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The Nature Of Sacred Relationships
All relationships need love in order to flourish. Whether it be within a marriage, a family, a community, a government, or a corporate Board room, without the bond of love being present, individuals cannot feel their oneness with others and cannot sufficiently empathize with the needs or perspectives of others in order to find harmonious solutions to problems that inevitably develop.
Love builds identification and erases prejudice. It opens the doors of perception to who others are, coming from a willingness to see the deeper truth of their being. This is the virtue of love. That in casting out fear, it no longer fears seeing who others are, because they are being seen through the eyes of love.
While love that is shared between two in the intimate setting of a partnership is often the closest bond that can be found at the human level, there is a love that extends even deeper than this. This deeper love is love for God which can contain love for one's beloved partner - also for the sacred and holy within oneself.
Such love creates a sense of gratitude for life and gives rise to a sense of beauty perceived in all that is. It instills in the beholder a sense of respect and reverence for all beings, and a willingness to be kind and compassionate toward all.
The deepening of a sacred relationship can only take place as the bonds that are built on selfishness disappear, and those that are based on selflessness and generosity replace them. These bonds of selfishness are dismantled in the presence of greater light, greater love, and greater trust, for they are based on the belief that one's own needs will not be provided for. The fear of not meeting one's own basic needs creates an enlargement of the need for self-protection and self-seeking, and this, in turn, creates selfishness.
How different it is to hold a relationship in sacred light, the light of the Divine, in which it can be assumed that by turning to God for all things, the needs of two or all can be met without one having to have less so that the other can have more. This same premise can operate in sacred joinings that take place on the community or governmental level. Here, too, holding relationships in the light of the sacred involves holding God at their center, and assuming that all needs can be met without prejudice toward any.
Self-centeredness, self-indulgence, selfishness in all its forms - indeed, all self-seeking at the expense of others, can only operate in a context in which the 'other' is seen as separate from oneself, not part of oneself. It is this separation that makes the difference, and the absence of this which can create a new way of being for the world.
Love that joins, love that builds identification and empathy, love that seeks the abandonment of selfishness - such love is the bedrock for sacred relationships on all levels, and its pursuit begins with the willingness to see all with the eyes of love as part of oneself.
Blessed are the eyes that can see the truth of the oneness of all, for these eyes shall know peace.
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