21 Apr The Spiritual Path of Relating
If the person sitting in front of you was your Beloved, how would you treat them? I suspect it would be with kindness and love. You would focus on their strengths and good points and ignore what you perceive to be the less-so. (After all, that’s how we treat our friends, right?) You’d speak carefully and tenderly and attend to their comfort. You’d feel grateful that love has shown up for you and might even count your blessings. And maybe, just maybe, you’d be aware of the divine spark at the core of that other person’s being, silently blazing away, equal to the one inside you.
But, your mind says, this isn’t the right person. This person is — fill in the blank — the wrong color or religion or ethnicity, social status, not pretty enough, not cool enough… perhaps you have too much of a history with them, or you don’t know how to enjoy their unique sexiness. If you observe carefully, you’ll notice that your mind wants to itemize everything “wrong” with this person as an explanation for why you shouldn’t love them. The mind doesn’t like the idea that anyone but a fantasy figure is the beloved, so it rejects the real human being and closes your heart.
We’ve been taught by the conventional culture that love exists some time in the future when we’ll meet and are involved with a perfect person, or that love is only to be given to people who look and act a certain way. In tantra, we learn that if we can’t relate to the person in front of us with love and awareness, we won’t be available for love with a romantic partner either.
Early in my work with one of my mentors, he told me that he relates to a homeless person on a bench the same way he treats a fashion model. Most of us would treat one of those people with derision and disrespect, and the other with adulation and fawning behavior. At that moment my mentor’s near-sainthood in his relating to other beings became clear to me, and I have forever-more aspired that level of respect and tantric relating.
An elevating ideal, perhaps, but difficult in practice? Yes, but worth pursuing as we turn ourselves into perfect lovers. When we practice relating to everyone as an emanation of the divine, we gain skill in the art of relating to a partner. Tantra is about seeing sex, love and romance as part of the spiritual path, and everyone we encounter is an opportunity for practice.
Guess what? The person sitting in front of you at this moment, whoever it is, is your beloved. This is where love is, right here, right now. This is your only opportunity for perfect love, now, not some time in the future. What are you going to do with it?
The first step in tantric relating is that relating to others becomes an essential element of your spiritual path. It is one of the major avenues we have for expressing our love into the world. All little moments of relating are opportunities for you to practice becoming a more loving person. Every encounter with another being is an encounter with the divine.
You can begin today relating in the tantric way by realizing that this person in this present moment is sacred, and it is up to me to recognize it. Treat everyone as someone you love, most not in the romantic sense, but in a spirit of camaraderie as spiritual brothers and sisters helping each other grow. The more you practice with everyone you meet, the more your heart will open and become accustomed to sharing love in every moment.
© 2022 Catherine Auman
This is an excerpt from Catherine Auman’s book, Tantric Relating: Relationship Advice to Find and Keep Sex, Love and Romance. This book is the third title in the Tantric Mastery Series. Check it out!
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