What Is Relationship?

[NorseMythology]

1 hour ago, pluto said:

Love it! You guys make me smile

My life is complete!

[Guest Annetta]

Contemplating 'what is relationship'?   Have some rubber bands on my wrists, one for each side...

Taking the bus to visit family - seated next to a homeless man that smells terrible, he's sleeping, swaying... might fall on me.  What is relationship?

"I need to cover my nose, I can't handle this.  Is there anywhere else to sit?  No... should I cover my nose?  Is that rude?  What if I just sort of pretend I have a cold?  Okay, there we go that's better.  Oh my God, he's swaying he's gunna fall on me!  And he smells so bad, I don't know where you've been dude!  Okay...time to refresh the air in my sweatshirt sleeve.  Sniff a little.  *sniff sniff*  Rub my nose... just sick.  I'm not being rude!  What if everyone thinks I'm an asshole now?  *sniff sniff, wipe nose on sleeve*  A seat opened up!  Time to move... don't you take that seat lady.  *moves*  Ah... ok.  Just keep sniffing.  Just a cold.  Not being rude.  Uh oh... that dude is talking to the homeless guy, does he feel bad for him because I covered my nose?  *sniff sniff - rubs nose*  I'll bet everyone on this bus thinks I am a piece of shit.  *bus has arrived - gets off*  I am a bad doggo. Mrrrr..."

Visiting the dentists office for an exam - what is relationship?

"I feel nervous, I wonder if this person thinks I am a piece of shit.  I'm staring too long at her, I should look away.  What if I am not connecting right?  Can I look at them, I don't want to look into her eyes it's too intense.  *looks around room*  What if none of my actions have any purpose?  Can she tell I'm not connecting?  Do I look nuts?  I probably look nuts.  I'll bet she thinks I'm on drugs or something.  *looks back, answers questions*  

 

So for now, the conclusion is that this is a deeply engrained fear of negative evaluation.  "What is relationship?"  
None.  There is no exchange of energies or emotions or connection when a person is that cut off.

"Hi, how are you today?"
"Oh, what? Yes thank you."
"??"

 

Edited March 15, 2017 by Whywolf

[Guest Annetta]

 @I_Like_Thing decided to get therapy for it, signed up for health insurance, so when it goes through gonna try cbt if it is available.  Researched bpd, schizoid, and some others - i think it's avoidant pd.  Or hypochondria maybe? Ocd? Idk. I need to figure this out soon though.

Basically i'm stuck in an anxious but contemplative brain-foggy state, and my thinking is very singular at this point.  I kind of feel like a zombie and zone out a lot.  Started two years ago. Been getting worse. What do you think it could be?

So, say you were in a very dissociative, very cloudy state of awareness and you had no one to turn to and your family wasn't  helpful /interested, how would you get from a to b to recover?

There's certainly something interesting about how similar mental illness and spiritual experiences are.  I think Carl Jung was onto something.  This is off topic, but I feel like that could be my life purpose, is to make a really detailed illustrated book like what Jung did, but not wordy.  Lot of pictures.  He has a similar style of art.

 

To stay on topic, thought about what is relationship when talking to family.  Inquired, asked questions.

[NorseMythology]

@Whywolf

It could be as simple as a hormone deficiency.

[Guest Annetta]

@NorseMythology got that checked out, everything was fine.

[Emerald]

Well, if I look from the non-dual perspective that all is one, then relationship has to be a relationship between the one and itself at the ultimate level. So, relationships between two people are illusory, just as (presumably) all happenings within existence are illusory including the illusion of self. But perhaps the illusion exists for a reason (if the one even traffics in reason, at all). So, the potential reasons for relationship that come up in my limited human mind are 1. The one wants to know what it is like to relate to another despite it being the only one, as the one must know everything by its very nature (assuming that God is omniscient as religions have told us), and how could the one know everything if it doesn't know duality and relationship. 2. The one wants to know what it is like to know conditional love due to the fact that its nature is unconditional love. 3. The one wants to know what it is like to know imperfection due to the fact that it's nature is perfection.

So, relationship gives the one the experience of separateness, otherness, imperfection, conditional love, differences, conflict, pain in opposition to the state of unconditional love and infinite well-being that is the state of entropy that our attachments keep us from falling toward. So, relationship often creates and solidifies the emotional attachment needed to stay out of the state of unconditional love and Truth that is the original state, so that the one may stay in a state of illusion to know more how it is like to be other than what it is. Full enlightenment might potentially nullify the reasons that the one wanted to experience the human perspective in the first place. Maybe enlightenment is ultimately foolish, despite that it is more expansive and is qualitatively better from the human emotional standpoint. You only have maybe 80 years to be this particular human with all its imperfections, while you have an eternity to be the one. Why do you have to be the one now and nullify all the beautiful illusions and the beautiful terrible suffering that stems from it? That is, other than the fact that you are indeed God and can do whatever the heck you want to regardless of whether or not it seems to make no sense.  It's not as though there are any rules to the game that you didn't yourself create.

But from the dualistic standpoint, relationship is two or more different people, places, things, or ideas that share something in common or have some form of dependence on one another. So, we could say that practically, this is what human relationships are as well. Human beings naturally and instinctually tend to create relationships with the exception of some understanding, idea, or goal that prevents a person from engaging in them. Even enlightened human beings create relationships, which is not necessary for the purpose of "getting love" as enlightenment is the realization that all is one and all is love. There is no sense of filling some place that lacks "love". Real love by its very nature is impersonal, unconditional, and non-directional. So, it has nothing to do with the emotions felt in a relationship on the dualistic level. But on the non-dual level, it is the very substance of the one and of all of existence. And the relationship is another creation of this one that is love. So, relationship as most people know it is not love, but all is love. So, relationship is also love. 

With this in mind, it seems that most enlightened people tend to still create relationships romantic and otherwise. Perhaps, because enlightenment is a state of non-resistance there is no reason to resist the natural urges to form bonds with others or natural urges in general. It doesn't matter in the end as it's all an illusion, but that's no reason to forego these instincts or resist them... but simply to be detached from them and see them for what they truly are. In the same way that there's no reason to forego practical things such as work. "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water." And at that ultimate level, relationship is truly an expression of love just as everything else is an expression of love. But it's not int he particularity of the relationshipees or in the emotions shared by the two. But it is the very substance of all things involved in the existence. It's the very dance that reality does to create the illusion of relationship that the reality and love can be found. To be continued...

 

[Guest username]

2 hours ago, Emerald Wilkins said:

Well, if I look from the non-dual perspective that all is one, then relationship has to be a relationship between the one and itself at the ultimate level. 

This is something that's confounded me for a while, and perhaps I won't be able to resolve this until I have deeper direct experience. Supposedly,all is one, but that one is both everything and nothing. Non-dual, I assume would imply one rather than two, an absence of distinction, and from that perspective, I can't imagine any observation one could make about "What is relationship?" other than the one you've made.

However, since the non-dual, the absolute is  Nothingness, I wonder if there would be a way to address that from that perspective, that is the absolute beyond all perspective.

Since Nothing has no qualities what-so-ever, do you think it would be possible to gain wisdom on the nature of relationships from that state of being, perhaps intuitively and without reasoning?  When we look at the Non-dual as a unified whole, a singularity of sorts, I think we can can start to contemplate on a conceptual level such as you've done here. But I'm curious about contemplating on the Absolute which is absent of qualities what-so-ever. Would intuition from direct experience be the only means?

2 hours ago, Emerald Wilkins said:

 So, relationships between two people are illusory, just as (presumably) all happenings within existence are illusory including the illusion of self. But perhaps the illusion exists for a reason (if the one even traffics in reason, at all). 

I like this transition as a way to expand upon your initial observation. I've noticed that I tend to do this too when dealing with the very fundamental. We've established a fundamental assumption about the non-dual Oneness only being able to have a relationship with itself that the ultimate level. From this, it's easy to conclude that, from the same perspective, relationships between two people (duality) are illusory, just as with everything else in existence (duality also). 

This is where I would personally find it difficult to draw further conclusions based on the previously established assumptions, so if I wanted to expand on the topic, the easiest thing to do would be to extrapolate, as you've done by transitioning to a somewhat tangential but ultimately still relevant question, which giving a reason for why the illusion exists. 

Something I'd like to note at this point is we've seem to have gradually become more and more conceptual in our inquiry. We started at the Absolute (perhaps as Nothingness) or perhaps as Oneness, not sure if Oneness is necessarily a conceptual dissociation from the being-level of the Absolute/Nothingness, or if it is just the same,but Oneness is simply a better reference point for non-dual vs. dual distinctions.  Then we transition to a more conceptual level by using our assumption to conclude that relationships between two different entities are illusory.  Then we transition to yet an even more conceptual level by using that to speculate on reasons for duality/illusion. 

I'm not sure if this is indicative of how natural it is for us to want to abstract away from the being level toward consensus reality. where we do most of our thinking. The way you've structured your inquiry so far resonates with my personal though patterns; I wonder if it is just coincidence or we can observe more closely to learn thing about our minds tend to reflect on these types of questions. 

I also wonder if this tendency to quickly move to more abstract terms when speaking of the absolute, perhaps out of necessity, is the most effective means of raising consciousness or if we should move the other way and try to fixate on the absolute despite it being difficult (impossible?) to really make any sort of philosophical observations about it.

 

I'm going to come back and finish up this post later. My shoulder hurts at the moment.

[WaveInTheOcean]

"You only have maybe 80 years to be this particular human with all its imperfections, while you have an eternity to be the one."

Hehe. Dangerous assumptions being made here imo. 

You already are 'it'. ("it" = 'the one' / nothingness / consciousness / God, and so on.) 
You have always been, and will never not be.

You are currently having an (illusory) experience of being a human body. You are still truly 'it', however, and will never not be.

[NorseMythology]

Would Oneness be the ultimate being and Absolute/Infinite be one step beyond?

I used the term Infinite for the latter and Infinite Being for the former, i think we are talking about the same concepts though.

I have heard that utimately there is no 'two', because when you conceptually divide one into two, you actually have a trio, let us say the 'up' and the 'down' and the neutral or dividing 'line'

Muchlike destructive wave interference, you can have a neutral non-wave with the potential for either wave or both waves.

Put simply, and going back to relationships, its almost as though understanding the seperation through relationship we can understand unity.

[WaveInTheOcean]

"The One" absolutely needs to create "false selfs" to be able to experience itself.

This is pure logic. Light needs darkness. Darkness needs light. it's all one thing. Contrast.

If all that existed was "Being" / Infinity / The One / Nothingness then "it" wouldn't know itself.

Individualized "physical" bodies walking around believing they exist as independent, individualized selfs goes hand-in-hand with "The One"/"God", i.e. you can't have one without the other  "God" needs to make itself believe that it's not "God" -- in the first place -- to ever be able to experience itself.

Therefore, no you don't have an eternity to be "the One". You have no time actually. you have this present moment to experience your true self, and that's it.

Edited March 16, 2017 by WaveInTheOcean

[Emerald]

5 hours ago, WaveInTheOcean said:

"You only have maybe 80 years to be this particular human with all its imperfections, while you have an eternity to be the one."

Hehe. Dangerous assumptions being made here imo. 

You already are 'it'. ("it" = 'the one' / nothingness / consciousness / God, and so on.) 
You have always been, and will never not be.

You are currently having an (illusory) experience of being a human body. You are still truly 'it', however, and will never not be.

Yes, that's true, it is an assumption. But it doesn't mean that it is a false assumption for 'why' (assuming that God even traffics in why) God wants to experience the illusion of separation and the illusion that it is a mortal human being. So, yes, we are always "it," but when we go trying to discover that we are "it" and indeed not this separate human being, it's a possibility that this nullifies (our/God's) original potential plan to experience the illusion of truly believing it is this individual. But this is highly speculative of course because it assumes that God even has reasons, as reason is a limited tool from the limited human lens. So, when I said "You only have 80 years to be this particular human being...", I already took into consideration that this is an illusion and that what we are is "it." But I was looking at the potential reason for the illusion.

Edited March 16, 2017 by Emerald Wilkins

[JustinS]

@Whywolf Hey try out Ashwagandha Root. It helped me alot with this problem during my dark night, and I can say that after a few weeks of taking one a day I am free from it now and no longer need to take any supplements.