female union must first occur inside ourselves. The union between Shiva and Shakti, Sky and Earth, Purusha and Prakriti, emptiness and form, to be or not to be, is the mystical marriage of an individual who has in himself a complementary polarity, and represent the awareness of the individual in the Self. It is not a solipsistic androgynous perception, nor a closure into ourselves which leads to loneliness, but the certainty of being self sufficient as an indispensable condition of establishing healthy relationships.
The emptiness, “the non-being and death” scare us because we don’t see them as polar and complementary processes of the being. We must find the courage to embrace the reality we cannot escape from.
OUR IDENTIFICATION WITH MENTAL IMAGES IS THE ROOT OF SUFFERING
When we are internally ready, when we have accepted reality, our relations become harmonious and we are free from dependence. Or it will let us leave troubled relations without resentment, recrimination and regret, and without fear of the future and solitude.
That is the time when the partner we have been looking for all our life will unexpectedly appear.
Being self sufficient, having the courage to show ourselves as we really are and to accept the inner solitude that nobody can fulfil, are indispensable conditions for not being dominated by illusions and for understanding others, and thus avoiding establishing relationships of dependency, which inevitably will end up in trouble.
The inner balance of self sufficiency is therefore a prerequisite of any healthy relation[11].
The mistake comes when we relate to life trying to resolve the problem outside ourselves and to find someone capable of filling our inner emptiness we have never dealt with. Nobody will ever fill this emptiness completely: we can fill it only if we recognise it and accept it as it is, without escaping into illusions and hopes.
It may happen that we have to go through painful experiences to grow which allow us to know our neuroses in the theatre of projections. Only if we are sincere with ourselves and can recognise them can we be free from them.
In love relations it is also easy to delude ourselves. For example we do things to please our partner even if these actions are not spontaneous. When we do this, if we feel loved we still have the doubt that the partner does not love us but the person we’ve tried to look like. What’s more, acting in a non-spontaneous way will soon begin to be a burden.
Certainly with these premises, relations are a reason for suffering. In this perspectives love relationships are “dangerous” for those who look for inner peace. This is why men and women sometimes choose the monastic life. They are not always moved by a spiritual conversion, more often they want to avoid entering the dangerous arena of love life.
Only when there is harmony between life and us and we spontaneously go with the flow, without fears or hopes, can we establish happy relations. There is harmony between us and life only we are free from the conflicts, which our thinking creates when we live amid desires, fears and conditionings.
Our thinking creates the self, with its memories and expectations. Until we free ourselves from the false identification with the character created by our thinking we will not find harmony with our partners. We will not be in harmony withwhat is.
BREATHING AND IDENTIFICATION
One of the reasons why the technique of Transpersonal Rebirthing is so efficient lies in the fact that during an intense breathing session one is predisposed to feel pleasant and painful feelings. We know we have entered areas of the subconscious and that with the recognition of what we are able to purge ourselves of, we free ourselves from its influence.
With this unconditioned attention to strong sensations that breathing produces, we can tune in with the present experienced from the perspective of the witness who has no desires or fears.
The absence of thinking leads to a state in which the observer who is separated from sensations disappears and everything is seen in the clarity of a non-divided conscience.
A clear perception of reality, beyond the cage of thinking, often helps the patient in only one session to resolve deep problems and open new horizons for him.
The moment of awakening lived during the breathing sessions become
characteristic of an individual when this attitude of being a witness without alternatives or goals is pursued in daily life.
At this point we will perceive that it is sufficient to make this inner step of surrender to reality in order to approach intuitive wisdom, which spontaneously manifests itself when the ego leaves it space. We will live experiences we would never have imagined. And now that we do not need them anymore, we can finally establish happy love relations.
[1] Take a look at the site “maturità genitale”: http://www.pieropriorini.it/index_file/dipendenzeaffettive.html.
In an article Piero Priorini analyses love dependence in a modern psychoanalytic perspective. His analysis is similar to what I affirm here, even though I see the limits of Freudian perspective compared to the Transpersonal one.
[2] Hieros Gamos = mystic marriage or holy union was an ancient symbolic ritual celebrated in the Spring. People who attended it acquired a divine nature and often were a means to the deity concerned. In alchemy the union between the male and female principles of matter is the key to the philosophical stone to transform not only ordinary metals into gold but also the conscience of the alchemist.
[3] See the inspiring book “Psychology and Alchemy” by C.G. Jung
[4] A Yogi can experience ecstasy of union with Absolute through an erotic rite, only if he does not feel any lust, i.e. he identifies himself with the transpersonal self and with the cosmic forces that express themselves through it.
[5] This is how Shankara analyses Absolute Subjectivity: If you recognize it [the Absolute Witness], you will be freed from the bonds of ignorance and obtain liberation. There is a self-existent Reality, which is the basis of our consciousness of ego. That Reality is the Witness of the state of ego consciousness and of the body. That Reality is the constant Witness in all three states of consciousness — waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep. It is your real Self. That Reality pervades the universe. It alone shines. The universe shines with its reflected light. Its nature is timeless Awareness. It knows all things. Witnesses all things, from the ego to the body. It is the Witness of pleasure and pain and the sense objects. This is your real Self. the Supreme Being, the Ancient. It never ceases to experience infinite release. It is unwavering. It is Spirit itself. Conscience –consciousness is a witness of our “Self”. Ramana Maharashi calls it “Ego-self”, Absolute Subjectivity…
[6] This fulfilment leads to the Self-Fulfilment seen as an absolute subjectivity without any attributes.
[7] Find the complete Mahamudra instructions by Tilopa at http://www.keithdowman.net/mahamudra/tilopa.htm
[8] Tilopa (928-1009) was a tantric practitioner and mahasiddha. who developed the mahamudra (Tibetan: phyag rgya chen po) method, a set of spiritual practices that greatly accelerates the process of attaining bodhi (enlightenment). He is considered the patriarch of Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Nine of his books have been preserved and translated into Tibetan.
[9] Karmamudra: when you practise tantric sex.
[10] Sanskrit word Bodhicitta “mind of enlightenment” or “awakening mind” is characteristic of Mahayana Buddhism.
[11] Naturally, this apply to homosexual relations as well, since sexual roles are psychological attitudes rather than physiological conditions.
