142 QUESTION: I started a new relationship and I think I could be very fond of this person, ultimately. I would like to be somehow appreciated by this person more than I actually am. There is a compulsiveness in me about this relationship because I feel I can’t progress more now than the pace my work allows, and my still-existing problems may impede the relationship and ultimately cut it off.

ANSWER: I will first answer the last part of your question. You fear that your still existing blocks will impede the relationship and might even jeopardize or destroy it. Now this, of course, is perfectly true. It would not be honest of anyone to tell you that this could not happen.

But think of how much more this could happen again and again until you would become so bitter that you would completely withdraw from living. Think of how much more painful it must be when one ascribes these occurrences to false reasons, and how much more constructive your life is when you learn from everything you experience. For no one – absolutely no one – goes through life without destroying some chances.

Every single incarnated soul has unresolved problems and blocks. The healthy approach I recommend would be this: “Yes, I have a problem here. It is very possible that my still-existing problems might contribute to an imperfect relationship, which might finally cease. But this is life and I intend to learn the utmost from everything and bring the most constructive attitude to what comes to pass.”

You also must know that you cannot be drawn to anyone who does not have equal problems – more or less. Therefore the other person must be equally responsible if the relationship does not work. It is not only your doing; it cannot only be your doing. It is neither yours nor her doing exclusively; it must be the creation of you both.

When you feel that others cannot blunder and you feel guilty for not being like others, then you will feel compulsive and overanxious. But when you know that perfection does not exist and that no one can do more than his or her best in any given phase, you will be more relaxed.

The most important thing is that you accept your present limitations with all their consequences. This is a fundamental requirement to eliminate the limitation. In that spirit you can still derive a great deal of joy, even increasing joy, out of each encounter. And each new contact will be an improvement until you are no longer afraid of people, of contact, of love, of yourself.

In this way you will derive more of a lesson, more help, and you will also contribute more to the other person, which in turn will increase your own security. With this attitude, you will not be in illusion or in distortion and you will see reality and grow from what you see. You cannot expect to have your blocks disappear in one fell swoop. And yet you will get more pleasure out of such encounters than before.

Do not think that on the other side of the fence are all other human beings and that they have no problems and only complete relationships. Do not believe that they never destroy anything while you are all alone on this side. Do not think that if only you could quickly get rid of this block, you too would be among the privileged ones.

All people destroy chances constantly and inadvertently in the sphere of human life. But mistakes are not the end of the world. If you learn and look at it in this way, you will not need to be so frightened.

The fact that every relationship is a mutual proposition – whether or not that relationship is good – must be brought home to all who are involved. Relationship cannot be a one-sided thing. When you know this, you will also discover your own power.

There is a strange and apparently paradoxical balance: the more egocentric the little child within a person is, the more one-sidedly it expects only to receive. The weaker and more helpless such egocentric people become, the more they tend to blame themselves alone for the failure of a relationship.

Since they experience only their own needs and desires, and since they believe only they count, they cannot share the brunt of failure when the relationship does not work. Nor can such a person be aware of his or her inner power to give to another person.

On the other hand, when egocentricity has been outgrown and you can experience yourself as being on the same level, your concern for the other in a relationship must grow. This will automatically give you the feeling that you have as much power to make someone happy or unhappy as you had hitherto ascribed only to the other person.

Hence you will feel much more secure. Once you are willing to give, you will feel entitled to receive. When that shift occurs, you will experience a certain fluctuation between blaming the other and blaming yourself.

When you do not go to the other person as a begging child, you will know your strength and your potential to give. This will enable you to use intelligence, observation and intuition. It will also help you to distribute your energies between making both active and passive contributions to the relationship.

It must give you freedom and a sense of proportion to realize that both of you are involved. If the other person were free of problems, his or her healthy state would overcome all difficulties, for this is the strength of true spiritual health.

QA173 QUESTION: I’ve been struggling with a problem. My mind has been obsessed with the memory of a relationship that has recently broken up. I’ve meditated on this and I’m trying to let it go, but I don’t seem to be able to. I think it connects with something in my childhood with my father and grandfather. It seems that every discovery makes this obsession go away temporarily and then something else is needed, a deeper probing perhaps.

ANSWER: Right. Perhaps more intense work will lead you with help – for this is difficult, as you know, to do by yourself – to discover that there is an ingrained belief in you that this must happen to you. The fact that this must happen is because you are somewhere fated to experience this, because you are somehow not quite loveable or adequate or sufficiently all right.

This hidden belief spreads such negativity that in the first place it is bound to influence the choice of partner. It is bound to influence what you emanate – how you react and how you act – and therefore bring this about. Then if it does happen, your secret conviction seems to be reconfirmed.

What would be necessary for you to uncover in intense work with a Helper is that you expose to yourself this secret belief that this is your fate, that this is bound to happen because that is what you deserve, so to speak – while a more conscious side in you battles against this assumed fate, and struggles.

The struggle becomes tenuous, because the other side is unconscious and you do not know to what extent your struggle is fighting against something you are convinced of inwardly. So you really have to bring this out in order to discover how untrue this is. You have to uncover the various false beliefs and what they are based on.

Just because something seemed to you to happen in this way once does not mean it always will – unless you take it for granted that it must, and therefore react and have built such a negative climate of fear and apprehension in you. This is why you cannot let go of it.

It is as though a deep inner voice says, “You see, you are no good; you cannot be loved. It is because you are inadequate.” Then in addition to this there may be some doubts in you that perhaps you have done something wrong that has caused this. This creates the questioning, “How could I have reacted differently?” self-doubt all down the line.

You would have to truly face your self-doubt and have the courage to examine, to what extent are there things that can be changed because your belief is false, and to what extent do you really not have to change anything in your behavior? Some things will have to be changed – other things, not. But this has to be investigated.

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