We all seek intimate relationships because we are all looking for love. We have been taught to believe that another ‘special’ person has something that we need or want. If we are very body conscious we may be looking for a particularly sexy, attractive body. If we are a spiritual seeker we may be looking for our ‘soul mate’, but the basic dynamic is exactly the same we are looking for another person to fill the gap, or loneliness, that we experience deep inside of us. Unfortunately for humanity, special one-to-one relationships, even if we use spiritual language to describe them, can never make us whole. According to A Course in Miracles® we are all asleep, and sleeping minds cannot join (T 596). The principle of the ego-self is separation, so we each dream our separate dream of physical life. Our physical body is the symbol of our separate ego and, therefore, bodies can never truly join. The closest you can get to someone with a physical body is sexual intercourse but, even here, two sleeping minds cannot join.

All intimate relationships between two ego-selves go through stages that take us from the illusion of falling in love to the disillusionment of falling out of love. The first stage of these special relationships is infatuation. We find one person who excites us and gives us a tremendous sense of aliveness. When we meet someone who excites us sexually, our boundaries begin to loosen and our heart centre opens, whilst our base centre and solar plexus are churning. When we meet another body that turns us on, we feel giggly and silly. This is infatuation. Our hormones are activated and we have a strong chemical/physical reaction to this other person’s presence. All reason leaves and our bodies seem to tell us what to do. We long to get physically closer, as quickly as possible, even though social conventions may hold us back for a while. A successful infatuation quickly turns into a romance. At this stage, both parties may be on ‘cloud nine’. They will both feel alive, because they have temporarily dropped their barriers. During the early stages of a romantic relationship, both sides worry about whether the other person finds them attractive, so they strive to appear the best that they can. Neither side reveals their weaknesses. Each lover hides their physical and emotional inadequacies and attempts to look their best. The man may go to the gym more often than usual, for example, while the woman may well buy sexy underwear! Each lover performs for the other. Each finds they have much more energy than usual and feels as though they could perform miracles. For a short while it does appear that two minds and hearts have joined together, but this is just the illusion of falling in love.

After the romance stage most couples decide to move in closer and take their relationship to another level. This is a bad move, but we all do it! Romantic couples often decide to move in together. They cannot resist moving closer to ward off all the pain of the big wide world. They join together: “You and me against the world.” After this commitment to closeness, there is usually a honeymoon period during which the couple create mutual dreams, or fantasies, of a happy future together —marriage, babies, new home, dream holidays. During this honeymoon period, disillusionment and disappointments with one another are covered up or pushed to one side.

Bargains and Disillusions
For a while, lovers will continue to sacrifice their own needs and desires in the name of love but, sooner or later,disillusionment sets in and, suddenly, they feel as though they cannot stand their beloved any more. They find that there is something wrong with their beloved and they no longer desire or trust them. When disillusionment sets in like this, most people in our modern society end the relationship and start looking for another. Sometimes disillusionment sets in after only a few months together; sometimes it does not set in for years. Of course, some couples hang on to each other long after disillusionment has set in. They still live together, in the physical sense,but their minds are thousands of miles apart. A lot of people stay together, physically, out of convenience, guilt or fear, but their relationship has become a burden to both of them.

All our intimate relationships are ‘special’ relationships. These special relationships are unholy because they are based on bargaining, even though we certainly do not realise that this is what we are doing when we first fall in love. In special relationships our egos are only prepared to give to our beloved as long as we get what we want from them in return. Traditionally, women have looked after men, physically and emotionally, in return for economic support and security, but in more modern societies both men and women expect to be sexually and emotionally fulfilled by their partner.

Healing and Transcendence
The bottom line of all special relationships is that the ego always wants to get something from them. We want to imprison our loved ones and we attempt to do this by guilt tripping them. All our close relationships are possessive and prone to jealousy. We say: “You are mine. You belong to me”, either out loud or in our heads. We say: “I need you. Promise you will never leave me!” We think that human love like this is normal but, in fact, it is very painful. We think that love is about getting as close as possible to another body. But a body is incapable of love. Your ego and your body do not know what true love is. We all just mimic it. Human love can change to hate in a minute, whereas true love is unchangeable. If, one day, you love someone and the next day — perhaps because they have left you for a younger body— you hate them, it is not true love. Moreover, when we tell our lover: “I will only ever love you, no one else”, it is a lie. Nobody can love only one person for the rest of their lives. What is really happening in special relationships is that, unconsciously, we are setting each other up! Somewhere, deep inside us, there is so much fear, guilt and sin that our egos have to find someone to attack or blame in order to project this unbearable pain outwards. We have all had a taste of romantic love, but we have also all experienced the pain that sets in when we and our lover begin to project our ‘stuff’ onto each other. When the projection in an intimate relationship becomes full blown, a couple will really start to hate each other. Even the most kind, gentle person can become enraged in an intimate relationship, and sexual partners become masters at pushing each other’s buttons. Most people end up hating their partners or ex-partners more than the worst tyrants in the world.

When disillusionment sets into an intimate relationship the two usual options are separating or staying together in hell. If you separate from a special partner, without healing your relationship, you are likely to repeat the whole painful process with someone new. On the other hand, if you stay together with your partner once disillusionment has set in for the sake of the children, for example, you will become an enraged victim with shattered dreams and secret thoughts of hate and revenge. However, there is a third option available, but most of us do not want to take it. This is the option of staying together and transforming our ‘special’ relationship into a healing or ‘holy’ relationship, in which both parties commit to owning and transcending the internal pain that is triggered by their partners. Most people really do not want to do this because it involves coming face to face with their own pain and darkness. If you are brave enough to surrender your relationship to the Holy Spirit and ask that its purpose become solely one of healing into true love, you can be sure that your relationship will be turned inside out and outside in. Once you truly commit to the healing path, your relationship will, undoubtedly, become very fearful and both of you will struggle as all your pain comes up to the surface. Then, you have to be brave and strong enough to face and heal it, day after day, until you clear all your internal barriers to wholeness and true love. If you commit to healing yourself through an
intimate relationship, you and your partner will need a lot of space from each other for quite a while. You will feel lonely,depressed and angry, as all your inner pain and guilt comes up to the surface of your consciousness and you will constantly be tempted to blame your partner for your extreme discomfort. At this stage in your healing, you need to keep taking time out from each other. Give each other lots of space!

Wholeness Inside
In order to use a close relationship for spiritual healing, both partners have to be prepared to change. If one person in a relationship really commits to a healing path, but the other partner does not want to change, you will inevitably part company quite quickly, because you will no longer have anything in common. But, if two people commit to healing, the relationship may well survive, even though you will both continue to project your guilt onto each other throughout the healing process. How long does it take to heal an unholy relationship? I do not know, but probably many years. Most people will just opt out, long before the healing process has been completed, because the pain becomes unbearable. To heal a special relationship, you have to find the wholeness inside yourself and only after a long healing journey will you, finally, discover it. Once you discover your wholeness, you will look at your partner with great compassion and true love. But this love is in no way exclusive or possessive. You no longer need your partner to stay with you, physically, and the love you feel for your partner will extend out to everyone, in exactly the same way. The irony, then, of healing your relationship is that you end up no longer needing or wanting your partner as you did before. However, if both you and your partner have truly healed, you may stay together so that you can extend true love out into the world around you.

Dissolution of the Ego
The ego is quite happy to latch on to the idea of having a holy relationship with someone. The ego loves to feel special and superior and will be more than happy to claim that it is transforming your relationship into a holy one. However, it is crucial to understand that the ego no more wants a holy relationship than it wants enlightenment, because neither have anything to offer it. Only your higher Self can appreciate the gifts of a holy relationship and the joy of spiritual comradeship. Your ego will continue to crave special, exclusive love that it can use to project its shame and guilt outwards. Only when the ego has begun to dissolve, though the healing process, can the higher Self re-experience and sustain a self-less form of loving that extends out, equally, to all manifestations of life. Although healing through staying in an intimate relationship once disillusionment has set in can be very painful it can, eventually, lead to a very beautiful state of being, in which you see your partner as an eternal soul, rather than as a personality or physical body. This is your ultimate goal — a holy relationship, in which two souls, who have found their
own wholeness within, share and extend this wholeness with everyone they meet. But you have to be a very advanced spiritual practitioner to know that God’s love is always with you and that loneliness is just an illusion. You have to be a very diligent spiritual practitioner to connect, constantly, to inner joy, peace, love and wholeness and, therefore, to have no need or desire for completion through a relationship. Because so few human beings on earth dwell only with God, there are few shining examples of holy relationships for us to follow. Nevertheless, if we truly want to find lasting love and happiness we have no alternative but to surrender all our close relationships to a higher intelligence or universal will. Climbing out of our self-made imprisonment of needy, grasping human love is extremely challenging but, when you finally reach the top of the mountain, you will find that you no longer need another personality or body to protect you from your inner demons. You will be free, at last, from all the trappings of special relationships: free to love the whole world with an open, compassionate heart and an awakened mind.
--Jason Chan

Jason Chan is an internationally renowned Tai Chi, Chi Gong and ACIM® teacher, who combines Eastern and Western philosophies in his ‘Tao of Miracles’ workshops. He is a founder of the Light Foundation.