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Risking the Shattering Awe-full Brilliance
The Huge Challenge of Sacred Relationship
We are conceived as a result of relationship and born into a world of relationship in a cosmos which is nothing but relationship. Yet, almost without exception, it is relationship which generates our greatest challenges, individual or collective, and which remains the most elusive, often painful, mystery of our lives. When I mentioned to a client that I was writing a book on ‘The Challenge of Sacred Relationship’ his cryptic response was, ‘Not before time. We’ve made a real mess of that one.’ Why should this be so, when relationship is the primary reality which underpins the working out and evolutionary unfoldment of this planet as a whole?
This book asks the most fundamental question of all, ‘What does it take to come into, and remain in, sacred relationship – with yourself, other people, nature, the planet and wider universe, spiritual realms of being, and God, in whatever form we conceive that central reality - relationship which challenges, supports and frees both parties for wider usefulness?’ As one great 2,100 year cycle or Age comes to an end and we are caught in the chaos of transition, this seems to be a question that is almost too difficult to ask. However, there is no alternative if humanity and the planet is to survive and unfold.
Every day brings evidence that current ways of relating are less than adequate. As I write this chapter the world is struggling to make sense of events in the Middle East, along with the USA’s military involvement in the region, the plight of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, and the continuing refusal by the Roman Catholic hierarchy to adequately face the long-term consequences of the church’s sexual stance.
Over the last fifty years the forms that relationship takes have changed dramatically. Marriage for life is almost a thing of the past, and marriage itself seems relevant for fewer and fewer couples. The ‘fifties families is no longer recognisable, and a woman who combines paid employment and mothering is now the norm rather than the exception. Yet, while the form has altered, sometimes almost beyond recognition, the belief structures and mindsets which govern our attitudes to and expectation of relationship remain locked into patterns which are a legacy of the Age of Pisces. The poem Meeting and Not Meeting calls them ‘our old games of possession, power, greed’. Given, over the past forty years, an increasing emphasis over much of the world on the satisfaction of individual desires and self-gratification, we could add a ‘what’s in it for me?’ mindset.
This book arises, inevitably, out of my own lifelong journey into the reality of sacred relationship. Without such a journey it could not have been written. It is the outcome also of years of counselling and of working beside people whose physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing has deteriorated markedly as a result of the trauma of dysfunctional relationship. These people know that they are ‘dying’ at all levels of their being, they know that the old games are not healthy, yet they cannot see an alternative, a new way of relationship that will bring them and all they touch dynamically to life. They know that their ways of relating must change, yet in moments of crisis they revert to the same negative patterns which continue to destroy them and their world.
Dreams are powerful indicators of where we’re at and what needs to happen. In that context I want to share the finale of a recent dream.
A princess and two princes, all of whom have authority vested in them through their royal ancestry, have died. The people I am with are terrified that their deaths will become public knowledge, so they have taken the bodies in secret to a room, where they are attempting to make it appear that they are alive, even though heads, arms and legs have become separated from torsos. As I watch these people working with quiet desperation I am aware that there is a crowd outside the door looking in. I cannot see how anyone is going to be able to pass the dead prince and princesses off as alive, because all the onlookers can see very clearly they are not, and will inform everyone else.
How many of us go on trying with quiet desperation to pretend that the old ways of relating have authority and life, when in reality their time has gone and that fact has become very obvious to anyone who cares to really look?
Scientists know that living systems must be open, that no life is to be found unless there is an ongoing, complex and effective web of relationships. It is only humans who try to live their lives largely as closed systems, islands separated emotionally, mentally, energetically and spiritually. In doing so, they merely exist in relationship, unaware of its possibilities and too aware of its pain. One client described it as being covered by a very thick condom so that her arms were pinned down by her sides and she was completely cut off from everything and everyone, including herself.
Moving beyond old modes of relating means letting go of fear and daring to risk-take. For most adults this proves to be immensely challenging, even threatening, so locked away have we become, so fearful of opening up in case we prove vulnerable.
As the poem says,
Terrified
Of exposure
Of risking
The shattering awe-full
Brilliance of connection
Yet risking is the only way; to refuse to risk connection is to die of inertia/alienation. If we don’t risk all we cannot come into the sacred relationship which is a meeting of souls.
Risking is not necessarily comfortable; it can be challenging in the extreme. Most of us are afraid of destruction, of being jolted out of our old beliefs and modes of behaviour, of losing in that instant all sense of who we thought we were. The world in which we live is a technological world of ‘things’ which don’t have to be encountered, simply used. We therefore have little experience of connecting in any genuine way.
If you are not open to risktaking then this book (and this section of our web site) is not for you. It is designed to make you question, to seek, to commit to transformation wherever you begin to realise that that is what is needed in your life. There is a certain recklessness required. Not the recklessness that comes with unconsciousness or failing to stop to consider the consequences of any action, but a recklessness which arises out of conscious daring in the face of fear. Certainly ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ applies to coming consciously to sacred relationship, with reverence, with love, with insight and wisdom.
This book is a story, of humanity’s present, its past and its possible future; of our intimate life, of the life of communities, groups, nations, businesses, organisations, governments. To come into sacred relationship requires a certain state of mind and heart that is identical for both the individual and for the larger more public body. Essentially, no matter what the relationship, it is individuals who are involved, along with their individual agendas. In the end all that matters is the way in which each person chooses to come into relation. If there is a sense of sacredness and goodwill, then no matter what the situation the outcome will be life-enhancing for all concerned.
The human story began with a sense of oneness and relation born out of a tribal way of being, along with a simple instinctive relationship to earth, sky, goddess and gods, nature and each other. Over tens of thousands of years this developed into an awareness of self-consciousness and the need to function as individuals. Herein lies the origin of the sexual, emotional and power issues which continue to cripple relationships today.
This book challenges us to move on – to relationships based on soul meeting, on love as we may have never before conceived it, on long-term commitment to the journey of sacred partnership. Deep in our being we know that these will not be risk-free encounters, demanding little, giving even less. We know that they will ask more of us than we have ever given, take us to places we haven’t even conceived of, temper and test us in ways we don’t want to think about. We also know that when we dare to commit to the sacred mystery of true connection the outcome is mutual life, joy, creativity and empowered shared service at a level we have never before experienced. We do not, we cannot,
emerge from the fire of true connection the same person we were when we entered it.
I must have been five years old when the family shifted to an old house set high and wild above the Huon River in south-east Tasmania. I’m sure I cannot have been allowed to go to the river on my own. Even the stony track down to the road was steep, and I would then have had to cross the road before heading on down an even steeper bank through gum trees and scrub. To this day I don’t know how I came to be beside the river, but the memory is an exquisite jewel etched brightly on my being.
I am alone, and then suddenly I am not. In front of me, playfully oblivious of my presence, is a platypus. I have never before seen one but I know what it is and watch fascinated as it curls and nuzzles its way across the stones, tail ruddering against the current. I am held spellbound, not daring to twitch or even swat a fly off my face. It is one of those magic moments reserved for the lucky ones, and I am one of them. The world no longer exists; there is only the platypus and me. Then, even that distinction blurs. There is an immense sense of having been let into one of the secret places of God, and allowed to witness the mystery of creation.
And there the picture ends, seconds, minutes or hours later, who knows. I remember nothing more of the day: the climb up the hill, what happens when I reach home. All these are blotted out by this one awe-filled moment of connection.
Over fifty years later, pondering on that pivotal moment, I find its brilliance hasn’t dimmed. Nor has its profound effect on my life. The sense of wonder, the beauty of creation and my acceptance into the secret places of God – these are embedded into my essence. While for many years the sacredness of human relationships remained less certain, I had been provided with a safe haven, a core of trust in nature and in God which has never broken.
At base, the only issue on the planet at this time is the challenge of relationship. It is impossible for the planet to survive the void of sacredness, of love and of soul which has intensified over the last fifty years. We either ‘risk the shattering awe-full brilliance’ of true meeting, or we perish.
By Jan Lawson
www.ists-spiritualschool.org
From section: Sacred Relationship
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