A Completely Different approach towards resolving conflicts in a relationship. If you have been stucked all this while, and are open-minded enough, then I encourage you to read on.
Conflict in relationship belies the subconscious idea that one party feels attacked or threatened, and therefore seeks to defend by explaining or argument, escalating into a conflict.
Let's examine further into this.
Who would protect himself unless
- he believed he was being attacked,
- that the attack was real, and
- that his own defense was capable of saving him
And thus lays defense's folly: it gives illusions complete actuality and then tries to deal with them as if they were real. It multiplies delusions, making resolving conflicts even more difficult.
And you do that when you try to plan the future, engage the past, or organize the present in the way you want. Basically manipulating people, events to what you imagine in your mind in every single aspect of your life.
I am not going into the right or wrong of it, but to give you the breakdown of what such an approach might bring or miss out.
You function under the assumption that you must defend yourself against what is occurring because it must contain the threat to you. A perception of threat is an admission of a flaw. It is the belief that there is a threat that has the capacity to force you to defend yourself.
This irrational idea underpins our minds. And all of its structures, all of its thoughts and doubts, all of its fines and heavy armaments, all of its legal definitions and rules, all of its ethics, leaders, all work to maintain its sense of threat.
Because no one walks around the world in defence, for the very definition means fear in his heart.
A Place Of Fear
It's terrifying to be on the defensive. It comes from a place of fear, which grows with each defense. You believe it provides security. Nonetheless, it speaks of true anxiety and legitimate terror.
Isn't it odd that you don't pause to consider what you protect, how you defend, and against what while you flesh out your plans and thicken your armor and tighten your locks?
What Are You Defending?
Let's start with what you're defending. It has to be something vulnerable and easily harmed. It must be something that has been rendered easy prey, unable to defend itself and in need of your protection.
What is it but the body's weakness that necessitates constant attention and vigilant, deep worry in order to safeguard its brief existence? What if the body falters?
The body, on the other hand, cannot fear or be afraid. It has no requirements. Yes it does need food, air and water. Those are what sustains a body, in the very literal sense.
When engaged in conflict with your partner, are you defending your body from physical harm most of the time. Of course if there is physical abuse, by all means defend yourself or even leave such a relationship.
In many cases, conflict is often about something else. It could be why is the text message not replied timely. Why is it that every time I have to tell you to clean the house and you cannot take the initiative. And when such conflicts arise, are you defending your body so that it can meet its basic needs for survival? The answer is a clear No. You are defending something else, and believe that something else or a part of you is being attacked, even though no real physical wound has taken place.
It was your intellect that gave the body all of the functions you see in it and gave it a value far greater than a pile of dust and water.
The body is in need of no defense. This cannot be too often emphasized. It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope, and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish.
Such attempts, ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad attacks you make upon it. For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs, your values and your dreams.
Defending The Ego
The "self" that needs to be protected is fictitious. The body, worthless and unworthy of even the most basic defense, need only that it be regarded as separate from you in order to become a healthy, tool through which the mind can function until its usefulness is over. Who wants to preserve it once its usefulness has passed?
You've already harmed your mind by defending your body. Because you've noticed the flaws, weaknesses, limitations, and deficiencies in it, you believe the body must be saved.
You will not see the mind as distinct from physical circumstances. And you'll inflict on the body all of the suffering that stems from seeing the mind as limited and frail, apart from other minds and from its Source.
Healing Starts From Thoughts
These are the thoughts that need to be healed, and when they are rectified and replaced with truth, the body will respond with health. This is the only real defense the body has.
Is this, however, where you seek its defense? You provide it with a type of protection from which it derives no benefit and only adds to your mental anguish.
By trying to defend the ego, which is derived solely from your thoughts, you are defending something fictitious. Why would you want to defend something imaginary?
The ego is cunning. It often masquerades itself in far more pleasing ways so that you will continue to find meaning in defending it. it does so through concepts like personality, self-identity, beliefs and more.
When a conflict arises in a relationship, it is the ego that rears its ugly head. But we are so closely intertwined with that imaginary ego, we thought it was true. The ego was never true,
If you continue to defend the ego, generated by your thoughts, you don't heal, but you do take away the hope of healing, because you don't know where meaningful hope must be found.
Planning is An Addiction to Perceived Threats
A mind that has been healed does not plan. It follows through on the plans it receives after listening to wisdom that isn't its own. It waits until it has been told what should be done before going forward and doing it. It doesn't rely on itself for anything except its ability to carry out the plans that have been allocated to it. It is clear that no barriers will obstruct its progress toward achieving any goal that serves the larger plan designed for the sake of all.
A healed mind is free of the belief that it must plan, despite the fact that it cannot know the optimal outcome, the best means of achieving it, or how to recognize the problem that the plan is designed to solve. It must continue to abuse the body in its plans until it realizes this. When it accepts this as real, however, it is healed and is able to let go of the body.
The body's enslavement to the plans devised by the unhealed mind to save itself must make the body sick. It is not free to be a method of assisting in a plan that greatly outweighs its own protection and requires its assistance for a short time. Health is guaranteed in this capacity. Everything the mind uses for this will work beautifully and with the vigor bestowed upon it, and it will not fail.
It may be difficult to recognize that self-initiated plans are merely defenses, with the goal of all of them being realized. They are the techniques by which a terrified mind would defend itself at the expense of reality. This is easy to see in some of the shapes that these self-deceptions take, when the denial of reality is plain to see. Planning, on the other hand, isn't always seen as a defense.
The mind is preoccupied with establishing control over future events when it is planning for itself. It does not believe it will be taken care of until it makes its own arrangements. Time is relegated to the future, to be governed by the knowledge and experience gained from prior events and beliefs.
It ignores the present because it is based on the belief that the past has taught the mind enough to control its future course.
Recycling the Past
As a result, the mind that planned refuses to accept change. What it has learned in the past serves as the foundation for its future objectives. Its decision is influenced by its previous experiences. And it fails to recognize that the here and now is all it needs to ensure a future unlike any other, devoid of any outdated ideals or ill beliefs. Anticipation is irrelevant because present confidence leads the way.
Defenses are the strategies you devise to counteract the truth. Their goal is to select what you approve of and ignore what you believe is incongruous with your reality views. What remains, though, is utterly pointless.
Your reality is the "threat" that your defenses would want to attack, obfuscate, dismantle, and crucify.
Dropping The Defenses
We'll look forward to that time today with confidence, because it's all part of the plan. We'll make certain that we have everything we need to complete this task today. We make no preparations for how it will be accomplished, but we see that our defenselessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn with conviction on our minds.
We rest from pointless planning and every idea that prevents the truth from entering our consciousness for fifteen minutes twice today. Today, we will receive rather than plan, and we will be able to give rather than organize. And, as we say, we are actually given:
If I defend myself I am attacked.
But in defenselessness I will be strong,
and I will learn what my defenses hide.
That and nothing else. If there are any plans to be made, you will be informed. They might not be the strategies you thought you needed, or the solutions to the difficulties you believed you faced. They are, however, answers to a different type of question, one that remains unsolved yet needs to be answered until the Answer appears.