What Is Love?
The natural capacity of those who have more tribal definition equips them to bargain and negotiate in relationship. This means they are naturally up for the back and forth of figuring out how to come to terms in service to mutual support. This looks like one person saying “I will handle the dishes and the laundry if you will manage the bills and the social calendar.” Then the other person might say, “I’ll do the bills but I’d rather do the laundry than the calendar. “ From there they figure out some kind of bargain that will work. This is a perfectly functional way to live for those designed to negotiate.
Compromise is something else altogether (by this I mean compromising yourself, not compromise as it applies to relationship dynamics). Compromise looks more like forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do in a way that denies the truth of who you are. It is not actually an agreement.
We are often more able to override ourselves in relationship in order to hold onto the security, stability or energy it provides, when we are younger. As we age, this kind of override becomes harder to sustain. The body or spirit becomes worn out and chronic compromise over years often results in a lack of aliveness or illness in some form.
A central principle behind following strategy and authority is that it aligns the consciousness to the body. It is the natural movement of the body through life which ultimately has the power to show us the unique movie of our lives being played through us. The mind isn’t actually in control. When we really start waking up to this process and we surrender to what the body, the design is showing us, we realize that so much of what we are moved to do is not personal.
If I ask a Sacral Generator to go to an event with me and their response is no, the conditioned mind is likely to take that personally. If I am emotional, I may have feelings about that response which is perfectly natural. Does that “no” response coming from that other person’s body mean that they don’t care about me, or that there is something wrong with the relationship? That they don’t respect or see me? Maybe it does, but maybe not. If the response is pure, it is simply the response of the body. It actually may have very little to do with me. And a Sacral response is a pure life force energy engaging with experience (or not). It is not logical or sophisticated and it is not up for negotiation. It is what it is.
I could argue with that response. I could blame that person for not loving me enough to accomodate me. I could try to pressure, shame, guilt or reason with that person to persuade them to ignore that pure response and go with me anyway.
If I succeeded in that, how would that trip go? Have you ever talked a generator out of their true response? I have. It gets pretty messy and often miserable in the end. Without that kind of in built response, and with the hunger for energy, recognition and one-on-one relationship, many Projectors are prone to compromising themselves a lot and becoming bitter if others don’t do the same.
Have you agreed to things that felt wrong to you or compromised yourself by going somewhere you knew you didn’t belong to try to make someone else happy or keep them in your life? So much of what happens in relationship is not personal. Ra said, “If you allow someone to be who they are and they allow you to be who you are, then that’s Love . Anything else is torture.”
In my experience, that allowing is a practice of acceptance and surrender, of being present enough to see things and people as they are, including myself. This kind of surrender can be painful. It can challenge what we have been taught is right and good. It doesn’t give us license to ignore the effects of our actions, but it can open the door to a kind of liberation from the futile attempt to argue with reality.
If we are free to be who we are, what does this mean for relationships?
What is love to you?
