Sacred Relationships

Written by: Julie Redstone
Published on: January 10, 2012
Category: Love & Compatibility

Our most intimate experience of self is often that of what we need, wish for, or want, and so it is natural for us to imagine and hope for what we desire in another. Sometimes this wishing comes from our better self - the part that knows what we truly need and has higher aspirations for ourselves and others. But sometimes we wish for less than what is good for us, and more of what is comfortable or reassuring for us in the moment.

This dilemma of 'need' and 'want' often gets projected onto relationships in which we want the 'other' to be who we want them to be or need them to be, rather than who they are. When tendencies are strong in this direction, we no longer see another as who they truly are. Rather, we see them through the prism of our own fears and projections. This creates a great burden for relationships, since mutual projections of one onto the other prevent the natural expression and evolution of intimacy and shared growth. They bring the relationship into a more perilous place of trying to satisfy the immediate needs of each person - needs that are not fully disclosed. Such relationships may be considered 'karmic relationships' rather than sacred relationships, (if we are speaking of the consciousness in which they are held, rather than the innate sacredness of every relationship), for they are based on the unconscious needs and fears of each participant, often carried from lifetime to lifetime and projected into each new situation.