Springing Light

When we are small we depend wholly upon others for everything: for sustenance, for safety, for all our physical and emotional needs. As infants we are unable, at first, to meet these needs with what we possess inside us, so we reach out to those nearest us, literally cry out, from our sense of helplessness and inability to meet our own needs.

As we grow we are presented with opportunities to begin meeting these needs ourselves. The job of parents is to prepare children in a gradual process to be capable of functioning as an independent person who can easily access the infinite strength, wisdom, and grace that we each possess inside us.

However, in more cases than not, something goes awry in this process. After all, parents are not perfect superhuman creatures without needs and issues of their own. In addition, as we grow up we are confronted with many, many people, each different and each with desires, perceptions, and issues that twist the process for us just a little more. Adding to that, we typically make choices within our lives that provide us with growth and learning opportunities, little stumbling blocks that give us an opportunity to pause and take note.

In the end, then, we find ourselves as adults more often than not feeling less than whole, less than complete, and less than able to meet our needs, especially emotional ones, ourselves.

So we naturally turn to sources outside ourselves, usually to other people.

It is quite common, then, upon making an emotional connection with someone, especially in the confines of an intimate relationship, to begin to give over to them the job of meeting our emotional needs for us. It begins innocently enough: asking for thoughts, ideas, input, and assistance with solving problems. We are conditioned to think that this is part of what takes place within a relationship. The other person, feeling love for us, wishes to please and wishes to help. Why would they not?

What occurs then is an imbalance of energy between the partners. There is a constant shifting taking place to correct this imbalance, which in turn makes both members of the relationship uncomfortable. It turns into a never-ending cycle that feeds upon itself. Many relationships function like this in a dual manner, i.e. both partners are meeting one another’s emotional needs, or attempting to, yet both partners feel perpetually drained.

If one member of such a relationship would then choose to end that cycle and break that connection between them, they would immediately feel an immense relief, much like that of giving birth. After all, they are no longer functioning for two!

The other, now bereft, member of the relationship would feel a sudden loss, resulting in pain. Without that emotional lifeline they feel lost and adrift on what suddenly feels like a very stormy and unfriendly sea.

In this instance, which occurs often, both members require healing.

To avoid this sure path to pain, either your own or as the cause of someone else’s, it’s important to maintain a constant state of connection with your own truth, your own inner and infinite source of wholeness.

There’s an oft-repeated phrase from the movie “Jerry Maguire” that has likely set many hearts afire since the movie was made: “You complete me.”

The problem is, the statement is a lie.

No one and nothing can complete you but yourself.

You are ALREADY complete and whole. By reaching outward to feel that sense of wholeness, you immediately deny the wealth that you already posses, and by doing so you disconnect yourself with the one true source of all your love, all your energy, all your power.

You may be asking, How do I connect with my inner source? Do I really possess all that? Am I really whole and complete, right now?

Here’s an exercise I wrote to assist you in accessing your own inner wholeness:

 

Reaching Inward

Go outside into nature, or as close to nature as you can. This can be a park, a forest, the beach, or even simply the street outside your house or your yard. Gathering all the energy you can muster, tense yourself as if you are going to scream as loudly as you can. Instead of actually screaming, however, instead send all that energy inward, deep within you. At that moment, when you feel you have reached your deepest inner place, reach in with the scream and take hold of what’s there, bringing it back with you in your hand. Now release the scream and examine what’s in your closed hand.

Perhaps you see nothing, but you are holding the way to your innermost sense of strength. You can draw upon this again and again, and this exercise is best performed several times over the course of a few weeks. And over those weeks you will begin to remember the way to that inner place without having to send such a blast of energy inward to reach it.

You may also repeat to yourself: I am whole and complete.

After having performed this exercise for awhile you will begin to notice that you feel more centered, more balanced. You will feel more YOU.

And then you will feel less like you need to submit to the empty lure of emotional connection, and instead can begin to enjoy those connections simply for what they are, rather than what they give you.

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