Peter’s Story
Section Two - Episode Seven
Letting Go
Continuing on with the version of the story written in October-November 1998,
for self-therapy purposes.....
By early 1998, we were discussing the future of our relationship. We agreed to scale back the sexual content and concentrate more on the friendship.....
Over several months, we went through a process of letting go. It was a very gentle, loving, process. For me, it was an opportunity to resolve very deep emotional issues concerning letting go and moving on. I had always found it very difficult to let go of relationships: my experiences with letting go of Jeanette and of Cynthia had been especially difficult.
I used my therapies to good advantage in this process. There was one occasion, on a Sunday afternoon when we had talked and agreed to let go of the sexual part of our relationship and Jane had left my place an hour or two earlier than usual, because there was nothing more to be said. I was left feeling empty and sad, and I went out into the garden and found two plants to make flower essences from to help in my letting go process. I made the essences,
Mahoe
and
Lilac Oxalis, and, in combination with other essences, they really did help me through this letting go process.
At times, the sexual feelings would come up, and we would sometimes make love. For me, on these occasions, it was about learning to be with each other in the intimacy of the moment without any expectation or agenda for the future. This, surely, is a major lesson for all of us: being totally in the moment, the same thing that Shihan Andy spoke about during those magic moments in karate class.
For the past few months (it is now October 1998 as I write this), our relationship has been a platonic friendship. I have been, once again, doing intensive self-therapy work on my remaining unresolved emotional issues; and finally, at last, I can truly say that, for these long-standing relationship-related issues of mine, “The end is in sight”.
I believe that I have now moved a long way towards letting go of my need for a “Special Relationship”, with Jane or with anyone, and am more able to relate to her in a “Holy Relationship” way. To do this, it was essential for me to let go of the sexual part of our relationship: this was keeping me tied in to the “Special” way of relating, with expectations and an agenda. I am now able to be in a space of truly unconditional love with her, with no expectations as to what might be in it for me. I am also now able to relate to her sons in a very straightforward, open, loving way, without the energy of rivalry for their mother's love.
Any remaining expectations or agenda I had about Jane were blown away when she began a sexual relationship with someone else. I initially had very mixed feelings about this, but I used this as an opportunity to work on my own issues that were thrown up by my feelings. It provided me with an opportunity to enter another period of very intensive self-therapy which is ongoing as I write this (October 1998). The writing of this story is for me a very important part of this self-therapy.
About the time that Jane and I were changing the nature of our relationship, I re-established contact with an old friend, Lisa, who had moved from Wellington to Waiheke Island. Lisa is an old friend and colleague, and we have co-operated and helped each other over the years as we are both flower essence therapists, and had both trained in a number of other therapies including Reiki, Zenith, and the Perelandra energy processes.
Talking to Lisa on the telephone, the subject of past lives and past-life therapy came up. She had discovered that she has a talent for tuning in to issues and discovering any past-life connection, and that usually the emotional energy from the past life could be easily resolved with the aid of flower essences. (See further on in the story, for details of using essences.)
What I am about to relate may stretch the incredulity of some of you, but all I can say about this is that ten years ago I would never have believed it myself. But to me now, it is the only explanation that makes sense about a lot of what happens in human relationships, and to me now it is as real as the computer that I am typing this story on. Just because we cannot see something with our physical eyes does not mean that it cannot exist.
I began to do this past-life therapy for myself, with Lisa's help; slowly at first, and then more and more. Eventually, I found that I could do the past-life “readings” myself. I tune in to the energy of the issue, and ask for the details of what I need to know about this past life or lives. I use my pendulum to ask questions, and within a few minutes I have a complete picture of all I need to know. I can do this for myself or for others.
Lisa had discovered a way to help with the resolution of past-life energies using the “M.A.P.” process developed by Machaelle Small Wright of Perelandra, and both Jane and I have recently (1998) been using this successfully.
The subject of possible past lives between Jane and myself was raised early in 1998, but at that stage Lisa was able to obtain hardly any detail. Later in 1998, however, I discovered that Jane and I have had many past lives together, in all sorts of relationships: parent-child, sisters, brother-sister, and marriage partners many times.
The incident where Jane found the courage to say “No!” to sex when she did not feel like it, was actually related to a past life with me in a culture where the women did not have the power to say “No”. By finding the courage to say “No” this time she released the energy of this, broke the karmic pattern, and will never, ever, have to endure a situation again where she is powerless to say “No”. Things often have a deeper, hidden meaning which is not obvious at the time.
Right through 1998, I worked on clearing my many past-life issues with Jane, and a large number of my own general past-life issues which have been triggered off by my feelings about her. For me, this has meant staying centered in the energy of unconditional love (towards all concerned, ie. Jane, her new partner, her sons, and myself) no matter what I am feeling and no matter what appears to be “happening”. It has been a powerful opportunity in learning to let go of old concepts about what is real and what is not real, and about the futility of having agendas. Once again, it's about just being totally present in the present moment, as spoken of by Shihan Andy in the karate class.
It would have been much harder for me to have done what I have done, in resolving all of these issues, without the use of the tools and techniques of the therapies that I have used. But, the tools and techniques are just that. Useful as they are, they remain just tools.
What really matters is the intent of the person who is using the tools. The finest hammer and chisel in the world does not automatically make the user into a master carpenter: and so it is with these tools. I have discovered that the most important ingredient in the recipe is unconditional love. Love for others, and love of self, totally without conditions or agenda. This is the real miracle.
And, if I am in this state of unconditional love, really experiencing it all of the time, in present time, with no regrets about the past and no apprehension about the future, then what else actually exists for me except this pure, heart-centered, unconditional love?
Nothing else matters to me, nothing else can possibly matter. And because nothing else matters, nothing else exists for me. Everything else ceases to exist, fades away into a shadow-land, a dream land. All of the things I thought were real: the pain, trauma, resentment, guilt, agendas, judgment, etc. All of it slips away out of existence, like the memory of a nightmare after the sleeper has awoken.
I have awoken to the fact that I am the love. I become it, and for me nothing else exists. There is no pain, no sadness, no resentments nor grievances, no apprehension nor fear, no expectations nor agendas, and therefore there is no possibility of disappointment. There is just the oneness of the pure, carefree, unconditional love. It matters not what appears to be happening around me. What others appear to be doing. My only reality is the bliss of the love I am feeling, with no conditions attached, for everyone and everything.
And as I experience this state of blissful oneness with everything and everyone in the universe, for me linear time ceases to exist. I enter into the reality of cosmic time, where I really am living right in the moment of present time, just as Shihan Andy spoke about. I am at peace with the past and with all possible futures, because I am in total acceptance of everything that is happening right now.
Everything that I experience is just as it is meant to be, perfect in every detail. And in my reality of cosmic time, everything that I have ever experienced in this life and in all other “past” lives, and everything that I will experience in this life and in other “future” lives, is actually happening right now. I have already reached the point of resolving, integrating and accepting all past and future “traumas”. I have already reached the point of infinite wisdom and all-knowingness that is my rightful inheritance.
I can choose to experience anything I like, and whatever I choose to experience, I will experience it as blissful unconditional love. For there is no other reality.
Fatherhood
Right throughout this whole story of my life, there have been a number of themes which keep recurring in various guises. One of these is fatherhood in all its aspects.
All of the women that I have spoken about here have been mothers. A natural consequence of this is that for me to have a functional relationship with any one of these women, I also need to be able to have a functional relationship with her children. Until now, I have been an abysmal failure at building function relationships with these children.
In every case, the children felt threatened by my relationship with their mother, like they were afraid that if their mother gave me some of her love there would not be enough of her love left for them. They showed this fear in various ways: Meagan's daughter displayed thinly veiled hostility, Jane's sons tolerated me but were obviously unhappy, and Cynthia's 9-year old son attempted to attack me with a knife!
Until recently, my answer to the drama with the children was to focus on the children and blame them as being the “problem”. “If only they could sort out their unresolved stuff with their own father, there would be no problem with them accepting me!” Or, I would try to avoid the problem by only spending time with the woman when her children were not around.
Or, let's avoid the problem altogether and totally avoid relationships with women who have children (like my initial hesitation when I first met Jane). But this just never seemed to happen. Most of the women that I was attracted to were mothers: that was one of the factors that attracted me, of course! My hurt little inner child was looking for someone to mother him and this was a major reason for the negative reaction from the children of the woman I chose, as they did not want a rival for her affection. And, the universe was determined to not let me off the hook so easily! This was an issue that I was going to have to resolve.
However, isn't it interesting, that as the story progresses, the children's hostility becomes less extreme with each relationship. Not a coincidence, in my opinion. As I became more healthy and functional, what was reflected back to me by the children was less blatantly hostile.
In other words, if I really want to have a healthy loving relationship with any woman and with her children, I have to resolve my own issues!
Most solo parents are fully stretched in the day-to-day drama of running their household without the continuing support of a partner, and they often find that when they enter a new relationship with a man (or woman) who is a relative stranger to the children, the new relationship becomes another commitment of their time and energy that they can ill afford. This was certainly the case with all of the women in this story, and at times I was left feeling like the proverbial straw that was about to break the camel's back.
Instead of feeling that my presence in her life was enhancing her life, I felt that I was an extra burden that she had to somehow fit in to her life along with all her other commitments. This would trouble me greatly, as I believed that sexual relationships should include a large degree of nurturing and supporting each other and I felt helpless to do this because of the issues with the children. There always seemed to be a shortage of time to do all the things that I would have liked for us to do together, so everybody seemed to be the losers in that we all suffered from a lack of “quality time” with each other.
Attempts to break the impasse ended in dismal failure. On one occasion when Cynthia left me to mind her children while she went out for an hour or two, it was an absolute disaster: they ran riot and I was helpless to do anything with them. With both Meagan and Jane, any outings with her children were at best strained and at worst traumatic. And I found that no matter how hard I tried to like them and get to know them, it always felt “false”, like I was pretending to like them, and of course you cannot fool children, they could see right through my pretense and my attempts at more pretense only made matters worse.
I used to fantasize along the lines of “If only I had met Cynthia/Meagan/Jane many years earlier, and if I was the father of her children, then they would accept me and things would be very different!”
In my ideal fantasy relationship, I would have a totally functional, loving relationship with the children of my partner, with everyone's needs being totally met and no-one feeling threatened. When she needed time out on her own, I could just say “I'll take the boys to a movie while you have some time on your own.” But how to achieve this in real life????
Well, there is an answer, but it's not easy. There are no short-cuts. The only way is for me to sort out and resolve all of my own unresolved issues about everything that is impacting on my relationship with all of the people concerned. ie. All of my unresolved baggage about being a father, about my relationship with my own father and with my mother, and about my relating to women.
Rather a tall order, but, wait a minute, isn't this what this whole story is all about???!!! Yes, I have been doing it all the time! And yes, it is working..... gradually.
I have now resolved that I will never again dive into a “relationship” with any woman until I have first taken the time to get to know her children (and her also) really well as a friend. And I will face up to and resolve any issues that come up in my face during this “getting to know you” phase. Even if it turns out that in any particular instance the relationship does not proceed beyond the friendship stage, this will still be time well spent, as it will have given me an opportunity to identify and resolve some of my own issues and this will be work that I will not have to repeat next time! Patience and delayed gratification is the name of the game.
I must say, however, that just recently (late 1998), I have noticed that I find it much easier to relate to children. When I spend time with the children of my women friends, I find myself (usually) actually enjoying the experience! And, my relationship with my own sons is improving, but more of this later.
Click here to continue on with the next episode of this section of this (1998 version) of the story......
Section Three, Episode One..... Health and Healing.
