The Horizontal and Vertical of Relationships

Sep 1

Our greatest interest in providing these resources and messages is to help you increase your consciousness, and in doing so, begin to pave the way toward presenting and articulating a new science of living that can impact the most mundane of experiences. In doing so, we are most interested in how consciousness can be more understood, how it applies to daily living, and the spiritual path that results from those efforts.

It’s not about opinion or belief which has nothing to do with consciousness but is about truth that is self-evident. If you are a person who feels that you haven’t made a lot of real progress in your circumstances, that lack of progress can often be attributed to the fact that you don’t really know what you’re dealing with, that you don’t really know what the real problem is. The human mind sees the path of life as a linear process encased in duality, and, particularly in the United States, sees all endeavors pointing to materialistic goals and acquisition. The mind condition is nothing more than a mental condition residing in oppositions and paradoxes for which it has no answer other than to resist. So, it is quite common in a dominant mental condition that what a person says is not what they do.

Stability is not a characteristic of the human mind.

We use the terms horizontal and vertical to describe the difference between the physical and the metaphysical. Horizontal is physical and vertical is metaphysical. It is the difference between matter and Spirit, between unconscious and conscious, between unreal and real. Said in a way that nearly everyone would understand, it is the difference between heaven and earth.

Until the journey to the vertical begins in your life, you will be trapped in a world of duality where the sense of meaninglessness becomes overwhelming and the noise of everyday life blocks any attempt to find release.

Maria Alfassa Richard, Sri Aurobindo’s principal spiritual collaborator, who would become known as the Mother, said this:

“Basically, the vast majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and all the windows shut, so they suffocate (which is quite natural),but they have with them the key that opens the doors and the windows, and they don't use it. Certainly, there is a period when they don't know that they have the key, but even long after they do know it, long after they have been told, they hesitate to use it and doubt that it has thepower to open the doors and windows, or even that it may be advisable to open them.
And even once they feel that ‘Afterall, it might be a good thing,’ a fear pursues them: ‘What is going to happen once all these doors and these windows open?’ They become afraid–afraid of losing themselves in this light and in this freedom. They want to remain what they call “themselves.” They love their falsehood and their slavery. Something in them loves it and remains clinging to it. They feel that without their limits, they would no longer exist. That is why the journey is so long, so difficult.
For if one would truly consent no longer to be, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyous–though perhaps not in the way men conceive of joy and ease. At heart, there are very few beings who are not enamored of struggle. There are very few who would consent to having no darkness or who can conceive of light as anything other than the opposite of obscurity: ‘Without shadow, there would be no painting. Without struggle, there would be no victory. Without suffering, there would be no joy.’ That is what they think, and as long as they think like that, they are not yet born to the spirit.”

“At heart, there are very few beings who are not enamored of struggle. There are very few who would consent to having no darkness or who can conceive of light as anything other than the opposite of obscurity.” -Maria Alfassa Richard

The Mother’s argument is that in reality, duality does not exist. Her argument is that there is another reality than the one you practice. We teach this understanding through those terms of horizontal and vertical.

Back in 1999, social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University performed tests on some subjects and discovered that in many cases, the lower the performance of a subject, the higher their confidence was that they had done well. They published their findings in a paper entitled, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.”

Dunning went on later to write an article called “We Are All Confident Idiots.” That’s a really good way to describe yourself in the horizontal: confidently incompetent...and, of course, I am placing myself in that category, too.

One of the most visible areas of human life in which your (and my) incompetence shines in the horizontal is in the world of relationships. Carl Jung and Jungian psychology, which is the most effective psychological approach to human behavior, coined what became known as the anima and the animus, a destructive and damaging effect that occurs when an individual is functioning in their most unconscious, dysfunctional self.

John Sanford, a Jungian Episcopal priest, is the author of, “Invisible Partners,” a book about relationships. In his book, he explains, by the anima, Jung meant the feminine component in a man’s personality, and by the animus, he designated the masculine component in a woman’s personality. Jung derived these words from the Latin word animare, which means to enliven because he felt that the anima and the animus were like enlivening souls or spirits to men and women.

Sanford says this about the anima and the animus:

“A woman almost always knows when a man is possessed by his anima because he is not available for relationship. One cannot get through the mood to find the man. In the hands of the anima, unresolved and repressed feelings turn intopassive-aggressive moods and behavior. Possessed by rage, it is a match poised to drop in awaiting can of gasoline. At worst, a man becomes chronically moody, resentful, and anima-ridden. Working things out in a relationship requires that a man come to grips with his anger. This includes overcoming his fear of a woman’s anger.
Every man must be capable of enduring the dark side of the woman if he is going to find her tender and life-giving side. If a man becomes too repressed and passive, there is something in most women that will dominate such a man if he allows it. It is a man’s passivity that draws out a woman’s animus. Among the negative attributes of the anima is her capacity to poison a man’s creative urges. When a man is anima-possessed, he is apt to give forth opinions instead of genuine thinking. The animus is the master of opinions in a woman: judgments, generalizations, critical statements, and assertions that do not come from a woman’s own process of thinking and feeling but from various authoritative sources such as mom and dad, books and articles, church or some other collective organization.
It’s like a group of uneducated and uninformed men sitting around a cracker barrel. This situation is exacerbated when the father has relinquished the masculine role of disciplinarianand forced the mother to assume this role in the family. The Great Prosecutor, the Top Sergeant, the Great Scorekeeper, the Inner Judge, the Duty Demon. It’s like a great pronouncement and pronouncements are indisputable. Judgments, conclusions and criticisms have a peculiarly blunt, stinging quality because they are not related to the emotional reality of the situation. It prefers to use a sword instead of a lamp. Since the anima and the animus have these irritating effects, it is not surprising that they are inclined to argue with each other. No man can converse with an animus for 5 minutes without becoming the victim of his own anima.”

He goes on to say, “Masculine justice is impersonal and objective. It is enshrined in our penal and legal codes and calls for an impartial and uniform meting out of justice as society requires it, for various offenses, without regard to individual considerations. Feminine justice, on the other hand, is the justice of nature. It is personal and suited to the particular circumstances. Feminine justice prevails in matters of human relationships. We get what we deserve.”

I see nothing but absolute validity in Sanford’s comments, but I sure wish somebody had told me about this before I got married the first time. But there’s the horizontal for you. Seeking but never finding. I have said many times that the problem with relationships is not divorce but staying together. The majority of people in relationships are not in relationships at all but are in what Tony Speed in his book “Living, Loving and Laughing” calls entanglements, recreation-ships, sex-ships, and other kinds of ships...but they’re not relationships.

There’s the horizontal for you. Seeking but never finding.

Speed states that the way you know you’re in a relationship is when you have the option not to be in the relationship. Well, there goes most marriages. In the horizontal, you are constantly seeking to find that person who is going to fulfill you, and therein lies one of the greatest land mines of human relationships. I promise you, I guarantee you that you will never find that person who is going to fulfill you, no matter how many country music songs you listen to. This doesn’t mean that the other person will not become the center of your universe and your true love. Seeking fulfillment in relationships is a horizontal endeavor that reflects the level of differentiation you experienced in your family of birth.

Highly differentiated parents displayed to their children a clear control of not needing the other parent to attend to their every whim or need, to be emotionally grounded when the other person was emotionally upset, and not expect the other person to be in charge of meeting their every expectation or to be in charge of making them happy. But few children are exposed to this level of consciousness growing up. And when a marriage or serious relationship rolls around, you always pick someone who’s at about the same level of differentiation that you are. It’s a match waiting to be lit.

The journey at that point is an exploration into becoming and the success of the relationship will become dependent upon whether the couple can increase their consciousness and overcome the very reasons that brought them together which were probably not very conscious at all. This becomes a horizontal journey into mind, body, and emotion that is typically approached through therapy in some manner.

Helmuth Kaiser, a psychiatrist in the 1940s called it fusion fantasy: the fantasy of two bodies appearing to be controlled by one mind as if the two had given up their separate identities in order for two to become one. It is the death knell of many relationships but has been argued for in poetry and music since the beginning of time. It ain’t going to happen because the only person you can become is the person you are...but not the horizontal you, but the vertical you...which we’re coming to.

But that’s why differentiation is so important. Differentiation allows you to maintain your sense of self when you are emotionally connected to or physically close to another person, especially if you’re in love with them. I want to tell you a story about differentiation. I was divorced and married for the second time in 1992. This was different and I knew it. There was something in the first years of just knowing one another that transcended anything I had experienced before and it was this very sense of oneness with Terry that I soon mistrusted. I saw shadows of the same old me, the me that I had worked hard to evolve and to pull out of the ashes of the past and I wasn’t going back to that. We had been married for about 5 years and I was out of town for several days. I contacted Terry on the way home and told her that I needed to talk to her, that there was something important that I needed to tell her but that I didn’t want to speak at home.

So, we agreed to meet at a favorite restaurant. I could tell she was nervous when we sat down. She had already understood the seriousness in my words and I think it frightened her a little. After settling in, I told her, “I have to tell you something.” I paused and I held her hand and I told her, “You have to let me go. You have to start focusing on yourself and what you want in your life. I cannot be the object of your life. I’m not going anywhere. You have healed me, you have stuck with me through all of the dark years when I could barely take care of myself and I am forever grateful to you for what you have done for me. But I cannot fulfill you. Only you can do that. But I will do everything in my power to help you do that as you are doing everything in your power to help me fulfill myself. I want you to be you outside of me, and me outside of you, as impossible as that may seem. I will be with you for the rest of my life but I want you to be you and to live the life of your choice.”

Terry would always say how, the following morning, she felt so free. Years later, I took it even further by telling her something like this, “I love you so much and I love watching you be happy, so much that if the time ever comes and you want to be with something else, or you fall in love with someone else, I’ll help you because I love watching you be happy. I’ll help you be where you want to be.”

The word differentiation was not a psychological term to me, it was a foundation of a healthy and successful relationship, something that neither life nor death could destroy. Now, let’s go back: why did I guarantee you that you will never find that person who is going to fulfill you? We now must move to the vertical in order to understand and apply wisdom and consciousness to our relationships. The reason that no one can fulfill you is because you were never unfulfilled in the first place. That is something you made up. At birth, in spite of the heredity, environmental, genetic, and parental forces to which you were exposed, you were whole and complete, needing nothing from anybody for any reason to be whole and complete and well and loved. And if you were whole and complete, needing nothing from anybody for any reason, why would you have any expectations of the other person? You wouldn’t.

You were never unfulfilled, never not loved, never not good enough, until you made up a story in which something was wrong with you but just because you made it up, it doesn’t make it true.

Expectations ruin relationships. And it’s not hard to see that many times you don’t even live up to your own expectations of yourself, so, project that discrepancy onto the other person? And if you were whole and complete, needing nothing from anybody for any reason, why would you argue with the other person...so you can be right and feel better about not being whole and complete and fulfilled? You were never unfulfilled, never not loved, never not good enough, until you made up a story in which something was wrong with you but just because you made it up, it doesn’t make it true.

Your role in relationships is not to get that person to fulfill you but to share your fulfillment, your wholeness, your completion, and your love of Self with them and they with you! It means accepting responsibility for your own happiness or unhappiness, and neither expecting the other person to make you happy nor blaming that person for your bad moods and frustrations. In the vertical, you transform:

Drama into Truth
I’ll Never Win at Love into Abundance
Surviving into Becoming
Subjective into Objective
Unreal into Real
Being Afraid into Being
Unthreatenable Memory into Truth
Compulsion into Intention
Reaction into Action
Childhood Tapes into Choice

Be yourself, your true self, and everything else will unfold naturally, including being in a loving relationship that defies your past experiences. Relationships provide the greatest opportunity to create the experience of your highest thought about yourself, of fulfilling your dream of who you consider yourself to be. When you do the opposite, when you see them as the opportunity to cause the other person to live up to your highest conceptualization of them you will know great suffering and pain. So, it shouldn’t be lost to you that the loss of your Self in your relationship is what causes so much suffering in most couples. I promise you...they cannot fulfill you.

With that in mind, worry about yourself...about what you’re thinking, saying, doing, feeling, acting, or reacting. Because if you cannot love yourself, you cannot love another. And if you cannot love your Self, how is it possible for another to love you? In spite of their best efforts, it won’t matter. You can’t feel it anyway. So, here we go.

Love, honor, and cherish yourself.

You can only see out there what you see in here and when you do, there will be more love than you can handle because all you will see is the unfolding of love, the becoming of love across the planet, love is all there is. Be courageous and become self-centered which is not the same thing as being Selfish. What you do for yourself, you do for the other. Live up to the highest ideal of yourself you can imagine and that is the gift you give to the other.

And lastly, you cannot have it all until you’re willing to give it all up. Let go of your expectations, your needs. Turn your expectations and needs into preferences and let go. Emerson said, “I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which he is totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One's enough.”

So let go.

For what has not been overcome in the past repeats itself, again and again, each time with a slightly different appearance, a slightly different partner, but basically always the same, until you confront the old knot, the old you, and untie the knot. Move your relationships from the horizontal to the vertical, not because you should, but because you have the courage to be your true self, needing nothing from anybody for reason, to be whole, complete, loved, safe, and fulfilled.