Ego and Essence in Relationship

 

 

Our Ego-Self in Relationship

 

1) I vow to turn you into a symbol of my sense of unworthiness, and to use you to justify my decision to forget who I really am.

 

2) I vow to make you an idol – to see you as the source of my happiness, security, sense of well-being, worth and peace.

 

3) Therefore, I vow to blame you for the many feelings of unworthiness, insecurity, lack of fulfillment, anger and discontentment that I feel.

 

4) I vow to use our relationship to practice and perfect my skills of judgment, projection, and giving to get, and to reinforce my perception of myself as a lacking, powerless victim.

 

5) I vow to make the form of our relationship more important than its content, and to focus my energy and attention on whether or not you are living up to my needs as I have defined them.

 

6) As long as you fulfill the desires and demands of my ego, I will love you and be nice to you. When you don’t, I will feel justified in criticizing and attacking you, manipulating you and trying to change and control you.

 

7) I vow to use our relationship to practice my belief that safety lies in separation, in keeping secrets, in being defensive and attacking or withdrawing when I feel scared.

 

I vow to emerge from our relationship more angry, despairing, cynical, defensive, hopeless and convinced of my guilt (and yours) than when I entered it.

 

 

Our Essence in Relationship

 

1) I vow to deepen my acceptance of my own true nature as Love Itself, and compassion for my own humanness, as the ground from which I engage in love with you.

 

2) I vow to see you as a reflection of The Sacred, and think of you as a beloved soul companion here to help me wake up to the blessedness of existence. 

 

3) Therefore, I vow to join with you in healing whatever defences or blockages arise in either of us to the experience of real love. 

 

4) I vow to cultivate my capacity for unconditional acceptance, forgiveness, kindness, compassion and trust, that through relinquishing my judgments and seeing you as innocent and wholly lovable, I may come to know myself as thus. 

 

5) I vow to focus on nurturing the content of our relationship, honouring you by doing my best to relate from a place of honesty and kindness. Where I see a lack, I will look to what I could give.

 

6) When I hit my own wounds and feel tempted to control you to avoid facing my own pain, I vow to stop, go within and enquire into the true cause of my hurt. Sharing my process with you, I ask your support in opening to grace, that I may surrender into the truth deeper than my inner fears.

 

7) I vow to use our relationship to loosen my attachment to the ways of separation, that I may move towards a deeper joining instead of withdrawal; share more of my heart when I feel like closing off, and finding ever deeper levels of courage to choose love over fear.  

 

I vow to walk home into the heart of Love together, that through our relationship we may become our truest Self; free, whole, at ease, and capable of loving without condition.