Enlightened relationship blossoms only in the deepest silence …  when … there is only the unadulterated recognition of emptiness dancing through duality. ~ Amoda Maa

enlightened relationship sunrise beach amoda

Since COVID crisis began, we have been focusing on qualities that bring humanity together, e.g. kindnesscompassion, love, and more … today we explore the “ground” where all such qualities are “practiced” : human relationships … particularly intimate relationships, which is an even more fertile ground …

But … before we dig into this topic … we want to acknowledge and commend Go Fund Me for persistently organizing/promoting multiple campaigns to meet the current imperatives. All of these campaigns are worthy of our attention … but for now we want to highlight the ones dealing with COVID-19 relief and social reforms … we are supporting these personally and also as Stillness Speaks (through donations):

Financial challenges are being faced by most, if not all of us … but IF your situation allows you to donate and help then …

… please visit  Frontline Responders Fund’s Go Fund Me page … and help deliver crucial supplies to these frontline responders

… and/or visit  America’s Food Fund Go Fund Me page and help feed the neighbors in need …

… and/or visit Justice and Equality Fund page … to further justice and equality.

And, we again, express our deepest gratitude to the COVID-19 Frontline Responders (all the healthcare professionals – doctors, nurses, hospital/medical-services staff – firefighters, law enforcement, volunteers, and any/all the people involved in keeping the “system-at-large” functioning for ALL of us) … and to Go Fund Me for being instrumental in feeding the needy and supporting justice & equality.

THANK YOU – our lives would not be possible without your dedication.

 

So, now back to intimate relationship …  Amoda’s opening quote offers a glimpse into what such relationship could be, i.e., enlightened relationship … but what is that? … she provides an answer through a full chapter titled Love and Enlightened Relationship in her most recent book, Embodied Enlightenment: Living Your Awakening In Every Moment  …

embodied enlightenment amoda maaThis post is the conclusion of a multi-part series that’s exploring “… authentic embodiment of awakened consciousness …” through excerpts from Amoda’s book on “… that which is deeper than surface reality …”

… in part 1, we considered excerpts from the chapter titled: The Body as A Gateway  To Liberation… where she reminds us that we are “literally made of light” and then goes on to explore the role of “light in awakening”

… in part 2, we looked at excerpts from the chapter Spiritual Maturity And The Three Stages of Awakening … that’s about “… the maturation of awakening …” which is a crucial issue faced by all on the self realization journey … she also talks about true compassion, forgiveness, and love in action … qualities that emerge as spiritual maturity develops and deepens …

Amoda takes us on a deep dive into Love and Enlightened Relationship through the subchapters: Spirituality as an Excuse to Avoid Intimacy, The True Purpose of Relationship, Relationship as Spiritual Practice, Meeting Each Other in Openness, The Direct Path of Naked Truth, From Conscious Relationship to Enlightened Relationship, When the Silence in You Meets the Silence in Another, and Beyond Sex … in this part 3, we will look at only some of these subchapters …

All italicized text below is from Amoda’s book and is published here with her gracious permission. She has also generously offered a free downloadable PDF of the Table of Contents (link at the bottom of this post … along with more information about her) … Click here for her current events.

Amoda opens the chapter by setting the stage with how spirituality is used as an excuse for avoiding intimacy: “Most traditional spiritual teachings consider relationship to be a distraction from the purity of the spiritual path. While it is true that the addictive cycle of looking for wholeness through another is an obstacle to enlightenment, when this truth is interpreted by the unenlightened mind it sets up an even bigger obstacle. The desire to transcend the messy and painful world of emotions and intimate human relationship is a major stumbling block for many seekers. Very often, it’s the desire to find freedom from this pain that sets off the spiritual search in the first place. But the spiritual search itself can easily become an avoidance tactic. …”

... and she asks “… If what you truly desire is authentic freedom, this cover-up must be exposed …”

… and that “… This exposure demands your willingness to be fully intimate with the totality of life’s phenomenal display. Everything is in relationship to everything else: you are in perpetual relationship to the world. Whether you believe the world is an illusion or not does not matter, because beliefs do not negate the fact that you are having an earthly experience. Authentic freedom requires you to consciously surrender all lopsided notions of “only consciousness is real” and to meet, with innocent openness, the naked reality of your experience.” 

With that context she moves onto …

THE TRUE PURPOSE OF RELATIONSHIP

Denial or avoidance of any experience at all, whether it is an earthly experience or a spiritual one, limits your perception and cannot possibly reveal the unbounded vista of truth. Any attempt to use spirituality as an excuse to avoid intimacy perpetuates the inherited war between human and divine, passed down by millennia of religious and scientific conditioning.

human divine amoda

The invitation offered in the pages of this book is for you to put aside the archaic idea of enlightenment as a renunciation of the world and to be a pioneer of a new conversation in spirituality. Will you join the increasing number of spiritual seekers for whom this idea of renunciation no longer rings true? Will you join the increasing number of people who are now asking new, far-reaching questions that extend across the apparent divide between consciousness and the world to embrace the crazy paradox of being in the world but not of it? Relationship is perhaps the place where these questions are the most urgent, for while it appears that relationship is a very personal (and even a very selfish) matter, it actually has much more to do with the transformation of the world than it does about you.

Why? Because it’s in the furnace of intimacy that the collective shadow, which plays itself out as greed, corruption, and destruction, is illuminated and transmuted to compassion. Every time you turn away from or deny what is here in your experience, you add to the darkness in the world because you are divided within. Every time you deeply accept or open to what is here, you set the world alight because you are radiant with an inner oneness. You are the cause of war and peace in the world, because the world is inseparable from who you are as consciousness. And right in the midst of the messiness of relationship is where war can stop and peace can begin. Because it’s when we’re at our most vulnerable that we either fall back into ego by implementing the age-old strategy of defense and attack, or we rise into a new way of being by recognizing that we are all intimately connected and that each of us is an expression of one beingness.

radiant inner oneness enlightened relationship amoda

Relationship can offer the possibility of an enlightened humanity, because in every interaction it has the capacity to return us to the wholeness of love. If you are willing to open to this possibility of allowing relationship to be your spiritual practice, then relationship will evolve out of the dream (and the drama) to serve its true purpose of transforming the world.

RELATIONSHIP AS SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

Relationship is a potent medicine. It invites you to get right up close and intimate with everything that is unilluminated in you. Every ugly emotion and dark feeling that has been pushed away because you’ve deemed them unacceptable becomes unimaginably highlighted in the torchlight of intimacy. The messy arena of relationship, where two individuals each want their needs met, to be understood, to be heard, and to be loved, is the testing ground where our buttons get pushed and we involuntarily send off missiles to destroy our enemy or erect impenetrable walls of defense. This ancient mechanism of attack and defense is a very effective strategy for avoiding an honest meeting with the raw energy beneath the reactivity. It’s raw because it’s the hurt and vulnerability that was not met when the abuse or rejection first happened, and you were too small and powerless to face it. If this past trauma has not been consciously processed and integrated into your psyche, it remains in the shadows of your subconscious, waiting for the opportunity to be seen and fully held in the heart of acceptance.

Trigger points are not a sign that something is terribly wrong, but a sign of love’s intelligence calling everything back home to itself. It’s a return to healing and wholeness. Love, disguised as a trigger, is an unrelenting invitation for you to open now. Whatever happened in the past, it does not matter now. Whatever your story of victimhood or wounding, it does not matter now. What matters now is your willingness to open to the raw energy that is here, to be vulnerable to the unfoldment of this unfiltered moment and all that it offers … all of it, not just the bits you like. The invitation is to stop filtering reality through your “likes” and “dislikes,” to stop following the horizontal movement of the egoic mind as it takes a snapshot of now and compares it with the past, and to radically and irrevocably stop labeling this moment as “unbearable” or “the worst thing that ever happened to me.” Just stop right here and be fully, wholeheartedly, and lovingly with what is.

stream what is enlightened relationship amoda

Your unconditional acceptance of what is here is the resolution of all that is fragmented in you. It’s the remedy for all that is sick in the world. The root of judgment and the resulting resentment, rejection, hostility, and hatred lies in your lack of acceptance of that which you believe to be bad or wrong in you. If you’re on a spiritual path (which undoubtedly you are, if you’re reading this book), then the root of judgment lies in your lack of acceptance of all that is unspiritual or unenlightened in you. The one who triggers you the most is your best friend, because relationship is a powerful mirror and always reflects back to you that which you don’t accept in yourself—so that you see it and choose to befriend it. The one you hate the most is your greatest spiritual teacher, because right here, in the dark cloud of your righteousness, rage, and revulsion, is the radical opportunity for you to stop doing what you’ve automatically done for a lifetime or more, and instead choose to open to what is beneath your reactivity. This opening allows the rawness of terror and horror to melt into the tenderness of vulnerability and grief. It’s a breaking open of the heart to welcome everything back home to rest in love.

Perhaps you can now see that the spiritual bypassing of the messy world of relationship is no longer an intelligent option if we are to be harbingers of peace in the world, today and beyond. The deeper purpose of relationship is to be a catalyst for spiritual evolution, for your own sake and for the sake of humanity. It’s in the midst of the hurt and raging emotion that we can become conscious of where we are divided within. The reason there is more turbulence in relationship, as well as more urgency to find the perfect relationship than ever before, is because relationship is an evolutionary driver and we are being offered a powerful opportunity to bring light to darkness in the messiness of our everyday lives.

Are you willing here and now to take up this invitation? Are you willing to be the portal through which light can enter the world? It’s a potent invitation … are you willing to say yes? You don’t have to be concerned about finding a relationship. If you are honestly willing to open your heart and let love in, despite the high possibility of “unacceptable” and “unspiritual” feelings, relationship will find you at the right time. You do not need to do anything to make this happen; life’s intelligence will inevitably offer this opportunity.

light portal amoda

Next in this chapter (Love and Enlightened Relationship) Amoda continues her in-depth exploration into this topic through the next three subchapters: Meeting Each Other in Openness, The Direct Path of Naked Truth, and From Conscious Relationship to Enlightened Relationship … these subchapters are not part of this post …

And then she moves onto …

ENLIGHTENED RELATIONSHIP: WHEN THE SILENCE IN YOU MEETS THE SILENCE IN ANOTHER

Enlightened relationship is what happens when the silence in you meets the silence in another. When each individual has totally fallen in love with aloneness and fully embodies their own wholeness, it’s no longer about mutual satisfaction, pleasure, comfort, or security, nor about feeling loved and wanted. Without dependency, there is no longer an attempt to change or fix or please the other. Nor is there any attempt to agree (or disagree). It’s not a battle of opinions, because there is neither an enemy nor a victim, and neither is there an attempt to spiritualize the relationship. There’s really no need to practice any spiritual method or even “be conscious,” because it’s not something you can make happen by doing something, nor is it something you can understand intellectually. It doesn’t have anything to do with following the right spiritual teacher or the right spiritual teaching. Enlightened relationship blossoms only in the deepest silence, when all false constructs of separation are destroyed, and there is only the unadulterated recognition of emptiness dancing through duality. Only here can true love flourish.

deepest silence amoda

True love meets the essence of love in all people and all things. It’s not reserved just for “the one.” You could say it’s an impersonal (or universal) love, but this does not mean the human bond with your partner, if you’re in relationship, is any less vibrant. It means you are not dependent on anything outside of you to give you love or to make you feel loved or to make you feel loving, and neither do you try to possess or hoard the love. Instead, you are simply the open space through which love flows, because real love simply can’t help but move through any vehicle that is empty of the residue of conditional love. This love has nothing to do with being nice or acting in any particular way. It’s an invisible emanation of light that gently touches all that is unilluminated in its vicinity and has the power to transform. There will be those who are repelled by this because they resist transformation. And there will be those who are magnetically drawn to this because they are ripe for an inner revolution of consciousness.

The two individuals in an enlightened relationship are not aware that anything special is happening, because just like enlightenment itself, enlightened relationship is actually extraordinarily ordinary! It only becomes special, holy, or mystical when the ego takes ownership of it, and then it is not an authentically enlightened relationship, but a facsimile of this. Just as with enlightenment, there are actually no rules about what an enlightened relationship looks like in its outer form. It’s the inner dimension that matters, and here there is only the sense that there is no more “relationship.” In other words, there are no longer two individuals having a relationship; instead there is one beingness shimmering through all forms and through the space within which all forms appear. This is not an intellectual realization, but an almost palpable experience that flickers in and out of everyday perception and yet is unmistakably present in all things.

You may have already glimpsed this open space of beingness, but perhaps you have not recognized it as love or even been conscious of it. You’ll experience this space in moments of stillness as you watch the sun majestically rise over the horizon, when the melody of a bird’s song makes you silent inside, or when the beauty of the mountain peaks catches your breath. You’ll also experience this space when you stop and look into the eyes of your child, when you’re lost in dancing, or when you savor that first sip of tea. It’s right here now, in the gap between thoughts, in the pause between the in-breath and out-breath, and in the space between these words.

moments stillness majestic sunrise amoda

Amoda concludes the chapter Enlightened relationship by …. addressing a key issue in the minds of those exploring enlightened relationship: “… what happens to sexual attraction in an enlightened relationship …” in the final subchapter Beyond Sex:  … this subchapter is not part of this post … but we offer a quote that gives an insight into Amoda’s thoughts on this crucial topic:

“… The question of what happens to sex in an authentically awakened relationship needs to be truthfully investigated within your own direct experience, as there is no “right way.” The real inquiry is not about what happens on the surface but about discovering what is beneath the social, cultural, and gender-based push and pull (and beneath the biological pull) of the sexual impulse …”

 

~ Amoda Maa

 

Again, here’s Part 1 … and Part 2

May you remain safe and healthy as you navigate this global crisis …

And may the insights offered here help foster deeper harmony and balance in your intimate relationship … leading to an enlightened relationship … and beyond …

 

All italicized text above is from Embodied Enlightenment: Living Your Awakening In Every Moment … by Amoda Maa and is published here with her generous and gracious permission. Click here for the free, downloadable PDF of the Table of Contents.

 

Amoda’s Stillness Speaks Teacher Page will be coming in the future … please visit Part 1 of this series for her brief BIO including her website … and click here for her current events.

 

Images (edited & Logo added): 1 & Featured) Sunrise at Sanur Beach Bali by PantherMediaSeller, 2) Cover page for Amoda’s book, 3) Hands manipulate atomic or other properties of universe by rolffimages, 4) Hot sunset over water by pklimenko, 5) Beautiful stream in autumn forest by Vovashevchuk, 6) Composite of a) Time warp background, traveling in space by Juric.P and b) Human silhouette in yoga pose and meditation by teotarras, 7) Matterhorn and reflection on the water surface during sunrise, by biletskiy_e, 8) Sunrise at Quiraing, Isle of Skye, Scotland by sara_winter. All except 2 are purchased from depositphotos, and are for use only on our website/social channels (these images are not permitted to be shared separate from this post). 2 is provided by Amoda with permission to be used on our website and other digital assets.
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