Loosening the ties that bind

The big insight that I got from Robert Scheinfeld’s audio entitled The Rings of Relationship is that I didn’t need people.

Yes, people add flavour to my life; I enjoy them, and welcome interaction with them. But I don’t need them.

To have an inkling of the significance of this insight, you’d have to have some appreciation of what a stark contrast it represents from my previous orientation.

Prior to this, I considered people to be vital to me – you know, right up there, just after oxygen. I made many decisions around people, bent myself out of shape to include them in my life, and felt distressed when things didn’t work out with them.

Yet, in what seemed like a split second, that focus evaporated.

That, in turn, resulted in a tremendous sense of freedom.

This change in alignment has a domino effect. It influences many other aspects of what Robert calls the Human Game.

The flip side of the coin, namely, that other people don’t need me any more than I need them, also feels freeing. In fact, it lifts a huge weight off my shoulders.

An interesting feature of this new level of awareness is that I feel no less love towards my family members and close friends than I felt before. Actually I feel warmer and fuzzier towards them than I did in the past.

As Robert has said elsewhere in his teachings, when you’re watching a movie, you suspend your awareness of your physical surroundings and allow yourself to get caught up in the story enough to enjoy the drama.

In a similar way, you can know that you’re in the Earth Amusement Park, and yet you can allow yourself to “forget” the mechanics of the particular ride you’re on to a degree that enables you to relish it.

So, if I stop and think about it, I know that Greg is my apparent husband (to use Sailor Bob Adamson’s language), I know that my apparent mother had an apparent operation recently, I know that my apparent son just switched apparent jobs, and so on.

But I don’t go around couching it in those terms all the time. I check in with Greg to find out what progress he’s making with the electrical gizmo he’s trying to fix, I wonder how Mom is doing after her surgery, I’m curious how my son is finding his new job, etc.

When things in the storyline go “wrong,” I offer what help I can, but quietly chuckle and wonder what will unfold in tomorrow’s episode of the soap opera.

Again, in the interests of being honest, I must admit that I don’t experience this level of “enlightenment” (or whatever you would call it) consistently. Yet, I would say that, compared with the way I experienced life before gaining this insight, I feel 85% better.

The moments during which events around me “grab me by the throat” are less intense and last a shorter time than they did before.