On Needing a Lover who Won’t Drive you Crazy
All of us have people in our lives whom we love. They can be a source of tremendous joy and connection and they can also drive us crazy. Because relationships with others bring enormous meaning to our lives, A Course in Miracles talks a great deal about relationships. The Course aims high as a spiritual teaching, promising to lead to an experience of love and peace beyond anything we can experience as individuals living in the world. But, that heady stuff doesn’t carry much water if we can’t know love and peace with the people who are in our lives right now. What the Course offers, then, is a path to capital “L” love, synonymous with capital “P” peace, that takes us right through the heart of our important relationships.
The focus of this blog post is on romantic relationships and on the question: How do you want to perceive your lover or romantic partner? If you are interested in experiencing peace, then it’s vital to know that you have a choice in your perception. A Course in Miracles teaches that there are only two ways to think about your romantic relationship: either from the perspective of the ego or from the perspective of the Holy Spirit (or however you refer to your inner Guide). I am saving an explanation of the origin of these two mutually exclusive perspectives for a future post. For now, here is what is important to know about them.
The Course’s concept of the ego is not the same as familiar concepts, like Sigmund Freud’s ego or the popular use of the word as referring to a person’s sense of self-importance (as in, “having a big ego.”) What A Course in Miracles teaches is that the ego is an entire thought system, and not a nice one. The ego is only interested in itself and its survival. It doesn’t believe in love and it doesn’t believe in shared interests. It believes that to get anything you have to give something, but nobody can be trusted because everyone is subject to suspicion, even lovers and life partners. The ego is only interested in proving that it is right and the other person is wrong. It nurses grievances and refuses to forgive. It operates on the basis of fear and guilt and it only sticks around as long as there is something to be gained. Like I said, it’s not a nice thought system. Part of what makes the ego thought system so pernicious is that it operates much of the time below the level of conscious awareness. At the level of awareness, we each perceive ourselves as innocent. We are the ones who have been hurt, wronged, even victimized by the person we love. We are not to blame, they are.
The Holy Spirit, by contrast, sees oneness. It understands that only love is real, that all minds are joined, and that there are no separate interests. It teaches that how we perceive and think about others is in fact how we view ourselves because all separation is illusory. To blame someone else and remain innocent is therefore impossible. And yet, by believing that our lover is guilty and we ourselves are innocent, what we end up doing is reinforcing the belief that we are separate. This belief in separation is the source of enormous pain and confusion and stands in the way of experiencing love. For this reason, the Holy Spirit never blames or judges anyone. Instead, the Holy Spirit teaches that the belief in separation is a mistake, and so too is the belief in guilt—anyone’s guilt. The Holy Spirit looks beyond behavior to the innocence of every person. Rather than holding grievances, it teaches forgiveness as a means of returning to a state of peace. The type of forgiveness that A Course in Miracles teaches is the recognition that we only lose peace by our own decision, not by the action of another. Through learning to recognize this and remembering that all minds are joined, we can let go of grievances and experience union with others, especially our lovers and romantic partners.
Returning to a state of peace after your lover or partner has “driven you crazy” is, of course, much, much easier said than done. The Course explains that each of us has two possible ‘voices’ that we can ‘listen to’, namely the ego’s and the Holy Spirit’s. For any situation, “The two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously; or almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first” (T-5.VI.3). This means that our instantaneous reactions when we are upset always reflect the ego thought system. “The ego speaks in judgment… The ego’s decisions are always wrong, because they are based on the error they were made to uphold” (T-5.VI.4). The error is the belief that we are all separate beings with separate interests. The ego effectively says, ‘Somebody has to be wrong and it better not be me.’ Because it has this perspective, A Course in Miracles calls the ego, “the teacher of attack” (T.-14.XI.14). As a result, thinking about your lover or romantic partner with the ego thought system perpetuates conflict, holding onto grievances, and assigning and rehearsing blame.
Alongside the perspective of blame is the Holy Spirit’s, which A Course in Miracles calls “the Teacher of peace” (T.-14.XI.14). To access the Holy’s Spirit’s perspective, the first step is to recognize that you have taken the bait of seeing your lover as wrong and yourself as right.
Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. In this view, you seek to find an innocence that is not Theirs but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else’s guilt. Can innocence be purchased by giving of your guilt to someone else? (T-26.X.4)
Once you have recognized this trap of thinking with the ego’s perspective of attack, the second step is to allow the Holy Spirit to teach you to look at the situation from its perspective of peace. All that is needed is willingness to shift from the ego’s to the Holy Spirit’s perspective. Key to supporting this shift is noticing and letting go of judgment of the other person or of yourself. This is the stuff of forgiveness as A Course in Miracles teaches it:
Forgiveness…is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. (From Part II of the Workbook, paragraph 4 of the section, “What is Forgiveness?”)
By joining with the Teacher of peace in your mind in this way, “…the Holy Spirit reverses [the ego’s] decision, much as a higher court has the power to reverse a lower court’s decisions in this world” (T-5.VI.4). With that reversal, you will experience a shift from anger, hurt, and blame to something better, whether it is peace of mind, connection, contentment, or even deepened love for your lover or romantic partner.
What this shift will feel like will vary from person to person and even situation to situation. Because romantic relationships are so deeply personal and intimate, and because all of us carry emotional wounds from other times in our lives, Course-style forgiveness of lovers and romantic partners is generally gradual. This type of forgiveness often takes many iterations to work through. But what is always true with each argument and conflict is that it is an opportunity to choose again how we want to perceive our lover or romantic partner. In turn, how we practice perceiving that person will strengthen what we believe in and value. If we value conflict and pain, we will think with the ego thought system and take the perspective that we are always the victim and our lover is always the perpetrator. By contrast, if we value peace, we will think with the Holy Spirit and see—eventually—the fundamental innocence of the other person, no matter what they have said or done. By repeatedly choosing this perspective, we no longer have to search for a lover who won’t drive us crazy, because we will see that our peace was never truly taken away by that person to begin with.
Note: The teaching that personal peace is a choice between two thought systems in no way supports the position that mistreatment is justified and should be endured. No one deserves to be mistreated by another person and no one is justified in mistreating another person. What we each deserve is kindness, including kindness from ourselves. The attainment of personal peace through the guidance of the Teacher of peace is simply available at any moment, regardless of decisions about whether a romantic relationship is brief or lifelong.
All quotes are from A Course in Miracles, copyright ©1992, 1999, 2007 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, 448 Ignacio Blvd., #306, Novato, CA 94949, www.acim.org and info@acim.org, used with permission.