matthew7

@Nahm Thanks. I think I would appreciate a bit more concreteness and nuance, but I see where you're pointing and perhaps that's what's important here. One possible issue is that purification as you've described it can be described in part as a cognitive capacity, and thus exists as an attribute of persons. I'll think of some practices to open up more space and invite a bit more purification on my part. It does seem however that others do affect our capacity to undergo these changes. Anyone who has been in a sustained relationship with another person in love or work immediately recognizes this. I'm not sure what your life circumstances are like, but I would imagine you're able to sustain these mindsets/attunements in part because you've curated your world to support them. Reducing these nuances to poignant poetic axioms seems to have a benefit, but at this stage at least, I'll need the nuance to be accounted for and integrated with the other mindset. If you have more to share, I welcome it. Appreciate what you've already expressed.

@Nahm I see. And what role does thinking serve in life? It supports survival, problem-solving, and tells stories, so has important effects in the world, and is indispensable, but is at the same time is not fundamentally real?

@Nahm Appreciate it (although I remain a bit confused on what to do with the sensations). Can you say a bit more about purification? Not understanding this part.

@Nahm Thank you very much for this. I've been giving it careful attention. I wonder if you can speak to a couple confusions on my part (if you kindly have the time). As I find myself evaluating whether to be in or leave the relationship, if I'm trusting my sensations primarily as guidepoints (and I write this with humility that I have some distance to travel in being about to read my sensations adequately), how do I discern the meaning of sensations that clearly tell me, this isn't right, around perceptions of my partner's disagreeableness / selfishness / criticalness / shallowness; And the meaning of sensations that tell me, this is comfortable, this is love, I am soothed and connected here around my partner's love / tenderness / vulnerability. I find myself receiving alternating sensations and not knowing which should inform my actions. Is the solution that the action is not necessarily to leave, but rather to undergo the purification/barfing up process and to stop the suppression of those sensations. I wonder what this entails. Am I impervious and centered amidst the disagreeableness/selfishness/etc. once purified. I suppose I don't know which sensations to heed, and what type of action to take. I also wonder about the process by which purification, barfing up (for both of us) occurs. Much gratitude.

I was hoping to solicit a bit of wisdom from members who have experience with being fully satisfied in romantic relationship and with feeling the painful ambivalence of loving someone deeply and sensing that life with that person isn't quite emotionally or spiritually tenable. I was hoping someone could potentially speak to intuitions I have that selection of relationship partner impinges profoundly on the energy we can furnish for creativity, spirituality, and consciousness. I love my partner very much. I'm also frequently ruminative and uncentered when I approach lower receptivity in her toward curious and creative inquiry into understanding more deeply and broadly what it is that is going on here. I thought I could manage it, and take pleasure in the small playful serious conventional activities of relational life while nurturing love, beauty, and truth/consciousness in my own interior. Sometimes I'm able to, and sometimes we can get there together, but most of the time, I feel constrained as (I conjecture) lack of anticipated receptivity limits initiatory energy for creativity, and leads me toward a cranky malaise. I'm wondering if this is simply evidence of my needing to move on, painfully, with heartache and confusion on both of our parts as we mourn all of the beauty that we had together, or whether there's a way forward that I'm not considering. What place do relationships have amidst our path toward greater love, beauty, and truth, given that the vast majority of people on earth do not aspire to inhabit these values? I find myself saddened by the apparent irreconcilable dissonance between the way I may need to live my life and the way my partner wishes to live hers. Though I know I'm in a state of denial of what is as I share this, I also lament why love/bonding is possible where spiritual/values compatibility is not. It causes so much heartache. Perhaps I'm caught up in codependency. Perhaps I labor under false beliefs about the scarcity of love out there, scarcity of love for my partner, or I'm oriented towards the partial love to the exclusion of the unconditional love. Perhaps, and at the same time, the heartache I cause in my partner who trusted my promises, and the sadness and guilt I feel for stimulating her pain seem very real, however mistaken they may be. Thanks for reading.