The Road To Wholeness

Dear reader,

The days continue for many to bring difficulties in relationships that can relate to issues of relationships in general, the relationship with ourselves, our relationship with things and others, the relationship with oneself and others, the relationship among other societies and cultures etc

So, in the light of new observations and drawn from internal inspiration, I wanted to discuss some thoughts about the meaning and importance of relations. 
It has always been one of my deep questions about why we are forming relationships, what we expect from them, what types of relationships exist, why we choose some people and not others and ultimately how everyone behaves in every relationship in order to maintain it.

The answers I found over the years varied in kind, form, style etc. People do form relationships for a variety of reasons, so as not to be alone, to feel safe and companionship, to have support, to love and to be loved, etc.  These answers were of great importance but I felt that they did not constitute the whole picture.

It is clearly great benefits those of companionship, security, support and yet their pursuit through someone else always seemed to me as the happiness of every man is dependent on someone else. What if the other person dies or leaves for any reason, then he would take each other's happiness with him?

The answer that completed my circle pointed towards soul and life lessons, wisdom, integration.  Everyone alone can learn things and deal with them, read, perfect their own 'art', be professionally successful, create an independent life, be whole.  But whatever he has learned will be his own experience and knowledge of himself and the world, it will be his own perspective, his understanding and interpretation, his way of living with the individual boundaries of what he 'wants ' and  'who he is'.

The relationship with the other offers-in my view- another suggestion, another possibility for experience. Especially close (not only erotic) relationships create the possibility or better seek to invade into places within that previously they would be private and 'locked away' and challenge anything previously consolidated and certain including views, habits, safety patterns etc.
In this sense it is very beautiful to be connected and love people who appreciate and cherish what they see and it also very normal to oppose to someone who comes to ask us to change habits, to get in touch with aspects that we do not like about ourselves, to see things differently, to feel differently about things we we used to feel differently, to change altogether. 

The presence of the other near us often has the threatening ability to provoke us to see what "near" and "far" means, who we really are from who we might think we are, how we behave and why and ultimately what is important in our lives. The significant other can hold in front of us a filtered from his eyes mirror about who we really are.

Each time we relate or fall in love with someone, they mirror something that we are or want to be, that we think, that we feel, that we fear, that we avoid. 
In the face and in contact with the other we see, thus, an opportunity. An opportunity to learn something new about ourselves and the world, an opportunity to feel something different or something the same that we want to feel, an opportunity to co-create with someone what we dream of, an opportunity to experience all that we are in common 'space' with someone else, an opportunity to be whole with someone.

This opportunity we can not provide solely to ourselves (perhaps to a certain extent) because it is essentially the connection or the non-connection with the object, the other end of the thread and the other pole, is the challenge of the relationship with the other person that provides the opportunity to see what we do not know about ourselves, what we love and want to support, what we hide, what hurts us, what we feel proud of, what we want to live for and create.

In the other (whoever he is) and in his sincere relationship with him, in his help and support (love) I think mankind finds its own wholeness.

With Love,
Panos