Meeting the Inner Landscape with love

I’ve noticed lately how the sudden changes on our planet have really shaken things up with many of our relationships. I wanted to share a bit of what of I’ve been dancing with personally for anyone who might find themselves struggling to be present in these times.

All those big waves of reality certainly make the dance of intimate relationship even more delicate, intense, and potentially triggering with each step. While these waves come and go even in the best of times, it’s helpful to recognize that the collective atmosphere of doubt, mistrust, and fear can seep into personal experience in ways that block our clarity and throw us off center.

The global sense of uncertainty alone is enough to aggravate the deeper layers of insecurity, heartbreak, and lack that make up some of the more uncomfortable aspects of human experience. Add to the equation either inescapably close quarters or unattainable distances and relationships are swiftly put to the test.

Watching our go-to diversions, like travel, work, and social life crumble into the unknown can feel like being stripped of our armor and pointed to face the jagged edges of our inner landscape with little but raw honesty to defend ourselves.

Touching up against those avoided places can activate some of our most deeply embedded reactivities and destructive patterns, including the ones that have long sense faded from view.

At times like these it’s easy to lose our footing and get washed out to sea by the pull of old habits. And no matter what the preferred strategy may be, any tendency to shut down, dissociate, distract, blame, destroy, or fly away does not bring us any closer to the shore of conscious, loving relationship—with ourselves or others.

A beautiful alternative is to meet the inner experience that gives rise to these patterns with an open, loving presence. Many of us can be overly harsh toward the different varieties of inwardly felt experience. Especially the ones that don’t fit neatly into how we’d prefer to feel or be. But a bit of softness and curiosity is a much more effective approach to integrating these aspects of being human than criticism or avoidance will ever be.

The same loving presence that melts away our armor while softening into the most hidden corners of the psyche, is also the key to meeting the messiest parts of our loved ones with a warm embrace. Intimate relationships will expose our deepest wounds and trigger our most unsettling patterns.

As we begin to welcome this reality as a gift, the alchemical dance of self and other heats up, and the unconditional presence of two lovers shines a bright enough light to invite even the loneliest fragments of being back into that Sacred, shared light of awareness.

-Richard Willis, Fall 2020